In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time

AC/DC lost about 2/3 of their boogie power when Bon Scott died. (Seriously, the songs on Back in Black and everything after are routinely half the speed of the '70s material.)

what the fart is "choogling"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azt-0StLZOk

Your Love has been the first song this thread that I knew. From that recent SNL sketch with Josh Hutcherson and HAIM. So know I'm listening to HAIM. Good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxBHRZpIdg

Is this not a boogie? If not, what am I missing?

I'm sorry I cannot support "chooglin'" as a word or a concept.

If I saw the aged singer of The Outfield on the streets of manhattan my pacifist ethos would be stretched beyond its limit.

It's like a cross between butt chugging and one of those "comedy" sex moves like the dirty sanchez or whatever.

i have confidence that ilx massive can convert carl agatha to a chooglin' adherent with just a few well aimed YTs

It's going to take some doing to overcome my revulsion for the word, but I'm open to further examples.

"chooglin'" too close to "chive on" or somethin

If I can't choogle, I don't want to be part of your classic rock revolution.

carl agatha, most extensive discourse on choogling probably in this thread:

Creedence Clearwater Revival vs the Grateful Dead vs the Band

It's a pretty long thread though, so ctrl-f.

KEEP
CALM
AND
CHOOGL'ON

The Outfield might be a poor man's police but I find this song better than anything on Sting's output.

everything he says sounds like almost words but to me mostly this:

BABA BA BABA BA BAAAAAAAA BAAA BAAA

Solo sting mostly sucks but the outfield dude could never aspire to the profundity of hoping the Russians love their children too

bet outfield guy can't even sing a canticle

HEY OUTFIELD HOW'S YOUR LUTE

I actually never noticed the Sting vocal resemblance, though now I can't unheard it. I actually thought "Your Love" was a Rick Springfield song until this polling process started.

unheard it, i mean.

*unhear* it! autocorrect killing me.

I actually thought "Your Love" was a Rick Springfield song until this polling process started.

Was actually gonna reference Rick Springfield in my post upthread.

"Your Love" sounds like The Cure.

don't really hear cure or police tbh. like yes there's some chorus and dude's in a higher register but rhythmically and melodically the sensibility is miles away. closer to men at work if anything.

Your Love: Sounds like the Cars. Not Classic Rock. But nice. Good opening, ready for some action here. Okay. I think you've...played that enough. Song? There we go.

OH THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISS! That guy! yeah! I don't wanna lose your love tonight, that's where this is going. Riiiiiight. Sorry, y'all - false alarm. Never knew this had a title, or an artist - just part of the background noise of "Eighties, Nineties, and Today!" stations. Never really paid attention to the words or anything. The way the guitar brushes in on "un-der-cover!" is really lovely. I totally hear the soundscape of Synchronicity-era Police, especially in the break around 1:40 and the bridge that follows that. Unfortunately these guys aren't as inventive, or technically skilled, as the Police, so this only has so many places it can go, and the long ending gets seriously busy and annoying - I'm sure that gets faded a lot earlier when this gets played on the radio. But it's fine.

The video is bland but at least kind of sweetly charming - now these are some goofy looking guys. Love the one creep in the trenchcoat and the huge shades. Are they showing up to a gig or an art class? Main guy is trying so hard for Paul McCartney stage presence, though the hair is more directly 80s and he seems distinctly mismatched from the other members of the band, especially Hi-Tops guy. LOL at the paint effects... very Nickelodeon. Hahah, yeah, so it's an art class happening during the shooting of their video? What a weird premise, I wonder how that was explained to the band at the time.

We elect you to explain it to them.

P.S. died at all the frog dance extrapolations, bravo everyone

TS: Colin Hay (Men at Work) vs. Tony Lewis (The Outfield) vs. Sting (The Police)

Turning now to the fate of chooglin' and what it meant to be an MTV-type rock band - it's kind of amazing how quickly the kind of thing heard here came to be thought of as "rock and roll" even though it sounds almost nothing like anything that would have born the label a decade earlier. Over on Is there a name for that genre of turn-of-the-90s pop-rock with the positive vibes, huge guitar leads, and gated drums? , which deals with a slightly later moment, there are some great points (particularly by nabisco) that I think can refract onto 80s rock culture and studio technology generally. The transformation of the Police from new wavers into whatever it was they became is probably pretty key in this history, but so would be all the real slab-of-overdubs Trevor Horn stuff - there's a bit of Asia to the way the vocals are meant to soar here. Hall & Oates might be relevant too, though I haven't worked that out exactly.

I was listening to Get the Knack this morning and while it's unmistakably a turn-of-the-80s record (particularly in the band's look and feel), it was striking how much they did, indeed, sound like a rock band, playing together in a room or studio, living up to their "next Beatles!" trappings at least for at least five seconds to three minutes of not very close attention. The Outfield, who also seem to yearn to be a real band, sound like they're playing fifty to a hundred feet apart, with big panes of plastic surrounding each member, indeed with sheets of digitally-added paint running down in the space between. It's not the most artificial rock music you'll ever hear; compared to, I dunno, Icehouse they do indeed sound like the Police. When it gets really interesting is when this sound swaddles artists who came up in the 60s and 70s; Eddie Money for example makes the sound's weird combination of isolation and human stridency work thematically ("Take Me Home Tonight"). Outfield just don't seem to have come to the table with strong priorities of their own and so the song does start to sound a bit like what this stuff gets decried as: corporate product-rock, identical stamp-out emotions slathered over "fake" "un-rock" sounds.

coming into this late, Doc, but re "Middle of the Road": that song to me is a textbook for how to sing a rock song. Chrissie Hynde was for many years my favorite vocalist. Maybe she still is.

"Your Love" has never gone away. People who claim they love it do as a nostalgia piece; the song is a cinder block with a happy face painted on it

xpost Yeah, I'm cracking that one out again. I think I underrated it a bit above.

damn those classic songs with titles that don't stick. there oughta be a law.

but i love you, ilm, for turning an outfield video into a conversation about chooglin'.

sticking to the '80s, but this time with a song where if you don't know the title, i'm 99 percent sure you don't know the song. also, a rare appearance by prince in the classic rock canon (non-chooglin' division).

SONG #21: STEVIE NICKS "STAND BACK"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwdDVZsz2es

YES

EPIC

more music should sound like this

instant dancefloor every time

I hadn't checked out this song until recently and when I did, it seemed very very familiar to me, but I couldn't quite figure out why.

So did some searching and found that it was sampled in the track "Welcome 2 Thee Lite" by Thee Jamie Starr Scenario, which appeared in a Radio Soulwax mix.

this song rules

Stand Back: Shit, we're off to a good start here. I'm a sucker for this kind of propulsive synth bassline, gauzy pad and wham-wham drum thing. Vocals are cool too, I like how they're just kinda trucking along as part of the larger picture. It makes the 'exceptions' like the drum fill before the chorus (edit: or the the little forlorn guitar interjections later on) really pop. This is like the keyboard version of "Edge of Seventeen" in terms of relentlessness but I can't help when I grew up: this kind of synth sound really suggests Big Life Decisions, Moments of Crisis, all that.

Yeah, this keeps getting cooler. Head bobbin' along, the la la las and the dancier guitar (sorta watered down Chic) riding against each other. Bassline subtly getting more urgent. Ooh totally love the play between the backing vocals well leavin' me standin' here and the lead STAND BACK! This is totally great. Not very CR but that's okay.

Second listen, now with the (shorter) video version. Still great. Man. Stevie Nicks looks so different (my one mental picture is really the back cover of Rumours). There's kind of a misfit there that sums up something that works great about this song - the inherent scratch or rasp to Nicks's voice brings in this touch of humanity and basically of the 70s to this otherwise unearthly soundscape. Goes along with some of my comments above about Outfield vs. Eddie Money. Not that I think synth music has to have a - - - okay, aside, around 2:00, the dissolve there makes it look like Stevie Nicks is morphing into a hideous monkey monster - - - not that I think synthy music needs to be redeemed by some conventional notion of the human. I love stuff that really pushes it out there. But in some cases the contrast is really interesting and makes something special. Is it okay if I'm getting a huge crush on 80s Stevie Nicks watching this? Her little bop at "Wa-ha!" (2:58) is amaaazing, <3. Feel like there's a bit of Kate Bush (with less weirdness and art) in the whole presentation here (the last weird swoon, the spinning around with the drapey garment) but I could be way off.

Has anyone ever attempted to break this song down as the pre-answer to "Don't Come Around Here No More"?

or, basically, Veg, rogermexico, and sparkle motion OTM

I love this bit from Wikipedia: Nicks has often told the story of how she wrote the song. She wrote it shortly after she was married to Kim Anderson. The newlyweds were driving up to San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara when Prince's song "Little Red Corvette" came on the radio. Nicks started humming along to the melody, especially inspired by the lush synthesizers of the song, and "Stand Back" was born. They stopped and got a tape recorder and she recorded the demo in the honeymoon suite that night. Later, when Nicks went into the studio to record the song, she called Prince and told him the story of how she wrote the song to his melody. He came to the studio that night and played synthesizers on it, although his contribution is uncredited on the album. Then, she says, "he just got up and left as if the whole thing happened in a dream."

By the way I do a fantastic karaoke version.

Just ONCE I'd like a Prince story to end with "he awkwardly tripped on the door jamb on the way out."

etails: Really? What about you and Prince?

Stevie Nicks: Let me state this here and now: We did not have a sexual relationship--I did not let that happen.

Details: How did you meet?

Stevie Nicks: When we were recording "Stand Back" I decided to be really blatant and call Prince up and tell him that I had been inspired to write the song while listening to "Little Red Corvette." I told him that I figured my song was half his. He came over to the studio where I was recording and listened to it--as I turned extremely white and started to shake. Then he walked over to the piano and put on a really incredible keyboard track. And not only did Prince make it up right on the spot, he played it with only two fingers. Then he left.

Details: Did you see him again?

Stevie Nicks: Yes, when I was on the road a year or so later. I was sick, and Prince brought some cough syrup up to my hotel room. He was sweet--he walked around the room folding things, fluffing pillows, tidying up in general. Then he gave me a spoon of it himself. But when I asked for another spoonful he changed--he said, "I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!" Then he left.

Details: Do you still see him?

Stevie Nicks: No. I was at the premiere of Purple Rain, and in the scene where he slaps Apollonia I freaked and had to go sit in the bathroom. Afterward I went back to see him, and when he asked why I'd left, I had to tell him, "When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain." He looked at me like it just killed him. We've never spoken since. (sighs) It’s a shame, really...we were alike in so many ways.

Details: Such as?

Stevie Nicks: Well, for one thing, we both liked wearing black chiffon around the house.

Tracking back over the thread, I just wanted to say that listening to "Renegade" while watching the muted video for "Hocus Pocus" worked out surprisingly well, especially when dude's face would line up with Styx's shrieking. This doesn't work quite as well for the "Rosalita" audio but when it does it's...something.

xpost omg

Continuing my experiment of picking random adjacent videos for songs that didn't have videos in-thread: "Your Love" over "Peace Frog" reeeeeeally points out how weird and empty Outfield's world is... there is just no matching up these two versions of rock at all. However, clean-cut Outfield guy happily declaiming about blood being up to his ankles is kinda cool. It seems to work best with Outfield starting at 0:20 so you skip over the "arrival" of the band.