Entertainment For Lively Minds
Easy listening...
Posted by Specs_Beard on 30 January 2011 - 12:41am.
At the risk of this coming over as a 'guilty pleasures' post (when I don't feel in the least bit guilty), I just wanted to share this song - which I adore.
It's true that listening to the Seekers can be a bit like going on a Sunday school picnic, but every time I hear this I'm struck by:
1) Judith Durham's vocals (she started in JAZZ, apparently?!).
2) The unusual, stately rhythm.
3) The precision harmonies, not over-used.
4) The great lyric ('Pierrot and Columbine'!)
And they even feature the best spectacles in rock (1:07). And they get to appear on colour TV and wear black and grey. Magic.
Anyone else want to come out with an 'easy' track they love?
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I'm all for Easy Listening
Oh yes, I like a bit of uneasy listening and challenging atmospherics as much as the next man but a good song well sung is the thing I like the best. Laugh if you like and many will but I've always had a soft spot for this little number by Latin lothario Julio Doubleglazias
Begin The Beguine
Does this fit the bill?
Five easy pieces...
No guilt attached.
Dudley Moore Trio - Song For Suzy
Sergio Mendes/Brasil '66 - medley
Carpenters - Love Is Surrender
David Gates - Goodbye Girl
David Soul - Don't Give Up On Us
Karen
Always fifth in the MM drummer of the year poll after the four that you can remember.
Never My Love - The Association
Summer 1970
I listen to this and I am instantly transported back there:
I'm not sure if this is the kind of easy
you had in mind, but's it's just fabulous:
as is this piece of double-necked flimsiness:
and this is the most beautiful piece of music that Ennio Morricone wrote:
The Aussie Fab Four
Judith Durham is indeed highly respected as a jazz singer; Keith Potger (12 string) went on to manage the New Seekers; Athol's specs are welding strength - and was it him or Bruce (far left) who had a career in politics after the Seekers? The trivia with which I waste brain cells, no use in any Gaga-oriented pub quiz.
But don't they all look like Thunderbirds now?
Pet Clark
Whilst I could name another 4 or 5 Seekers tunes including the utterly wondrous Georgy Girl... here's Pets finest hour...
Petula Clark
I was on a long drive yesterday, in the company of Brian Matthews
'Sound of the sixties'
He played this & I sang along to it giving it everything I had. It must have been a horrible noise, but no apologies, I love this song.
Matt Monro
Now you're talking!
Matt Monro had a fabulous voice.
Thirded.
Like velvet. Softer than Sinatra but with similar levels of intensity and with the same interpretative gift. My favourite is 'Honey On the Vine'. That is both 'easy' and 'funky'. I'd post it but my sheer inadequacy in all matters technical forbids it I fear.
The actual theme to the Italian Job
BBC4
There is a documentary about him that was shown on BBC4 recently.
He comes across as a nice guy, much loved by his family, who had a happy, scandal-free life - but blessed with a magical voice
andy williams
surely the king of loungecore and this one always gets the family singing along in the car many happy memories
I will see your happy heart.......
....... & raise you this
So easy
-even has hands in pockets
Love the
Williams version, but I went to see the re-issue of Breakfast At Tiffanys this weekend starring the most gorgeous creature to ever walk the planet, so I thought I'd post this...
That's my
all time favourite drumming ever, all the way through it. It's a journey. It makes me think of Lee Marvin, in a wheelchair, reaching out to pick a flower, but overbalancing and falling down a ravine into foaming rapids, cut in time with the drumming from Happy Heart.
Perhaps I should have kept that one to myself. I like Lee Marvin and wish him no harm - I'd be happy with a stuntman. Even though he's dead.
A couple of ladeez
Rumer is an interesting case
I do hope she doesn't get placed in the Ken Bruce/Radio 2/Easy category by "serious" critics. It's the sort of fate that befell Norah Jones and Sade but I like listening to them far more than I do some angry young bunch of twerps from Camden armed with Strats.
Rumer is excellent
the obvious comparison is Karen Carpenter singing Bacharach. Absolutelu pure voice, actually sings a note, stays there and doesn't mariah Carey it. Total antidote to the underwritten, overwrought tedium that's supplied by yer Duffys and Adeles.
Astrud
Come on in Frank!
..and you Nat
Modern day easy listening
Mike Flowers Pop
Nouvelle Vague
More Carpenters
Proper Easy Listening toon from perhaps the archetypal Easy Listening group.
Goodbye To Love
Specifically added to the list for "that" guitar
GTL Turbo
I was wowing over its melodic fabness only the other day.
Tony Peluso
deserves all the credit he's rarely given for playing the solo.
Herb Alpert
...and the best Carpenters song
Going to
see James Last with my Dad at the Royal Albert Hall in April (nudging 83, this is bound to be his last tour) - I love this and the album it comes from (this is the title track):
A great arranger and orchestra leader, forever damned to be associated with those awful party albums he made in the 70s (so largely his fault I guess), but there are a lot of gems too.
How about a bit of Country/Pop/Easy Listening Crossover?
Summer's coming ...
Butch & Sundance
The Easy Listenin' cowboys.
Whatever it is they're selling, I don't want it. Unless it's laid Bacharach. Nice. Or Katherine Ross. Providing she's not being sold, I respect her dignity, you understand.
Guilty pleasure ??
I dont feel the least bit guilty for loving this.