Tears For Fears -- "Sowing The Seeds of Love" (1989)

What if you had a worldwide smash album and your record company basically handed you a blank check for the follow-up?

Tears for Fears had this opportunity after Songs From The Big Chair, and they spent it, all right. This multi-million bomb of an album that took four years to make was an overindulgent frozen rock that perhaps signaled an end to kitchen-sink productions like The Seeds of Love.

I was hanging out with the guys who worked at Sam Ash on Queens Boulevard when somebody said to check out the new Tears For Fears song. People accuse Oasis of lifting from the Beatles, but Tears for Fears crammed just about every psychedelic Beatles production trick in the book in this one 6 and a half minute song: flanged drums, megaphone vocals, backwards reverb, woodwind section, solo trumpet right out of "Penny Lane," the verses were close cousins to "I Am The Walrus," and screeching strings from that very same song.

Musical history is littered with rip-offs, and I actually like this song, despite the Fab Four lifts. It's still catchy and fun, but it goes on for far too long. It runs out of gas around the time the big organ chords come in at the 3:30 mark. If Tears for Fears lobbed about a minute to 90 seconds off "Sowing The Seeds of Love," they could have made their point and saved themselves thousands of dollars in production.

Somehow you feel that a ridiculous amount of music was left on the cutting room floor for "Sowing The Seeds of Love," but somehow through the magic of editing, they put it altogether for this epic mess. No surprise that the next record was a greatest hits compilation and the band's two members split apart, with Roland Orzabel continuing under the TFF name.

I liked Tears for Fears much better when they were suicidal and depressed on their first two albums. Some bands are meant to be that way.

The video for "Sowing The Seeds of Love" seems like a no-expense-spare effort as well. Once you get past Roland Orzabel's teeth for the first 45 seconds or so, it takes off into a dream-like New Age spaced out reverie that looks like Jim Morrison's peyote trips from Oliver Stone's film "The Doors."

Paul & Linda McCartney -- "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" (1971)

This is my favorite McCartney solo single, right back at the earliest stage of his solo career. I remember it having such an impact on me when I first heard it, wanting to hear it over and over again on the FM radio because of its wonderful soundscape and overdubs.

Technically, the single was credited to "Paul & Linda McCartney," truly a thumbed nose at the critics who thought his wife was a mere hanger-on. Although I'd be hard pressed to see what her contributions where.

McCartney always had this penchant for merging two or three song parts into one. With the Beatles, it came full force on side two of Abbey Road, where "You Never Give Me Your Money, " "Sun King," "Mean Mr. Mustard," "Polythene Pam," and "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" all blended effortlessly into one suite. His most famous single, "Band On The Run" was like three song fragments in one... and there are countless examples on many of his albums with Wings and without them.

I often wondered if he consciously planned them this way or they were all originally song odds and ends that he just surgically stitched together to make one really good one. Why hasn't anybody asked him this?

Much like I mistakenly thought the Rolling Stones recorded all their 60's hits in England (it was in Chicago and Los Angeles), I found out many years later that McCartney recorded "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" at the RCA Studios in Manhattan with some of the city's best studio musicians. It's a miracle that none of the slickness and precision of "studio cats" or a "New York City" sound seeped into this record.


McCartney threw every one of his musical production tricks into this song -- peculiar English-sounding character sketches, megaphone vocals (a la "Yellow Submarine"), sound effects, strange babble, and a good deal of whimsy.

The first "Uncle Albert" part is the better half, starting cold on McCartney's vocal, afloat on swirling Am7-D chords, with the bass remaining on the A note, then cooling down to a Gm7-C, Caug, and then D. The cellos and violas glide underneath, brushing against their strings.


We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
We're so sorry if we caused you any pain.
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But there's no one left at home
And I believe I'm gonna rain (cue breaking rainstorm sound effects!)


As much as this first half sort of slogs along, the melody and multi-layered production are so widescreen, you are caught up in all the layers and layers. It isn't long before McCartney grabs his megaphone, with a little spittle first, lots of "ah-ah-ah, Uncle Albert" overdubs...


We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But we haven't done a bloody thing all day.
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But the kettle's on the boil and we're so easily called away.


Then it's one of those expertly spliced table edits to a solo piano pounding out C chords, and then the only song in rock history that combines a sea chantey with power chords. This is where the song gets kind of silly, with one of those McCartney nonsense choruses that clearly sounded good when he was making them up, but really make no damn sense at all:


Hands across the water (water)
Heads across the sky.
Hands across the water (water)
Heads across the sky.


I was 14 when I not only bought the single and played it repeatedly on my phonograph, but I paid for the sheet music. In retrospect, it was not the most difficult song to figure out, but I had to dissect it any way I could. As these were the waning days of my piano lessons, I basically forced my senior aged teacher, a little old Italian lady, to play the song straight from the sheet music, even though she didn't know it from a hole in the wall. I remember she was doing the "sea chantey" instrumental horn part of the second half, pointing out the "legato" symbol over the notes.

Badfinger -- "Come and Get It" (1970)

Considered by some as pioneers of the "power pop" genre, Badfinger's star was blessed by no less than the Beatles, who signed them to their Apple label, and Paul McCartney wrote and produced their first single, "Come and Get It."

Badfinger's story has been told in many places -- four huge hit singles in the early 70's, loved by critics, but not selling enough albums, eventually signed by Warner Brothers, and then ending in the suicide of two its four members a year apart. I'm not going to review the sad tale, which can be read about here on the BBC's web site.

Eric, who drives me to the airport for business trips, has been been urging me for a while to rent The Magic Christian, the film where "Come and Get It" made its debut. Starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, the British film was never a hit and has been really a cult item, apparently still available on DVD. For Eric's sake, I'll probably have to indulge it on Netflix.

Badfinger, originally called The Ivies, was signed to Apple Records and were practically given their marching orders to record "Come and Get It" as their first single, and as the story goers, exactly like Paul McCartney's demo, which can be heard on the Beatles Anthology collection as well as the video below this post.

"Come And Get It," while being a typical McCartney toss-off of endearing melody and lightweight lyrics, was a prophetic blueprint of hits to come. Guitarist/keyboard player Pete Ham and bassist Tom Evans both wrote many fine pop rock songs, a few of which became very successful, and one of their compositions, "Without You," was re-recorded by Harry Nilson and became a #1 hit ballad. It was Badfinger's blessing to have that kind of talent that they did not have to rely on McCartney for more hits.

Compositionally, this is another one of those short, very simple 4/4 songs that incorporates unusual chord progressions so effortlessly. The verses and choruses are your basic Eb-Ab-Bb variations, but then it zips right into B major to Ebm and then E major to Eb and Bb, which from a musical point of view, is sort of all over the place -- yet it works seamlessly here, harmonies and all.

"Come and Get It" is one of those songs that when you hear it on the radio or CD player, you end up singing it to yourself many times long after the song concluded.

Below are two cool videos, the first of Badfinger playing the song live on a TV show called "Beat Club" at the end of February 1970. What caught my eye were Tom Evans' big Fender bass, practically as big as a bazooka... drummer Mike Gibbons intense focus... and Pete Ham's deliberate methodical piano playing. Below that, somebody was nice enough to post McCartney's demo, slightly slower in tempo yet completely laid out in arrangement, down to the cymbal crashes and maracas, for Badfinger's version.

Klaatu -- "Sub Rosa Subway" (1976)

You really have to be a music fan to remember the weird frenzy Klaatu caused when this album appeared in 1976. Certainly in Buffalo, where I was going to college at the time, this was the talk of the radio jocks and music mags.

The buzz was that this album was secretly made by the Beatles. And since the Beatles were the subject of one of the greatest musical hoaxes of all time ("Paul is dead"), it was not much of a stretch to think this was another prank being pulled by some if not all of the Fab Four.

All the hallmarks for this rumor were firmly in place: no photos of any band members, no band members names, the song credits were credited to "Klaatu," and the intricate album artwork with all kinds of hidden characters (and its ever present brown mouse) fed the fuel of the raging rumor mills. For movie buffs, Klaatu was the robot played by actor Michael Rennie in the film "The Day The Earth Stood Still."

Most importantly, the music sounded remarkably like Sargent Pepper/White Album era Beatles, especially when the single "Sub Rosa Subway" came out and it was prototypical Paul McCartney. The story of Alfred Beach, who invented the first underground subway, featured swirling harpsichords, Liverpudlian lead vocals and background harmonies, "laughing horns" (reminiscent of "All You Need is Love"), and smacked tubular bells at the chorus' echoing repetition. During the last 30 to 40 seconds of musical cacophony, you can hear Morse code being tapped out, and that was the Beatles cherry on the cake.

"Sub Rosa Subway" sounded like a really good Paul McCartney song left off Magical Mystery Tour. Of course, the whole album sounded like a 60's psychedelic Beatles record, done absolutely beautifully, with the classic compressed drums in some parts, wide dynamics, masterful studio trickery, and all kinds of Beatles touches that were made for headphone listening.

Back in 1870 just beneath the Great White Way
Alfred Beach worked secretly
Risking all to ride a dream
His wind-machine
His wind-machine

New York City and the morning sun
Were awoken by the strangest sound
Reportedly as far as Washington
The tremors shook the earth as Alfie
Blew underground
Blew underground
He blew underground, yeah.

Klaatu kept their mystery for a few albums until it was discovered that they were a small group of fanatical Canadian studio musicians. Ironically, I don't recall any of their names.

Below are some cool and bizarre video treats. First you have a well done homemade video about subway inventor Alfred Beach done to "Sub Rosa Subway." Then there is this super cheesy way-out homemade video done to the debut album's magnificent opening epic "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (note: the song does start very quietly with the sounds of the outdoors and somebody moving through the brush), followed by The Carpenters (Yes! Karen and Richard) doing their truly kitsch cover from 1977 where you get to see Karen Carpenter floating in space and some alien dudes make a cameo. Oh baby, put on your tie-dyed shirts and space helmets and let's go for a ride!
"SUB ROSA SUBWAY" by Klaatu

"CALLING OCCUPANTS OF INTERPLANETARY CRAFT" by Klaatu

"CALLING OCCUPANTS OF INTERPLANETARY CRAFT" by The Carpenters (1977)