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| Before... |
The Hit
Until this past week, I had never heard of Roger Voudouris (pronounced “Vi-DOR-us,” per the first half of this fascinating little internet gem posted by a guy who seems to be a longtime session musician, Leland Sklar), and I had never heard his hit, “Get Used to It.” From his recollections about recording the Voudouris’ hit:
“It was really fun when we did this, really such tight arrangements, just groove, lots of fun little parts to them. It wasn’t just plowing through a song. It had some thoughtfulness went into the arrangement and Michael was really just great at that.”
The “Michael” referenced in that quote is (or was) Michael Omartian, a producer who churned out hits for Donna Summer, the song Christopher Cross recorded for the Dudley Moore vehicle, Arthur (“Arthur’s Theme (Best You Can Do),” and a couple more. Sklar’s video is the opposite of tight - e.g., he talks about the “mow-and-blow service” he pays to take care of his lawn once a week and, because he shot it in 2020, his first tentative steps out his COVID bubble - but it’s a cool little artifact…still, I only agree on one thing with him about “Get Used to It”:
“It really kind of defines that period in the late 70s, into the 80s musically.”
Omartian/Voudouis built his hit around a loping bass line with a fairly reserved snare tempo-wise and synths (so much synth) one that plays a “rhythm melody” that prances around the bass, with a rising melody coming in ahead of Voudouris’ vocals, and piano helping fill out the bottom. He has a decent singing voice, for what it’s worth, but it’s a little stiff; call it a case of quality over character. If there’s a jumping off point for what will be a very short post, that’s it.
The Rest of the Story
“I got tired of playing everyone else’s album. I decided to sing and make my own record.”
Roger Voudouris, born 1954, Sacramento, California, stood up his first band while still in high school. He called it Roger Voudouris’ Loud as Hell Rockers, which gives a fair sense of where he saw himself within a band. That band had enough heat to land regular shows at a place called the Elegant Barn Nightclub and the same outfit became an opening band for acts as well-known as John Mayall, Stephen Stills, and the Doobie Brothers (when they came through Sacramento, I'm guessing?). Voudouris played for a time with a guy named David Kahne in the exciting named Voudouris/Kahne, but all that must have run dry because, as he noted in a quick-hit interview on an Australian show called Countdown (Part 1 and Part 2), which is where I saw the quote above, he spent some time as a session player.
When he finally signed with Warner Bros., they signed him as a solo act and, apparently, paired him with Omartian to grease the wheels to success. He/they floated an eponymous debut album into the market, but that one didn’t find enough buyers. His second album, Radio Dreams, included his hit single and it did much better, reaching No. 21 on the U.S. charts in June of 1979, and No. 4 in Australia (hold that thought). That one hit gave him enough juice to land a performance on the Merv Griffin Show and sent his name across the ocean to Japan, where he wound up doing better than he did in the States. He did just as well in Australia thanks to his appearance on Countdown, as noted in Wikipedia’s…let’s call it tidy entry on him:
“…he wore a figure hugging outfit with brown leather trousers while miming ‘Get Used to It’ into a wind machine, which made his long hair flow: it led to his brief status as a sex symbol in that country”
Voudouris put out two more albums - 1980’s A Guy Like Me (which I didn't have accces to and, frankly, didn't try to find) and 1981’s On the Heels of Love - but nothing else caught on anywhere outside Japan - and I couldn't get a sense of how long that lasted. He went back to the songwriting and session work from there - there is no second act this time, not even a desperate one - writing for projects like The Lonely Lady (starring short-lived 80s sex symbol Pia Zadora) and an Elvis Presley documentary. He died from liver disease in 2003, leaving behind three kids and an estranged wife, so it was good to hear someone like Sklar remember him fondly. And, if you watch those short clips from Countdown (they take less than four minutes together), he comes off well, calling guitar “what I do,” and gracefully admitting that Farah Fawcett wore their similar haircuts better than he did…
…and, for anyone wondering, they landed on the wind machine on accident. It kept Voudouris’ hair out of his eyes. He was a good-looking guy. You can see why Warner took a swing and aimed where they did...
About the Sampler
Hearing Voudouris call guitar “what I do” doesn’t mesh well with what you hear on his hit, so I tried to pull some guitar-heavy songs onto the 12-song sampler I pulled together to go with this post, including “Hold On” and “The Finger Painter” from his debut album, both of which end with some respectable, if light shredding, and “Just What It Takes” from Radio Dreams (and you hear the transition between the 70s and 80s from those first two songs to the last one), with honorable (though washed-out) mention going to “Don’t Turn My Music Down” from his debut and “We Can’t Stay Like This Forever” from Radio Dreams for at least including little guitar flourishes. If there’s a stand-out in Voudouris’ oeuvre, one you can call guitar-driven with a straight face, it has to be his eight-plus minute opus, “We’re Out of Time,” the only song that struck me as a worthy showcase for what he could do on his primary instrument.
Until this past week, I had never heard of Roger Voudouris (pronounced “Vi-DOR-us,” per the first half of this fascinating little internet gem posted by a guy who seems to be a longtime session musician, Leland Sklar), and I had never heard his hit, “Get Used to It.” From his recollections about recording the Voudouris’ hit:
“It was really fun when we did this, really such tight arrangements, just groove, lots of fun little parts to them. It wasn’t just plowing through a song. It had some thoughtfulness went into the arrangement and Michael was really just great at that.”
The “Michael” referenced in that quote is (or was) Michael Omartian, a producer who churned out hits for Donna Summer, the song Christopher Cross recorded for the Dudley Moore vehicle, Arthur (“Arthur’s Theme (Best You Can Do),” and a couple more. Sklar’s video is the opposite of tight - e.g., he talks about the “mow-and-blow service” he pays to take care of his lawn once a week and, because he shot it in 2020, his first tentative steps out his COVID bubble - but it’s a cool little artifact…still, I only agree on one thing with him about “Get Used to It”:
“It really kind of defines that period in the late 70s, into the 80s musically.”
Omartian/Voudouis built his hit around a loping bass line with a fairly reserved snare tempo-wise and synths (so much synth) one that plays a “rhythm melody” that prances around the bass, with a rising melody coming in ahead of Voudouris’ vocals, and piano helping fill out the bottom. He has a decent singing voice, for what it’s worth, but it’s a little stiff; call it a case of quality over character. If there’s a jumping off point for what will be a very short post, that’s it.
The Rest of the Story
“I got tired of playing everyone else’s album. I decided to sing and make my own record.”
Roger Voudouris, born 1954, Sacramento, California, stood up his first band while still in high school. He called it Roger Voudouris’ Loud as Hell Rockers, which gives a fair sense of where he saw himself within a band. That band had enough heat to land regular shows at a place called the Elegant Barn Nightclub and the same outfit became an opening band for acts as well-known as John Mayall, Stephen Stills, and the Doobie Brothers (when they came through Sacramento, I'm guessing?). Voudouris played for a time with a guy named David Kahne in the exciting named Voudouris/Kahne, but all that must have run dry because, as he noted in a quick-hit interview on an Australian show called Countdown (Part 1 and Part 2), which is where I saw the quote above, he spent some time as a session player.
When he finally signed with Warner Bros., they signed him as a solo act and, apparently, paired him with Omartian to grease the wheels to success. He/they floated an eponymous debut album into the market, but that one didn’t find enough buyers. His second album, Radio Dreams, included his hit single and it did much better, reaching No. 21 on the U.S. charts in June of 1979, and No. 4 in Australia (hold that thought). That one hit gave him enough juice to land a performance on the Merv Griffin Show and sent his name across the ocean to Japan, where he wound up doing better than he did in the States. He did just as well in Australia thanks to his appearance on Countdown, as noted in Wikipedia’s…let’s call it tidy entry on him:
“…he wore a figure hugging outfit with brown leather trousers while miming ‘Get Used to It’ into a wind machine, which made his long hair flow: it led to his brief status as a sex symbol in that country”
Voudouris put out two more albums - 1980’s A Guy Like Me (which I didn't have accces to and, frankly, didn't try to find) and 1981’s On the Heels of Love - but nothing else caught on anywhere outside Japan - and I couldn't get a sense of how long that lasted. He went back to the songwriting and session work from there - there is no second act this time, not even a desperate one - writing for projects like The Lonely Lady (starring short-lived 80s sex symbol Pia Zadora) and an Elvis Presley documentary. He died from liver disease in 2003, leaving behind three kids and an estranged wife, so it was good to hear someone like Sklar remember him fondly. And, if you watch those short clips from Countdown (they take less than four minutes together), he comes off well, calling guitar “what I do,” and gracefully admitting that Farah Fawcett wore their similar haircuts better than he did…
…and, for anyone wondering, they landed on the wind machine on accident. It kept Voudouris’ hair out of his eyes. He was a good-looking guy. You can see why Warner took a swing and aimed where they did...
About the Sampler
Hearing Voudouris call guitar “what I do” doesn’t mesh well with what you hear on his hit, so I tried to pull some guitar-heavy songs onto the 12-song sampler I pulled together to go with this post, including “Hold On” and “The Finger Painter” from his debut album, both of which end with some respectable, if light shredding, and “Just What It Takes” from Radio Dreams (and you hear the transition between the 70s and 80s from those first two songs to the last one), with honorable (though washed-out) mention going to “Don’t Turn My Music Down” from his debut and “We Can’t Stay Like This Forever” from Radio Dreams for at least including little guitar flourishes. If there’s a stand-out in Voudouris’ oeuvre, one you can call guitar-driven with a straight face, it has to be his eight-plus minute opus, “We’re Out of Time,” the only song that struck me as a worthy showcase for what he could do on his primary instrument.
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| ...after. I think A&R got outta hand. |
If you listen to everything else, you’ll hear someone Warner decided to sell as a romantic balladeer - a la “Get Used to It.” As such, I rounded out the sampler with “What Are You Doing After Class?” from his debut, “We Only Dance ‘cause We Have to,” from Radio Dreams, and “Heels of Love,” “She’s Too Cold,” and “First Love,” from his fourth album, On the Heels of Love. For my money, the main thing you hear across all those is an attempt to recapture what worked in “Get Used to It.”
In a lot of ways, Roger Voudouris’ shot at stardom looks like something Warner Bros. gave him, only to take the shot for him. I couldn’t find any record of how he felt about what he put out - and, if you watch Part 1 of his interview on Countdown, he certainly seems fine with it (e.g., “it’s more than just lyrics now, it’s production”) - but the sum of what I’ve read and watched is enough to make me wonder what kind of music he would have put out if left to his own devices. My best guess is, "We're Out of Time." Which I suspect was unmarketable, so...
Till the next one…which, based on the first glance, looks like it’ll be a lot more interesting than this one.
In a lot of ways, Roger Voudouris’ shot at stardom looks like something Warner Bros. gave him, only to take the shot for him. I couldn’t find any record of how he felt about what he put out - and, if you watch Part 1 of his interview on Countdown, he certainly seems fine with it (e.g., “it’s more than just lyrics now, it’s production”) - but the sum of what I’ve read and watched is enough to make me wonder what kind of music he would have put out if left to his own devices. My best guess is, "We're Out of Time." Which I suspect was unmarketable, so...
Till the next one…which, based on the first glance, looks like it’ll be a lot more interesting than this one.
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