Not Feeling Guilty Mix Vol. 1

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I’m on a mission to expose the notion of “guilty pleasures” in music for the putrid fraud it is. Few things about music exasperates me as much as the idea that we should qualify our enjoyment of a song, and compromise or emotional reaction to it. Of course, there is a caveat: our full freedom to enjoy any kind of music should be rooted in what one might call an informed conscience.

It is okay to like Coldplay or James Blunt if you are aware of and open to alternatives to Coldplay or James Blunt (though if you are, chances are you won”t like them that much anyway). If all you have in your collection is Coldplay and James Blunt, if your horizons are so closed and your ambitions so limited that Coldplay and James Blunt and all the other big names on TV and supermarket shelves populate your music collection exclusively, then you ought to feel guilty. But, of course, such people typically exhibit no musical conscience anyway. Their likes have given rise to the description of Coldplay and James Blunt as “music for people who hate music”.

But all that is academic. If you are here, if you read serious music blogs — and please indulge me the illusion that the present blog meets that definition — then you probably do so because you truly love music, engage with music. You most likely have an informed conscience. And thus equipped, I submit, there is no music you ought to feel guilty about enjoying (though if you invoke at this point names such as Celine Dion, Helmut Lotti or Michael Fucking Bolton, as his mother calls him, then my argument hits a soft foundation).

There is much less reason yet to confess to “guilty pleasures” when the music is actually good. Oddly enough, the label “guilty pleasures” is applied, on compilation albums, to much of the music on the mix I am presenting today. The sound has attracted other dismissive tags. Yacht Rock is one I particularly dislike. The more official terms AOR (adult orientated rock) and MOR (middle of the road) acquired a bad rep in the punk and post-punk eras, and have not recovered their credibility. So the critics have bashed the sound, and the marketers have decided to dress it up as something appallingly appealing. By calling it a guilty pleasure, akin to a dieter’s Magnum ice cream, they are telling us that we can enjoy what they clearly regard as kitsch only “ironically”. Their condescension is not only objectionable, but betrays a singular lack of appreciation of well constructed music. Being embarrassed about music is for losers. It’s a dark place to be. Far from feeling guilt, I embrace the music I like. All of it. Hence the title of the present mix, which these moronic marketers would doubtless categorise as a Guilty Pleasure.

The mix (and the follow-up I’m planning to post if there seems to be some demand for it) includes a number of the songs which featured in a series I posted 2007 (the links in that series don’t work any longer). My musings in those posts might communicate why I like these sounds, without a hint of guilt — though, in a few cases, with a sense of defiance. It requires a certain forbearance to pardon the Alessi Brothers’ simpering as the ex-girlfriend puts down the phone on them, but that patience is rewarded with a gorgeous chorus soon after. Or Rupert Holmes, well, you want to kick him — until the chorus, with the disco strings, kicks in. And some of the performers’ names might not inspire confidence: Fogelberg! Vanwarmer!!

Most of these songs put you in a good mood. The lyrics may be sad — the pleading in Baby Come Back, Bill LaBounty’s feeble post-break posturing — but the music grooves, usually aided by pretty funky basslines (Ace!). Some songs are happy. Orleans’ Still The One defines the greatest ambition for middle-age (and I must do a post on Orleans and that cover at some point). And the late Dan Fogelberg weighs in with a sweetly poignant number. Be sure to listen to Jim Messina’s Love Is Here, as jazzy an AOR track as you’ll ever get. And Messina’s old sidekick Kenny Loggins features as his backing singer Michael McDonald, who later appears on his own right with one of the greatest tracks in the genre.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R.

1. Kenny Loggins - This Is It (1979)
2. Bobby Caldwell – What You Won’t Do For Love (1978)
3. Bill LaBounty - Living It Up (1982)
4. Player - Baby Come Back (1977)
5. Nicolette Larson – Lotta Love (1978)
6. Ace - How Long (1976)
7. Rupert Holmes – Him (1979)
8. Ambrosia - How Much I Feel (1978)
9. England Dan & John Ford Coley – I’d Really Like To See You Tonight (1976)
10. Alessi - All For A Reason (1977)
11. Orleans - Still The One (1976)
12. Gino Vannelli – Feel Like Flying (1978)
13. Michael McDonald – I Keep Forgettin’ (1982)
14. Jim Messina – Love Is Here (1979)
15. Gallagher And Lyle – Heart On My Sleeve (1976)
16. Linda Ronstadt – It’s So Easy (1977)
17. Randy Vanwarmer - Just When I Needed You Most (1974)
18. Robert John - Sad Eyes (1979)
19. Rita Coolidge – We’re All Alone (1977)
20. Dan Fogelberg – Same Old Lang Syne (1981)

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On a separate note, many thanks to my new Facebook friends for becoming my friends. It’s been great chatting to some. One friend expressed his appreciation for my rather obsessive ID3 tagging, especially the inclusion of relevant artwork. For my part, I was pleased to know that I’m not the only person in the world who might spend 20 minutes or more chasing down some rare artwork (an exercise that might be expedited if I had a scanner that can accommodate an LP cover). Anyway, I recommended the free ID3 tagging programme I use. Named, without much pretentiousness, MP3Tag, it does everything I want from it with simple efficiency. I recommend it highly. Get it free HERE.

If you would like to be my Facebook friend and know from status updates what is going on and up, this is me.