Rock Operetta
Posted by Dave C on 2 September 2008 - 11:42am.
Who are the Grandmasters of mini-musicals? Forget full length double, or indeed, triple album progathons and bumper edition indulgences in rockanory. I'm talking about a radio friendly, fun size medley of motifs, using more keys than a locksmith in a panic and tearing through several tempos or time changes, with possibly some embellishment from the SFX boffins - all tied up with a bow, in seven minutes or less.
And what are the master classes in this genre? Perhaps....
Queen - Bo' Rap'
John Miles - Music
10CC - I'm Mandy
But surely, Macca has to be the Professor of 'Popera'
Live And Let Die
Band On The Run
Uncle Albert
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'Autumn Almanac'
by the Kinks always struck me as being quaintly poperatic.
Bat Out of Hell
Yes, really. I still enjoy it on the stroll into work.
Little Boy Soldiers
by the Jam - years since I heard it - as I recall, has at least 2 musically diverse sections and always struck me as a sort of mini-musical - perhaps the only new wave version of such?
Another minimusical from 10CC - "The Dean and I" - sounds like various songs welded together seamlessly.
And of course "Happiness is a Warm Gun" - is it 5 distinct sections in this short song?
MacArthur Park
By Richard Harris was probably the first - were there any earlier?
A Day In The Life
Did that come before MacArthur Park? - ELO have recycled it, (and I Am The Walrus )endlessly into prog pop tunes like Mr Blue Sky
Tho Who
"A Quick One While He's Away" was a pointer for Tommy I suppose.
And Punk Rock did throw up a couple classics, not bad considering Punk was meant to destroy this kind of thing!
The Damned's gothic punk extravaganza "Curtain Call" from the Black Album and The Stranglers "Down In The Sewer" from their debut album Rattus Norvegicus.
Surely
Brian Wilson's entire post-California Girls career?
It's a rat trap baby,
and we've been caught!
Another Queen one
Innuendo
Frankie Valli?
Yes. Who Loves You - with it's chimp noises and urgent guitar mid-riffing interlude.
The Beatles did it best...
... with Happiness is a Warm Gun shurely?
The Kinks
The Kinks "Shangri-la" ticks all the boxes for me in this regard.
Song cycle
The Beach Boy’s - Surf’s Up crams three movements of heavy-hearted Californian blues into a succinct four minutes.
Saint Etienne like to stretch themselves and try out new ideas. When they succeed it’s glorious, but occasionally they fall flat on their face. How We Used To Live comes from a period when the band appeared to be straining creatively: Nine minutes of odds-and-ends forced to share mutual space - some doodled electronica; an overly-twee High Llamas-style banjo passage with sketched lyrics; some dreary exposition that plunges the song into the doldrums; a burst of energetic techno and, finally, an anthemic, arm-waving ending, doomed to misfire because what has preceded it is so underwhelming. The B-sides were better.
Victoria Williams-penned songs like TC and Swing the Statue have a semi-improvised, half spoken/half sung narrative structure that brings to mind those garishly coloured Hollywood musicals of the 1940s. Her natural successor is Joanna Newsom who filled her last album - Ys - with exactly this kind of thing.
oooh - a mention of the High Llamas
sorry to take this offtrack, but Mr Backwards, would you be good enough to point me in the general direction of a good starting point for a chap who wanted to listen to the Llamas?
One of my favourite songs of all time is Town to Town by Microdisney, and whilst Cathal Coughlands angry-angry-shouty-shouty stuff is, i'm sure, all well and good, I think that Mr O'Hagans output might be more my 'thing'.
Llamas
I like Hawaii, Giddy Strings and Cold & Bouncy best, but I've not heard the more recent records. Backwards may more a more reliable witness.
"Music, so varied and sweet"
Gideon Gaye, the aforementioned Hawaii and Cold and Bouncy.
Of their recent material Beet, Maize & Corn is worth a listen.
There is a 2CD compilation titled Retrospective, Rarities and Instrumentals which covers their career up to 2000. The second disc contains their splendid b-side - Cropduster, which would fit very nicely into this thread as a good example of a mini-opera.
The band are prone to writing the kind of pleasant but forgettable instrumental that used to accompany pages of Ceefax early in the mornings on BBC2. If you can get past that and the way that some songs seem to almost glide past you, there's some good music to be enjoyed. I really rate Sean O'Hagan as a lyricist.
Whoops
Giddy Strings is a track on Gideon Gaye. You were more reliable.
thank you kindly
fraser and Backwards. I remember Dave Fanning (RTEs answer to John Peel. Ish. Very Ish) playing bits of their stuff BITD and thinking 'they sound alright'. Never got around to listening and this just woke something from the deep recesses of the noggin!
Scott Walker's Jackie
Or David McWilliams The Days Of Pearly Spencer.
Radiohead?
Surely 'Paranoid Android' is a mini rock-opera... there, I've said it, nuff respect!
The Beatles
Helter Skelter and Birthday. Both songs that sort of suck you in, throw you around a bit and spit you out the other side. Also in that category I would put Echo & the Bunnymen's Back of Love and many, many Sparks songs, but a good recent example is Waterproof from Hello Young Lovers.
Any Disco Ones?
I can only think of Giorgio Moroder's From Here To Eternity (single version) and MacArthur Park as refitted and refunked by Donna Summer
Live and Let Die has a Reggae interlude, does that count?
Easy
Backstreets by BROOOOOOOCE
Dire Straits
Did a few of these but Private Investigations was probably the most poperatic. And does Lou Reed's Street Hassle count? There's all sorts going on in there, none of it savoury. It's even got a spoken word bit by The Boss.
Shurely
the immortal Mark Wirtz rates a mention for "Excerpt from a Teenage Opera" (Grocer Jack) - I know there was supposed to be a whole Teenage Opera but it didn't happen, so it rates as a mini-musical in my book.
I also feel moved to mention Get Well Soon's "Witches! Witches! Rest Now In The Fire" (Word CD, August) - the video is most artistic, quite weird and slightly disturbing and I think it qualifies as a late entry. The album's a 'grower' by the way and (imho) is one of the best this year.
maybe the last one to make it big
was The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance