B-Sides, Undercurrents and Overtones: Peripheries to Popular in Music, 1960 to the Present (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

222 Pages·2009·2.95 MB·English

by  George Plasketes

B-Sides, Undercurrents and Overtones:
Peripheries to Popular in Music,
1960 to the Present
George Plasketes
B-SideS, UndercUrrentS and
OvertOneS: PeriPherieS tO POPUlar
in MUSic, 1960 tO the PreSent
for
Julie, Anaïs, and Rivers,
heArt and soul
B-Sides, Undercurrents and
Overtones: Peripheries to Popular
in Music, 1960 to the Present
GeOrGe PlaSketeS
Auburn University, USA
© George Plasketes 2009
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
George Plasketes has asserted his moral right under the copyright, designs and Patents act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
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Union road 101 cherry Street
Farnham Burlington, vt 05401-4405
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Plasketes, George
B-sides, undercurrents and overtones : peripheries to popular in music, 1960 to the
present. – (ashgate popular and folk music series)
1. Popular music – United States – history and criticism
i. title
781.6’4’0973
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plasketes, George.
B-sides, undercurrents and overtones : peripheries to popular in music, 1960 to the
present / George Plasketes.
p. cm.—(ashgate popular and folk music series)
iSBn 978-0-7546-6561-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Popular music—United States—history and criticism. i. title.
Ml3477.P63 2009
781.640973’09045–dc22
2008046196
iSBn 978-0-7546-6561-8 (hbk)
iSBn 978-0-7546-9382-6 (ebk.V)
contents
General Editor’s Preface vii
Preface: My Back Pages ix
Acknowledgements xi
introduction: the Flip Side: let it B 1
1 Get Your 45s On: terry Melcher, lost in the Surf and Sun of the
1960s Sound Waves 13
2 how the Midwest Was Won: the chicago Suburbs Seven,
a Mid-1960s regional rotation 25
3 covering Outside the lines: hans Fenger and the langley Schools
Music Project 35
4 Geffen records v. neil Young: the Battle of the Brands 51
5 Music and Movie Mutuality: ry cooder, the involved Bystander 69
6 World Music Missionaries: cross cultural convergences 85
7 the vital visual voice of the videotape editor: Seamlessly Sculpting
Graceland: The African Concert 101
8 rock around the cop: Bochco’s Broadway Blue Print as television
Musical Muse and Martyr 119
9 Must Sing tv: Pop rock Sitcom cameo Obscuras 135
10 Umbilical Musical chords: lineage, legacy and Mom and
Pop Pedigree 153
11 die another day: Warren Zevon’s desperado “deteriorata” 173
Bibliography 195
Index 203
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General editor’s Preface
the upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the
twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music
alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. a relativistic
outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international
ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution
of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context,
reception and subject position. together, these have conspired to eat away at the
status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. a need has
arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new
genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes
authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of
free, individual expression.
Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the
Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series presents some of the best research in the
field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings
in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed
in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. the
series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It
is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from acid Jazz to Zydeco,
whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or
traditional.
derek B. Scott
Professor of critical Musicology
University of leeds, Uk
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Preface
My Back Pages
B-Side Baptism: The Bee (Geez), Busted and Bail
the backbeat and spirit between the lines on these pages is rooted in and inspired
by my 45 r.p.m. experience beginning in the 1960s. Mid decade. On the first “eve of
destruction,” on the verge of the Wonder Years, in the midst of the ongoing British
invasion. the world seemed to be spinning at 45 revolutions per minute. Something
in the air, and on the air. at the time, aM radio. in the chicago vicinity and well
beyond, the source was the legendary station, WlS, 890 on the dial. an audio
umbilical chord, a simultaneous soundtrack and wish list. My g-g-generations’
version of the contemporary Now! and Totally Hits single compilations in the good
old daze, before napster nation, iPod people, and burn, baby, burn.
the hit single sounds emanating from the airwaves translated into artifact and
ritual, baptizing a passionate record relationship and vinylogical time line. the
little black discs began to accumulate, a complementary collection to baseball
cards. Prized possessions. and they cost less than a dollar. One lawn mowed in the
summer, a yard of leaves raked in the fall, and a driveway or sidewalk of shoveled
snow in the winter each were worth about six stackable singles for the turn, turn
turntable. a decent B-side made the black 7-inch cylinder a two-for-one bonus.
though a bargain, i nonetheless attempted to exit a store without paying for
a 45 record (a.k.a. “shoplifting”) one sunny Saturday afternoon at e.J. korvette’s
department store, on the suburb border between north riverside and Berwyn,
fifteen minutes west of the city. The record was the Bee Gees, “New York
Mining disaster, 1941,” a decade before they went disco. Of all the great music
circulating at the time, my choice of a song to be a part of my permanent record
rather than my record collection was a bit conspicuous. Getting busted for under
a buck was bad enough. But having the brothers Gibb as partners in crime rather
than lennon-Mccartney, Jagger-richards, local colors such as the ides of March
or new colony Six, or any number of one hit wonders of the era, softened the
edge-worthiness of the transgression, and compounded the embarrassment. My
indiscretion left a dumb as(s)terisk on my juvenile rap sheet, as well as a secretly
stupid scar on the soul of my soundtrack. Over the years, i affectionately refer
my adolescent act and attraction to the Bee Gees song as a “miner offense,” one
that was subconsciously and cosmically connected to my Father’s family’s West
virginia coal mining roots.
The happening proved to be a moment of B-side affirmation within my
formative 45 experience. When the store detective asked “why?”—that is, why
i lifted the record, not why i chose a Bee Gees single—i managed to mutter an