“Melody” From Black ’n Blue
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MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVES/WEEKLY ROCK POLL POST
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Name: Keno
E-Mail: keno@fairpoint.net
Subject: Poll Post for the week starting Monday, October 10
Date: Sunday, October 9, 2022
Time: 10:38:23 PM
Remote Address: 8.41.160.9
Message ID: 321305
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 321305
As I open up this week’s Poll Post for our 3 weekly polls, I’ll start off with the Stones poll, and first note that we will enter week 1,210 of voting and week 101 of rating their songs. This week’s question asks us this: Rate the Stones song “Melody” , from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“Melody” From Black ’n Blue
Last week we rated a song that was an in-between song from both the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor eras, and so this week we'll do close to the same thing by picking a song from the in-between Mick Taylor and Ron Wood eras of the band, with that being the tune "Melody".
Recorded in January, 1975 and released in 1976 on the album Black & Blue, yes indeed, this funky soul number was yet another steal from the Glimmers of somebody's else’s song, this time being keyboardist Billy Preston, who sang the co-lead vocals with Mick on this tune. Of course, the Glimmer Twins took the full credit for the song for themselves and paid Billy nothing for stealing the song away from him, as all of the music and some of the lyrics came from him. Billy also played piano and organ on the track. The song was only listed as "inspired by Billy Preston" on the LP, but when Bill Wyman covered the song on one of his solo LPs years later, he did the right thing and just straight-out credited the ditty to Preston only.
The full lineup for this song was: Lead Vocal: Mick Jagger; Electric Guitar: Keith Richards; Bass Guitar: Bill Wyman; Drums: Charlie Watts; with Vocal Harmony, Piano, Organ and added Percussion by Billy Preston. To rate this week’s song, just click on the following link: Stones Weekly Poll.
Last week at the Stones poll we voted on and rated this: Rate the Stones song “You Can't Always Get What You Want” , from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“You Can't Always Get What You Want” From the Rock n Roll Circus
“You Can't Always Get What You Want” scored a 10 for its top rating, while taking in 58.7% of the vote. To check out the Stones song's rating standings and see where in the standings this one landed, click on this link: Stones Song Ratings & Standings - List Page 5. Or, to see the full, finial vote tally from this poll itself, just click here: Stones Weekly Poll - week 1,209.
Okay, so let’s see now what this week’s Classic Rock Poll will be about as we enter week 849 of polling and bring back a multi-week question that will ask this: What was the first true Heavy Metal sounding song? (Part 1 of 3)?.
The birth of Heavy Metal music started just when?
You would have though we answered this question years ago, but no, I never asked it before. Now, from reading some forums where this question comes up every now and then, some of the younger metalheads just don't get it and will say to those who list any songs before Black Sabbath was formed, as being metal, are wrong, and insist that it all started with that band. Of course, that’s total bullshit, and even if the question only asked for the first true Metal band, they would still be wrong, as Sabbath wasn’t even the first. Any of us who were around back then knows this for a fact, and since it was the Baby Boomers generation that started Metal music, we should know what the first true Metal group was, and of course, it was Led Zeppelin, who came out in 1969, more than a year before Black Sabbath. Now true, Zeppelin wasn't just a Metal band, so yes, Sabbath was the first pure Metal band, just not the first overall.
But we aren’t asking for the first Metal band here for this poll question, what we are only looking for is the first song that had Heavy Metal elements in it, and since this clearly took place long before Sabbath was a band, then yes, IMO anyway, the first metal song came several years before their existence. If you rather call such songs from several years earlier "proto-metal", or a precursor to Metal, well fine. But are the words "proto" or "precursor" really needed here? They both really mean "first' and I already used that word and I think "first" fits the question better. Plus yes, Heavy Metal is light years different today then what we first had years earlier, with its many different faces around today, like Trash Metal, Speed Metal, Death Metal, etc. But we did have the first classic Metal songs played back in the early to mid ‘60s, and many claim, even before that, as the genre actually took shape back in the 1950s.
Now I agree that not all of the 46 songs listed in this multi week poll are pure Metal numbers and many of them today would not be consider or looked at as Metal songs any more. But for the most part, most of the songs in this poll are from the early to mid-1960s when Rock music was totally different, and even hard rock wasn't officially around yet when some of these songs were made (plus a few of the songs from the 1950s listed were Blues numbers and not even Rock music), and while many of these songs today would be looked at as hard Rock, back in the early '60s, and earlier, there was nothing close to them by any means, and yes, they were the start of, and where Heavy Metal came from, for sure.
The main ingredients for Heavy Metal music is, 1) How loud the electric guitar is played and how distorted it is when being played (the most important element to Heavy Metal) 2) How hard the drums were pounded and 3) How rough sounding the lead singer's voice is. All of the songs that are listing in this poll has at least one of those elements in them.
The three earliest songs closest to Metal that is listed in this poll come from the 1950s, with two of them coming from all the way back in 1954. They were "Cotton Crop Blues" by James Cotton, "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" from Pat Hare, and then from 1958 is Link Wray's "Rumble”. On the Cotton number, considered a Blues song - with its vocals sang in that way for sure (and of course, the Blues are where Heavy Metal really comes from), this one is the first released song of the 46 songs we are looking at in this poll. The second song from ’54 was released just a couple of months after the Cotton number, and more so one of the very first Rock songs released, but still noted officially as the Blues tune and titled "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby", with both songs featuring the somewhat forgotten guitarist Pat Hare playing the loud electric guitar on these 2 songs, with both of these numbers being the first real distorted guitar playing ever heard (if nothing else, that is a fact for both songs). Before these 2 songs, no sound coming from a guitar ever sounded like Hare's guitar sounded, and interesting that for his own song, the vocals are closer sounding like metal music, too, yet with that said, the one cut he made with Cotton, has a bit more wilder guitar sound on it. Hare was a badass who lived the life of a true, crazed rock and roller - before there were any rock and rollers around, and he was this way before Rock music started up. But he ended up living the last 16 years of his life in prison, after doing what his solo song's title noted (be it 9 years later) - as he shot his girlfriend dead, and then also shot a police officer who was called to investigate the sound of gunshots, killing the cop, too, in December of 1963, after a drunken fight with his girlfriend, who was his common-law wife at the time.
As far as Wray's "Rumble", this one was an instrumental, and to this day, it's the only instrumental Rock song, and the only song of any genre (period) with no lyrics to it, that was banned from radio play in both the States and in Europe, in part because of the loud distorted guitar on it and also because of what some in the States felt the title might lead to street fighting. But it's this song that Pete Townshend noted as being the reason he picked up a guitar in the first place, and the tune that Jimmy Page points to as inspiring him to play metal guitar.
Now I realize that while on some of these earliest songs, only the guitar's from these songs has hints of early metal soundings in them. But that's okay, since they were the start of something different, yet my guess is most won't vote for such songs since some feel that you need more than just a metal sounding guitar in a song for it to be the first true metal song (okay, I get that), and also, especially with the songs from the '50s, many don't even know these songs well enough. But let me tell you, with all 3 of the '50s songs listed, I noted above about Townshend and Page digging the Wray songs, while both Brian Jones and Keith Richards of the Stones, both knew who Pat Hare was and were influenced by his playing.
But yes, there's so many other songs that sounded much more Metal sounding than those from the '50s, and which contains more than just a distorted guitar to it. Think of the early Kinks and Who, and even the early Stones, and then most garage bands from the mid '60s, like The Fabulous Wailers (later just called "The Wailers", but no, this isn't the same band as the Bob Marley/Peter Tosh band of the same name), or The Rogues. But the truth was, the early Acid and Psychedelic Rock bands of the mid '60s were where Metal music also mainly came from (but along with the Blues). Plus, also remember, even bands like Led Zep and Black Sabbath, don't sound anything like a lot of the speed and death Metal music being made today. BTW, one last note on this.... the songs that you will see listed in this multi week poll will cover the years from 1954, up to 1970, as after '70, Metal music was for sure its own genre. But yeah, for those who feel it all started with Ozzy’s band, you can vote for Sabbath if you really believe that they played the first Metal song.
Okay, to vote in this week's Rock poll and to see the song’s listed for Part 1, just click on the following link: Classic Rock Poll .
Last week at the Rock poll we answered this question: Of the altered lyrics found in rock songs, that were forced on the artist due to censorship, what song was ruined the most by this action?.
The Stones caving in to the censors on U.S. TV, took first place in this poll
As is the case with a lot of our polls, the voting was tight and the top pick, that being “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by The Rolling Stones – Where the band was forced on the U.S. Ed Sullivan TV show to sing “lets spend some time together” instead of singing what the song's title was, came in first with 245 votes and 7.5% of the vote. This is actually a loss for the Stones, since unlike 90% of the other songs listed last week, the Stones caved in to the censors and willingly sang the altered lyrics live on TV (well, only the Glimmer Twins did the singing), whereas most of the other songs, the censorship was forced on the bands without them approving or even knowing what their evil labels were doing to their songs before the songs were released.
To see the full results from this poll, just click on the following link: Classic Rock Poll, week 848. Or, to see the Top 10 list from this poll, click on: Top 10 List Page, Page 18
Let’s finish up the Poll Post as usual with this week’s Beatles Poll, where we enter week 600 of voting along with week 34 of rating the Beatles’ songs. For this week we ask: Rate the Beatles song, “Do You Want to Know a Secret”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“Do You Want to Know a Secret”
This week's song to rate comes from the band's 1963 album Please Please Me, and while written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon/McCartney writing team, it always seemed like a George Harrison song to most fans, since it was written by John for George to sing. George wasn't writing his own songs yet at this time, although that was about to change real soon, so in the early days of the Beatles, both John and Paul would give one song per album each to both Ringo and George so they would have one song to sing lead on each LP release. In the U.S., it was the first top ten song to feature George as a lead singer, and it went all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1964, as a U.S. single (it did reach #1 on another, non-official U.S. music chart). John had claimed that as soon as he wrote this song, back in '62, that he realized he would give the song to George to sing. He also noted that his mother would sing a song to him as a boy with some of the song's lyrics heard in the Beatle song.
The lineup for this number was: George Harrison – Lead Vocals, Acoustic Guitar; John Lennon – Acoustic Guitar, Backing Vocals; Paul McCartney – Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals; Ringo Starr – Drums. To vote in this week's Beatles poll and rate this song, just click on this link: Beatles Weekly Poll.
Last week at the Beatles poll we answered this question: Rate the Beatles song, “This Boy”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“This Boy” Photo taken from the song’s video
“This Boy” like 33 of the 34 Beatle songs before it, saw a 10 rating for its top spot, taking 66.5% of the vote. To see the full, final results from this poll, just click on here: Beatles Weekly Poll – week 599. Plus, you can also check out the results at the Beatle song standings page. To get there, just click on here: The Beatles Song Ratings and Standings page.
So that does it for this week’s Poll Post. Okay, time for me to vent on a 100% non-music Poll Post close (yeah, I know, almost all of the Poll Posts end on a non-music mumble jumbo tale). I assume most of you, love or at least like babies, right? Even if you never what or wanted to have children - for whatever the reasons, everybody cares about babies and only the most heartless of all adult humans don't. Anyway, my great granddaughter turned 1 year old today (on Oct 9, she got the same birthday as John Lennon). So her grandpa (me) got her a cool, expensive birthday present that she could play in, a so called "GeeSound Ball Pit for Toddlers" that my grandson (her dad) told me about. It's one of those play pits made for babies that's shaped like a small pool and filled with about 50 or so foam balls that babies love to play in while sitting down. While it was way overpriced, it seemed like a cool gift, so I ordered it from Amazon. But when it got here the other day, it comes with a warning label on the front of the box that you can't miss before you open it, which reads: "Choking hazard for babies! Not for use by toddlers under 3 years of age!". At the Amazon site where it's sold, there is no warning shown - anywhere, and the main picture they use there shows a little baby girl, who can't me more than 2 years old, playing in the pit, and they make a big deal out of how great this makes for a baby's birthday present - yet the item is not for (or safe for) babies! Knowing how toddlers and kids are, no child over 4 would want to play in this thing - it would mainly only appeal to babies and toddlers 3 and under who don't get around a lot yet and are easily amused by things like this. Once a child is 4 or 5, they won't play in such a thing. So just how does Amazon get off selling something dangerous like this? I just hope word gets out about this dangerous toy pit that is made for babies - yet isn't safe for babies. I'm always been very careful with what I buy my little ones, and my grandson had asked me at first if I could have gotten her one of those baby walkers. They seemed harmless, and I was at first gonna buy one until I found out that they are flat out baby killers and hundreds of babies have died in them over the years, to the point where you can't even buy them in the departments stores anymore, and they are now banned in many places, like in all of Canada, and all pediatricians disapproved of them. I never would have guessed any of these things were a danger to a baby! Just what does one buy a small baby these days? Yet still, I can also hear my younger sister saying once to me, several years ago, how things are overblown today on things sold for children and things that you can do and can't do with your kids today, things that we all did when we were young, and somehow, we all grew up okay. That's true, but I guess the bottom line is, not everything is safe, and like that baby walker thing, I never heard that hundreds of babies have died around the world using them. That stuff doesn't make the news, but it still happens, too, even if most of us never hear of these things, they only happen to somebody else’s baby, or preteen. So, I will be more aware, since a baby is just that, and knows nothing yet, and it's 100% up to their parents and grandparents to look out for them so they will be safe. But if you got any babies in your life, do keep this in mind.
I do hope all of you have a great week ahead!
Keno
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