Good morning, good people. Welcome to the column you never asked for: The Smooth Side - an unforgettable ride through the dubious pleasures of smooth and non-confrontational music in the last 35 years. It may be Mellow Gold, yacht rock or marina rock, it may be soul, jazz-pop or rock (sort of) - it may even be perfectly awful, but it’s always gonna be smooth as silk, I assure you. The song link leads you to a stream on muxtape.com - double-click to listen. Look for a new entry every now and then, but probably not too often.

Prefab Sprout emerged in the UK in the early 1980s in the wake of Steely Dan, soft rock, punk and New Wave. They are often compared to contemporaries such as Simply Red, Aztec Camera and Swingout Sister - in the ghastly dubbed “sophistipop” genre.

Although this comparison is not entirely off base, Prefab Sprout deserves to be judged on their own terms. No one ever sounded quite like them. Front man Paddy McAloon is a brilliant songsmith, a pop perfectionist with grandiose ambitions and the talent to fulfill a lot of them - notably on 1990’s “Jordan: The Comeback”, produced by the equally talented Thomas Dolby.

1997 was the last time Prefab Sprout appeared as a “proper band”, with the album “Andromeda Heights”. 2001’s “The Gunman And Other Stories”, although released as a Sprout album, is often considered as more of a McAloon album. Sadly, he’s been struggling with some health problems in recent years and hasn’t released new material since 2003 apart from a couple of re-recordings for a reissue, I believe.

1997: I’m 25, effortlessly cool, ironic and single. Full-time student playing in a shoe-gazing Britpop-band, reading Pierre Bourdieu, quoting Harold Bloom for kicks and dressing in different shades of grey. The ladies seem to crowd around me, sort of, and it’s a brand new sensation. I’m the king of 1997. But as some mediocre Oasis clone stumble onto the local club scene I secretly hurry on home after class - such an uncool thing to do - hurry - to listen to the first Prefab Sprout album in 7 years. 7 years!

I loved every single thing about it. The lush arrangements, the harmonies, the cheesy synth sounds, the cover art with the star map - and of course the voice and the words.

Paddy McAloon was my hero when I was an awkward teenager in 1986 playing the tuba, sporting a crewcut in the age of the mullet and effectively turning into a deaf-mute every time a girl spoke to me and - much as I’d like to deny it at the time - he still was in 1997, meticulous reinvention of myself notwithstanding.

He still is, and it’s 2008. Some things will never change.

Prefab Sprout - Life’s A Miracle (1997)
(opens in new window, double-click to listen)

“Life’s a Miracle” is totally unapologetic in its embrace of the beauty of life. As far as I can tell, there’s not a hint of sarcasm, and it’s written by a man who’s more than capable of it. It’s corny as hell, but when I’m in the mood, listening to this track can be a truly liberating experience.

Try it - let the purity of the words and the beautiful harmonies wash over your tormented soul and free you from the chains of modern political correctness and the thick layers of ironic distance. Ain’t it wonderful?

…but me and my kids have the best time running around and dancing like maniacs to it all over the house every night. It’s probably our favorite song at the moment. Great fun!

Today I’m buying a new car! I bet you 10 bucks it’s is the only station wagon I’ll ever buy. Three kids in child seats and a stroller in the trunk - I had to give in. But next time we’re definitely buying a sports car (or a minivan, more likely…)

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My big head has been working overtime lately (for no apparent reason, as usual), and it’s time to share my new pet theory:

My claim is that over the past hundred years or so, the development of Anglo- and African-American popular music can be divided into highly predictable cycles.

You see, I figure that roughly, there’s been a revolution, a major shift in mainstream popular taste, every 35 years - starting with African American work songs entering the public consciousness around 1885, followed by the jazz revolution in the 1920s, the introduction of rock’n'roll in the 1950s and finally by the rise of rap music in the 1980s.

These 35 year-cycles can be split further into 7-year cycles that each mark the introduction of a significant new stylistic direction. About midway through these 7-year cycles there have been fads that also had a major impact on popular music, but these fads can generally be considered as an amalgam of previously established styles, and not as something inherently new.

So, according to my logic, the next major music revolution will occur around the year of 2025! I can’t wait.

Of course, this is not to be taken very seriously, and, if anything, the theory exposes my total insecurity and lack of knowledge concerning anything released after 1990. I don’t know the first thing about rap/hip hop music. I have no formal background. I have no research to back up my conclusions. I’m just another one of those average, rambling blogger-types.

Bebop is defined at a very early stage of its development (and to call bebop mainstream’s a bit of a stretch, really) , new wave? 1983?, rap/hip hop is defined at a late stage and there are at least a couple of other approximations. So there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to digg me here. You hear me?

It usually takes quite a few years for a stylistic period to be settled in people’s minds, and I think it’s hard to be very precise about the past 10 years, so a lot of question marks there.

Here’s my list. I imagine this list in the center of a musical landscape surrounded by styles that influenced (and were influenced by) it: folk, country, gospel, modern classical music, electronic music. Take a look, see if you agree:

1885 African American work songs

1895 Blues
1905 Ragtime
1913 Dixieland

1920 Jazz

1927 Hot jazz
1934 Swing
1941 Bebop
1948 Rhythm and blues

1955 Rock ‘N’ Roll

(1958 Doo wop)
1962 The Beat
(1966 Psychedelia)
1969 The Prog
(1972 Glam)
1976 The Punk
(1979 Disco)
1983 New wave
(1986 Hair metal)

1990 Rap/Hip Hop

(1993 Grunge)
1997 New School?
(2000 Boyband? Teenage divas?)
2004 The beginning of the demise of hip hop?
(2007 ?)
2011 ?
2019 ?

2025 ?? Cyber Plink Plonk ??

Here’s a song I wrote a couple of months ago. It’s a collaboration with my nephew, really. He’s 15, and he asked me to write a song for a school project. They were making a fictional short film about a dysfunctional family, and the song was meant to reflect the teenage daughter contemplating suicide. The lyric ideas are all his - pretty great, I think - a lot of emotion and teenage angst in there.

I put a gazillion effects onto the vocals, and I’m pretty happy with the end result. There’s a chilly ambience to the vocal and the track in general which is exactly what I was aiming for. I’m good!

OK, enough with the self indulgence already. Here is the track:

No Hope (Terje Fjelde / Endre Storli) © 2008 [download link]

Create Digital Music pointed me to Alltop, a headline aggregator with a really nice music page.

As CDM says, a great alternative to my already overloaded RSS flow in Google Reader.

I can’t see them lasting very long due to the intricate legal web that entangles the entire music industry, but the guys over at Muxtape (I’m assuming they’re guys here) have set up a cool service where you can create your own mixtape by uploading a maximum of 12 mp3s to their servers for streaming.

It’s a nice concept - people really seem to put some effort into their playlists, and I found more than a few of them to be quite agreeable (the lists, I mean. I don’t know anything about the people.)

I created this fine set of guilty pleasures (damn, I swore I would never use that phrase again) I mean, this fine set of classic pop and r&b [link to playlist here] Click and play, it’s that easy - and it’s just as easy to set up an account.

What the world needs now: A blog post about the voice behind “Theme from The Love Boat”.

My good blogger pal Robert just came up with a rather absurd reference to The Love Boat show in one of his entries, and of course that instantly reminded me of the *groovy* theme song by the distinguished Jack Jones (how couldn’t it?)

The Love Boat - Jack Jones

From my rather rural and definitely non-American perspective I never knew the first thing about mr. Jones until quite recently, when I listened to his 1997 album, New Jack Swing, where he performs swing versions of songs like “Every Breath You Take” and “She’s Leaving Home” - years before Paul Anka did the same on Rock Swings (2005).

I did some investigation and it turns out mr. Jones started his career almost 50 years ago as a kind of ‘1960s Michael Bublé: He won a couple of Grammys early on with his traditional pop records, combining old chestnuts with new material in the same vein. One of his biggest hits was “Wives and Lovers” (1963), something of a pet target for feminists in the 1970s, not without reason, mind you:

Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your make-up
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger
You needn’t try anymore

Now that’s the way to talk to a lady, all you wimpy singer-songwriters of the 1970s! He still performs it, but always with a humorous approach to the sexist lyrics, he usually delivers a line like “It’s my biggest hit dammit, so I’m gonna sing it”.

After swaggering through the 1960s with his suave James Bond-style, he loosened up a bit post-Summer of Love - let his hair grow long(ish) and in 1973 he rocked out with an entire album of Bread-covers! (incredibly, another reference to Robert’s post)

This enjoyable Jack Jones Special aired around that time.

Jones also has several acting credits to his name. In addition to his guest appearances on “The Love Boat”, he was the star of the minor British horror flick “The Comeback” (1978) and he starred alongside Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in a British TV comedy, “Cruise of the Gods” in 2002. I’m a bit curious about that one, as I loved the Coogan/Brydon-feature “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” (2005), and I’m also a big fan of Coogan’s Alan Partridge character.

At 70, Jack Jones continues to perform in Las Vegas and around the world, apparently to rave reviews, and nowadays he kinda looks like Moses without a beard. The silverfox!

He released his last album in 1998, a tribute to Tony Bennett.

Here he is, performing “The Days of Wine and Roses” with George Shearing live on Larry King:

I just started reading a new novel, and it opened with this quote from Samuel Johnson, an English writer in the 17th century:

“Were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, ‘Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy;’ and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, ‘Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;’ a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates.”

I knew instantly that I would never so much as look in Charles’ general direction - I’d follow Socrates with no hesitation or shame whatsoever. And then I started thinking: Is that because I’m a coward who will always choose the easy way out? Have I no sense of honor? Am I nothing but a soft pudding of a man, born and bred in an environmentally and economically safe nonviolent middle-class vacuum, I wondered.

And when it comes down to it, I think that may be exactly what I am.

Thank God.

I mean, I do go out on a limb sometimes, but it’s always within the compound of my peaceful, suburban life. And that’s the only kind of life I know, indeed a very different one than that of an Englishman living in 1750. Would I take a bullet for my king and homeland? Probably not - not voluntarily, anyway. Would I take a bullet for my wife and kids? Yes, no doubt. Do I give a shit about honor? What is honor about, anyway? Would I give up my current comfortable existence for the benefit of a fair world? Nah, not entirely anyway. Yet I do try to show some moderation. I don’t spend money excessively, I use public transportation whenever I can, a small percentage of my income goes to charitable causes, I have a modest house, a small and environmentally friendly car. I’m a social worker, helping people out somehow, hopefully…

I’m sorry mr. Johnson, I don’t want to dethrone czars. I want to live The Good Life. The Simple Life. I don’t want to be courageous, I want to be kind and gentle.

I want to know what Socrates has to say. So sue me.

I’m a piano player. Not a real piano player, but I play the piano. I know where to find the notes and the chords I need for my music. I’ve played the piano since I was 8, but I never had a single piano lesson due to unfortunate circumstances: a band instructor told me early on that the piano was for girly boys. Real men played the horn. I believed him.

Still, my band years did teach me to read notes. The problem is that I can’t read them fast enough when I’m sitting in front of the piano. So I’m basically playing by ear, and I’m not half-bad at it. And I have a pretty good ear when it comes to arrangements and piecing musical elements together.

But more than anything else, I feel like an impotent piano player. I will never have the drive, the overview, the fluency or the style of a trained pianist. It’s immensely frustrating, but the piano remains the most important thing in my life along with the people that I love and care for.

That feeling of impotence is never stronger than when I’m listening to jazz pianist Bill Evans. He’s my favorite piano player, and he moves me in ways no other musician has ever done. But every time I listen to his music I get just a little bit frustrated. To be quite honest, I sometimes even get frustrated beyond belief.

I know it’s completely irrational. He’s a world-class jazz pianist, possibly the finest the world has seen. Why would I even begin to compare myself with him?

It’s probably because his music describes my emotions so acurately. He describes my feelings way better than I’ll ever be able to domyself, musically or verbally. And even though I can hear what he is doing technically (sort of), I’ll never be able to replicate it, not even remotely so. Due to my limited technical abilities, my music will never be based primarily on raw (or refined) emotion, like his, but rather on the careful assembly of different parts. I’m not so much a musician as I’m a musical engineer.

Whatever. I bought the first tracks on Evans’ “The Last Waltz” yesterday, and they’re absolutely perfect.

“The Last Waltz” contains the final recordings of Bill Evans - he played nine nights live at Keystone Korner, San Francisco in September 1980. His trio at this point consisted of himself, Marc Johnson on bass and drummer Joe LaBarbera, and the support is flawless. It is widely considered as one of Evans’ finest recordings.

A week after his last performance at Keystone Korner, he died at 50.

Listen to the tracks on eMusic.