Music Video Of the Week - March 20, 2026

"Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - February 13, 2026

"My Wife" by the Who (Go to the link in the upper-right hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - May 9, 2025

"Alcatraz" by Leon Russell with the Gap Band  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Music Video Of the Week - February 14, 2025

"My Wife" by the Who  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - January 24, 2025

"The Story In Your Eyes" by the Moody Blues  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Music Video Of the Week - January 10, 2025

"Stay With Me" by the Faces  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - April 19, 2024

"Resurrection Shuffle" by Ashton, Gardner and Dyke  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - March 1, 2024

"Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Music Video Of the Week - May 6, 2022

"Everybody Loves You Now" by Billy Joel  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - February 4, 2022

"Heart of Gold" by Neil Young  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - January 14, 2022

"Day After Day" by Badfinger (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' - Fifty Years

Although the fiftieth anniversary of this landmark children's film was in June of this year, I bring up Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory today mainly because it's associated with the holidays, seeing as it has to do with candy and all that.  Also, I remember when it was on TV every Thanksgiving weekend. 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory should not have worked.  Its differences from Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" go beyond just the title.  In the movie, several characters from the book are either eliminated or diminished.   The hero of  the story, Charlie Bucket, joins four rotten children to tour Mr. Wonka's factory and disobeys one of Mr. Wonka's orders in the movie, just as the other kids do, though he does not do so in the book.  The fifth of five Golden Tickets hidden in Wonka chocolate bars - the pass needed for the factory tour - is claimed to be found in Paraguay only to turn out to be a fake, another change from the book.  And there are other changes that would take too long to document, not the least of which is the fact that the movie is a musical, chock full of Anthony Newley songs (including "The Candy Man," which Sammy Davis, Jr. would have a surprise hit with in 1972).  Roald Dahl himself disavowed the movie after it came out.  So why does the movie work?

The answer is simple: Gene Wilder.

Wilder played Willy Wonka with a sense of whimsy and silliness that took a character in Dahl's 1964 book that always seemed a bit creepy and nonchalant despite being well-meaning and made him likeable and enjoyable.  Wonka was still standoffish and smug, but Wilder brought a method to Wonka's madness, as - we all know this by now, so I'm not spoiling the ending for you - the purpose of the Golden Tickets is to find the ideal child he can give his factory to when he retires.   Wonka constantly tests the five children in his care as they tour the factory, exposing them to tempting situations where the kids can either do the right thing or overindulge and get themselves into irrevocable trouble.  (He also gets someone to pretend to be his competitor in the candy business to bribe them to give him Wonka's latest candy innovation, an everlasting gobstopper, though that was not a plotline in the book.)  Wilder's Wonka strikes the right balance between being a daffy old creep and kindly old gent.  As anyone who had seen Wilder as Leo Bloom in The Producers will tell you, he knew how to play a character at both ends of the spectrum for comedic effect. 

The sets were pure early-seventies kitsch, from the Chocolate Room with its chocolate river to its Wonkavision TV studio, which provides a form of nostalgia for those of us who grew up with the Carpenters on the radio and the Banana Splits on TV.   (Wonka's outfit even screams 1971.) The scenes of adults doing anything to get a Golden Ticket, including using a computer that can locate the Golden Tickets ("It says, 'I won't tell, that would be cheating!'") are also enjoyable, showing how the promise of getting something for nothing (the Golden Tickets also include a lifetime's supply of chocolate) brings out the greed in even the most mature and sensible grownups.  The whole movie is full of such colorful scenes and clever ideas, so much that you almost forget the inconsistencies - an American family (the Buckets) living in the ghetto of a German city (it was filmed in Munich) where Charlie's schoolteacher is English (though the cluelessness of Charlie's teacher teaching science and percentages seems almost French New Wave).  Almost.  The movie is only okay until Wilder steps in.  Then it becomes magnificent.

I also have to give credit to Jack Albertson for his sprightly and warm portrayal as Charlie's' Grandpa Joe, as well as Roy Kinnear as spoiled-brat Veruca Salt's hapless father.  I can't forget the Oompa-Loompas either, singing about the nasty children just as they did in the book.  But of course, the movie is called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for a reason.  Though the film was not initially a success, its constant annual holiday airings throughout the 1970s on NBC (a network that, perhaps coincidentally, aired "Chico and the Man," starring Jack Albertson) made it a perennial favorite among Generation Xers like myself, despite the deviations from the book (which I read as a kid).  Because the movie looks great, the story is still great, the moral is timeless (be a good boy or girl and you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams; misbehave you'll get your just deserts), and Gene Wilder is Willy Wonka.  Yes, I saw the 2005 movie version of the story, correctly titled after the book, and Johnny Depp makes a great Willy Wonka too.  And, that movie is superb in its own right because it's more true to Dahl's original story. But for my generation, Gene Wilder will always be Willy Wonka.

And don't forget what happened the man who suddenly  got everything he wanted . . . he lived happily ever after. 😊

Music Video Of the Week - November 26, 2021

"American Pie" by Don McLean (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 19, 2021

"Tiny Dancer" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

"American Pie" - Fifty Years

It was fifty years ago this autumn that Don McLean released his second album, American Pie, and while the album has long been considered respectable example of classic folk rock, containing fine songs such as "Till Tomorrow: and the Van Gogh tribute 'Vincent," the title song towers over not just the rest of the LP but over everything McLean has ever done.

Don McLean wrote "American Pie" with the knowledge that his contract with United Artists Records was on thin ice, so he decided that if he had only one shot at making an LP, he as going to give it all he had.  "American Pie" came to him as he was pondering the loss of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper -  real name: J.P. Richardson -  in the February 3, 1959 plane crash that took their lives . . . the day the music died.  He thus began writing a song that he said was about America and how its popular culture and its sense of optimism and progress fueled a great musical, cultural and social revolution in the 1960s, only to have it crashing down.  The song begins with a lament of the loss of Holly, Valens and Richardson, then picks up with a quicker tempo and with scenes of youthful innocence and marveling at the joy of early rock and roll and how rock evolved into a multifaceted musical form with the exuberance of the Beatles and the innovative songwriting of Bob Dylan.  The verses capture the thrill of musical discovery but then pivot to how America underwent a loss of trust in society, as the Vietnam War intensified and rock got more political.

There are numerous references to pop-cultural figures, including the Beatles as "sergeants," and possibly Dylan as "the jester," a mischievous figure that sings with the voice of the people and upends the ruling class.  Or was the jester a leader or a comedian - maybe Lenny Bruce, whom music critic Ralph Gleason once referred to as a secular saint? - shaming the rulers of America by stealing the king's crown?  The fourth verse finds the sergeants playing a tune at the halftime at a football game, with everyone wanting to get up to dance, only to find discord when the players try to take the field and begin the second half.  Was this a reference to the Summer of Love being interrupted by the resumption of a militaristic game like American football, devoted to territorial acquisition?  

More clear is "American Pie"'s fifth verse, with its obvious references to the Rolling Stones' disastrous concert at Altamont, where the peaceful vibe of the sixties gave way to a new, dark reality.  But who was the devil laughing with delight at the end?  Mick Jagger?  Richard Nixon? An archetypal record company executive realizing that rock could be taken over and controlled by the suits, it be turned into just another cynical product, now that cynicism had perverted it?

The sixth verse of "American Pie" returned to a slow, dirge-like tempo, lamenting the end of rock and roll's glory days and is innocence, with illusions to the death of Janis Joplin and the closing of New York's Fillmore East, the "sacred store" (which is a bank now).  The Father Son and Holy Ghost referred to leave, possible a reference to Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers but maybe still a reference to Holly, Valens and Richardson and that day the music died.  McLean is left to look at the aftermath of the sixties and the prospect of new decade much less idealistic the the one before it.  It seemed ironic that McLean would suggest such a dire forecast in 1971, a year of ever more innovation and brilliance in popular music in which many monumental records were made.  But as the seventies wore on, the music began to reflect deeper cynicism and skepticism, rock eventually gave way to disco, and punk rendered rock's most respected veterans and artisans irrelevant in a new, nihilistic age.  And then came that day in December 1980 when the music died yet again.  

McLean has never explained whom he was signing about specifically in "American Pie," but the mirror he held up to his homeland revealed a country of contradictions that people wrestle with today, even as popular music continues to change and reflect the times - times that seem more dire and more cynical with each passing year as Americans aim to regain a sense of optimism and renewal.  Promises from our leaders ("It's not a good bet to bet against America" - Joe Biden) and efforts by recording artists who want to say something with their music rather than just sell a catchy tune they know "the kids" will buy (think of any indie band you can name) can only move so far toward such optimism and renewal.  And the loss of both is why "American Pie" still resonate fifty years on, as well as just being one hell of a song that encapsulates American cultural history and social structure perfectly.

Below is a clip of Don McLean explaining "American Pie" in a TV interview from the Netherlands.   

And now, the song.  With the words.

"Stairway To Heaven" - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, Led Zeppelin issued its untitled fourth album, and the fourth song on that fourth LP became first in the hearts of fans of classic rock.

"Stairway To Heaven" is one of those monumental songs from the seventies that defined every form of popular music that rock has influenced or has been influenced by, from folk balladeering to the Delta blues to tight-fisted guitar-based rock.  It summed up everything rock stood for and still stands for today, with its positive message of self-discovery and enlightenment.  It proved that Led Zeppelin had a deeper message to present lyrically and musically than that in the sexually charged, blues-based songs of their previous albums or even similarly constructed songs on this fourth LP.  As I wrote back in February 2014 in my review of the album sometimes called Led Zeppelin IV, the song is "[an] ethereal epic track that brilliantly displays the complexity, the power, and, yes, the subtlety of Led Zeppelin's music as it slowly builds from an introspective musing into a searing rock performance - the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove."

"Stairway To Heaven" came about in a rather impromptu way, with guitarist Jimmy Page writing the music over an extended time, taking it from small pieces of music that had been taped.  Vocalist Robert Plant came up with much of the lyrics while sitting next to an evening log fire at a former workhouse for the poor - the sort of place Charles Dickens wrote about - called Headley Grange, where numerous bands recorded and rehearsed. "Headley Grange was somewhat rundown; the heating didn't work," Page later remembered.  "But it had one major advantage. Other bands had rehearsed there and hadn't had any complaints. That's a major issue, because you don't want to go somewhere and start locking into the work process and then have to pull out."

The lack of heat and the Victorian ambience, along with the rustic fire in the hearth, may very well have inspired the esoteric, pastoral lyrics of "Stairway To Heaven," with their inviting images of a songbird in a tree by a brook, forests echoing with laughter, and bustled hedgerows, with the promise that if you're headed down the wrong path, "there's still time to change the road you're on."

Page built up the arrangement of "Stairway To Heaven" in much the same matter as the Beatles' "A Day In the Life," were the music started out quietly and introspectively, with an acoustic guitar and recorders (from bassist John Paul Jones); electric guitars are eventually brought in for more texture as the pace of the tempo slowly increases.  The song is firmly planted in California folk-rock when John Bonham's drums come in, but the anticipation of a full flowering still hangs heavy in the sound.  That flowering comes with an explosion of heavy rock with a melodically fluid but menacing guitar solo from Page almost in the same style as Martin Barre's solo in Jethro Tull's :Hymn 43."  (Such complex melodicism would eventually cause the punk revolt of 1976 and 1977, but that's another post.)  Plant's voice, in the middle range, mutates back into his piercing Chipmunks-on-speed vocal as he delivers the lyrics of "Stairway To Heaven" that sum up the song and the promise of rock and roll:

And as we wind on down the road,
Our shadows taller than our soul,
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard,
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all . . .
To be a rock and not to roll.  

The band slows down and brings the song in for a landing, with Robert Plant left on his own to recall the stairway one last time.  It rivals the crashing E major chord of the aforementioned "A Day In the Life" and the gong of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as one of the most memorable closing moments of  a classic-rock song. Except that "Stairway To Heaven" closed side one, not side two, of the album it was on, unlike "A Day In the Life," which closed the Beatles'  Sgt. Pepper, or "Bohemian Rhapsody," which, apart from a 71-second instrumental version of the British national anthem at the very end, closed Queen's  A Night At the Opera.  Using "Stairway To Heaven" as a side one closer demonstrated that Led Zeppelin not only had more to offer on side two of Led Zeppelin IV (and it did), but had more musical surprises to come thereafter - surprises that would include straight folk ballads, reggae, danceable pop tunes, and R&B.  "Stairway To Heaven" is one of the most transcendent songs ever offered up by a major rock  band.  And no mater how overplayed it is on classic rock radio, it's a song that deserves its ubiquitous presence.     

This post is dedicated to fellow Sirius XM urban talk host and fellow Drew University alumnus Karen Hunter, who once mocked now-former House Speaker Paul Ryan for still listening to Led Zeppelin in the 2010s.  I love you too, Karen. 😛 

And now, the song . . .

Music Video Of the Week - November 5, 2021

"Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin (Go to the link in the upper-right-corner.)

'Fearless' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago yesterday, the British band Family released their fifth album, Fearless.

This blog entry about Family's Fearless LP is not meant to be a proper review; for that, you can go here to an October 2011 repost of my original review of the album from my Family fan page.  It is, like my January 2020 post about Family's A Song For Me, a celebration and acknowledgement of the album, an album I believe to be the band's greatest album ever.

Family were known to be innovative and unorthodox in arranging music and writing lyrics, and on Fearless, they pulled out all the stops to make an adventurous, immaculately produced album that encompasses progressive rock, soul, folk, and straightforward rock and roll and delivers high-caliber musicianship and sold professionalism.  Fearless, fifty years on, is still a spellbinding work that fulfills all of Family's promise.  The die-cut layered paging of the album sleeve, with portraits of the band members melding into one, was the perfect metaphor for their ambition.

Fearless, ironically, had less to prove for Family or for rock and roll than A Song For Me did.  A Song for Me came out at at time of uncertainty as to whether rock and roll could carry on in a new decade without the Beatles and with the Rolling Stones chastened by Altamont.  By the time Fearless came out in October 1971, rock and roll was still peaking, thanks to the Stones' resilient Sticky Fingers, the Who's Who's Next, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, and, a week or so, after Fearless's release, Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album.  Less was riding on Fearless than on A Song For Me, as Family had settled into a more or less permanent lineup of Roger Chapman on vocals, Charlie Whitney on guitar, Poli Palmer on vibraphone and keyboards, and Rob Townsend on drums.  They could put out a solid album with little if any effort.  But with so many masterpiece albums - too many to list here - having already been released in 1971, would that be enough?  Of course not.  That's why Fearless went beyond just being solid and effortless.

Family's secret weapon was John Wetton, their new bass player, whose fluid bass lines anchored Family and gave their songs a more melodic flair in the rhythm.  Wetton's vocal chops proved to be indispensable - his sharing of lead vocals with Chapman on songs such as "Spanish Tide" and "Save Some For Thee" created a new dimension to their sound.  Chapman's vibrato bleat, though, remained Family's signature, particularly on tough-minded songs like "Between Blue and Me" and "Blind."

Fearless was overshadowed somewhat by other events in rock music going on at the time.  Duane Allman died n a motorcycle accident the same day of its release, and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" and Don McLean's "American Pie" would soon suck up the oxygen as both songs vied to define epic seventies classic rock.  But with an album as perfect as Fearless, with a closing track like "Burning Bridges" - which summed up the entire concerns of a morality-play album like Jethro Tull's Aqualung album -  Family remained a band to be reckoned with.

Reckon with this - "Save Some For Thee," the best and best-produced song to grace Family's Fearless album, on which Wetton's lead vocal dominates.  Plenty of living for free here.   

Music Video Of the Week - October 29, 2021

"Between Blue and Me" by Family (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - October 1, 2021

"Spanish Tide" by Family (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)