The Zombies keyboard player Rod Argent wrote this song. He said in The Guardian February 22, 2008: "'Time of the Season' was the last thing to be written (for the album). I remember thinking it sounded very commercial. "Time of the Season" (1967) was only released at Kooper's urging, initially coupled with its original UK B-side, "I'll Call You Mine", without success. After previous singles flopped, Date rereleased "Time Of The Season" backed with another UK flop single, "Friends Of Mine", and it made its breakthrough in early 1969, over a year after the band split up. It did not chart in the band's native Britain, despite being re-released twice, but it later found success there with Rod Argent saying that it became "a classic in the UK, but it's never been a hit."
The song's characteristics include the voice of lead singer Colin Blunstone, the bass riff (which is similar to Ben E. King's hit "Stand By Me"), and Rod Argent's fast-paced psychedelic improvisation. The lyrics are an archetypical depiction of the emotions surrounding the Summer of Love. It is famous for such call-and-response verses as "What's your name? (What's your name?) / Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?) / He rich? (Is he rich like me?)" approximately 50 seconds into the track. Rod Argent said "One of my favorite records was George Gershwin's 'Summertime;' we used to do a version of it when we started out. The words in the verse - 'What's your name? Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?' - were an affectionate nod in that direction."
The recording of this song bought about a minor spat between keyboardist Rod Argent, who wrote the song, and the vocalist Colin Blunstone. The argument was over the phrase, "When love runs high." Blunstone struggled with the high note at the end of the line, and snapped at Argent, "If you're so good you come and sing it." Argent admitted in Mojo magazine February 2008: "It was written really quickly and we didn't rehearse it an awful lot. I was trying to change the phrasing." Blunstone told his side in our 2015 interview. "It was written in the morning before we went into the studio in the afternoon, and I kind of struggled on the melody," he said. "Rod and I had quite a heated discussion – he being in the control room and me singing the song - and we were just doing it through my headphones. Because it had only just been written, I was struggling with the melody." Blunstone added: "It makes me laugh, because at the same time I'm singing, 'It's the time of the season for loving,' we're really going at one another."
"California Dreamin'" was written by John Phillips and Michelle Phillips and was first recorded by [Barry McGuire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W2se8MMqwo). However, the best known version is by The Mamas & the Papas, who sang backup on the original version and released as a single in 1965. The song is #89 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The lyrics of the song express the narrator's longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City.
"California Dreamin' " was certified as a Gold Record (single) by the RIAA in June 1966[8] and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001.
The song was written in 1963 while John Phillips and Michelle Phillips were living in New York. He dreamed about the song and woke her up to help him write it. At the time, John and Michelle Phillips were members of the folk group The New Journeymen, which evolved into The Mamas & the Papas.
Michelle Phillips is the only surviving member of the band, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Elliot, otherwise known as Mama Cass, died in 1974 and Doherty in 2007.
Glad you enjoyed it. Although the enjoyment of a song is purely subjective, I find it interesting to see what the artists were thinking and how it affected culture of its time. It obviously meant a lot to your dad and his friend. It also helps keep the music alive for at least a little bit longer.
"We Gotta Get out of This Place", occasionally written "We've Gotta Get out of This Place", is a rock song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and recorded as a 1965 hit single by The Animals. It has become an iconic song of its type and was immensely popular with United States Armed Forces GIs during the Vietnam War. In 2004 it was ranked number 233 on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list; it is also in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were husband and wife (and future Hall of Fame) songwriters associated with the 1960s Brill Building scene in New York City. Mann and Weil wrote and recorded "We Gotta Get out of This Place" as a demo, with Mann singing and playing piano. It was intended for The Righteous Brothers, for whom they had written the number one hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" but then Mann gained a recording contract for himself, and his label Redbird Records wanted him to release it instead. Meanwhile, record executive Allen Klein had heard it and gave the demo to Mickie Most, The Animals' producer. Most already had a call out to Brill Building songwriters for material for the group's next recording session (The Animals hits "It's My Life" and "Don't Bring Me Down" came from the same call), and The Animals recorded it before Mann could.
In The Animals' rendition, the lyrics were slightly reordered and reworded from the demo and opened with a locational allusion – although different from that in the songwriters' minds – that was often taken as fitting the group's industrial, working class Newcastle-upon-Tyne origins:
In this dirty old part of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me, there ain't no use in tryin'
Next came a verse about the singer's father in his deathbed after a lifetime of working his life away, followed by a call-and-response buildup, leading to the start of the chorus:
We gotta get out of this place!
If it's the last thing we ever do…
The arrangement featured a distinctive bass lead by group member Chas Chandler. This was the first single not to be recorded by the original line-up, following as it did the departure of keyboard player Alan Price and his replacement by Dave Rowberry. It featured one of singer Eric Burdon's typically raw, fierce vocals. Rolling Stone described the overall effect as a "harsh white-blues treatment from The Animals. As [Burdon] put it, 'Whatever suited our attitude, we just bent to our own shape.'"
At the time, the title and simple emotional appeal of "We Gotta Get out of This Place" lent itself to some obvious self-identifications—for instance, it was a very popular number to be played at high school senior proms and graduation parties. In music writer Dave Marsh's view, it was one of a wave of songs in 1965, by artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, that ushered in a new role for rock music as a vehicle for common perception and as a force for social consciousness. Writer Craig Werner sees the song as reflecting the desire of people to take a hard look at their own lives and the community they come from. Burdon later said, "The song became an anthem for different people – everybody at some time wants to get out of the situation they're in."
The song was very popular with United States Armed Forces members stationed in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was frequently requested of, and played by, American Forces Vietnam Network disc jockeys. During 2006 two University of Wisconsin–Madison employees, one a Vietnam veteran, began an in-depth survey of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, and found that "We Gotta Get out of This Place" had resonated the strongest among all the music popular then: "We had absolute unanimity is this song being the touchstone. This was the Vietnam anthem. Every bad band that ever played in an armed forces club had to play this song."
These are some of the 400 or so snippets I've posted over years on Voat. My site is an extension and embellishment of some of these. I'm just trying to keep the music from the greatest decade alive and interesting for a few more years. I know you realize how far commercial music has decayed since then.
"Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)", or simply "Turn! Turn! Turn!", is a song written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s. The lyrics, except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song and the final two lines, are adapted word-for-word from the English version of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. The Biblical text posits there being a time and place for all things: laughter and sorrow, healing and killing, war and peace, and so on. The lines are open to myriad interpretations, but Seeger's song presents them as a plea for world peace because of the closing line: "a time for peace, I swear it's not too late." This line and the title phrase "Turn! Turn! Turn!" are the only parts of the lyric written by Seeger himself.
The song had first been arranged by the Byrds' lead guitarist Jim McGuinn in a chamber-folk style during sessions for Judy Collins' 1963 album, Judy Collins 3. The idea of reviving the song came to McGuinn during the Byrds' July 1965 tour of the American Midwest, when his future wife, Dolores, requested the tune on the Byrds' tour bus. The rendering that McGuinn dutifully played came out sounding not like a folk song but more like a rock/folk hybrid, perfectly in keeping with the Byrds' status as pioneers of the folk rock genre. McGuinn explained, "It was a standard folk song by that time, but I played it and it came out rock 'n' roll because that's what I was programmed to do like a computer. I couldn't do it as it was traditionally. It came out with that samba beat, and we thought it would make a good single."
The master recording of the song reportedly took 78 takes, spread over five days of recording, to complete.
The song's plea for peace and tolerance struck a nerve with the American record buying public as the Vietnam War escalated. The single also solidified folk rock as a chart trend and continued the Byrds' successful mix of vocal harmony and jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar playing. Pete Seeger expressed his approval of The Byrds' rendering of the song.
This written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell and originally recorded by [Kelly Gordon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4HYZg9HNc) in 1969. Although Russell was dying of lymphoma and the pair met only three times, they managed to collaborate on the song. This was the only songwriting collaboration between veteran songwriters Bobby Scott ("A Taste of Honey") and Bob Russell ("Ballerina"). Russell, who wrote the lyrics, made his mark writing for films and contributing words to songs by Duke Ellington and Carl Sigman. Scott was a piano player, singer, and producer. He did a lot of work with Mercury Records on sessions for artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Bobby Darin.
James Wells, Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland, tells the story of a little girl carrying a big baby boy in his 1884 book The Parables of Jesus. Seeing her struggling, someone asked if she wasn't tired. With surprise she replied: "No, he's not heavy; he's my brother."
In a 1918 publication by Ralph Waldo Trine titled The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit, Trine relates the following anecdote: "Do you know that incident in connection with the little Scottish girl? She was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: 'He's na heavy. He's mi brither.'"
The first editor of Kiwanis magazine, Roe Fulkerson, published a column in September 1924 carrying the title "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", the first use of the phrase exactly as it is rendered in the song title.
In the 1940s, the words, adapted as "He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother", were taken as a slogan for Boys Town children's home by founder Father Edward Flanagan. According to the Boys Town website, the phrase as used by Boys Town was said to Fr. Flanagan in 1918 by one of the residents while carrying another up a set of stairs. The boy being carried is said to have had polio and worn leg braces.
In the Guardian newspaper of February 24, 2006, Hollies guitarist Tony Hicks said: "In the 1960s when we were short of songs I used to root around publishers in Denmark Street. One afternoon, I'd been there ages and wanted to get going but this bloke said: 'Well there's one more song. It's probably not for you.' He played me the demo by the writers [Bobby Scott and Bob Russell]. It sounded like a 45rpm record played at 33rpm, the singer was slurring, like he was drunk. But it had something about it. There were frowns when I took it to the band but we speeded it up and added an orchestra. The only things left recognizable were the lyrics. There'd been this old film called Boys Town about a children's home in America, and the statue outside showed a child being carried aloft and the motto He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother. Bob Russell had been dying of cancer while writing. We never got, or asked for, royalties.
Elton John - who was still called Reg - played piano on it and got paid 12 pounds. It was a worldwide hit twice."
Joe Cocker was offered this song before The Hollies after it had been played first to his producer Denny Cordell. The General Professional Manager for Cyril Shane Music Ltd & Pedro Music Ltd in England at the time explains: "Tony Hicks was in our office looking for songs for the Hollies. Denny called from New York to say 'Joe didn't see the song.' As Tony said in The Guardian, he liked the song and asked for an exclusive the following day. The version he heard was Kelly Gordon, who apart from being a successful producer, also wrote a little song entitled 'That's Life.' His version was slow and soulful which is why I had thought of Joe Cocker to record it.
This was the second single The Hollies released after Graham Nash left the group to form Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the first was ["Sorry Suzanne"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFaN3VxRDbA). Nash was replaced by Terry Sylvester.
Eric Clapton wrote this song, which is a testimony of faith. It's the first song for which he wrote all the lyrics.
Steve Winwood sang lead, as he did with all of the Blind Faith songs. Rick Grech played bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Even though it's a very personal song, Clapton made sure he wouldn't be the lead vocalist by writing it in a higher key than he could sing. He thought Winwood was a much better singer (most would agree), and wanted him on this track. The song is about how Clapton was becoming more comfortable with his life. He had just left Cream at the peak of its popularity, and was looking forward to playing with Blind Faith. He wasn't too comfortable though: Clapton was fighting drug addiction and falling in love with George Harrison's wife, whom he would later marry.
Clapton called this a "song of gratitude." It was one of his first songs to explore spirituality, which he did on some of his solo tracks in the '70s. He said the message of this song was to "say 'thank you' to God, or whatever you choose to call Him, for whatever happens."
Blind Faith released just one album, and didn't issue any singles. The album was very successful, going to #1 in both the US and UK, but the band broke up after one difficult tour.
The release of the album that shares the name of this track provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic. The US record company issued it with an alternative cover showing a photograph of the band on the front as well as the original cover.
The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton's who is primarily known for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. In the mid-1990s, in an advertising circular intended to help sell lithographic reprints of the famous album cover, he explained his thinking behind the image:
"I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept began to emerge. To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and its expression through technology a spaceship was the material object. To carry this new spore into the universe, innocence would be the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare's Juliet. The spaceship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the girl, the fruit of the tree of life."
The spaceship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweller at the Royal College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. The beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl? Seidemann wrote that he approached a girl reported to be 14 years old on the London Underground about modelling for the cover, and eventually met with her parents, but that she proved too old for the effect he wanted. Instead, the model he used was her younger sister Mariora Goschen, who was reported to be 11 years old. Mariora initially requested a horse as a fee but was instead paid £40.
Bizarre rumours both contributed to and were fuelled by the controversy, including that the girl was Baker's daughter or was a groupie kept as a slave by the band. The image, titled "Blind Faith" by Seidemann, became the inspiration for the name of the band itself, which had been unnamed when the artwork was commissioned. According to Seidemann: "It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. The name was instead printed on the wrapper, when the wrapper came off, so did the type."
Alex North wrote the music, Hy Zaret wrote the lyrics.
The Righteous Brothers version was a huge hit, but it was recorded with far more modest expectations. Phil Spector considered it album filler and released it as a B-side. The single had "Unchained Melody," with no producer credit on the label, as the flip to Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Hung on You," but many DJs preferred "Unchained Melody" and played that one instead. This infuriated Spector, who subsequently left no doubt as to which side of a Philles single was the A-side.
The famous climax of this song where Bobby Hatfield sings the high "I need your love" line wasn't how the song was written. In our interview with Bill Medley, he explained that Hatfield did two takes of the song, then left. He would often reconsider his performance and come back later to change it, and that's what he did on this track, returning to ask Medley if he could make an edit. This was no easy task, since with a maximum of four tracks to work with, you had to record over part of the original take, but Medley accommodated and Hatfield delivered that soaring vocal line. Said Medley: "I punched that in and he left. He said, 'No, I can do it better.' And I said, 'No, you can't.' [Laughs] And I think it's a big part of that song."
Sorry this is long but the song is such a classic.
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" is a song written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil (husband and wife). Bill Medley recalled, "We had no idea if it would be a hit. It was too slow, too long, and right in the middle of The Beatles and the British Invasion." The following is from the Rolling Stone's Top 500 songs: "Spector was conducting the musicians for a Ronettes show in San Francisco when he decided to sign the Righteous Brothers, who were on the bill. He then asked Mann and Weil to come up with a hit for them. Bill Medley's impossibly deep intro was the first thing that grabbed listeners. 'When Phil played it for me over the phone,' Mann recalled, 'I said, "Phil, you have it on the wrong speed!"'
It was first recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1964, and was produced by Phil Spector. Their recording is considered by some music critics to be the ultimate expression and illustration of Spector's "Wall of Sound" recording technique. It has also been described by various music writers as "one of the best records ever made" and "the ultimate pop record". Phil Spector was determined to make this his finest production to date, and wanted it to be better than anything released by current top producers like Berry Gordy, George Martin, Andrew Loog Oldham and Brian Wilson. He chose the Righteous Brothers for their tremendous vocal talents, and enlisted his old Jazz guitar idol Barney Kessel to play on the song. Other musicians to play on the track included Los Angeles session pros Carol Kaye (acoustic guitar), Earl Palmer (drums) and Ray Pohlman (bass). Cher, who did a lot of work with Spector early in her career, can also be heard on background vocals near the end of the song. Spector was the first major West Coast producer to make the musicians wear headphones, so when they heard the song, they heard it with all the processing he added, which in this case meant a lot of echo. This got the musicians out of their comfort zones and made them work together to get a sound that gelled. It took more time to record this way, but Spector didn't mind: while a typical 3-hour session would produce about four songs, Spector would spend an entire session working on one track, leaving a few minutes at the end to record a throwaway B-side jam. Phil Spector put a tremendous amount of effort (and about $35,000) into this production, but the final product was so unusual that he began to wonder if he had a hit. Seeking a second, third and fourth opinion, he played the song for the following people:
1) The song's co-writer Barry Mann, who was convinced the song was recorded at the wrong speed. Spector called his engineer Larry Levine to confirm that it was supposed to sound that way.
2) His publisher Don Kirshner, who Spector respected for his musical opinion. Kirshner thought it was great, but suggested changing the title to "Bring Back That Lovin' Feelin'."
3) The popular New York disc jockey Murray the K. Spector confided in Murray that the song was almost four minutes long (despite the label saying it was 3:05), and wanted to make sure he would play it. Murray thought the song was fantastic, but suggested moving the bass line in the middle to the beginning. Spector put the time on the single as 3:05 so that radio stations would play it. The actual length is 3:50, but stations at the time rarely played songs much longer than 3 minutes. It took radio station program directors a while to figure out why their playlists were running long, but by then the song was a hit. Billy Joel, who inducted The Righteous Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, makes a sly reference to this in his song "The Entertainer" when he sings, "If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05."
Spector heard all three opinions as criticism, and got very nervous. "The co-writer, the co-publisher and the number-one disc jockey in America all killed me," Spector said in a 2003 interview with Telegraph Magazine. "I didn't sleep for a week when that record came out. I was so sick, I got a spastic colon; I had an ulcer." In December 1999, the performing-rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) ranked the song as the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, having accumulated more than 8 million airplays by 1999, and nearly 15 million by 2011. Additionally, the song was chosen as one of the Songs of the Century by RIAA and ranked No. 34 on the list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. In 2015, the single was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
There's a lot more involved in the FGNT than may be apparent. We've been doing it every Friday night for 4 years and are entrenched in our methods. For just one item is site longevity. Voat was stable until it wasn't, nothing is forever. We've considered moving to NewVoat before but it's not time yet to do so. Maybe in the future.
It should be important to note the thread has always been independent of the site we're on. It is possible to be part of thread without visiting the rest of a site or being involved in it's politics, but only if the priority of playing music means more to the person involved. Each must choose their own.
We've always encouraged anyone who thinks they can develop and maintain a home music thread has our blessings. Sharing music is the highest priority no matter where or by whom.
Yeah, it was the time when most of the Hippies didn't realize it was so Marxist, just getting high, fucking, and everybody just having a good time. We actually were kinda innocent dupes at times. Some woke up as they got older but others fell in headfirst and are still here today. What a world.
It's just a regular thread. People record their music (even with a cell phone is fine), post it to a hosting site, and then share the link in a comment. It's also nice to share some details about yourself (especially at first) or about the song. After a while you'll get to know the regulars and look forward to new submitters. We're interested in getting to know people and limit our conversations to music and performing mostly. It gets to be a lot of fun. It starts every Friday night at 8pm et over on Poal in s/Guitar (the site we use has nothing to do with the thread, we're pretty much left alone). It's always stickied so it's easy to find. It's mostly active for the first couple hours but stays open all week until the new one, so you can go look anytime to get an idea of how it works. We welcome any instrument, any skill level, and have no rules or standards. Just a group of people that enjoy playing music and hanging with like minded people. Hope to see you there.
While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked like strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector. A direct translation of the title is sometimes given as "Ninety-Nine Air Balloons", but the song became known in English as "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons". The title "99 Red Balloons" almost scans correctly with the syllables falling in the right places within the rhythm of the first line of lyrics: "red" partially replacing a flourish of the singer before "Luft". Neunundneunzig (99) has one syllable more than "ninety-nine", so the last syllable and "Luft" are blended in the English translation and become "red". The lyrics of the original German version tell a story: 99 balloons are mistaken for UFOs, causing a general to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but child's balloons, the pilots decide to put on a show and shoot them down. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the war ministers on each side bang the drums of conflict to grab power for themselves. In the end, a 99-year war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons, causing devastation on all sides without a victor. At the end, the singer walks through the devastated ruins and lets loose a balloon, watching it fly away. According to David Frum, the political context of the song was the protests against NATO nuclear missile deployments.
The English version retains the spirit of the original narrative, but many of the lyrics are translated poetically rather than directly translated: red helium balloons are casually released by an anonymous civilian into the sky and are registered as missiles by a faulty early warning system; the balloons are mistaken for military aircraft which results in panic and eventually nuclear war.
From the outset Nena and other members of the band expressed disapproval for the English version of the song, "99 Red Balloons". In March 1984, the band's keyboardist and song co-writer Uwe Fahrenkrog, "We made a mistake there. I think the song loses something in translation and even sounds silly." In another interview that month the band including Nena herself were quoted as being "not completely satisfied" with the English version since it was "too blatant" for a group not wishing to be seen as a protest band. Despite having given in excess of 500 concerts over a period of more than 30 years, Nena has never sung "99 Red Balloons" live, even at her rare concerts in England, always performing the German version instead.
Here's a direct translation of the German version.
Have you some time for me,
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
on their way to the horizon.
If you're perhaps thinking about me right now
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
and that such a thing comes from such a thing.
99 balloons
on their way to the horizon
People think they're UFOs from space
so a general sent up
a fighter squadron after them
Sound the alarm if it's so
but there on the horizon were
only 99 balloons.
99 fighter jets
Each one's a great warrior
Thought they were Captain Kirk
then came a lot of fireworks
the neighbors didn't understand anything
and felt like they were being provoked
so they shot at the horizon
at 99 balloons.
99 war ministers
matches and gasoline canisters
They thought they were clever people
already smelled a nice bounty
Called for war and wanted power.
Man, who would've thought
that things would someday go so far
because of 99 balloons.
99 years of war
left no room for victors.
There are no more war ministers
nor any jet fighters.
Today I'm making my rounds
see the world lying in ruins.
I found a balloon,
think of you and let it fly (away).
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
That was just online humor. Paul is a fantastic songwriter and quite gifted guitarist. His progress through genre's over the years is impressive.
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COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
More compassion and effort than our Govt has for it's own citizens.
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COF 2 points 3.8 years ago
Excellent tune. Musically and lyrically.
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COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Nice guitar work, Thanks!
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COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
The Zombies keyboard player Rod Argent wrote this song. He said in The Guardian February 22, 2008: "'Time of the Season' was the last thing to be written (for the album). I remember thinking it sounded very commercial. "Time of the Season" (1967) was only released at Kooper's urging, initially coupled with its original UK B-side, "I'll Call You Mine", without success. After previous singles flopped, Date rereleased "Time Of The Season" backed with another UK flop single, "Friends Of Mine", and it made its breakthrough in early 1969, over a year after the band split up. It did not chart in the band's native Britain, despite being re-released twice, but it later found success there with Rod Argent saying that it became "a classic in the UK, but it's never been a hit."
The song's characteristics include the voice of lead singer Colin Blunstone, the bass riff (which is similar to Ben E. King's hit "Stand By Me"), and Rod Argent's fast-paced psychedelic improvisation. The lyrics are an archetypical depiction of the emotions surrounding the Summer of Love. It is famous for such call-and-response verses as "What's your name? (What's your name?) / Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?) / He rich? (Is he rich like me?)" approximately 50 seconds into the track. Rod Argent said "One of my favorite records was George Gershwin's 'Summertime;' we used to do a version of it when we started out. The words in the verse - 'What's your name? Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?' - were an affectionate nod in that direction."
The recording of this song bought about a minor spat between keyboardist Rod Argent, who wrote the song, and the vocalist Colin Blunstone. The argument was over the phrase, "When love runs high." Blunstone struggled with the high note at the end of the line, and snapped at Argent, "If you're so good you come and sing it." Argent admitted in Mojo magazine February 2008: "It was written really quickly and we didn't rehearse it an awful lot. I was trying to change the phrasing." Blunstone told his side in our 2015 interview. "It was written in the morning before we went into the studio in the afternoon, and I kind of struggled on the melody," he said. "Rod and I had quite a heated discussion – he being in the control room and me singing the song - and we were just doing it through my headphones. Because it had only just been written, I was struggling with the melody." Blunstone added: "It makes me laugh, because at the same time I'm singing, 'It's the time of the season for loving,' we're really going at one another."
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COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
"California Dreamin'" was written by John Phillips and Michelle Phillips and was first recorded by [Barry McGuire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W2se8MMqwo). However, the best known version is by The Mamas & the Papas, who sang backup on the original version and released as a single in 1965. The song is #89 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The lyrics of the song express the narrator's longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City.
"California Dreamin' " was certified as a Gold Record (single) by the RIAA in June 1966[8] and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001.
The song was written in 1963 while John Phillips and Michelle Phillips were living in New York. He dreamed about the song and woke her up to help him write it. At the time, John and Michelle Phillips were members of the folk group The New Journeymen, which evolved into The Mamas & the Papas.
Michelle Phillips is the only surviving member of the band, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Elliot, otherwise known as Mama Cass, died in 1974 and Doherty in 2007.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6135418f9a745
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Glad you enjoyed it. Although the enjoyment of a song is purely subjective, I find it interesting to see what the artists were thinking and how it affected culture of its time. It obviously meant a lot to your dad and his friend. It also helps keep the music alive for at least a little bit longer.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134fcc85412b
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago
"We Gotta Get out of This Place", occasionally written "We've Gotta Get out of This Place", is a rock song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and recorded as a 1965 hit single by The Animals. It has become an iconic song of its type and was immensely popular with United States Armed Forces GIs during the Vietnam War. In 2004 it was ranked number 233 on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list; it is also in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were husband and wife (and future Hall of Fame) songwriters associated with the 1960s Brill Building scene in New York City. Mann and Weil wrote and recorded "We Gotta Get out of This Place" as a demo, with Mann singing and playing piano. It was intended for The Righteous Brothers, for whom they had written the number one hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" but then Mann gained a recording contract for himself, and his label Redbird Records wanted him to release it instead. Meanwhile, record executive Allen Klein had heard it and gave the demo to Mickie Most, The Animals' producer. Most already had a call out to Brill Building songwriters for material for the group's next recording session (The Animals hits "It's My Life" and "Don't Bring Me Down" came from the same call), and The Animals recorded it before Mann could.
In The Animals' rendition, the lyrics were slightly reordered and reworded from the demo and opened with a locational allusion – although different from that in the songwriters' minds – that was often taken as fitting the group's industrial, working class Newcastle-upon-Tyne origins:
In this dirty old part of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me, there ain't no use in tryin'
Next came a verse about the singer's father in his deathbed after a lifetime of working his life away, followed by a call-and-response buildup, leading to the start of the chorus:
We gotta get out of this place!
If it's the last thing we ever do…
The arrangement featured a distinctive bass lead by group member Chas Chandler. This was the first single not to be recorded by the original line-up, following as it did the departure of keyboard player Alan Price and his replacement by Dave Rowberry. It featured one of singer Eric Burdon's typically raw, fierce vocals. Rolling Stone described the overall effect as a "harsh white-blues treatment from The Animals. As [Burdon] put it, 'Whatever suited our attitude, we just bent to our own shape.'"
At the time, the title and simple emotional appeal of "We Gotta Get out of This Place" lent itself to some obvious self-identifications—for instance, it was a very popular number to be played at high school senior proms and graduation parties. In music writer Dave Marsh's view, it was one of a wave of songs in 1965, by artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, that ushered in a new role for rock music as a vehicle for common perception and as a force for social consciousness. Writer Craig Werner sees the song as reflecting the desire of people to take a hard look at their own lives and the community they come from. Burdon later said, "The song became an anthem for different people – everybody at some time wants to get out of the situation they're in."
The song was very popular with United States Armed Forces members stationed in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was frequently requested of, and played by, American Forces Vietnam Network disc jockeys. During 2006 two University of Wisconsin–Madison employees, one a Vietnam veteran, began an in-depth survey of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, and found that "We Gotta Get out of This Place" had resonated the strongest among all the music popular then: "We had absolute unanimity is this song being the touchstone. This was the Vietnam anthem. Every bad band that ever played in an armed forces club had to play this song."
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=61351eb0075ef
COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
These are some of the 400 or so snippets I've posted over years on Voat. My site is an extension and embellishment of some of these. I'm just trying to keep the music from the greatest decade alive and interesting for a few more years. I know you realize how far commercial music has decayed since then.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=61351384bd8d0
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago
"Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)", or simply "Turn! Turn! Turn!", is a song written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s. The lyrics, except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song and the final two lines, are adapted word-for-word from the English version of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. The Biblical text posits there being a time and place for all things: laughter and sorrow, healing and killing, war and peace, and so on. The lines are open to myriad interpretations, but Seeger's song presents them as a plea for world peace because of the closing line: "a time for peace, I swear it's not too late." This line and the title phrase "Turn! Turn! Turn!" are the only parts of the lyric written by Seeger himself.
The song had first been arranged by the Byrds' lead guitarist Jim McGuinn in a chamber-folk style during sessions for Judy Collins' 1963 album, Judy Collins 3. The idea of reviving the song came to McGuinn during the Byrds' July 1965 tour of the American Midwest, when his future wife, Dolores, requested the tune on the Byrds' tour bus. The rendering that McGuinn dutifully played came out sounding not like a folk song but more like a rock/folk hybrid, perfectly in keeping with the Byrds' status as pioneers of the folk rock genre. McGuinn explained, "It was a standard folk song by that time, but I played it and it came out rock 'n' roll because that's what I was programmed to do like a computer. I couldn't do it as it was traditionally. It came out with that samba beat, and we thought it would make a good single."
The master recording of the song reportedly took 78 takes, spread over five days of recording, to complete.
The song's plea for peace and tolerance struck a nerve with the American record buying public as the Vietnam War escalated. The single also solidified folk rock as a chart trend and continued the Byrds' successful mix of vocal harmony and jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar playing. Pete Seeger expressed his approval of The Byrds' rendering of the song.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=61351384bd8d0
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
The Table Of Contents is pretty good, as is the search. The About page tells what I am trying to do.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134f054dafc5
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Have you seen my site?
https://musicfor.us/
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134f054dafc5
COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
This written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell and originally recorded by [Kelly Gordon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4HYZg9HNc) in 1969. Although Russell was dying of lymphoma and the pair met only three times, they managed to collaborate on the song. This was the only songwriting collaboration between veteran songwriters Bobby Scott ("A Taste of Honey") and Bob Russell ("Ballerina"). Russell, who wrote the lyrics, made his mark writing for films and contributing words to songs by Duke Ellington and Carl Sigman. Scott was a piano player, singer, and producer. He did a lot of work with Mercury Records on sessions for artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Bobby Darin.
James Wells, Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland, tells the story of a little girl carrying a big baby boy in his 1884 book The Parables of Jesus. Seeing her struggling, someone asked if she wasn't tired. With surprise she replied: "No, he's not heavy; he's my brother."
In a 1918 publication by Ralph Waldo Trine titled The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit, Trine relates the following anecdote: "Do you know that incident in connection with the little Scottish girl? She was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: 'He's na heavy. He's mi brither.'"
The first editor of Kiwanis magazine, Roe Fulkerson, published a column in September 1924 carrying the title "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", the first use of the phrase exactly as it is rendered in the song title.
In the 1940s, the words, adapted as "He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother", were taken as a slogan for Boys Town children's home by founder Father Edward Flanagan. According to the Boys Town website, the phrase as used by Boys Town was said to Fr. Flanagan in 1918 by one of the residents while carrying another up a set of stairs. The boy being carried is said to have had polio and worn leg braces.
In the Guardian newspaper of February 24, 2006, Hollies guitarist Tony Hicks said: "In the 1960s when we were short of songs I used to root around publishers in Denmark Street. One afternoon, I'd been there ages and wanted to get going but this bloke said: 'Well there's one more song. It's probably not for you.' He played me the demo by the writers [Bobby Scott and Bob Russell]. It sounded like a 45rpm record played at 33rpm, the singer was slurring, like he was drunk. But it had something about it. There were frowns when I took it to the band but we speeded it up and added an orchestra. The only things left recognizable were the lyrics. There'd been this old film called Boys Town about a children's home in America, and the statue outside showed a child being carried aloft and the motto He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother. Bob Russell had been dying of cancer while writing. We never got, or asked for, royalties.
Elton John - who was still called Reg - played piano on it and got paid 12 pounds. It was a worldwide hit twice."
Joe Cocker was offered this song before The Hollies after it had been played first to his producer Denny Cordell. The General Professional Manager for Cyril Shane Music Ltd & Pedro Music Ltd in England at the time explains: "Tony Hicks was in our office looking for songs for the Hollies. Denny called from New York to say 'Joe didn't see the song.' As Tony said in The Guardian, he liked the song and asked for an exclusive the following day. The version he heard was Kelly Gordon, who apart from being a successful producer, also wrote a little song entitled 'That's Life.' His version was slow and soulful which is why I had thought of Joe Cocker to record it.
This was the second single The Hollies released after Graham Nash left the group to form Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the first was ["Sorry Suzanne"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFaN3VxRDbA). Nash was replaced by Terry Sylvester.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134fcc85412b
COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
It's great you're doing this sub, thoroughly enjoying the tunes. I'll try to add some when/if I'm feeling better. Keep up the good work.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134f054dafc5
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Here's a very nice rendition by TheBuddha
https://files.catbox.moe/usgx8e.mp3
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134ca778916c
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Love her voice. Obligatory Paul Simon Sucks.
/v/music viewpost?postid=613478c96eeaf
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Sorry this is so long but I think it's worth it:
Eric Clapton wrote this song, which is a testimony of faith. It's the first song for which he wrote all the lyrics.
Steve Winwood sang lead, as he did with all of the Blind Faith songs. Rick Grech played bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Even though it's a very personal song, Clapton made sure he wouldn't be the lead vocalist by writing it in a higher key than he could sing. He thought Winwood was a much better singer (most would agree), and wanted him on this track. The song is about how Clapton was becoming more comfortable with his life. He had just left Cream at the peak of its popularity, and was looking forward to playing with Blind Faith. He wasn't too comfortable though: Clapton was fighting drug addiction and falling in love with George Harrison's wife, whom he would later marry.
Clapton called this a "song of gratitude." It was one of his first songs to explore spirituality, which he did on some of his solo tracks in the '70s. He said the message of this song was to "say 'thank you' to God, or whatever you choose to call Him, for whatever happens."
Blind Faith released just one album, and didn't issue any singles. The album was very successful, going to #1 in both the US and UK, but the band broke up after one difficult tour.
The release of the album that shares the name of this track provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic. The US record company issued it with an alternative cover showing a photograph of the band on the front as well as the original cover.
The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton's who is primarily known for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. In the mid-1990s, in an advertising circular intended to help sell lithographic reprints of the famous album cover, he explained his thinking behind the image:
"I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept began to emerge. To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and its expression through technology a spaceship was the material object. To carry this new spore into the universe, innocence would be the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare's Juliet. The spaceship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the girl, the fruit of the tree of life."
The spaceship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweller at the Royal College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. The beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl? Seidemann wrote that he approached a girl reported to be 14 years old on the London Underground about modelling for the cover, and eventually met with her parents, but that she proved too old for the effect he wanted. Instead, the model he used was her younger sister Mariora Goschen, who was reported to be 11 years old. Mariora initially requested a horse as a fee but was instead paid £40.
Bizarre rumours both contributed to and were fuelled by the controversy, including that the girl was Baker's daughter or was a groupie kept as a slave by the band. The image, titled "Blind Faith" by Seidemann, became the inspiration for the name of the band itself, which had been unnamed when the artwork was commissioned. According to Seidemann: "It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. The name was instead printed on the wrapper, when the wrapper came off, so did the type."
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=6134867686f78
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Alex North wrote the music, Hy Zaret wrote the lyrics.
The Righteous Brothers version was a huge hit, but it was recorded with far more modest expectations. Phil Spector considered it album filler and released it as a B-side. The single had "Unchained Melody," with no producer credit on the label, as the flip to Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Hung on You," but many DJs preferred "Unchained Melody" and played that one instead. This infuriated Spector, who subsequently left no doubt as to which side of a Philles single was the A-side.
The famous climax of this song where Bobby Hatfield sings the high "I need your love" line wasn't how the song was written. In our interview with Bill Medley, he explained that Hatfield did two takes of the song, then left. He would often reconsider his performance and come back later to change it, and that's what he did on this track, returning to ask Medley if he could make an edit. This was no easy task, since with a maximum of four tracks to work with, you had to record over part of the original take, but Medley accommodated and Hatfield delivered that soaring vocal line. Said Medley: "I punched that in and he left. He said, 'No, I can do it better.' And I said, 'No, you can't.' [Laughs] And I think it's a big part of that song."
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134b461c917e
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
RIP Don.
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134bd891702f
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago*
Sorry this is long but the song is such a classic.
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" is a song written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil (husband and wife). Bill Medley recalled, "We had no idea if it would be a hit. It was too slow, too long, and right in the middle of The Beatles and the British Invasion." The following is from the Rolling Stone's Top 500 songs: "Spector was conducting the musicians for a Ronettes show in San Francisco when he decided to sign the Righteous Brothers, who were on the bill. He then asked Mann and Weil to come up with a hit for them. Bill Medley's impossibly deep intro was the first thing that grabbed listeners. 'When Phil played it for me over the phone,' Mann recalled, 'I said, "Phil, you have it on the wrong speed!"'
It was first recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1964, and was produced by Phil Spector. Their recording is considered by some music critics to be the ultimate expression and illustration of Spector's "Wall of Sound" recording technique. It has also been described by various music writers as "one of the best records ever made" and "the ultimate pop record". Phil Spector was determined to make this his finest production to date, and wanted it to be better than anything released by current top producers like Berry Gordy, George Martin, Andrew Loog Oldham and Brian Wilson. He chose the Righteous Brothers for their tremendous vocal talents, and enlisted his old Jazz guitar idol Barney Kessel to play on the song. Other musicians to play on the track included Los Angeles session pros Carol Kaye (acoustic guitar), Earl Palmer (drums) and Ray Pohlman (bass). Cher, who did a lot of work with Spector early in her career, can also be heard on background vocals near the end of the song. Spector was the first major West Coast producer to make the musicians wear headphones, so when they heard the song, they heard it with all the processing he added, which in this case meant a lot of echo. This got the musicians out of their comfort zones and made them work together to get a sound that gelled. It took more time to record this way, but Spector didn't mind: while a typical 3-hour session would produce about four songs, Spector would spend an entire session working on one track, leaving a few minutes at the end to record a throwaway B-side jam. Phil Spector put a tremendous amount of effort (and about $35,000) into this production, but the final product was so unusual that he began to wonder if he had a hit. Seeking a second, third and fourth opinion, he played the song for the following people:
1) The song's co-writer Barry Mann, who was convinced the song was recorded at the wrong speed. Spector called his engineer Larry Levine to confirm that it was supposed to sound that way.
2) His publisher Don Kirshner, who Spector respected for his musical opinion. Kirshner thought it was great, but suggested changing the title to "Bring Back That Lovin' Feelin'."
3) The popular New York disc jockey Murray the K. Spector confided in Murray that the song was almost four minutes long (despite the label saying it was 3:05), and wanted to make sure he would play it. Murray thought the song was fantastic, but suggested moving the bass line in the middle to the beginning. Spector put the time on the single as 3:05 so that radio stations would play it. The actual length is 3:50, but stations at the time rarely played songs much longer than 3 minutes. It took radio station program directors a while to figure out why their playlists were running long, but by then the song was a hit. Billy Joel, who inducted The Righteous Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, makes a sly reference to this in his song "The Entertainer" when he sings, "If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05."
Spector heard all three opinions as criticism, and got very nervous. "The co-writer, the co-publisher and the number-one disc jockey in America all killed me," Spector said in a 2003 interview with Telegraph Magazine. "I didn't sleep for a week when that record came out. I was so sick, I got a spastic colon; I had an ulcer." In December 1999, the performing-rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) ranked the song as the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, having accumulated more than 8 million airplays by 1999, and nearly 15 million by 2011. Additionally, the song was chosen as one of the Songs of the Century by RIAA and ranked No. 34 on the list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. In 2015, the single was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
/v/EasyLikeSundayMorning viewpost?postid=6134d19542f3a
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
There's a lot more involved in the FGNT than may be apparent. We've been doing it every Friday night for 4 years and are entrenched in our methods. For just one item is site longevity. Voat was stable until it wasn't, nothing is forever. We've considered moving to NewVoat before but it's not time yet to do so. Maybe in the future.
It should be important to note the thread has always been independent of the site we're on. It is possible to be part of thread without visiting the rest of a site or being involved in it's politics, but only if the priority of playing music means more to the person involved. Each must choose their own.
We've always encouraged anyone who thinks they can develop and maintain a home music thread has our blessings. Sharing music is the highest priority no matter where or by whom.
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=61326d56941db
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Would love to hear what you play. It's just a regular thread and a link is in top comment.
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=61326d56941db
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Yeah, it was the time when most of the Hippies didn't realize it was so Marxist, just getting high, fucking, and everybody just having a good time. We actually were kinda innocent dupes at times. Some woke up as they got older but others fell in headfirst and are still here today. What a world.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=61315489e69b2
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
It's just a regular thread. People record their music (even with a cell phone is fine), post it to a hosting site, and then share the link in a comment. It's also nice to share some details about yourself (especially at first) or about the song. After a while you'll get to know the regulars and look forward to new submitters. We're interested in getting to know people and limit our conversations to music and performing mostly. It gets to be a lot of fun. It starts every Friday night at 8pm et over on Poal in s/Guitar (the site we use has nothing to do with the thread, we're pretty much left alone). It's always stickied so it's easy to find. It's mostly active for the first couple hours but stays open all week until the new one, so you can go look anytime to get an idea of how it works. We welcome any instrument, any skill level, and have no rules or standards. Just a group of people that enjoy playing music and hanging with like minded people. Hope to see you there.
/v/VoatFmRadio viewpost?postid=61294a5976ec2
COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked like strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector. A direct translation of the title is sometimes given as "Ninety-Nine Air Balloons", but the song became known in English as "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons". The title "99 Red Balloons" almost scans correctly with the syllables falling in the right places within the rhythm of the first line of lyrics: "red" partially replacing a flourish of the singer before "Luft". Neunundneunzig (99) has one syllable more than "ninety-nine", so the last syllable and "Luft" are blended in the English translation and become "red". The lyrics of the original German version tell a story: 99 balloons are mistaken for UFOs, causing a general to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but child's balloons, the pilots decide to put on a show and shoot them down. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the war ministers on each side bang the drums of conflict to grab power for themselves. In the end, a 99-year war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons, causing devastation on all sides without a victor. At the end, the singer walks through the devastated ruins and lets loose a balloon, watching it fly away. According to David Frum, the political context of the song was the protests against NATO nuclear missile deployments.
The English version retains the spirit of the original narrative, but many of the lyrics are translated poetically rather than directly translated: red helium balloons are casually released by an anonymous civilian into the sky and are registered as missiles by a faulty early warning system; the balloons are mistaken for military aircraft which results in panic and eventually nuclear war.
From the outset Nena and other members of the band expressed disapproval for the English version of the song, "99 Red Balloons". In March 1984, the band's keyboardist and song co-writer Uwe Fahrenkrog, "We made a mistake there. I think the song loses something in translation and even sounds silly." In another interview that month the band including Nena herself were quoted as being "not completely satisfied" with the English version since it was "too blatant" for a group not wishing to be seen as a protest band. Despite having given in excess of 500 concerts over a period of more than 30 years, Nena has never sung "99 Red Balloons" live, even at her rare concerts in England, always performing the German version instead.
Here's a direct translation of the German version.
Have you some time for me,
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
on their way to the horizon.
If you're perhaps thinking about me right now
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
and that such a thing comes from such a thing.
99 balloons
on their way to the horizon
People think they're UFOs from space
so a general sent up
a fighter squadron after them
Sound the alarm if it's so
but there on the horizon were
only 99 balloons.
99 fighter jets
Each one's a great warrior
Thought they were Captain Kirk
then came a lot of fireworks
the neighbors didn't understand anything
and felt like they were being provoked
so they shot at the horizon
at 99 balloons.
99 war ministers
matches and gasoline canisters
They thought they were clever people
already smelled a nice bounty
Called for war and wanted power.
Man, who would've thought
that things would someday go so far
because of 99 balloons.
99 years of war
left no room for victors.
There are no more war ministers
nor any jet fighters.
Today I'm making my rounds
see the world lying in ruins.
I found a balloon,
think of you and let it fly (away).
/v/music viewpost?postid=612ab237aa9be