Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Wow

The slight step up in melody at :20 and 1:16 is so classic, so completely 1980s (even though the song is from 1978). The chorus does have the power, but that little melody in the verse is so perfect to my ear that I'm not even going to whine jealously about the bass guitarist's awesome disco shirt.




I want to follow up on this. Basically, my theory is that little climbing melody signals the beginning of 80s music. Until then disco and rock were totally content with sustaining the first note he sings on that chord. By climbing notes on the same word, turning "saved" and "night" into multi-syllabic words you are hearing the start of the vocal acrobatics that would define Def Leppard and Motley Crue's sound and especially Survivor. who blatantly stole this melodic extension. This song is the missing link between music of the 1970s and the 1980s. I also want to suggest that pianist Greg Rolie might've been listening to Boston's first album when he wrote this song.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.