1976: A Great Year in Music

1976 was a great year for pop music. And as a freshman in college, I spent lots of time listening to the radio, the airwaves filled with some of the best music ever to come down the pike – before or since. Of course, my focus and efforts should have been more directed toward my studies – instead of spending time listening to music, partying, and growing the world’s worst mustache – but how was I supposed to know that?

Still, it was a year of great songs (and I mean really great songs!) like The Eagles’ Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, Stevie Wonder’s I Wish, and Peter Frampton’s Show Me the Way. Of course, the year also brought us a handful of less-than-memorable classics – songs like Leo Sayer’s You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and KC & The Sunshine Band’s Shake Your Booty, but even those songs weren’t all that bad. 

For me, however, one of greatest songs to come out of 1976 was the Boston tune, Smokin’. Even today, I hear that song and I just can’t sit still. If it comes on the radio while I’m driving in the car, it gets totally cranked up until the speakers in my poor little Honda CRV almost blow up! (Okay, perhaps that’s an overstatement – but not by much!) And, as a great car song, it inspires fits of head-bobbing-while-driving better than almost any other song I know. (The obvious exception being the middle section of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. And if you remember the car scene in the movie Wayne’s World, then you know exactly what I’m talking about!)

Not only was the song Smokin’ a classic, and one of my all-time favorites, but Boston’s debut album boasted some other great tunes, as well: More Than a Feeling, Peace of Mind, and Rock and Roll Band – all great songs!

I’m proud to say I still have my original copy of the first Boston album – too bad I don’t have a turntable to play it on!

Gotta Love the Marimba!

Not long ago I posted some thoughts about the use of an ocarina as a solo instrument in pop music. (see 5/05/10: An Ocarina?) I admit the subject might have been a little bit lame to blog about, and so I apologize to anyone who thought I was being a tad harsh at best, or, at worst, terribly boring. (Just for the record, I don’t really think it was that bad of a subject, but hey, I can take a little constructive criticism from time to time.)

So allow me now to write on a more positive note about yet another instrument you don’t hear used much in pop music, at least not as a solo instrument: the marimba. Yes, that’s right – the marimba. (You know, that xylophoney-looking thing with metal tubes protruding down from down under the keys.) The marimba is known for its mellow lower register, and frequently used to create an “island” kind of mood, sounding a little like a muted version of steel drums.

Now, the marimba has been used a few times as a solo instrument in pop music, namely in the Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb and Elton John’s Island Girl. But, without a doubt, the all-time standout marimba solo appears in the song Moonlight Feels Right (1976) by the Atlanta-based band, Starbuck – a group formed in 1974 by keyboardist and vocalist Bruce Blackman and marimba player Bo Wagner. (Yes, they’re the two guys up and to the right, dressed in those suave and sofisticated outfits, reminding us of why the chic styles of the 70s didn’t last!)

Given the fact that one of the band’s founding members was a marimba player, it’s no wonder that a 16-bar solo works its way into the middle of the song, giving Wagner a chance to show off his mallet chops while wowing his fans with sixteenth note triplets and chromatic scales. (Okay, too technical? Did I mention I was a percussion major for a big part of my college career?)

Anyway, the song made it all the way to #3 on the Billboard charts in 1976, and was the only real hit Starbuck ever had. Maybe the marimba just doesn’t appeal to a wide enough audience… Ya think?

Stairway to Heaven

Few songs generate fonder memories of my early teenage years than Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, a tune that has been covered by dozens of artists, all the way from Dolly Parton to Mary J. Blige. Written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and appearing on the album Led Zeppelin IV (1971), the song consistently ranks high among the top rock songs of all time.

Back in the fall of 1971 I was in the ninth grade, and from the first time I heard Stairway to Heaven, I remember immediately liking the song – its soft, arpeggiated acoustic guitar intro, its mystical and enchanting lyrics, and, most especially, Plant’s screaming vocals at the end.

During my high school years the song was a staple at parties, coffee houses and school dances. And, I’m pretty sure we did a cover version in the band I played with at the time, along with songs by groups like The Doors, Yes, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

But my favorite high school memory surrounding Stairway to Heaven is playing it as an instrumental guitar prelude in church one Sunday with one of my best friends, Doug. Our church (of the large, downtown, Presbyterian variety) must have been fairly liberal for the day – not that there’s anything wrong with that – because members of our youth group regularly played guitars and sang during worship, entertaining the old guard with classics like Blowing in the Wind and One Tin Soldier. I can still recall playing on that particular Sunday, the two of us sitting on the steps that led up to the chancel area, with Doug plucking out the melody and me putting the chords underneath, as the congregation sat in silence and listened, politely intrigued. "Pretty cool," I thought at the time. Still do.

On a related note, a year or two after playing Stairway to Heaven in church, three of my friends and I played a prelude of a different sort, this time offering up a medley of Duke Ellington tunes. You should have seen the three ministers sauntering down the aisle to the strains of Take the "A" Train….

An Ocarina?

Okay, I’ll admit it: back in the mid-1970s I actually owned a Captain & Tennille album. There, I said it. I gladly lay it right out there on the table and own it. Not a problem.

The album was Love Will Keep Us Together, and not only was the title track pretty good, but I also liked some of the other cuts, as well – like the group’s cover version of The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows, and the Bruce Johnston classic, Disney Girls.

The duo released several other albums in the late 70s (I didn’t buy any of those!), and while it’s relatively easy to poke fun at The Captain & Tennille for a myriad of reasons (not the least of which is the hokey nautical captain’s hat worn by Daryl Dragon – alright, I know he was “the captain”), I really must take issue with Dragon’s choice of an ocarina as the solo instrument on one of the group’s more popular songs, Do That to Me One More Time, which appeared on their 1979 album, Make Your Move. I can’t for the life of me figure out what made him choose that instrument over some others. (An ocarina is a flute-type of instrument that looks sort of like a potato with holes in it.)

Daryl Dragon was, after all, one of the early users of the synthesizer in pop music (not that Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman had anything to worry about), using it in a particularly creative way on the song Muskrat Love. So, why not use a synthesizer for the solo verse in Do That to Me One More Time? (Something other than the sound of two muskrats mating might be nice, however!) Why in the world choose an ocarina? Goodness! An ocarina? The instrument (also known as a “sweet potato” – which should be a pretty good clue as to what a looser instrument it is!) sounds really out-of-place to me, and way “not cool.” How about a guitar? Or a trumpet, even? Almost anything would have been better than the “doot-doot-doot-doot-doot” of an ocarina. I don’t know, as a solo instrument, it just sounds really hokey to me.

Other than that, however, I sort of like the song – even though its title does have a romantic subtlety rivaled only by The Starland Vocal Band’s Afternoon Delight.