 |
| So fucking 70s... |
The Hit
Fans, even former ones, of Louis C.K.’s TV show know Stories’ “Brother Louie” - which assumes they didn’t before. The bigger question, how many people know the song’s subject?
“She was black as the night
Louie was whiter than white
Danger Danger when you taste brown sugar
Louie fell in love overnight”
If you guessed a mixed race couple, you win! Also, if the line about “brown sugar” squicks you out, the next two lines - “Nothin’ bad it was good/Louie had the best girl he could” - makes clear the songwriter was all for it. The rest of the song, on the other hand, gets into large parts of the world…at large was less supportive. Like Brother Louie’s parents. Given that the song came out about six years after the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v Virginia, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Close readers might have noticed I used the generic “songwriter” instead of singling out anyone - never mind any member of Stories. They didn’t write it: the UK funk/soul band Hot Chocolate wrote it, who are better known States-side (I’m pretty sure) for “Sexy Thing.” If, like me, you’ve never heard Hot Chocolate’s version, that happened by a combination of accident and design. While Stories’ career hadn’t exactly stagnated, the A&R guy at the band’s label, Buddah Records, wanted to give them a little nudge, so he had Ian Lloyd (more later) to come to the office and listen to a bunch of songs to see if he could find something to release as a single to goose sales. In a circa-2013 interview with the ever-reliable Classic Bands, Lloyd recalled spending a couple days listening to one song after another…until he heard “Brother Louie.” He said “this one,” and that’s the song Stories recorded and released. There’s a whole story about that moment, which I’ll get to, but I got a kick out of Lloyd’s memory of the moment:
“But the fact that I had really been listening for two days to all this stuff and then heard that and said ‘This is a number one record,’ when it finally went to number one, I was surprised. I was kind of like, ‘Wow! I was right!’ It was exciting.”
So…who did it better, Hot Chocolate or Stories? I’m partial to Stories’ version, but that could be familiarity bias. The “white-boy soul” vocals aren’t exactly lights-out, but it beats the semi-monotone on Hot Chocolate’s version, and the latter get swallowed in the mixing to boot. They’re both busy, but I prefer everything on Stories’ cut from the chorus to the instrumentation and production; everything just gets more room to breath. To wrap up a stray thought, when Lloyd/Buddah realized that the Hot Chocolate version he’d heard wasn’t a demo, but a copy of their single and it was about to drop, they rushed Stories’ version to market the week before. And that’s why most Americans know their version and not Hot Chocolate’s…
…that said, hearing their “Brother Louie” doesn’t tell you dick about Stories.
The Rest of the Story
“All of a sudden, we had a big hit with a song that did not represent our music and the direction we were trying to go in. I didn't think it would affect me that much, but it did. Consequently, I decided that I had to remove myself from that, so that I could come back and show what I really can do.”
- Ian Lloyd to Triad’s Russell Weiner
The quote comes from Wikipedia’sentry on Stories, but they don’t have a citation for the quote. Still, it gets at a key detail about them as a band: they didn’t last long; in terms of playing with the original line-up, they didn’t even last two albums.
Stories started when two session violinists (successful ones too), introduced their sons, keyboardist Michael Lookofsky, later Michael Brown, and classically-trained bassist/vocalist, Lloyd Buonconsiglio, later Ian Lloyd. Both Brown and Lloyd had been around a bit, Brown much more than Lloyd. The former was a bit of prodigy, who’d already had success with a band called The Left Banke. Brown wrote both “Pretty Ballerina” (which hit #15 in ‘67) and “Don’t Walk Away Renee” (#5 in 1966) at age 16 - both, notably, inspired by a young woman named Renee Fladen, girlfriend of The Left Banke’s bassist, Tom Finn, and burning infatuation of Brown’s. Brown’s hands shook so much when she was around that he’d miss the keys; apparently, he had to come back to play his parts at night after she left, and you can almost hear the Kleenex slipping out of the box when you read that.
I found that on a site called Taylor Francis Online and, as with Stories in general, it’s easier to find good copy about what the band members did before and after the band than during its tiny run.
At any rate, Lloyd and Brown hit it off well enough that they agreed to start a band, one they wanted to sound “Beatles-esque.” After recruiting a guitarist (Steve Love) and a drummer (Bryan Madey), they hit the studio to record a debut album - helped, you’d assume, by Brown’s resume in particular. They titled their first album I’m Coming Home and released it and a single by the same name in 1972. The single didn’t do badly - it got within touching distance of the top 40 - which bought them a chance to do it all over again…only to see the band unravel.
Brown checked out to pursue another project before Stories finished recording their 1973 follow-up LP, About Us, though he didn’t officially leave until after its release. A site called Rebeat cites personality clashes for the breakup (also, the author loved the album) - going the other way, Lloyd had pretty positive memories of their writing relationship when he talked to Classic Bands* - but he and Brown still co-wrote most of the material for the album. That still left the band with only nine songs, so they added one written by Love (“Changes Have Begun”), plus a pretty clear throw-away titled, “Down Time Blooze.” The album came out, it moved some units, etc. And here’s where “Brother Louie” comes in.
When’s Lloyd’s prediction came true - “Brother Louie” stayed at #1 for two weeks and stayed on the national charts for a total of 18 weeks - Buddah re-released About Us, only with the hit/addendum tagged on to the end of it. The album sold so well that they’d ship versions of the original version of the LP - i.e., without the hit - but with a label added to the album sleeve stating it was on there. After getting grief from fans on the road, Lloyd started bringing 45s of the single to shows that he’d sign and pass out to keep the masses satisfied.
As hinted at above, Stories didn’t carry on as a concern much after that. Lloyd didn’t even play the bass-line on “Brother Louie”; the guy who did, Kenny Aaronson, would take Lloyd’s place when he left (as promised) to do solo projects of his own. A guy named Ken Bichel had already replaced Brown before Stories’ third album, Traveling Underground, came out in 1973. That one featured some minor hits - e.g., “Mammy Blue” (which made #50) and “If It Feels Good Do It,” a cover of an old Climax song (No. 57 in this series) - but Stories ended shortly thereafter.
Nearly all the members, original and their replacements, carried on, whether doing their own material or doing session work for some of the biggest artists of the 1970s and 80s - e.g., Lloyd performed some of Bryan Adams’ hits before Adams did and did session work with Billy Joel (among others), while Aaronson played with Hall & Oates, Billy Squier, Foghat, Bob Dylan, and Rick Derringer. That doesn’t mean Stories didn’t have their moments or that they didn’t tour. * To pick up the asterisk above, I haven’t seen many artists who matched Lloyd for a patchy memory - he’s fuzzy on how much they headlined versus opening for others - but he did call out a couple shows, like opening for Ike & Tina Turner at Candlestick Park, and playing a festival gig with Ted Nugent, Focus and Boz Scaggs.
Finally, and just to note it, Brown passed away from heart failure in 2015. Given his pair of hits with The Left Banke, Taylor Francis found that incredibly, romantically apt.
About the Sampler
Because I included both of The Left Banke’s hits and Hot Chocolate’s version of “Brother Louie” on the sampler, I capped the Stories selection at 12 - which should be ample to show, the piano-forward sound aside, their modest catalog sounds like their hit.
I’m guessing the album Spotify lists as eponymous is actually their debut, I’m Coming Home. As with most of their material, I suspect you’ll hear “prog-rock” if/when you listen to them instead of “Beatles-esque” - unless, here, “Beatles-esque” points toward ambition. At any rate, I repped Stories’ debut with the title track (which sounds like something out of a musical), the anthemic “Hello People,” a shot at a ballad in “Nice to Have You Here,” an interesting number called “You Told Me” (that’s one disciplined bass-line) and, a personal favorite, the up-tempo, “Saint James.” For About Us, I pulled in the hit, of course, backed with the peppy, dramatic opening number, “Darling,” a pair of 70s rockers with “Believe Me” and “Hey France,” and what I’d call their “proggiest” number, “Please, Please.” Finally, Traveling Underground wasn’t great - they peak at About Us for me - and I already linked their thoroughly competent take on “If It Feels Good Do It” up above, but the other song, “Bridges,” shows what's left of Stories showing their musical/composing chops.
For what it’s worth, I find that entire selection somewhere north of likeable and south urgent - i.e., nothing mind-blowing, but it’s stuff that’ll work for people who like their sound.
Till the next one…
Fans, even former ones, of Louis C.K.’s TV show know Stories’ “Brother Louie” - which assumes they didn’t before. The bigger question, how many people know the song’s subject?
“She was black as the night
Louie was whiter than white
Danger Danger when you taste brown sugar
Louie fell in love overnight”
If you guessed a mixed race couple, you win! Also, if the line about “brown sugar” squicks you out, the next two lines - “Nothin’ bad it was good/Louie had the best girl he could” - makes clear the songwriter was all for it. The rest of the song, on the other hand, gets into large parts of the world…at large was less supportive. Like Brother Louie’s parents. Given that the song came out about six years after the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v Virginia, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Close readers might have noticed I used the generic “songwriter” instead of singling out anyone - never mind any member of Stories. They didn’t write it: the UK funk/soul band Hot Chocolate wrote it, who are better known States-side (I’m pretty sure) for “Sexy Thing.” If, like me, you’ve never heard Hot Chocolate’s version, that happened by a combination of accident and design. While Stories’ career hadn’t exactly stagnated, the A&R guy at the band’s label, Buddah Records, wanted to give them a little nudge, so he had Ian Lloyd (more later) to come to the office and listen to a bunch of songs to see if he could find something to release as a single to goose sales. In a circa-2013 interview with the ever-reliable Classic Bands, Lloyd recalled spending a couple days listening to one song after another…until he heard “Brother Louie.” He said “this one,” and that’s the song Stories recorded and released. There’s a whole story about that moment, which I’ll get to, but I got a kick out of Lloyd’s memory of the moment:
“But the fact that I had really been listening for two days to all this stuff and then heard that and said ‘This is a number one record,’ when it finally went to number one, I was surprised. I was kind of like, ‘Wow! I was right!’ It was exciting.”
So…who did it better, Hot Chocolate or Stories? I’m partial to Stories’ version, but that could be familiarity bias. The “white-boy soul” vocals aren’t exactly lights-out, but it beats the semi-monotone on Hot Chocolate’s version, and the latter get swallowed in the mixing to boot. They’re both busy, but I prefer everything on Stories’ cut from the chorus to the instrumentation and production; everything just gets more room to breath. To wrap up a stray thought, when Lloyd/Buddah realized that the Hot Chocolate version he’d heard wasn’t a demo, but a copy of their single and it was about to drop, they rushed Stories’ version to market the week before. And that’s why most Americans know their version and not Hot Chocolate’s…
…that said, hearing their “Brother Louie” doesn’t tell you dick about Stories.
The Rest of the Story
“All of a sudden, we had a big hit with a song that did not represent our music and the direction we were trying to go in. I didn't think it would affect me that much, but it did. Consequently, I decided that I had to remove myself from that, so that I could come back and show what I really can do.”
- Ian Lloyd to Triad’s Russell Weiner
The quote comes from Wikipedia’sentry on Stories, but they don’t have a citation for the quote. Still, it gets at a key detail about them as a band: they didn’t last long; in terms of playing with the original line-up, they didn’t even last two albums.
Stories started when two session violinists (successful ones too), introduced their sons, keyboardist Michael Lookofsky, later Michael Brown, and classically-trained bassist/vocalist, Lloyd Buonconsiglio, later Ian Lloyd. Both Brown and Lloyd had been around a bit, Brown much more than Lloyd. The former was a bit of prodigy, who’d already had success with a band called The Left Banke. Brown wrote both “Pretty Ballerina” (which hit #15 in ‘67) and “Don’t Walk Away Renee” (#5 in 1966) at age 16 - both, notably, inspired by a young woman named Renee Fladen, girlfriend of The Left Banke’s bassist, Tom Finn, and burning infatuation of Brown’s. Brown’s hands shook so much when she was around that he’d miss the keys; apparently, he had to come back to play his parts at night after she left, and you can almost hear the Kleenex slipping out of the box when you read that.
I found that on a site called Taylor Francis Online and, as with Stories in general, it’s easier to find good copy about what the band members did before and after the band than during its tiny run.
At any rate, Lloyd and Brown hit it off well enough that they agreed to start a band, one they wanted to sound “Beatles-esque.” After recruiting a guitarist (Steve Love) and a drummer (Bryan Madey), they hit the studio to record a debut album - helped, you’d assume, by Brown’s resume in particular. They titled their first album I’m Coming Home and released it and a single by the same name in 1972. The single didn’t do badly - it got within touching distance of the top 40 - which bought them a chance to do it all over again…only to see the band unravel.
Brown checked out to pursue another project before Stories finished recording their 1973 follow-up LP, About Us, though he didn’t officially leave until after its release. A site called Rebeat cites personality clashes for the breakup (also, the author loved the album) - going the other way, Lloyd had pretty positive memories of their writing relationship when he talked to Classic Bands* - but he and Brown still co-wrote most of the material for the album. That still left the band with only nine songs, so they added one written by Love (“Changes Have Begun”), plus a pretty clear throw-away titled, “Down Time Blooze.” The album came out, it moved some units, etc. And here’s where “Brother Louie” comes in.
When’s Lloyd’s prediction came true - “Brother Louie” stayed at #1 for two weeks and stayed on the national charts for a total of 18 weeks - Buddah re-released About Us, only with the hit/addendum tagged on to the end of it. The album sold so well that they’d ship versions of the original version of the LP - i.e., without the hit - but with a label added to the album sleeve stating it was on there. After getting grief from fans on the road, Lloyd started bringing 45s of the single to shows that he’d sign and pass out to keep the masses satisfied.
As hinted at above, Stories didn’t carry on as a concern much after that. Lloyd didn’t even play the bass-line on “Brother Louie”; the guy who did, Kenny Aaronson, would take Lloyd’s place when he left (as promised) to do solo projects of his own. A guy named Ken Bichel had already replaced Brown before Stories’ third album, Traveling Underground, came out in 1973. That one featured some minor hits - e.g., “Mammy Blue” (which made #50) and “If It Feels Good Do It,” a cover of an old Climax song (No. 57 in this series) - but Stories ended shortly thereafter.
Nearly all the members, original and their replacements, carried on, whether doing their own material or doing session work for some of the biggest artists of the 1970s and 80s - e.g., Lloyd performed some of Bryan Adams’ hits before Adams did and did session work with Billy Joel (among others), while Aaronson played with Hall & Oates, Billy Squier, Foghat, Bob Dylan, and Rick Derringer. That doesn’t mean Stories didn’t have their moments or that they didn’t tour. * To pick up the asterisk above, I haven’t seen many artists who matched Lloyd for a patchy memory - he’s fuzzy on how much they headlined versus opening for others - but he did call out a couple shows, like opening for Ike & Tina Turner at Candlestick Park, and playing a festival gig with Ted Nugent, Focus and Boz Scaggs.
Finally, and just to note it, Brown passed away from heart failure in 2015. Given his pair of hits with The Left Banke, Taylor Francis found that incredibly, romantically apt.
About the Sampler
Because I included both of The Left Banke’s hits and Hot Chocolate’s version of “Brother Louie” on the sampler, I capped the Stories selection at 12 - which should be ample to show, the piano-forward sound aside, their modest catalog sounds like their hit.
I’m guessing the album Spotify lists as eponymous is actually their debut, I’m Coming Home. As with most of their material, I suspect you’ll hear “prog-rock” if/when you listen to them instead of “Beatles-esque” - unless, here, “Beatles-esque” points toward ambition. At any rate, I repped Stories’ debut with the title track (which sounds like something out of a musical), the anthemic “Hello People,” a shot at a ballad in “Nice to Have You Here,” an interesting number called “You Told Me” (that’s one disciplined bass-line) and, a personal favorite, the up-tempo, “Saint James.” For About Us, I pulled in the hit, of course, backed with the peppy, dramatic opening number, “Darling,” a pair of 70s rockers with “Believe Me” and “Hey France,” and what I’d call their “proggiest” number, “Please, Please.” Finally, Traveling Underground wasn’t great - they peak at About Us for me - and I already linked their thoroughly competent take on “If It Feels Good Do It” up above, but the other song, “Bridges,” shows what's left of Stories showing their musical/composing chops.
For what it’s worth, I find that entire selection somewhere north of likeable and south urgent - i.e., nothing mind-blowing, but it’s stuff that’ll work for people who like their sound.
Till the next one…
No comments:
Post a Comment