‘BATTLE OF THE BANDS’ NUMBER 1 (Or, ‘BEBEL VS. BEBEL’)

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Republican Vs. Democrat, Male Vs. Female, War Vs. Peace, Light Vs. Dark, Good Vs. Evil, Man Vs. Machine, Love Vs. Hate, Dog Vs. Cat, Sun Vs. Moon, Brain Vs. Brawn, Oscar Vs. Grammy, Angel Vs. Demon, Laurel Vs. Hardy, Beer Vs. Wine, TV Vs. Radio, Pitcher Vs. Batter, Paper Vs. Plastic, Reality Vs. Fantasy, Yeshua Vs. Beelzebub, Conservative Vs. Liberal, You Vs. Me, House Vs. Senate, Offense Vs. Defense, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Spy Vs. Spy, Fischer Vs. Spassky, W.C. Fields Vs. Sobriety, Harold Gimpy, Jr. Vs. Sheldon J. Pismire, Rock Vs. Paper Vs. Scissors, Islam Vs. Everything, Singer Vs. Singer, Band Vs. Band...
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THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  BANDS!

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EUGENE MARTONE VS. JACK BUTLER

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Yes, it’s time once again for the first installment of ‘Battle Of The Bands’ (BOTB).

Back on Wednesday, July 10, 2013, my friend FarAwayEyes (FAE) posted her first BOTB blog bit – click HERE (Nina Simone won). 

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I so squirrel-flipped over FAE’s idea that I threatened to (and then asked to) steal her concept for my own blog. I essentially told her I was going to run with the BOTB thang whether she wanted me to or not, and if she objected to my plagiarism she could just sue me (good luck getting ‘Cruzan’ Rum from a stone!)

But always the good sport, FAE welcomed my theft. I then suggested the idea that we BOTH do BOTB simultaneously – on the 1st and 15th of every month - and that we link to each other’s blogs. She agreed and proposed the idea that we post our own votes in each BOTB blog bit one week later (i.e., on the 7th and 21st of each month). So, there’s the background story.

In the future, I will be matching up original song recordings against cover versions, and sometimes it will be a cover version against another cover version. Most of my selections will be Rock and Pop Standards, although I will also dip into Jazz, and occasionally even Blues and Country-Western.

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GODZILLA VS. KING KONG

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But I definitely wanted to begin this series with Bebel Gilberto Vs. Bebel Gilberto for a very specific reason:

A number of years ago, I sent something to my blogging buddy A-DogG. Wanting to reciprocate, and knowing I loved Bossa Nova music, A-DogG copied a CD for me from his own music collection. It was a 13-track album by Joao Gilberto’s daughter, Bebel Gilberto, and it was titled ‘Remixed’ – apparently a collection of older Bebel Gilberto songs remixed by various newer artists, but each track retaining Bebel’s vocals. That album taught me the importance of a song’s or an instrumental’s musical “arrangement”.

If you listen to a lot of high-quality music (e.g., Benny Goodman’s ‘Stompin’ At The Savoy’ as opposed to the Sex Pistols' ‘God Save The Queen’) then you know that an arranger - generally working with a lot of instruments - determines which musicians will play when, how the instruments will interact, who will solo, when the strings will get punched up and/or faded out in the musical piece, etc. We tend to focus on the singers and the musicians, without giving much thought to whose name followed the words “arrangement by” in the credit listing.

But a lot of brilliant musical minds have become well known for their special arranging talent. Billy May, Quincy Jones, Booker T. Jones, Henry Mancini, and Nelson Riddle all became famous for their creative musical arrangements. A lot of people don’t know this, but amongst the serious musical minds, Richard Carpenter – not his sister, Karen – was considered the mastermind behind the success of ‘The Carpenters’. Richard’s music teacher in college recognized Richard’s genius for musical arrangements early on, and Pat Metheny – an A-list Jazz musician and musical genius himself – has publicly stated that he was always extremely impressed with Richard Carpenter’s talent as an arranger. That’s high praise!

Big Band great Glenn Miller first made a name for himself as an arranger with Ben Pollack’s band. Later, Miller started his own band and struggled for a time until, in the process of arranging his band’s musical charts, he finally hit upon that unique “signature sound” that made his band immediately identifiable.

As an arranger, what Glenn Miller had done was to use the “clarinet in tandem with the other four saxes, often doubling an octave above the lead. In so doing he walked directly into the ‘sound’ he’d been seeking.” Or as Glenn himself put it: “The fifth sax, playing clarinet most of the time, let’s you know whose band you’re listening to. And that’s about all there is to it.”

Oh, is that all there is to it? Hmmm... I guess I’m ready to start my career as a music arranger then. Never mind that I don’t know a C-sharp from a Fart-flat.

Although I did have that basic understanding of what musical arrangers do, it wasn’t until I heard Bebel Gilberto’s ‘Remixed’ album that I fully understood just HOW IMPORTANT a musical arrangement really is; it wasn’t until I had repeatedly listened to tracks 4 and 10 on that compact disc that I came to understand that a musical arrangement can literally make or break a song!

Bebel Gilberto’s ‘Remixed’ album contains 13 tracks, but #4 and #10 are the same song – same song, same singer, but with different backing groups and arranged in a vastly different way. To my amazement, I found that I most definitely liked one of the tracks and yet I strongly disliked the other one. Same song, different arrangement.

Never again would I take for granted the “arranged by” credit on an album cover.

I promise that my future BOTB blog bits will not be as technical (nor as “Techno”) as this one has been, but I wanted my debut installment to be an object lesson; I wanted to share with you some of what the song ‘AGANJU’ taught me some years ago about the value of an arrangement. See which version you prefer, and pay attention to how much the arrangement alters the overall presentation of the same song:

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As The Photo Sez... BEBEL GILBERTO

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Bebel Gilberto (with ‘Latin Project’) – ‘AGANJU’ 
[Track #4]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TI7MFwrM6Q

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BEBEL GILBERTO

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Bebel Gilberto (with ‘Spiritual South’) – ‘AGANJU’ 
[Track #10]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJumJpNvIw4

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I welcome EVERYONE – whether I know you or not -  to vote for your favorite of these two songs in the comment section below. And feel free to tell us WHY you chose one song over the other. (NOTE: Comment Moderation is activated. All submitted comments that do not transgress "Ye Olde Comment Policy" will be posted as soon as possible. Thanks for taking the time to comment. And I will weigh in with my own vote on August 7th.)

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After voting here, I suggest - actually I insist - you pop over to FAE’s ‘Far Away Series’ blog and see which songs she has chosen and vote there also. (If her BOTB blog bit isn’t posted yet, pour yourself two shots of ‘Grand Marnier’ over ice – do it twice – and then return to ‘Far Away Series’ to vice your voice ...vote your vice ...voice your vote.)

Voice Your Vote @ ‘FAR AWAY SERIES’ by clicking HERE.

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Until August 15th ...ROCK ON!

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RIDDLER VS. BATMAN

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~ Stephen T. McCarthy

POSTSCRIPT: If you feel like joining us in this endeavor by creating a ‘BATTLE OF THE BANDS’ series on your own blog, by all means, please do! FarAwayEyes and I will love it if the number of participants “GOES UP TO ELEVEN”.

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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