Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio dot Com Like can you want I come?
Speaker 2: They come on the land me Now.
Speaker 3: Hey, this is Jesse Carmichael from Room five.
Speaker 4: Hi, this is Phil Margol of the Tokens.
Speaker 5: Hello.
Speaker 6: It's Nicole Atkins on the Rock and Roll History Show.
Speaker 2: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the Rock and Roll History
Show on Hudson River Radio. I'm Chief Cupid Brian Horowitz,
gonna try to control all the cat crambones we have
here tonight. As is our tradition, Valentine's is coming up,
so uh we all pick either pro or con Valentine's
kind of tracks and see where our mood falls. So
I'm looking forward to seeing what happens tonight as always.
Before we hop in, allow me to introduce all the
crambones who are joining us here tonight. First and foremost,
from the Rich Observatory. He believes that only girls are
born on Valentine's Day because there's no mail delivery on holidays.
Neil Richter is back.
Speaker 4: Oh I see what you did that?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 4: How you doing?
Speaker 2: Everybody, the host of Paranormally Yours. She believes skunk's love
Valentine's Day because they're sentimental.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 1: Stinky ponds, sticky pons.
Speaker 8: Wait wait, wait till everybody hears the song, I chows, Oh,
I can't wait. Keep that in mind.
Speaker 2: And from the silver screen she saw two chemists walk
into a bar on Valentine's Day. One said to the other,
I've got my eye on you, Mercedes Cat this year.
Speaker 5: Okay, so it did take me a minute.
Speaker 2: That's good, A good thinker every now and then. It's
never got hurt anybody.
Speaker 5: Hey, everybody, Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2: And our absolutely retired teacher, he says, if you always
want a date on Valentine's Day, get a calendar.
Speaker 9: Hey, everybody, Happy Valentine's Day to everybody out there in
radio land.
Speaker 2: And last but not least, the host of shaving Cream,
she says, the one flower you should never give on
Valentine's Day is califlower.
Speaker 10: Barbara Ville this year, I would agree with that.
Speaker 2: I would disagree. I'd be very happy to get a cauliflower.
But I'm a little strange. What can I say?
Speaker 1: I think you have to be to be on this show.
Speaker 2: I think so. So Yeah, this this Valentine's Day tradition
kind of geled a few years ago. It was we
were kind of split fifty to fifty pro Valentine's anti Valentines.
I'm neutral on Valentine's. I am against the price gouging,
but I am for all the chalk that comes with it.
So I'm kind of in the middle of myself and
I'm looking forward to hearing what everybody has chosen for
this year's selection. And Mercedes, you're going to leave us
up this.
Speaker 3: Year, I am, and I am really happy to be
kicking off the show today because I don't know if
my Valentine's Day song is pro or con.
Speaker 5: And maybe you can help me decide.
Speaker 3: The song title is Go to the Line, and it's
by a band called the Nightcaps, and it's from nineteen
eighty two album of the same name on Sire Records.
And first I want to tell you a little bit
about the band. I worked for Sire Records at the
time that this song was released, and I was a
huge fan. I went to every show that I could,
and I knew the band members. I lost track of
them over time, but I never forgot I reached out
to a mutual friend and found Jan about two years ago,
so I decided to bring him along to talk about
the song and maybe he can tell you if it's
pro or con Valentine's Day.
Speaker 11: God, you know, hi Hi, you don say hi jam Hi.
Speaker 7: Everybody ex musing reason all things for picking a song
of mine. But it's funny because when you asked me,
I thought, well, I don't really have any love songs
because I love I loved subversive love songs like that
were actually political songs sounded like love songs like Curtis
Mayfield and stuff like that. So this, when you asked
me about this, I went, that was that was like
I was like eighteen or nineteen years old, first serious,
real girlfriend, and we kept breaking up and going back together.
So it's and I love you and why do you
hate me? And why do I hate you? And let's
get back together song? So it falls strictly in both camps.
Speaker 5: Chorus. Are you in trouble?
Speaker 12: John over?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 7: No, No, that's that's my ride coming for me. Oh,
I'm sorry. That's the New York City Symphony. They're coming
down Second Avenue.
Speaker 11: They're on tour.
Speaker 7: Sorry, I lived near many major hospitals. Anyway you can
edit that out.
Speaker 2: Near or in.
Speaker 7: Yeah, depends on when you ask.
Speaker 3: Okay, so to me, I don't know, if I ever,
I don't know. Did we have lyrics back then with
their lyrics on that there.
Speaker 11: Was there There was a lyrics sheet on the album.
Speaker 7: I think Daven put it on that reissue CE that
came out years ago, like ten years ago or something. Yeah,
there were lyrics on the inner sleeve and it was
pictures of us and the Uptown Horns who figure really
largely in this Arno Hecked, Crispin, c Bob Funk, Paul
litteral those guys.
Speaker 11: We lost them to my favorite live band ever, the
Jay Giles.
Speaker 7: Band, So losing them was heartbreaking and yet validation. I
got the best guys and they contributed everything to this,
and that was Al Maddie who you know who you've
seen recently, and Sammy Brown on drums, and Peter Jordan
from the New York Dolls and Stumble Bunny and several
other bands who was on base. I started this band
because the Voidoids broke up when I had been in
Richard Hell and the Voidoids in seventy nine, and my
mother said, go back to school, get a job, or
start another band.
Speaker 5: That's a no brainer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I was going to say I didn't
really well, I didn't remember the lyrics. Maybe I knew
him at the time, but you know, it's too busy
like dancing and.
Speaker 11: Well, it's you know, it's very funny.
Speaker 7: It's that kind of like pet It's kind of a
petulant song. Looking at it from forty plus years, it's
kind of a petulant little boy breaking up but not
breaking up with this first serious girl who I'm still
friends with to this day, by the way, who I
who asked me for a copy of the LP who
because her boyfriend, who she's married to, has liked the band.
Speaker 11: Life.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Really, but I think you know the chorus is I'd
go to the line.
Speaker 11: For you, but you'd throw it all away, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right right?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I always thought of it as a romantic song, like
I would do any thing for you. So that was
my initial reason for picking the song. And then the
more I talk to you and the more I listened
to the song, I was like, okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah it was it was you know, you're trying. I
was trying to like sort of snap. I can say
her name, she wouldn't mind. I was trying to snap
and Carrie Hamilton and I and I wrote you know
we were such a pretty pair, matching eyes and matching hair,
you know, eighteen year old stuff. And you know, I
wish that I could make the old days clearer. I
wish I could make the old days nearer.
Speaker 11: We're eighteen.
Speaker 7: How many old days were they? I wish that I
could tear you from your mirror. I might as well
have been speaking about my own self. So it's really
funny to look at it through those eyes ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it really is a I love you? Why why
don't you love me the same way I love you?
Maybe I don't well view this say when you love
me not?
Speaker 5: Let's let's play the song.
Speaker 14: Oh, it was such a prettiest thing.
Speaker 12: Fat you're not imagine gors.
Speaker 14: The town you goes up, I'll building alone And that's down.
Speaker 1: Words that the.
Speaker 14: Right got.
Speaker 12: Got oh my.
Speaker 14: On the wrists, just coming all.
Speaker 15: The words coming on the road, don't.
Speaker 14: Come back getting down in the sports got your can't
you want post your back word.
Speaker 12: To words black patches black.
Speaker 15: As I was another five bucks five to.
Speaker 12: The issues as to tell.
Speaker 11: You Rocky the d.
Speaker 14: Last spot you love You're going on the words you
got it on the words You've got it on the way,
I've got the last love back up on the WT
colling on the WBS, step out on the word, gotta.
Speaker 12: All that stuf, gotta.
Speaker 13: Let you say, you gotta do.
Speaker 11: The gotta.
Speaker 16: Have what's come off?
Speaker 11: Back to.
Speaker 17: What's come off?
Speaker 11: Back to the.
Speaker 14: What's come off?
Speaker 11: Back to the.
Speaker 14: Speaks like one. I want to tell you about blas Way.
Speaker 17: You said not good?
Speaker 12: The other you are you sad?
Speaker 11: Not good? I be saying you?
Speaker 14: Is it not good that your frock your side, last funny?
All all the words, doing all the words, You're all
it all the worst.
Speaker 11: I don't last.
Speaker 8: I love.
Speaker 14: Still thound, all the words, still do all the words,
still do it? All the world speaking stupid.
Speaker 11: It's been a while.
Speaker 5: How did it sound to you?
Speaker 11: You know? I love?
Speaker 7: I just it just flashed to me that when I
was writing that, I was fascinated with Elvis Costello's Trust album.
I had been and he wrote this song on that
album that had two distinct parts, and I thought, why
not just throw something in at the end that has
almost nothing to do with the song, but it's related,
and I kind of I just flashed on that when
I was listening to it. You don't I have to
listen to this in years.
Speaker 5: I love that debt.
Speaker 3: It changes that the song changes. I think that's very cool. Yeah,
and I think you sound amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean writing parts for the horn section is not easy.
Is that something you learn how to do? Is it
you just figure?
Speaker 7: Well, I've got to give credit to the uptown horns
where it's too. They would I was musically illiterate, so
I would just play them parts or hum them parts.
They would take them and then play them in front
of me and go like this and I you know,
like the spinal tap joke to raga, you know. But
really they crafted the We crafted the arrangements together. All
the harmor harmonic structures were theirs. I just gave them
the lines and sometimes they go, yeah, that's a bit trite.
We do that all the time with other bands. Don't
do that, which was great growing up, advice nice.
Speaker 18: They played with so many people they were really oh
we lost them, the Jay Giles and then they went
on to the Rolling Stones and Robert Plant and playing
on Living in America by James.
Speaker 4: Brown, on and on and on.
Speaker 7: They were no and they came together as a horn
section in the bedroom I lived in in my parents' house.
Speaker 11: On Sixteenth Street.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure the neighbors love that.
Speaker 11: The horns were the most benign sound that came out
of that room.
Speaker 5: So you wrote the song, you wrote the horn?
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, I wrote that song.
Speaker 7: And yeah, al Maddy of course always contributed arrangement stuff
whatever you guys, he does with music with me to
this day.
Speaker 11: But he that was mine and I brought it to
the band and then they did the thing that they
did which made them a band.
Speaker 7: You know, you can bring a song and tell people
how to play it, but unless people will understand you
get get it in their hands, there could be any
four guys.
Speaker 5: And this this song, I don't know.
Speaker 11: It charted right, No, no, it charted on on some
on like Indie Networks CMJ kind of thing.
Speaker 7: And it charted in certain places that we funnily enough,
like in the States it was like Detroit and Philly
and Cleveland and places that.
Speaker 11: Always liked the bands that we sort of liked. And then.
Speaker 7: In France and Italy and Germany for a while, but
really we never.
Speaker 11: Got the tour over there.
Speaker 7: We got to tour with YouTube uh in England, Scotland
and Wales during the war tour, and that was about
it for us with Sire.
Speaker 11: We made just the one record and we're handsomely paid
to leave.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, we don't have no, we don't have a
sad rock and roll We got screwed story. The two
A and R guys who signed us, Ken Kushnik, Michael
Rosenblack right, Mike left to go join his father at Geffen.
Speaker 18: Well he went to the Frontier first, but yeah, right,
and then he joined ed and he uh and then
Ken went to become head of WE International.
Speaker 7: So the two guys who signed us had left, and
Seymour was occupied with Madonna, rightfully so, and so we
got kind of you know, we are. We had good representation,
we had a good relationship with them, and they gave
us money rather than you know, our lawyer said, you'll
make the album and they'll keep it in the shelf forever,
or they'll give you money.
Speaker 11: And we said, give us money.
Speaker 5: And that was Seymour's doing.
Speaker 7: David Altshule, you know, they were the Warner Brothers structure
because Warner Brothers was not fond of us.
Speaker 11: Sire was.
Speaker 7: When we lost our champions at Sire, we lost Warner Brothers,
so it wasn't a you know, it wasn't a hardship story.
We walked away happy. I saw Seymour Stein about ten
years ago at a party and I said, Seymour, I
just wanted to thank you. And he didn't remember who
I was.
Speaker 5: I'm not surprised, and I said.
Speaker 11: Jan from the Nightcaps. So I got seymore stories for decades.
We won't go there. And he looks at me. He
was sitting in a chair.
Speaker 7: It was on Delancey Street, that club that had an
upstairs outdoors thing, and he was sitting in a chair.
He looked like Sydney Green Street. It was one of
those wicker chairs. And I said, Seymour, I just wanted
to thank you, and he goes. I said, I'm Jan
from the Nightcabs, Barbuskuydell's nephew. And he goes and he
looks at me and he said thank me for what
because I could see it clicking for him.
Speaker 11: Yeah yeah, And I said, I'm sorry, I'm horse tonight.
Speaker 7: I said thank you for sending me to places I
never would have gone, Meeting people I never would have gone.
He met cities I never would have gone to things
I never would have had had a big nice part
of my resume. And he looked like relieved, but I
didn't attack him.
Speaker 17: It was like.
Speaker 11: I walked away with a few bucks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: In the band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 5: At least we did right by you. That's good to know.
Speaker 3: So Seymour's for anybody who doesn't know Seymour Simus, the
president of Sire Records.
Speaker 11: Sorry, I was speaking as if I was speaking to you,
not an audience.
Speaker 5: I know, It's okay, let me translate.
Speaker 11: Should have looked at the other six people on my street.
Speaker 2: Sorry, We're all just listening intently and we're taking notes
on how to make money by not making records.
Speaker 7: It was I likened it to farm subsidies, you know,
where they would pay farmers to plow their crops under.
Speaker 12: There you go.
Speaker 5: Yep, So you did make another record.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we made another record on their our own auspices,
actually in the Hudson Valley. We made it with a
woodstock label in the early nineties. It was self funded
and it was really done the way I do music now,
which is because I have to and giving it away
is sort of By the time that CV was coming
out nearly nineties, did music business as we knew it,
and as I grew up in it was not the same.
Speaker 11: So selling has never been the deal.
Speaker 7: At this point, I have people who've heard what I've done,
who listen, and I make it for them, and I
make it so that my kid goes this is where
your grandfather's work really took shape.
Speaker 5: So I guess we got to get on with the
rest of the show.
Speaker 7: I Mercedes, thank you for inviting me. Everybody else please
thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're welcome to stay and make witty comments if
you like.
Speaker 4: If you if you have pain, keep them under the radar.
Speaker 11: Unless invited, I'll keep them under the radar. I'm gonna
hang out and listen though sounds good.
Speaker 3: The last thing I wanted to say is the album
Go to the Line by the night Caps. Every single
song is spectacular. If you ever happen to see it somewhere,
you should grab it because it is. Really every song
is amazing. Why are you laughing?
Speaker 5: It's so true.
Speaker 11: I'm laughing because you can buy it.
Speaker 7: A Look, none of this goes to me because that
album will never recoup what they gave us and paid
us to go away.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but you know, for your listening ears.
Speaker 7: It's on Spotify, so if you want to help pay
a penny for each listen to the recoupment balance, you
can find it there.
Speaker 2: So, Jane, are you playing out anywhere?
Speaker 11: I have been?
Speaker 7: I spent the last year playing a regular show here
in New York City on Saint Mark's Place with an
amalgamation of great New York City people that I've grown
to know.
Speaker 11: Oh Titian style. The names.
Speaker 7: I hesitate to start naming people because you will be
here too long, or I'll leave somebody out.
Speaker 11: I'm a Julian.
Speaker 7: My old brother from the Voidoids was one of the
people who played, as well as the people from the
Bush Tetras and Faith and what anyway, I don't want
to leave anybody out.
Speaker 11: But this year it's about working on the record.
Speaker 7: I seem to make every decade I'm working with Night
Bob look him up and Charlie Row and.
Speaker 11: That's it. Focusing on the recording.
Speaker 2: Before I forget. Is there a website or social media
somewhere we can get anything out for me?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 7: Okay, no, I would highly recommend looking up Night Bob
Chaikowski's website.
Speaker 11: He and Rich Neeson do a thing called not road
Diaries or something like that.
Speaker 7: It's a beautiful show about from two guys who've grown
up there, who longer than we've been alive on the road.
Speaker 11: With fans, and one of them is producing my new record.
Speaker 2: So nice. So do you are you working in studio
or are you working from home mostly.
Speaker 11: Or working right now?
Speaker 7: We're working on There have been about because I only
make a record, say every ten years or so, I've
been working.
Speaker 11: On excuse me.
Speaker 7: I've been working on whittling down the list with the
assistance of the two guys I'm working with at the
production stage, and we're.
Speaker 11: Whittling down the songs. My throat is dying questions, we're
whittling them.
Speaker 7: We're whittling them down to a list of about ten
or so. We don't really believe that an album is
what you want to do right now. We just want
to and they all know the same thing. I'm giving
this away. I'm keeping all the rights. Anybody wants to
use it for anything like that, fine, but really everybody
involved those it's.
Speaker 11: Being given away.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 3: You've been doing the the uh mike for tell shows.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3: You are amazing. You slay the audience. I mean, it
is breathtaking to see you sing well.
Speaker 11: Mike gives me great songs.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And then that band Murderers Row Yeah, Charlie Roth, Danny DeVito,
got it, get again. I'm gonna lead people out like
ten people.
Speaker 5: Dave Foster, Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 11: Amazingam Speinberg.
Speaker 7: I can't even name all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
but you can't sound bad with that band.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the song and the combination of the songs
that he picks.
Speaker 11: Yeah, he takes.
Speaker 3: He takes a year and gives everybody a song that
he thinks will fit them somehow. And Jim, what was
the list? What was the last couple of songs that
you did? They were Rainy Knight in Georgia.
Speaker 11: Right, Oh, that was yeah, there is I do have
My daughter finally sent me a video of that. I
finally that was July. I've got it in January. But
that's what kids are for, and we did it. Sixty five,
sixty six, sixty.
Speaker 7: Seven, sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 11: I got to sing fire, which was fun.
Speaker 3: That was mind blowing. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: Anyway, okay, go on, folks and.
Speaker 11: Down please we can do this later.
Speaker 2: Ass again, as you're putting stuff out, come on back
and share it because I love the whole process. I
love the studio, the mixing, all the all the techie
behind the scenes kind of stuff. So I'm in me too,
So yeah, me too.
Speaker 7: Keith Richards had left everything about that out of his book,
kind of read it twice.
Speaker 5: All right, Okay, Also that's my song. I don't know.
You can vote later if you want on which.
Speaker 3: Way it goes.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say, given the age bracket, it's trying
so hard because some I don't know where I heard it.
But at that age when you think about you know,
like like you have a one year high school relationship,
that is a much larger percentage of your life than
if you're fifty and you had a one year relationship,
and that much easier to get over. So I'm going
to say it's pro and you're trying, you're figuring it out,
you're learning.
Speaker 11: I agree.
Speaker 2: That would be my vote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, All right, cool, Okay.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and give Jan's
voice arrest and we're going to be back with Neil's pick.
So stick around. We'll be right back.
Speaker 8: This is Hudson River Radio dot Com. This concludes the
first part of this cassette.
Speaker 2: Please turn the cassette over and begin again on side too.
Speaker 12: Hudson Riverradio dot Com.
Speaker 2: And welcome back. I don't think Neil is known for
being cupid, like so, I don't know which the rest.
Speaker 4: Hi, Ay, he's gonna go. I beg to differ.
Speaker 2: I will sit back and listen to everything you have
to say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if this will be a pro
or con either, so I'll I'll well, let's get into
it and you'll you'll see what I mean, because you know,
my reputation here on the Rock and Roll History Show
is the connoisseur of the obscure. And I think perhaps
so we got Mercedes and Jan here. I think they
might know the band in the song I'm talking about.
We'll find out because for my Valentine's Day song, I
went into the early days of New York City punk
rock for a band called The Fast and a song
called It's Like Love Now. The Fast were an American
glam punk band that formed in New York City in
the mid nineteen seventies, and, while never reaching the commercial
heights of their contemporaries like the Ramones, Blondie or the
Talking Heads. They were an influential part of the CBGB
Maxis Kansas City scene when the New York City punk
scene was still in its infancy. The fast sound and
style blended nineteen sixties modpop with the use of synthesizer keyboards,
sort of what you might call bubblegum power pop before
the synthesizer would become a staple of what would soon
be called new wave. Formed by brothers Mickey Zone and
Mandy Zone, and later by a third brother, Paul Zone,
they were joined by pretty much a rotating cast of
musicians like so many bands, and they released their first single,
Boys Will Be Boys in nineteen seventy six, which also
appeared on an LP called Max's Kansas City nineteen seventy six,
which was produced by Peter Crowley, who just happened to
be the man who booked the bands at Max's at
the time. So a little marketing there, I think so,
And it was sort of Max's answer to the Live
at CBGB's album that had come out not too long
before that. Now, their second single, the song We're About
to Hear called It's Like Love, was released in nineteen
seventy seven and produced by Richard Gotderer, who had been
a producer and a member of a band called The
Strangeloves in the nineteen sixties and their hit I Want
Candy was covered by Bow Wow Wow. In the nineteen eighties,
he'd also just produced Blondie's debut album, and he would
go on to work with the Go Gos as well.
And Oh, by the way, I did buy the single
when it came out, and yes I still have it.
So let's feel a love. It's like love by the fast.
Speaker 12: Hurricane, blood drip for you while black, like an electric
sex canning shifting like you dinner thing when.
Speaker 17: I did love me?
Speaker 15: Yes to take what to take?
Speaker 14: Maby made to say?
Speaker 12: I can say it's.
Speaker 17: Not makes feed like skirts may be as.
Speaker 12: Sound, excuse me?
Speaker 19: Thank you.
Speaker 12: Can see.
Speaker 10: With my name.
Speaker 17: And like loud and loud and loud and like love
and like.
Speaker 4: H yeah, so what thing pro? I think it's like
pro It's almost like a comic book or cartoon love song.
You know, he can't take it too seriously when he's
wondering if it's her hairspray or mouthwash that turns him on,
you know, and you can't get away with lyrics like
that anymore. Back then, I think you could.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and they did.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna say pro it's so cute and lighthearted it is,
and you know, kind of innocent love. It's just really sweet.
I really like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you haven't signed any documentation, it's a verbal agreement
at this point.
Speaker 4: So well, around nineteen seventy eight or nineteen seventy nine,
while performing in Boston at a place called the Rat
Scaler or the Rat as they call it. It was
kind of Boston's equivalent to like CBGB's and incidentally the
same place I saw them play at around that same time,
So go figure, I went to Boston to see a
New York band. But that's how our run anyway. At
that time up there, they were spotted by rick O
Kasek of The Cars, who invited them to open for
The Cars at a big stadium show in Portland, Maine.
Shortly after that, he also decided to produce a record
for them at the famed Electric Lady Studios in New
York City, some of which wound up on their first
LP called The Fast for Sale that was released in
nineteen eighty Now by nineteen eighty three, the band was
reduced to a duo and became known as Man to Man,
using keyboards, electronics and backing tapes, and they performed dance
music in some of New York City's larger dance clubs,
as well as venues throughout the UK, South America, and Mexico.
And the last thing I saw was that Paul's head
recorded a song that featured vocals by Debbie Harry of Blondie,
and it was called I'll Try Anything Once, and that
was back in two thousand and eight. But there it is.
Speaker 11: I can add one thing to Paul zones bio.
Speaker 7: Paul Zone has several published books of photography.
Speaker 11: Excellent photographer.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 11: I know something, I knew all of them.
Speaker 7: Oh please, you mentioned Peter Crowley, you mentioned Richard Gotta
or I don't even want to go on about the
connections with all of them that.
Speaker 11: Are pertained to even the Nightcaps. But the guys in
the fast Mickey Zone was one of the great guitar players.
My only flaw, the only flaw in.
Speaker 7: Those records is that he was he loved Pete Townsend
and he was like he would hang upside down.
Speaker 4: Sorry, oh it's funny. You should mention that beare because
for the encore, the final song when I saw them,
they did a version of I Can See for Miles,
which knocked me out.
Speaker 11: Yeah. And he would hang upside down from the top
of Marshall Stack with the back of his legs. Yes,
and I mean at Max's, not just like in big places.
At Max's all the time. They were like a house
band at Maxes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, everybody needs a hobby.
Speaker 4: I loved the fast. Thank you so much for playing
them my pleasure. I knew you would. I knew you
would know them that. That's great. I'm so glad you
were here to add that. That's great.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll set I don't want to step on anything, gotcha. Yeah,
I'm going to vote for I'm going to vote pro.
Speaker 15: S.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 4: So we've got two pros. Now, this we're what's we're slipped.
Speaker 2: We're getting sentimental in our old age.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I know.
Speaker 3: The first song I did for the Valentine my first
Valentine show on Remember Radio.
Speaker 5: I used to love her, but I had to kill her.
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember. You've lightened up a little bit.
Whatever you're taking you should share with us.
Speaker 4: If I recall the first song I picked. I think
it was Harry Nielsen and I said, you broke my heart,
you tore it apart, so.
Speaker 2: You yeah, there was there was some editing that had
to be done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I remember that one too, So yeah, there
has been a shift here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lightening up, a little early dementia whatever, you know,
it's just we're getting soft and we are we are
all right. Thank you, Neil. That was a good one.
Speaker 9: John brough to you, Okay, I would think my selection
tonight obviously is eleanor Rigby by the Beatles nineteen sixty six,
and no, not the Alice Cooper version.
Speaker 12: And.
Speaker 9: Okay, yeah, I picked up on that one. I figured, no,
I think I'm just gonna go with the original. But
I would say this is not a pro Valentine's Day song,
and I'd like to know what my fellow cranbones think
of that. It's when you think about it, like the
average person, not the music file, the average person drive
it down the road and listen on the radio, doesn't
even I think, pay attention to the lyrics. And I've
talked a lot about that whole idea in a lot
of my selections over the years.
Speaker 20: Here at Hudson River Radio.
Speaker 9: And so when you're kind of tapping along, you don't
realize this is a very depressing song. It is a
very it is you know, I'm I've seen some headshakings here, Mercedes.
Speaker 20: And you know, for one, you know what is this
song focused on.
Speaker 9: It focuses on universal loneliness, unseen lives, dying alone, spiritual emptiness.
So I gotta say, I'm gonna do Hudson River Radio
a solid here, and I am going to bring this
right down into the depression.
Speaker 20: And with that, Brian, why don't we just play the song.
Speaker 11: Ella?
Speaker 12: Except the horizon.
Speaker 2: You judge where a wedding is being It's in a dream.
Speaker 7: Wait's at the window wearing the face that he keeps.
Speaker 15: In a job by the dog. Who is it fall?
Speaker 12: All the lonely dude, they all come from, all the
lonely people.
Speaker 14: Why do they all be loved?
Speaker 2: Father McKenzie writing the words.
Speaker 15: Of the sermon that no one will hear, no one
comes near.
Speaker 19: Look at him working dunning his socks in the night
when there's nobody there.
Speaker 14: What does he care?
Speaker 12: All the lonely people?
Speaker 11: Why do they all come?
Speaker 4: All the lovely people?
Speaker 19: But do they be love.
Speaker 14: At all the lovely people.
Speaker 12: Ah got all the love lead people.
Speaker 21: Elen Brigby died in the church and was married alone
with her name.
Speaker 12: When he came McKenzie winding the dame from his hands
as he watched from the grave.
Speaker 2: Hey, that was Eleanor Rigby.
Speaker 9: Obviously at the Beatles, Paul McCartney has the inspiration, said
he was inspired by a lot of the lonely people
he had known, creating fictional characters to explore their solitude.
I think you can't get more lonely than that when
you think about it. One interesting fact about the song.
In Liverpool there is a grave for Eleanor Rigby, and
nearby there is somebody by the name of Mackenzie, and
Paul McCartney said he did not know that about those
headstones in that cemetery in Liverpool at the time of
the song's writing. He said, the idea to call his
character Eleanor's possibly because of Eleanor Braun, the actress who
starred with the Beatles in their nineteen sixty five film
Help and Rigby, came from this from the name of
a store in Bristol. In Bristol, Rigby and Evans limited,
so interesting little backstory there. I don't know a lot
of the details then some of the other people on
this cast, but I know there's been a lot of other.
Speaker 10: Versions of the song and it's but if you want
a song that is not a.
Speaker 20: Happy song, this is definitely it.
Speaker 9: But when you listen to the beat, when you listen
to the music, and I am not a music file,
it doesn't sound depressing. It sounds happy, you know, and
you're tapping along and you're listening. But then you listen
to the lyrics and you study the meeting, I'm like,
damn me with some very lonely people, and I'll.
Speaker 4: Leave it at that.
Speaker 2: Wow and couch. Something about the song the Beatles in general.
There were people at EMI that complained about this rock
and roll nonsense. Yeah, And the rock and roll nonsense
is what funded the classical music side of EMI's business.
And then they used strings on eleanor rigby the classical
players that were being subsidized by the Beatles to pay
for that.
Speaker 20: We did a show, Brian, didn't.
Speaker 9: We did a show Brian recently that that discussed the
whole theme of classical impl Yeah, classical music in rock.
Speaker 20: We talked about Beethoven.
Speaker 9: When you think about this, I mean there's a lot
of classical in here, you know, and you know the
tempo had For me it sounded a lot like almost
like a little bit of Mozart in a lot of ways,
just the way that earlier like a baroque yea or whatever,
you know, with the tempo with the violins exactly it uh,
it just it really expresses that.
Speaker 10: So I'm glad I was able to bring the show
in Valentine's Day right down.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's too, Yes, one squarely no, Yeah, all right,
Barber's up next. I have a gut feeling I know
which direction she's gonna go.
Speaker 5: Well, let's see, we're going down, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, the song I picked, I'm pretty sure you're all
gonna know the direction we're going. It's called I'm So
Sick of You.
Speaker 5: And it's We're We're well.
Speaker 1: And the reason I chose it is because Valentine's Day
may not necessarily be a happy holiday for everyone. As
for me personally, my parents were married on Valentine's Day
in nineteen sixty and after my father passed at just
fifty six years old, my mom would always pay tribute
to him on Valentine's Day by making sure that she
would give my brother and I was candy and we
would have her own little quiet celebration. She did this
every year for the rest of her life. So Valentine's
Day has since been pretty much bittersweet for me. And
also how many of us have been in bad relationships?
Speaker 4: Never?
Speaker 1: No, no, So I think I think nearly all of
us have at least once, and listenings at least and
listening to the lyrics in the song I'm So sick
of you? Uh you think that he's singing about one
doozy of a bad relationship. So a little bit about
weird Al because we've done an entire show about weird
Al and played a number of his songs before. So
I'm sure our listeners and especially my fellow Crimbones may
remember some basic facts about weird Al. Let's see. Let's
see what you remember now. He was born Alfred Matthew
Yakovic nineteen fifty nine in what Stayed Everybody, California, Really California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, never mind, he's going on. He's extending his tour
from last year to where we saw him. Actually Harbor
saw him too. You saw him and then we went
up to Saratoga to see him, so highly recommended.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. It was one of the best
concerts I've ever seen, and it was it was a
place where everybody in the audience was just as weird
as I am. Nice and it felt like coming home.
Speaker 2: I we got we got there, We got into the
parking lot, and I changed into my ridiculous Hawaiian shirt
that I keep just for that occasion, and my daughter
was so embarrassed until she looked around and everybody else
changing into their Hawaiian shirts, and then realized that I
am in the crowd.
Speaker 1: You have not succeeded until you've embarrassed your child. Perfect perfect, Okay,
so weird. Al is known for his comedy music, his
comedy songs which are parodies, and also he's done original
works and also does anybody know what other kind of
music is famous for polka songs. He's known for his trademark,
which instrument accordian accordians all right, and who remembers how
he came about acquiring said accordions.
Speaker 2: Salesman knocked at the door selling accordions and guitars, and
the parents chose an accordion because they.
Speaker 1: Thought it was more rock and roll than the guitar
blows me away every time. So does anybody remember.
Speaker 2: How he got his start Doctor Demento?
Speaker 1: Doctor Demento At the age of sixteen in nineteen seventy six,
he I think Doctor Demento showed up at his high
school and he managed to slip him the tape. Does
anybody know the song that he said that he gave
to doctor very That comes a little later, though, I'm close,
all right, we'll get to that the very you just
answered another question though. The song was Bilvidere Cruising, written
about his family's car, am Belvedere. In nineteen seventy nine,
while attending college and working at the university radio station,
Al went to the restroom across the hall from said
radio station because it had great acoustics, and recorded the
parody titled My Ballogna. He sent the recording to Doctor
Demento and it led to Capitol Records, giving Yankovic a
six month recording contract. It was then that weird Al
thought maybe he should ditch his major. Anybody know what
his major was in college?
Speaker 2: Architecture?
Speaker 1: Architecture?
Speaker 3: Very good Goldstein, you have a fan here, so I.
Speaker 2: Am always ready for pop quizes, because after what I
do to all of you, I know it's coming at.
Speaker 1: Some points exactly exactly. So I figured instead of just
writing down the same facts that we've all heard time
and time again, I figured I just quizzed everybody. So
it was at this time that word all thought, Hey, baby,
I should ditch architecture as my major and pursue a
career in music, which brings us to our Valentine's song
I'm So Sick of You, released in nineteen ninety six
on the album Bad Hair Day.
Speaker 16: You tell Joel Gamble gimp on fine why you always
rested my time?
Speaker 12: Hey baby, trust me, you just discuss me. Your hands
a mess and you'll make up crusted.
Speaker 16: I don't know too many females. You make a habit
of biting the toenails. Who every time you call you
tell me of the walk on it just the side
of the leagues on this gla shall we be heaving together?
Speaker 12: Him?
Speaker 2: Only one little they weren't you?
Speaker 12: Baby? I don't say to you.
Speaker 16: You make a mail grand room. Godd are you keeping
your god?
Speaker 12: You belcher everywhere thousand of the earth, you are raising
a shake a bad dad.
Speaker 16: You don't have announce the plast You're just the one thing.
Speaker 12: Pean of the neck. How much walk can I take?
Speaker 16: Naw, give me a break now, dude, even snow away
you're wide away.
Speaker 12: Now you tell like a friends where the bird become? Well,
maybe you should get up on. Maybe I have a
second you maybe syne so sing of you?
Speaker 16: And when you're something, oh my name, it's like I'm
listening to what's meet me?
Speaker 12: Chuck sound?
Speaker 16: And when you're looking at me in that special way,
it's how A mean? And keep my dunchdown.
Speaker 12: And when you ask me what I'm thinking, honey, usually
I'm thinking.
Speaker 21: How I really like Anya?
Speaker 12: And completely I've been dunking for I wouldn't have to
listen to you. Welcome those two quid questions.
Speaker 14: Over and over.
Speaker 16: Guys, We'll let discuss the noise you make when you laugh,
kift being.
Speaker 12: Robbing my grains? That just my chas dance.
Speaker 5: Dance until you came up.
Speaker 12: I'm not devidated anyone that's low on.
Speaker 20: The food chance and my just dance.
Speaker 12: And you got a hum in anybody? Oh there, you
got the hair of a bus of promoter. Get your
teas or yellow your buzz made of yellow. You wake
up in a bottle doing on your bill.
Speaker 16: I hain't no way you crack your knuckles.
Speaker 17: I hate your whin you cercle. Friends to the well,
say ay, so second you.
Speaker 12: Really?
Speaker 14: Now you're recodating, I'm.
Speaker 17: So second you.
Speaker 12: Not you irritated?
Speaker 14: My ay, I'm so second you?
Speaker 12: Well, I want to get there, gonna sayne I'm so you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm sound sick of you is a parody
of the style of Elvis Costello, particularly the song's radio
radio no Action and pump it Up. This was confirmed
by Yankovic in a nineteen ninety nine interview and did
anyone catch the mind rhyme contained in the song? Anyone
know what a mind rhyme is? I know, I talked
about it before. It's when you hear a line in
a song or poem and expect the next line to
contain but it doesn't, And it's This is usually used
to fool the listener and to expect things to hear color,
colorful language, and then going in a different direction. I
did a whole episode of shaving cream on mine rhymes
if you want to hear more? And yes, SE's absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Miss Susie had Steamboat miss Less, Miss Lucy.
Speaker 8: I mentioned it.
Speaker 12: I didn't.
Speaker 11: I didn't play it, but I mentioned, yeah, I used
to do that, right, Patty song. Yeah, yep, the Handsler.
Speaker 1: So the mind rhyme, like you said, is found in
the lines. You don't have an ounce of class. You're
just one big pain in the neck. And I'd like
to close by saying that, as of twenty twenty five,
Yankovic has sold more than twelve million albums, recorded over
one hundred and fifty parties and original songs, and performed
over two thousand live shows. And he's still going. And
when we were given this topic, this is the song
that immediately came to mind.
Speaker 2: Nice Nice. He sold out Madison Square Garden and he
was just blown away himself, you know which, none of
us are surprised. And there are a group of us
that I'm sure Barber's in that would love to see
him do the super Bowl halftime show. Oh god, there
have been petitions to get Weird Alt to do that,
and he said he would do.
Speaker 20: It, really yes, but oh my god, that would be wonderful.
Speaker 2: Right it.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So maybe I got to thank you for playing this.
I would never have sought this out and this song.
I love this song. I'm like going to go find
it and download it right now. I mean, by a
copy of it right now.
Speaker 4: I was trying to make a list of how many
times I would have sung that to someone else and
how many times it would have been sung to me.
But I think the latter has has a higher really.
Speaker 1: Because when I listened to that song, I try to
pick out all the things he's complaining about that I'm
actually guilty of doing.
Speaker 4: Well. I draw the line at that at biting your tone.
Speaker 12: No, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need to shave any back hair, and I
don't bite my toenails. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 5: I'd love to be able to bite my toenails.
Speaker 11: As the kids say, I'm going to go with six
seven on that.
Speaker 1: I paid too much money for my invisil lines to
bite my toenails.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I don't think I can. I'm not that, you know.
Speaker 11: Okay, that's.
Speaker 1: I'm not that limber either.
Speaker 5: Well, that's what I was getting at. It would be
it would be quite a feat.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing some barber march. I paid too much for
my visile line to bite my toenails. Tell me that
doesn't belong on a T shirt.
Speaker 11: Oh boy, thanks last my day?
Speaker 2: All right, thank you, Barbara excellent. Yeah, I know he extended.
It's technically the same tour as last year, so I
know the dates are posted. I don't know if I'm
gonna be able to make it again this year, but
if you haven't seen him live, it's totally worth it.
This time, he's got an expanded band. It's the same
core band that he's played with since day one, but
he's added more musicians. He's doing the costume changes, all
the hits, so some of the deep cuts like this,
totally worth it. And we're not even being sponsored to
say that. So and I have a Hawaiian shirt if
you need to borrow it. So with everybody else, all right,
we're gonna take a second, real quick break, and we've
got two more to go, So stick around Hudson Riverradio
dot com.
Speaker 11: Your dad likes us, Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, two more Valentine selections to go. We're up
to Gail, and I'm gonna guess Anti before we even start.
Speaker 8: What makes you say that we've met several years?
Speaker 1: Well, color me surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just going to cast my vote before we
even start.
Speaker 8: But well, I think this is neutral or something. I
think it's meant to be pro. But I think it's neutral.
Speaker 5: This will will be will be the judge of that.
Speaker 8: Hey, this this song did not chart. It's not on
a record label. I was looking for various and sundry
different sort of topics within this topic and I couldn't
find anything that fit what I was looking for. And
when I saw the first line of this song in
my Google search, I I had to use ish because
the name of the song and the first line is
if our love was some swamp gas, it would make
a sweet sound.
Speaker 2: That's deep.
Speaker 8: The singer songwriter is Brian Odin, and he started writing
songs when he was a kid growing up in Oklahoma
and spending his summers in the Colorado Mountains. Some songs
were funny and others were straight from the heart. He said,
none of them were very good, but that process of
being in a created creative move and writing a funny song,
and also of walking in the woods and having a
real heart song come to me that has never really
gone away.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 8: He has been all kinds of different things.
Speaker 4: For a day job.
Speaker 8: Over the years he's been he was spent four years
as a childcare counselor and supervisor at a treatment center
for children. He taught English as a second language at
the college level. He was at one point a self
employed internet entrepreneur. He also earned a master's degree in
educational psychology with an emphasis on teaching English as a
second language. His focus on recording and sharing his mostly
children's songs is a recent development. He says, Once in
a while, I would sing songs at family or social gatherings,
and I had a few concerts here and there, but
that was about it. I've always loved writing and sharing songs,
but it never seemed like a realistic way to pay
the bills, so it was always in the background. He
started putting his songs on YouTube in January two thousand
and nine. His YouTube channel now has over sixty million
video views. Wow, he said, I hope to keep writing
and recording more songs. I really enjoy creating and sharing
both kinds of songs, the fun ones and the ones
that come from a deeper place. And it's been a
nice surprise to me that based on the comments on
YouTube and on my site, he has his own website.
Some of the songs I think of as just light
fun are sometimes really They sometimes really change someone's mood
or even get them through a really difficult time. That
kind of thing has been a really nice surprise and
definitely makes song drops. That's another one of the sites,
besides YouTube, more rewarding for me. So in terms of
future plans, hopefully I'll be fortunate enough to keep on
creating and recording and sharing songs. Now, you might want
to listen to these lyrics as carefully as you can.
I'll mention the first verse. This came out in twenty
twenty three. If our love was some swampcass, it would
make a sweet sound. If our love was a skunk bush,
it would stay on the ground. If our love was
a camel, it wouldn't much fish. If our love was
an outhouse, it would smell like a barbecue pit. Speaking
speaking of.
Speaker 1: Mind, oh, I thought you were gonna give us a
wine rise.
Speaker 8: I wrote this sweet love song special for you since
I forgot your birthday. It's the least I can do.
And the other verses are very much like this, so
let's give it a listen. I just think it's cute
and funny.
Speaker 6: I was some swampcass, it would make those sweet sound.
Speaker 2: Hipper was a skunk, but give it.
Speaker 12: A on the ground.
Speaker 6: Hipper Love was a camel, much hipper s would smell
like a barbie. I wrote this sweet love song special
you since I forg got your birthdays.
Speaker 7: But bease tick to the dude.
Speaker 6: I love you as far as a jerkey can die.
Speaker 17: I love you as.
Speaker 6: Long as a lizard stays dry.
Speaker 14: I love you as strong as a turtle can swim.
Speaker 6: I love you as deep as the doo doo live man.
If I Love was a cockroach could jump really high.
If I Love was a mushroom, it would be a
fun guy. If I Love was bread food and it
would hardly have bolt. If for love wasn't a house,
it would be made of gold. I wrote this sweet
love song special for you next time.
Speaker 12: I love this your brand new herty.
Speaker 6: I love you as far as a jerkey can die.
I love you as long as a lizard stays dry.
I love you as strong as a turtle can swim.
I love you as deep as the doo Doo live man.
If A Love was a chicken, they would have forty weeds.
If a load was a cow pie, it would make noses.
See if our love was a trash, Nope, it would
have no dead knife. If a load was an out house,
it would have no horse flies. I wrote this sweet
love song.
Speaker 12: Special for you. I think I must spelled your name
on my dooming tattoos.
Speaker 6: Good A long you as far as a turkey can find,
A long you, as long as a bizards. These drive
among you less strong as a turtle and swim.
Speaker 15: I love you as deep as a doot.
Speaker 6: I mean, if a love was a camel, they would
have much pits. If a log wasn't out house, it
was spelled.
Speaker 14: Like a barber.
Speaker 11: You bit.
Speaker 6: I wrote this sweet love song special for you. Don't
think me, just make me more corn bread and stud.
Speaker 20: That was that was great, off off.
Speaker 8: I saw those lyrics and I just had to pick
this one.
Speaker 2: I think there needs to be more songs about skunk butts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now you see I think this I think was
This was definitely a positive song.
Speaker 2: It's a curveball. I think it's completely positive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, he went, guy, he went, he went,
you know, in college and higher education to write this stuff? Right?
Speaker 11: Was that?
Speaker 4: Thank you? Just checking, just checking so I think.
Speaker 5: His voice.
Speaker 8: No, I don't think so. I don't know whose voice
that is. But it was very funny.
Speaker 5: It was great.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it sounds like it was sped up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, little wizard. So that was cute.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna be running around singing that at work, which
please please make my colleagues wonder about me even more
than they already.
Speaker 11: And I even certed it into my year, So thank you.
Speaker 2: You're going to add it to the setlist next time around.
Speaker 8: Yes, I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, write down, I love it?
Speaker 4: Got it.
Speaker 2: Excellent? All right? Thanks Gil.
Speaker 8: So that that's the kind of counteract eleanor h Yeah,
a palette cleanser.
Speaker 2: I mean, overall, we only have one negative so far,
we're all going soft.
Speaker 7: I always I'm gonna say, I always thought Eleanor Maybe
it's just my optimistic streak, but I always thought the
people in eleanor Rigby were pining for lost love.
Speaker 11: You know, that they had actually had great love.
Speaker 7: And I kind of always took it as a you know,
that loneliness rather than the loneliness.
Speaker 11: Of complete isolation. But that just might be my you know,
my prism.
Speaker 9: No, I think I like that whole whole theme because
they're kind of pining for the past in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 4: I agree, Yeah, you can't know that. You can't know
loneliness if you haven't experienced you know, love love.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so yeah, I guess I always assumed a backstory
for each of these people.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 11: But I loved hearing it. It's always good to hear
that song. And that version where they striped Jath back
to the strings is really nice to hear.
Speaker 2: Very cool. All Right, we got one more to go.
Speaker 11: Wait?
Speaker 2: Is it going to balance out the voting? Is it
going to go?
Speaker 5: I don't think it can.
Speaker 2: I don't know that's true. I don't think it can.
I honestly think mine could go either way. And I
think it's kind of age based and it depends on
the story that not a whole lot of people go.
So take a walk with me, if you would. My
song is called Into the Night by Benny Mardonez. You
may or may not have heard it. We'll do a
real quick bio on Benny. He was born Ruben armand
Mardonas in nineteen forty six in Cleveland. His father abandoned
the family when Benny was an infant and returned to
his native Chile. Benny grew up in Maryland, graduating high
school in nineteen sixty four and a listing in the
US Navy. He served in Vietnam. After being discharged, he
moved to New York City to pursue a singer songwriter
career and wound up writing songs for people like Brenda Lee,
best known for Rocking around the Christmas Tree, and for
Chubby Checker, who you may have heard of. He would
record demos of the songs that he wrote. Common practice
record the demos to pass on to the artists so
they could hear what the songs sound like, and some
of the demos came to the attention of Tommy Mottola
at Sony, which owns Columbia Records, and Tommy Mottolis told
Benny he should be recording his own songs. So Benny
Benny Mardone is put together a band called the Hurricanes.
He got signed to Polydor Records, which is a British
subdivision of hemith umg. In nineteen eighty Benny co wrote
the song Into the Night with Robert Tepper, who has
his own story we could talk about Another Time, and
the song was released on his second album titled Never Run,
Never Hide. The song hit number eleven on the Billboard
Hot one hundred back when radio was king, and it
launched Benny into the big time. But unfortunately, substance abuse,
mostly cocaine, brought him right back down to the point
where Polydor wound up dropping him. He was a complete
mess until nineteen eighty five when his son Michael was born,
and that prompted him to straighten up. A friend helped
him move to Syracuse, New York and start over, and
Benny became a local celebrity and made a good living
performing in the Syracuse area in Central in Central New
York for many years now. Four years later, nineteen eighty nine,
a Phoenix radio station k ZZP had a show common
show common format called where Are They Now? And they
played this song because it was nine years old already.
That prompted Scott Shannon, a major figure in pop radio,
to add it to his playlist while he was working
out in Los Angeles. For those who may not recognize
the name Scott Shannon, he invented the morning Zoo format.
He's the one who made Z one hundred in New
York City the top radio station. There's a pretty cool
documentary called From Worse to First about Z one hundred,
and it focuses on the work that Scott Shannon did,
so Scott to him, Yeah, yeah, Z one hundred. He
went over to WPLJ and then he went over to
CBS FM, and then he retired.
Speaker 11: Now, yeah, it's a big station on one of the
satellite Yeah, he's.
Speaker 2: Always done that. He's always one of the side gigs.
He's always done all these kind of stuff like syndicated
old these shows for regular broadcast radio stations and now
streaming and online. So he's not completely retired, but he
stepped away from broadcast radio. So he put it Into
the Night into his playlist and everybody followed Scott Shannon,
so they started putting it in their playlist and it
took off again. Benny was signed to Curb Records. He
re recorded the song as Into the Night eighty nine
and it hit number twenty again on the charts. It's
only it's only one of ten songs that charted twice
like that, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Good for him.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Benny Mardonez continued to tour and perform until about twenty seventeen.
He was battling Parkinson's disease, and he wound up getting
injured from repeated slips and falls, which unfortunately accompanied that
he had multiple surgeries and it just kind of snowballed
into bigger problems and he wound up passing away in
twenty twenty. If you want a tear jerker moment, you
can go on YouTube because somebody posted the last time
he sang this song at the Turningstone Casino in Central
New York and you can see his hands were shaking
and he's in tears as he's introducing the song. This
is the last time I'm going to sing this in public.
Please sing it with me, and everybody sang it with him,
so even if you have a heart of stone, it's
kind of a tear jerker. So over his career, Benny
put out twelve studio albums and five live albums, and
that's pretty good on top of other one off recording projects.
And now, as far as the song goes, it's the
first line that may sway your opinion one way or another,
but I will say that the first line is also misunderstood,
so bear with me as we tell the story. The
song starts with the line she's just sixteen years old.
Leave her alone. They said, Oh wait, I can understand.
Uh oh yeah, but here comes the story for me.
I was fifteen when the song was released a second time,
and when you're fifteen, hitting sixteen is huge, especially in
New York, because at sixteen you get your driver's license,
you get some autonomy, you know, like high school graduations,
kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel.
So it didn't bother me. I kind of got it,
but I wasn't thinking about how old the singer was
at the time. And it's a song where you can
understand the lyrics, you can understand what he's saying, and
the lyrics spoke to me.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 2: The style is a bit of a throwback to the
nineteen fifties duop, which I was into in high school
because I'm a complete nerd. The backup singer style, the
chord progression, and I think you'll hear definitely that fifties
style when we listen to the track. And remember the
fifties wasn't that long before the song first came out
in nineteen eighty, so it wasn't that long ago. The
co writer, Robert Tepper is actually a backup singer on
the song as well. So with that opening line and
with the lyrics being easily misunderstood out of context, people
got a little upset about what they assumed to be
the subject matter of the song, which is an old
dude lusting after a sixteen year old, and in fact,
many radio stations would not play the song because of
that until Polydor Records issued a statement explaining the origin
of the song. They sent out over three thousand letters
the different radio stations explaining what the actual story of
the song is, and then they started playing the song.
On top of that, many programmed directors at R and
B stations when they heard the song, they thought Benny
was black, so they put it into rotation, and when
they found out he was not, He's a white guy,
they pulled the record, so it kind of tanked on
the R and B side. So here's a recap of
the story behind the song. I mentioned it. He co
wrote it with Robert Tepper. They were at Benny's apartment
in Spanish Harlem in New York City while they were
working on writing songs for the next album. Their neighbors
included a family of five. The father of the family
made it big as a Broadway set designer, and then
apparently ran off with one of the dancers in one
of the shows, just completely abandoning the family, leaving the
mom and three teenagers, two girls and a boy. They
had nothing. The father was the sole income for the
family and he was gone. Benny was already established at
this point. He was making a good living and he
wanted to help out this family, so he would pay
the kids to do jobs like go grocery shopping for him,
walking the dog. And the girl who walked his dog
was and still is named Heidi. She was sixteen. One
morning before school, she came over to walk the dog,
and as she was leaving, Tepper made an off the
cuff comment about her appearance, and Benny said, pal, she
is sixteen years old, leave her alone, and then bing
the light bulb goes off because songwriters have light bulb
moments like that. I can never have a light moment
like that, even with all my woody comments, I never
come up with anything like that. So he started building
a story off that line, She's just sixteen years old,
Leave her alone. The chorus goes, if I could fly,
I'd lift you up and take you into the night
and show you a love like you've never seen. You
can misinterpret that as I'm an old guy taking this
young girl, but that's not what he meant by it.
It's about lifting the family out of poverty, showing you
a love like you've never seen. Is your father abandoned
you and you don't know what it's like to have
a good father. So that was his approach to the
story behind the song. Benny did a lot of interviews
specifically about the song, and a lot of those interviews
he brought Heidi with him to sit there and explain,
to actually justify what he was talking about. He was
very happy to explain the backstory to the song. As
luck would have it, Heidi would go on to marry
into a wealthy family in Puerto Rico and her whole
family wound up moving there, so they all had a
success story as well. Her brothers got jobs with the
wealthy family and all that kind of stuff, so turned
out happy for them. It's Benny's vocals that really stand
out on this track. He did the whole song in
three takes. There are a number of standout vocal fills
in the song, especially a bridge in the middle, and
as you recall, I mentioned that he recorded demos for
songs that he wrote so other people could hear what
it would kind of sound like. Those vocals were supposed
to be a guide for a saxophone solo, which was
common practice. I'm gonna sing this, then the sax player
had to pick it up, like Jen was saying that
he did with his song sing it Warren's pick it
out and play it well. After they were done, the
producer was quoted saying, we won't be using a saxophone
on this record the way Benny sang it was.
Speaker 11: Been horrified momentarily.
Speaker 2: I can imagine, but I think when you hear the track,
you can understand why the decision was made. So let's
check out. This is the original one, not the re
recording from eighty nine. This is the original nineteen eighty recording.
Into the Night Bye Benny Mardonez.
Speaker 13: She's just sixteen years old. Leave you no, they said,
sad readed that.
Speaker 4: You don't know what.
Speaker 19: It is ya, but I want you to know, lad good,
I thank you, thank you to the night. It jell
you love, thank you name say and say. It's like
having a dream.
Speaker 21: Nobody it has a home. It's heaving it all, watching
it fall, and I.
Speaker 12: Would wait to be time for you.
Speaker 11: Do it?
Speaker 14: Looka It's true.
Speaker 12: I can't imagin my love.
Speaker 15: Stuffing, just the baby.
Speaker 11: That I want you.
Speaker 12: I'm think you.
Speaker 14: I'll take you into your life.
Speaker 15: I'll show you, I'm dig you, I take you into
the night.
Speaker 12: In shall you name scene?
Speaker 14: I'm seeing I go by not Biggie thinking n.
Speaker 12: Y should be.
Speaker 14: My ha big.
Speaker 12: And digging.
Speaker 2: Chance got his lighter out, an actual old school lighter,
you know they made those still, So what'd you think?
Speaker 20: Yeah, I would not.
Speaker 9: Say that would be a pro Valentine's song given the
the theme. I would have to I don't know, you know, folks,
what do you all think?
Speaker 4: I would question whether it was a Valentine's you know
song at all, being that it's kind of you know,
the whole sixteen year old thing. You know, But why
didn't they just change that lyric? It would have It
would have changed the whole perspective of the song. And
because otherwise, I mean, the production is magnificent, you know,
the scene is all it has everything going forward except
that you know which, And in my mind.
Speaker 3: He was paying tribute to like a real person and
a real story.
Speaker 7: I sat Valentine wasn't all necessarily about romance.
Speaker 11: It was about love.
Speaker 5: Can heads off, wasn't it pretty much?
Speaker 11: You know, you gotta overlook the whole.
Speaker 2: You pick the part you like and go with that.
Speaker 11: So you don't think style, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: You don't think it's pro.
Speaker 3: Who doesn't think it's pro?
Speaker 1: John doesn't?
Speaker 2: No, Well, I think when people guests stuck on that
that sixteen year old line, even with the explanation. Now,
of course some people just will not accept the explanation
of the backstory and just think it's a pervy song.
Speaker 4: Well no, even even with the explanation, and you know,
and even you know, sending out the letters and going
not everybody is going to hear that, you know, not everybody.
Speaker 14: You know.
Speaker 4: Now it's a different world now, you know, you put
something out on the internet, Yeah it's gonna that didn't
happen back then. That wasn't available. So you know, it
was like maybe you were listening when he did the
interview on the on the radio station or whatever. Maybe
you weren't. Chances are you probably weren't. If there's you know,
you got a million listeners, what they're not all listening
at once, right in my case, none of them listened.
Speaker 7: So but I was seventeen when I heard that song,
and I guess I didn't think about sixteen it's such
a big deal, or fourteen is such a big deal.
But I think of the song as kind of an
expression of, you know, love, not romantic love.
Speaker 11: But I kind of I'm on the fence with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I was fifteen when it came out,
so I was right at that age and didn't think
about the singer's age or any of that. I just
thought the lyrics were cool. Again, right, huh you think
it's pro I would say, you know what, after knowing
the story that it's about lifting a family out of poverty,
it has actually nothing to do with it at all,
which is the monkey wrench that I like to throw
into everything.
Speaker 4: What was the year again?
Speaker 2: It first came out in nineteen eighty, and we listened
to the nineteen eighty recording. He re recorded it in
eighty nine, which.
Speaker 4: Was which is good.
Speaker 2: But it's a little different the same lyrics, same lyrics,
different band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was a little older than fifteen in nineteen eighty.
That's all.
Speaker 2: Right, So there you go. I think we're split on that,
but overall, yeah, the crampbolts have got soft.
Speaker 4: We're all overall pro. We'll get them next to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got it to make us cranky.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you guys, Thank you guys for
having me, because I hope I haven't overstepped in my.
Speaker 11: Experience. I'd like to leave you with one thing that
I always think of when discussing these songs, and it's
from Frank Zappa, and it's there's two songs. There's two
times that all the songs on the radio are true
when you're falling in love or breaking up.
Speaker 4: True.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maxwell Silver, this has.
Speaker 11: Been a blast. I really enjoyed just hearing this stuff.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 11: This is great. Fellow music nerds.
Speaker 4: Thank you totally.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, join us.
Speaker 8: You got it, mot We're an interesting group.
Speaker 11: We can yes, you monsters meet the most interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my gosh. All right, excellent choices, Crambones. We'll have
to pick a topic that shows our true cranky side
in the near future, just so we balance it all out.
Great job, and thank you all for joining us for
the Rock and Roll Instury Show on Hudson River Radio.
Don't forget subscribe in your favorite podcast app, and check
out all the other shows we do at Hudson River
Radio because there is something for everybody. We'll be back
soon with another brand new episode, so we hope you'll
join us then. Until that time, peace out, everybody. Don't
forget to go get the half price Valentine's Chocolate.
Speaker 11: Next week Rock Cop Bottomed Cram.
Speaker 6: Okay, Bye bye.
Speaker 10: Hudson River Radio DOC a subsidiary of Glacier Entertainment LLC.
Potentially successful, the multi hundred dollar corporation