February 25, 2020

It doesn't matter why, but we were talking about melodicas...

... and I found this, and I'm almost certain it will make you feel happy:



ADDED: There's also a melodica in The Hooters, "And We Danced":



That's from 1985. The band tells us that their name is based on "hooter" as another term for melodica.

36 comments:

henry said...

"Hooter" as another name for melodica. And you believed them?

Heartless Aztec said...

In the Maysles brother's film of the Beatles first U.S. visit in February of 1964 there's a scene where the Fabs are all sitting in a room and John is tootling the notes to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on a melodica. And this is a couple of years before pot and LSD.

Heartless Aztec said...

Nothing to get hung about...
https://youtu.be/-v2gfElEVYU

Curious George said...

Freddy Mercury isn't gay enough to be in The Hooters.

mezzrow said...

If you like this you'll love the Melodica Men. They are clever young men indeed.

Here's my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aidKzrYAo8E

Curious George said...

I have a third one! Here is Walk Off the Earth and Parachute doing a cover of Pharrell Williams' "Happy." Mike "Beard Guy" Taylor plays the Melodica.



dwstaple said...

At my kids' recent piano recital, someone played the theme to The Office on piano and melodica. It received significantly more excitement among the parents than a typical recital piece. Upon giving the theme song a re-listen, I'm pretty sure that it is indeed a piano and melodica in the TV version.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Emmanuel del Real Díaz of Café Tacvba, often plays the melodica, especially on their earlier songs.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Good God, how could you not mention Augustus Pablo?!

CJinPA said...

A "Hooters" reference on Althouse?

If anyone has even a slight positive recollection of the band, I plead with you to give Amore a listen.

It's much better than their brief MTV-era success and they rock the melodica!

Ann Althouse said...

As far as other people famous for playing the melodica, something I'd never looked into... Wikipedia says:

"The melodica was first used as a serious musical instrument in the 1960s by composers such as Steve Reich, in his piece titled Melodica (1966). Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal developed a technique consisting of singing while playing the melodica, resulting in a wide tonal and harmonic palette. It is associated with Jamaican dub and reggae musician Augustus Pablo who popularized it in the 1970s, and more recently with Jon Batiste, who is often seen playing the instrument on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

Ann Althouse said...

I just stumbled into that Muppets Show thing as I was researching a different instrument (the Emenee organ) and it made me think of the melodica. The Hooters video I remember vividly from the 80s when I loved watching MTV.

The Hooters are also on Cyndi Lauper's "Money Changes Everything" -- with melodica.

stevew said...

Gorillaz have a couple, or more, tunes featuring the melodica. It's a great sounding instrument that adds unique texture to the music - to me anyway.

Jack Klompus said...

If anyone has even a slight positive recollection of the band, I plead with you to give Amore a listen.

They were a great live local band in the 80s. A local radio station did a contest among local high schools to win a free concert by The Hooters by having students fill out and send in index cards with the band name, the radio station, and the name of your school. Principals across the region were furious that students were spending all of their time filling out "Hooters cards" instead of doing work. Even more outrageous was that a school from Jersey won the contest.

CJinPA said...

The Hooters also wrote Joan Osborne's 1995 hit, "One of Us."

No melodica, but a Mellotron.

Unknown said...

Yea! I get to reference New Order today!

New Order's opening to "Love Vigilantes" (From Low-life) features a prominent melodica solo, as well as "Truth", (From Movement), "Hurt" (the b-side to "Temptation"), "Your Silent Face" (From Power, Corruption & Lies), "Angel Dust" (From Brotherhood), "Fine Time" (From Technique) and "Run Wild" (From Get Ready). - Wikipedia Melodica in Music - Great Britain

Jack Klompus said...

The Hooters also wrote Joan Osborne's 1995 hit, "One of Us."

And also "Time After Time" made popular by Cyndi Lauper.

Yea! I get to reference New Order today!

That certainly is an unknown pleasure, but I wouldn't make a big ceremony of it, otherwise it'll turn into an atrocity exhibition.

wild chicken said...

I loved watching MTV in the 80s too.

Even into the 90s. Wish it were still around. All the specialty networks are in a race to the bottom.

Lincolntf said...

I saw The Hooters at the Worcester Centrum when I was in high school. Fun concert, though of course the lead singer thought he was in Boston until enough people in the audience yelled at him that we were in Worcester. He apologized.

DrSquid said...

A few years ago I saw Donald Fagen and his new band The Night Flyers on a steamy hot summer night in St.Augustine. Green Flower Street was their opening number and in it Fagen played a melodica and did the vocals. I've heard he is a very heavy smoker (Chesterfields!) and appeared markedly barrel chested like in the advanced stages of emphysema, but he was wailing on that instrument and his singing sounded the same as their early albums. Pretty amazing.

This was just days before Walter Becker died.

CJinPA said...

I saw The Hooters at the Worcester Centrum when I was in high school. Fun concert, though of course the lead singer thought he was in Boston until enough people in the audience yelled at him that we were in Worcester. He apologized.

The Hooters were Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian. They once came to where I worked, and I proceeded to call each by the other's name.

Jack Klompus said...

I loved watching MTV in the 80s too.

Before cable became the standard we got our video fix from UHF with shows like Video Rock with the great Bow Wow Wow intro. The 80s had such a great aesthetic.

Kai Akker said...

Impossibly sweet, that Hooters video. Yeah, CJ, I have a positive recollection of the band! Hell yeah. And those principals had cause to frown over that postcard competition; 26 million were delivered, according to Wikipedia. Yay America! A dozen, maybe more like 100 of those kids are working on the coronavirus vaccine development right now. C'mon America!

Iman said...

Haven't heard the Hooters in a long, long tim, good song. Watching that video makes me think of MTV.

Iman said...

Make that time. "Tim" was another album from that era...

Iman said...

I'd always thought the "Boy in the Bubble" off Graceland was the best use of the melodica I had heard.

But then I read it was just an accordion... damn...

Yancey Ward said...

I still hear "And We Danced" all the time on the 80s station on Sirius. The song by The Hooters you don't hear very often any more is "All You Zombies".

For the longest time I assumed they were a UK band, but Hyman and Bazillian were both born in the US, and the band formed in Philadelphia. I didn't know that until Wikipedia came along with their entry.

Carter Wood said...

Gang of Four, the great Marxist post-punk group, often used melodica in its early performances. Jon King played it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKCoDtu5hgo&feature=youtu.be

Oh, no. Andy Gill died on February 1. Such an inventive guitarist. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/04/802407363/andy-gill-gang-of-four-guitarist-who-gave-punk-space-and-groove-dead-at-64
Andy Gill, a guitarist renowned for his sharp, inverted approach to the instrument who founded the post-punk group Gang Of Four and later became a respected producer, died in a London hospital Feb. 1 from a respiratory illness, the group announced in a statement. He was 64.

As a co-founder of the implacably political Gang Of Four, which formed in Leeds in the late 1970s, Gill's influence on the silhouette of rock and roll was deep and transformative; if the prevailing winds of style zigged, Gill and his co-founding bandmates — bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham and singer Jon King — could already be found zagging. "Instead of guitar solos, we had anti-solos, where you just stopped playing, left a hole," Gill says in Rip It Up and Start Again, a history of post-punk by Simon Reynolds.
Their live performances of "Anthrax" still ring in my ears

Jack Klompus said...

"Tim" was another album from that era.

I was partial to the thrashier EP Stink! from The Replacements catalog.

Quaestor said...

So they finally got out of the trunk.

Presumably without brain damage.

I'm happy about that.

Presumably.

Maillard Reactionary said...

This would be a good instrument for Joe Biden to take up once he retires from politics.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Jack Klompus said...
The Hooters also wrote Joan Osborne's 1995 hit, "One of Us."

And also "Time After Time" made popular by Cyndi Lauper."

https://www.metrolyrics.com/time-after-time-lyrics-cyndi-lauper.html

Jack delete your comment now. Next, give Cyndi credit for what she, albeit indeed not alone, accomplished. How could you be so wrong in such a fashion?

It's unconscionable.

Iman said...

Carter Wood... I saw that obit the other day. I wish I still had my Gang of Four cassette that had a live version of “what we all want”. THAT was a BIG drum sound... the entire song was so unique, as were they.

Jack Klompus said...

Guild - I'll concede that the songwriting was a collaboration between Lauper and Rob Hyman of the Hooters. Coincidentally, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was written by another Philadelphia musician Robert Hazard who deserved even more recognition than the Hooters earned.

Jack Klompus said...

Entertainment! is such a great album. I was always a bit of a bigger Wire fan - Pink Flag and Chairs Missing never get old and they're still creating interesting music.

MadisonMan said...

That was wonderful! Bravo! I loved that! Oh, it was great! Eh, it was pretty good. Well, it wasn't *bad*. Well, there were parts that weren't very good though. It could've been a lot better. I didn't really like it. It was pretty terrible. It was Bad. It was awful. It was terrible, ah get them away! Boo!