Balarama Music

Clapton Chronicles: Solo

{Nov 05}

Doug1980s eric clapton No Comments

(Note: This one is probably the most frustrating as over half of the songs I mentioned, I couldn’t find YouTube links for including the song I’m featuring. Bear with me…)

I’m going to jump around a bit here and cover his solo career second and then Derek & The Dominoes last so excuse me for the historical gap, though his solo career did begin before The Dominoes. However, the song I’m covering comes way after that period – almost a decade and a half.

For being just one man, Clapton’s solo career can probably be described as the definition of eclectic to some. What do I mean by that? Well, think of it this way: a band like The Beatles had four people with different musical tastes all giving input; Clapton’s one man. Get it? The blues roots are there and prevalent in everything he did, but the musical genres those roots allow him to cross are staggering. Skiffle, rockabilly, pop, country, soul, reggae, et cetera; in the last post when I was referring to all his genres, most of them can be found here. Whereas Cream was psychedelic rock rooted in blues, The Yardbirds were blues-rock, Blind Faith was progressive blues, and Derek & The Dominoes were southern blues rock; Clapton’s solo career covered all of that and more. Why bring this up? Well, do you know how hard it is to pick out your favorite song or album from just one band doing one genre (a la Cream)? Imagine how hard it is to pick out your favorites for such variety.

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Originals Week: Frusciante Covered Too!

{Jun 05}

Doug1980s crazy town, frusciante friday, john frusciante, originals week, red hot chili peppers No Comments

Frusciante Friday lives on through Originals Week. Now, this entry is from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and I know you’re probably thinking, “But how could someone cover a Chili Pepper song in the past decade and people not know it was by them, especially since their hits of the 90s still dominate the radio today?” If I could see you in person, I would slap you for not only asking that question but for still listening to the radio in this day and age. Radio…that’s a good one. Anyway, it is true that a band covered a Red Hot Chili Pepper song and I would be very surprised if even one person who reads this has not heard of it…but let’s start by talking about the Chili Peppers’ song first which is actually the story of how Frusciante came into the Chili Peppers. My, my, my how I love Frusciante Fridays!

The Red Hot Chili Peppers originally consisted of Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Jack Irons, & Hillel Slovak. However, due to contractual obligations to another band, Slovak and Irons were not around for the first album and only Slovak was around for the second. However, the Chili Pepper’s third album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (featured “Fight Like A Brave“) is where the original line-up was finally together on an album. What resulted was a clearly better representation of their funk-punk fusion than their first low-rent punk album and they’re second mostly funk album (it was produced by George Clinton: what are you going to do?). Their third album did miles better than the second as it got to 148 on the Billboard 200 as opposed to…not charting before…so there was definite cause for celebration. However, that celebration was short-lived as Kiedis & Slovak both developed horrendous heroin addictions and tragically, it took Slovak’s life. Adding a smaller, but still substantial blow to the Peppers after this was the announcement that Irons would be leaving as he thought the band would keep killing his friends and didn’t want to be part of it. So what to do, what to do? Well, by this point in 1988, Kiedis & Flea had barely scratched their musical potential and with Kiedis clean, they both decided to keep the band going. They quickly snagged up DH Peligro & DeWayne McKnight to play the guitar and drums respectively, but chemistry is very vital in bands & ultimately the lack of it here lead to their departure. As luck would have it though, Peligro knew someone who had not only passed a class on RHCP Chemistry, but was now ready to teach it.

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Got My Mind Set On Someplace Else

{Feb 26}

Doug1980s george harrison, the beatles 1 Comment

Today’s song comes to us from one of the overlooked Beatles, George Harrison. I almost put down “the most overlooked,” but does anyone actually care what Ringo Starr has done since 1970? This is actually a really good song never released as a single (aka not many of you will know of it, let alone have heard it) that I feel is the best track on his 1987 record Cloud Nine. You should know something about that album already because it featured the smash hit “Got My Mind Set On You” that Harrison had been wanting to cover since the 60s (John & Paul shot him down numerous times). If you don’t know that song, click here and catch up, loser.

Anyway, the year is 1987 and George Harrison hasn’t released anything since 1982 when his last album bombed. He spent the time working on his film production company, Handmade Films. That went over swimmingly as their biggest picture, Shanghai Surprise starring Madonna and Sean Penn, was nominated in virtually every Razzie Award possible and won for Worst Actress. However, that movie is very vital to this record as Harrison recorded around five original songs for the soundtrack, two of which made it onto the Cloud Nine record. Two were later added on the album as it was re-mastered and re-released. The album itself is also important historically to music as it was the recording sessions which led to Harrison and Jeff Lyne (Harrison’s co-producer at the time & long time friend) starting the Traveling Wilburys in 1988 with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. We will definitely cover them in the future here on this blog.

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