"Stand over next to the guitar man"
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 7:56 amIf you know the next line*, then you'll be sad to hear of the death of Stan Freberg (b. 1926), who created a series of comic parodies of pop songs in the late 1950s.
That particular line comes from The Banana Boat Song where the bongo player on the session (a laconic Peter Leeds) tries to send the singer (Freberg) to other parts of the studio because he is "too loud man, too piercing". In the end he persuades the singer to sing outside the studio where (mysteriously) the door becomes locked and he can't get back in to sing the famous line "Day-o". The song ends with a crash of broken glass - "I come through the window".
If I've concentrated on this song it's because even at my very young age, it provided lessons for me about recording and recording studios. Not just the concept, but even the idea that studio musicians, however skilled, might see it as "just a job", where their comfort and convenience rated higher than the artistic merit of the music. Obviously I didn't analyse it in those terms at the time, but the idea stuck.
* "He sent me over here"
Ray
That particular line comes from The Banana Boat Song where the bongo player on the session (a laconic Peter Leeds) tries to send the singer (Freberg) to other parts of the studio because he is "too loud man, too piercing". In the end he persuades the singer to sing outside the studio where (mysteriously) the door becomes locked and he can't get back in to sing the famous line "Day-o". The song ends with a crash of broken glass - "I come through the window".
If I've concentrated on this song it's because even at my very young age, it provided lessons for me about recording and recording studios. Not just the concept, but even the idea that studio musicians, however skilled, might see it as "just a job", where their comfort and convenience rated higher than the artistic merit of the music. Obviously I didn't analyse it in those terms at the time, but the idea stuck.
* "He sent me over here"
Ray