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80's radio's influence on music

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Author Topic: 80's radio's influence on music  (Read 6462 times)
Saxman
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« Reply #30 on: August 01, 2010, 06:23:01 pm »


Yeah, I went from respected playing my horn to trying my best to hide the fact I couldn't play. I mean I could play and eventually got back enough to play through the songs but I literally had to avoid practicing as playing before a performance would have me unable to hit anything before it was over. So warming up I had to fake entirely which didn't jive with your average band director. I managed, but after high school I realized the loss of ability was just not worth even keeping my horn as I would never be able to get it back or try to pursue any kind of even hobby playing for the future.
Thus my dream of being Lee's backup was gone forever....I kinda wonder if I even could play after all these years. I couldn't really read music well, and had to play by ear if you will, but I'd love to give it another go. Maybe someday my son wil want to play in school, and I might get a chance to try again.

It sounds like you (not unlike myself with Walt, the woodwinds player) were already better than Lee in high school.  They are the two luckiest, right time, right place horn players in pop music history.  I think Chicago made it because:

- Robert Lamm and Jimmy Pankow had an excellent grasp of commercial pop song forms (and pushed the envelop with those forms, especially during 1969-72)

- Jimmy wrote unique horn arrangements based on what the song composers were looking for.  

- Pankow really stepped in as the commercial pop song guy once Lamm started to falter after he exhausted his big batch of songs (let's not forget even the 1972 hit "Saturday in the Park" was written in 1970!) .  At least Lamm wasn't like George Harrison, who blew his entire backlog of songs on "All Things Must Pass" and pretty much faltered after that, with 1-3 decent tunes per album.

- Peter Cetera eventually developed into a world class and unique tenor vocalist, in addition to being a great bassist, later being the only hit songwriter in the band

- Terry Kath was a great, Hendrix-style lead guitarist with a great baritone voice who was pretty much edged out by Cetera by 1973 for single vocals

- Danny Seraphine was an exciting "lead" drummer with real technique, not the slop of Keith Moon

Point: they did NOT make it because ANY of the horn players were great soloists.  Jimmy and Lee were never more than "meh" soloists on a good day (and in Walt's case, not even meh), although Jimmy had a great tone at one time, which started going south as early as 1979.
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