Sam can’t help it: 30-Day Song Challenge, the Sequel, day 1 – a song you love from a band you hate
Welcome to 30-Day Song Challenge, the Sequel. Over the last month I’ve been working through the 30-Day Song Challenge, and I liked the idea so much I created a follow-up around 30 of the questions I wished the original had posed.
You’re invited to track along, comment, offer your own entries, and by all means click the link above (or the icon at the bottom of the page) to Like the Facebook group and play for yourself. The rules are here (or click the INFO link on the FB page).
Now, let’s get started with Day 1: a song you love from a band you hate.
There’s never been much to respect about Journey. They were the pinnacle of Corporate Rock and Steve Perry was as self-involved a prancing cliché as ever fouled the stage. Which was a shame, because Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie had played with Santana, and Perry had one of the greatest rock voices ever, and later on they absorbed Jonathan Cain from a band I really liked, The Babys. (Of course, the gods deliver me, they also had a dawg bass player named Randy Jackson at one point.)
But the thing about CorpRock was that those bands were all about being rich and famous as opposed to brilliant and artistic, and to do that you needed songs. Great pop songs, anthems that the chicks would swoon over wrapped in arrangements and production values that were sufficiently masculine so that male fans could tag along without feeling like wusses. Which meant that no matter how much you might detest the put-up job, every once in awhile there was going to be a song that you couldn’t help liking.
“Girl Can’t Help It.” I guess I can’t either.
lullaby pit 
I love Journey and actually, they have grown in my estimation. Maybe not grown, but not fallen off like so many other bands of the late 1970s into the 1980s.
I know there has to be a song that would fit here, the “I hate that band except for that one song,” I just can’t think of it.
Agreed on that phase of the Journey, but before then was this great band called Journey who released at least one truly great album (their 1st one), followed by at least 2 more respectable LPs. Need I even say the words:
The Great Ansley Dunbar. (The man is a percussion legend.)
Any song before Perry joined up is better than any song after. In my humble opinion.
Completely in agreement on Dunbar–he was great. He drummed for John Mayall for a while, post Mick Fleetwood, and had his own band for a while, called Retaliation. Still have some of those albums–I should haul them out sometime.
My candidate here would be Urgent, by Foreigner. And that old stand-by, Heartache Tonight, by the dependably hateable Eagles.
I can’t stand Pink Floyd. Don’t get it, never will (definitely a lack of mind-altering substances sort of thing). “The Wall” was a cheap rip off of “Tommy.”
Nonetheless, “Welcome to the Machine” is fascinating: http://youtu.be/ZEVDJ_kp1Cc
You know, this is the first time I’ve ever heard “The Wall” being compared to “Tommy” as a rip-off. The form is the same (rock opera), so I suppose you could say that “The Wall” ripped off the form, but the themes and the story are quite different between the two.
I’ve been having a hard time with this one. Generally I blank out all the songs from bands I don’t like, so I forget about the one or two that I do like. Back to thinking on it.
Technically THE WALL wasn’t a rock opera, it was a concept album, and if we’re using those kinds of standards then everybody is ripping off SGT PEPPER’S.
I’ve heard THE WALL a million times and this is the first time I have ever considered it in light of TOMMY. It hardly seems to me that Floyd is ripping anybody off, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it regardless.
The odd thing for me about Cat’s comment is that I’m almost the opposite. I love Floyd but don’t really like that particular song. Truth is I don’t much care for DARK SIDE OF THE MOON period….