This is part two of the transcript of my talk with songsmith and recording artist Alan O’Day. You can find part one here. In this final part, O’Day talks about his musical influences, and we discuss the slickness of the westcoast sound.

How do you feel about your musical output from back then?

You know, Undercover Angel is kind of a corny song, and it’s kind of a sexy song, and it’s kind of an infantile song, and it sold two million copies. I think it’s a good song, and I am proud of its success. It was banned in Peoria, Illinois, as being too sexual, and I’ve always worn that as a badge of pride [laughs]. I had no illusions that I was creating great art, I’ve just always loved the idea of the little three-minute movie.

That can be art in its own way, you know?

Yeah, it’s kind of like people’s art, like street art. As the technology enabled us to do more and more things, it seemed like it got a little less honest. I haven’t really thought much about it, but back then, you were working with a fairly limited palette, and then you had your ideas and your desire to excite people, to keep them enthralled for the length of a record. That’s always just thrilled me to do, to try to create something that would keep people’s attention and give them a great little ride on a roller coaster for three minutes.

Yeah, that’s definitely an art unto itself.

I’ve watched how Diane [Warren] has talked about her own stuff, and how she’ll say that something she wrote was crap, and something she wrote was good. Sometimes the muse was with me, and sometimes it wasn’t, and some of the stuff is kind of ordinary. But Angie Baby I think is some of my best work, and I think the muse was with me. I worked three months on that song constructing the lyric, and I kind of wondered why I was working so hard on this song – I even took it to a psychologist, you know – I just wanted to make sure that I was writing an authentic thing of what this ‘touched’ person would be doing.

You did the research.

Yeah! But when the song became number one, suddenly the three months didn’t seem like such a hard thing, you know.

I can see that! That song hit number one quite unexpectedly for you, didn’t it?

Well, any number one was unexpected, that was my first. I think it sold nearly two million also, like Undercover Angel. I’d only met Helen Reddy briefly, and I was not that impressed. But I had a chance to meet her more recently, and my perception was different, and she’s different, and she’s wonderful. She’s a fantastic person. She’s very involved in political viewpoints, and helping the cause of women, and just full of spark. Some health problems, and she doesn’t really sing professionally, but I was blown away, and she was so kind to me. If we get to stick around, you know, sometimes we grow up.

Seems you guys have a lot to be proud of, you know, through a long life of music.

I’m really blessed, and I get to walk the line between anonymity and fame. It’s not like my face is well known, so I just go and do my life, and enjoy that. We don’t live high, we just live normal, and we deal with the normal stuff that comes with aging with and being ordinary in between playing the game of [radio announcer voice] “here’s Alan O’Day!”

Many LA artists from the period have been criticized by the music press for making “conveyor-belt music” with nothing but the bottom line in mind. Have you ever dealt with that kind of stuff?

As far as conveyor-belt music, I’m hearing a lot more of that now, because it seems like the function of a lot of music is to hypnotize you and lull you instead of entertain you. I take my little iPhone to bed with me and put on ambient stuff and go to sleep with it, you know. But I can tell you something about country music. Country music has kinda picked up where pop music left off. A lot of the country music now is like rock ‘n’ roll Americana pop music was back 20-30 years ago, and that’s why a lot of people are gravitating toward it – me included. I don’t have a list of successes of writing country songs, but I enjoy the process of trying to write an authentic country song, which is more complex than it seems. I spend a lot of time in Nashville, in fact I produced my new album there, co-produced it it with a friend of mine who, oddly enough, was in a band with me in the sixties. That’s an interesting turn of events. You can hear a lot of stuff that sounds like pop, you may hear a little steel guitar or fiddle in it, but there’s some pop stuff going on in country music.

From a musicians perspective as well, it seems like country music is an arena where you’re still allowed to be good at what you do.

Again, it’s that limited palette. You’re taking simpler chords and yet creating something that stands tall. You don’t have a symphony orchestra at your command, you’re not using diminished flat 13ths over 9ths or whatever, and yet you’re creating something that has heart and is real to a lot of people. There are some wonderful story songs going on in Nashville and country music, but you don’t hear many story songs on the pop scene today.

One thing I noticed, I was listening to Brad Paisley…

Oh, what a talent.

Oh yeah, fantastic talent. I was kinda taken aback a little bit by the humorous narrative, ’cause that’s something I’m used to hearing on records from the seventies and earlier, and not so much these days.

See, I grew up with Spike Jones and Stan Freberg, and the only person doing that kind of stuff is Weird Al. The country stuff has that whimsy to it, I’m glad something does.

From a young musician’s perspective here, especially in Norway, I don’t know how that is over in the US, but there are gigs that I don’t get because I play too cleanly, because I don’t do the plectrum-strumming eight notes thing exclusively, and then there are bands that make it because they’re… not great.

Yeah, isn’t that interesting. Kind of a garage band, “let’s not be too intellectual” kind of thing.

Yeah, and I’ve talked to people about bands that I like, like Toto or Pages and stuff like that, and they’ve got nothing but bad feelings towards them, you know. “Those guys are too good at what they do, and there’s no soul in the music,” and they keep regurgitating those old arguments about there being no soul in music that’s well crafted. I think that’s what I was getting at with the “conveyor-belt” comment.

There was a slickness to the pop music production of that era, and I think it’s fair to criticize the slickness.

But it was an authentic slickness, though. It was played the way you hear it on the record. Not like these days when you tune everything and sync everything up with Pro Tools. When Jeff Porcaro grooves on a record, that’s what the engineer was hearing as he was recording it.

It was what was happening then. And, you know, Undercover Angel, those songs, nobody was using click tracks. So one could make a case that the click track was instrumental in the destruction of a human factor in pop music, you know. I mean, I played to a click on my new CD, and the guys are playing to a click track because you can edit so easily and work with it, but every once in a while you get the feeling like somethings’s lost. I think it’s really easy to look back from the next era at the previous era and see more clearly and criticize it than when you’re in the middle of it. And I think that rock ‘n’ roll has always got that thing that’s out of control and things that are done wrong on purpose, people who are doing the wrong thing and getting a kick out of it and sneering and laughing. There’s always that edge that whatever generation has just been through it, they’re gonna be appalled, you know. My parents – this whole rock ‘n’ roll thing, “what the heck’s going on, this isn’t music like we understand it,” and of course that just feeds kids to want to do it more, because it’s becoming their own kind of comment on the world, I get that.

What artists were your main inspirations?

Yeah. Okay. I grew up listening to my dad’s 78’s, and so I have a little bit of Errol Garner, influences of the 40’s music. Then I started hearing early rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm ‘n’ blues and started buying some stuff like that. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters was one of my first favorites when I was a sophomore in high school. Little Richard, Fats Domino, and during high school all the pop stuff, Patience and Prudence. Certainly Elvis, with that tape echo thing. The other side of “Heartbreak Hotel” was called “I Was The One”, and I had just been through – you know how romance and angst over love affairs in high school. I’d just been through something where I had had a little romance going with a girl, and then she went on with somebody else. So this song “I was the one who taught her to cry”, I mean, that just spoke for me one hundred percent, I could just feel it. And the fact that it was put into a song, I think that’s one of the things that got me to want to write songs. To put those feelings into a song, you were making poetry, rather than just being a victim of a feeling. I mean, it was major pain to be rejected in high school! And when you were in love with somebody it was like a drug.

The connection to that kind of music was so strong, so I was definitely an Elvis fan. Oddly enough, he seemed like one of the more polished ones. I loved Buddy Holly, I loved Richie Valens. I was down in the Coachella Valley where there was a large Mexican population, and besides the pop station, there was R’n'B stuff going on down there, a lot of the black artists.

I would try to figure out on the piano, my aunt had purchased a piano for me, and that was a big deal. It was a used piano, we didn’t have a lot of money. And I played everything in the key of C for the first two or three years, because that’s where all the white notes lined up nicely with the major chords and everything. And then I graduated to F, but I never figured all that out until later. I was trying to play what I hear on the records note for note, and trying to figure out how they did it, because it was so exciting to me. Like I say, Little Richard stuff, you know.

There was no YouTube back then either, so you had to listen to the music, not just watch some guy teach you how to do it.

Absolutely. I can enjoy videos of music and listen to the music at the same time, but my heart is with just listening. My heart is in my ears to just listen. Those people just turned me on through high school, and I got out of high school and I went for a year of junior college up in Pasadena, which was closer to LA, it’s really part of LA, and I met a guy who played guitar. He introduced me to this whole world of blues and BB King and a lot of these people came in, like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williams. At first I remember thinking, “God, this is too ignorant and too rough” and then my taste started changing to like it, you know. Bo Diddley, all that stuff – and he was totally into this stuff, but he was also into jazz, which scared me, because I was just using three fingers on my right hand and not my thumb. Nobody talked to me about technique, you know. At some point, someone said “you should use your thumb” and I said “oh, OK” and I started incorporating my thumb. This opened up a whole world to me, and the guitar thing, ’cause you could do things with the guitar that you couldn’t do with a piano, so that broadened my listening then. I still have these albums, these 33’s. I could pull out a Muddy Waters album, and I can show you where he autographed it to me, but he didn’t write it, he printed “Muddy Waters – to you.” I saw him at the Veteran’s Center in Indio, and asked him to autograph my album. It was still the blues connection to the rock ‘n’ roll stuff back then.

[End of transcript]

Thanks to Alan O’Day for an interesting and informative conversation. Don’t forget to check out Alan’s website at alanoday.com.

I recently had the great pleasure of talking to songwriter Alan O’Day about the music he made in LA in the Seventies. Having written number one hits such as his own “Undercover Angel” and Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby,” O’Day continues to write and perform his own material. He still resides in his native Los Angeles, and in the first part of this interview, he talks about his formative years in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, as well as his relationship with fellow luminaries such as Jeff Porcaro of Toto, who he was briefly in a band with, and songwriter Diane Warren, who he helped mentor at a crucial time in her career.

(Interviewer’s comments and questions in italics.)

What about LA made it such fertile ground for pop music in the 1970s?

Well, I didn’t see that in comparison to any other place, so that comparison never crossed my mind. But it was just a vibrant situation here. I myself played in night clubs in the Los Angeles area in the 60’s and was burning out of doing that in the late 60’s, but my constant companion was pop music – both AM and FM stations. It felt like it was the glue that held things together, the sense that you’re listening to the radio and you know a lot of people are listening to it, and there’s an implicit camaraderie.

There was kind of a reaction against the war, or war mentality, and that was like us against them a little bit. Music was making political and love statements that were kind of galvanizing to millions of people, actually a bit younger than me, I was 30 years old in 1970. But I was watching what was happening.

The playing in night clubs, which was my support, was kind of falling away like a cocoon, and I remember writing songs between sets. Working on an idea, coming home to my funky little apartment and working on song ideas, kind of like a revolt or a yin/yang against what I was doing in the clubs.

And then I was working in a recording studio after that, getting minimum wage but learning a lot, and I remember that I went on days when I could come home, just part day, I would rebel against the fact that I was working by  throwing myself into my music. And my output, because of that frame of my mind, was pretty large. And then I got lucky and actually got a royalty check and didn’t work anymore, and I found that when writing became my main gig, it was a little harder (laughs) to revolt against anything, because I had what I wanted, you know?

Well, that happens a lot, doesn’t it? When music becomes your main source of income, when you rely on that for rent and stuff, then it gets a little harder finding the right motivation to write.

Yeah, that’s it excactly. But what was going on around here was bands playing in LA and the Hollywood scene on the Sunset Strip, and quite often you’d be able to go see a band that had a recording out, and there was a connection among people and music, and I think it was based on radio and the local club scene. It was a commonality, that’s what I remember. And it was feeding me, it was nurturing me to want to write.

I never studied music formally, but I learned to play other people’s songs by ear, and that’s how I played gigs in night clubs. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that was teaching me lyrics and melody and chords and stuff on a hands-on basis, and that’s what propelled me into writing my own stuff.

Learning by doing, then, huh?

Yeah, and I got to really dislike playing in clubs at that time, ’cause we were kind of background music. With God’s grace, I get to play now, in songwriting venues or oldies concerts, or in Nashville at the Bluebird Cafe, just situations where people come because they remember my hits, and suddenly I’ve got an audience that’s so accepting, you know? Where were those people then [laughs]…

(Long anectode about early night club gig experiences.)

Yes, it’s very easy to get mad at “them”.

Your statement about people moving to the area and the TV boom, I don’t have a clue about that. It’s an interesting proposition. I just know that there were a lot of young people here that were connected, and there was a look and a dress, with the mustaches and beards and semi-hippie stuff going on still, it was just vital.

Now, the disco scene started coming in, and I didn’t really consider myself a part of that at all. Some people refer to “Undercover Angel” in kind of a disco context, and I don’t get that. I thought I was writing some pop stuff.

(I explain my outsider’s perspective. “I’m trying to get the sociology of it. Such a lot of talents in the same place at the same time.”)

Yes. Well, you know, another way to look at it is, there was probably talent other places too, but because this was a recording hub and a music business hub, the people who were here had more of a shot.

I’ve thought about that, You know, with the Porcaro guys, they were sons of TV business, movie business people, and they were trying to be the best in their local area, and just by chance, at that time, their local area was on top of the world.

Yes. You could probably find someone asking the same question about Nashville or New York, but I like the LA question better, because it’s tasty to me to think back. There was a feeling about it that I was involved in something. It sizzled for me, it had buzz.

I took my songs to a publisher who gave me a reality check by saying that they weren’t ready to be hit records at all, and that I needed to learn more of the craft. His name was Sidney Goldstein with a company called EH Morris. He ended up signing me as a writer, and he would gently prod me to work on the craft of things and put [my songs] together, and kind of by osmosis, I picked up what he was talking about. I was already doing it organically, but he helped me focus on that, and got me my first cut. Now, he was from New York, he was the LA arm of this company based in New York, and I’m the only writer that he ever signed out here.

Was he a songwriter himself, or was he just really good a recognizing great songs?

I don’t believe he was a songwriter. He was a publisher, a business man and very sincere and serious about his work – and very loyal to the company. It was like being taken under somebody’s wing. An older man, he is no longer with us. Very gentle, it was almost like a fatherly kind of relationship. Eventually he shared my publishing rights with the company that became Warner Bros, which is how I got connected to Warner Bros, which is now Warner Chappell. Those were good years, I would go out and play in clubs sometimes, or sit in or, you know, go listen to stuff. I was not at all well to do, but there was a richness in my existence – so much so that when I had hits under my belt, I would have wistful dreams about the funky apartment I lived in the early seventies, because it was where I really found myself.

Have you had a chance to mentor anybody the way mr. Goldstein mentored you?

Well, not to that extent, but I’ve been a positive force for some songwriters, most notably Diane Warren.

She’s a great songwriter.

Yeah. She came to me early in her career, in kind of an obtuse way – because there was another young lady in her late teens who had come with her father to have me listen to her songs, and there was nothing really spectacular there. She just needed a little more life under her belt to see if she really wanted to pursue writing. So they thanked me and said goodbye, and a couple weeks later I got a letter in the mail, ostensibly from this young lady, saying “I have a friend who’s a really good songwriter, and she’d like to come and see you. Her name is Diane.” And I wrote back and said “sure, no problem!” It was just very informal stuff. ‘Cause I liked talking about music, and, you know, I liked girls. [laughs] What a concept! So, Diane showed up at my doorstep, looking hippie-ish, with a guitar – she wasn’t really playing piano at that point – and played me some of her stuff, which had some potential, but was very folky, it was like “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, kind of Jimmy Webb-ish. And I found out later that that letter from the girl was actually written by Diane to get herself to come and see me. She didn’t need to do that – she didn’t know she didn’t need to do it, I would have seen her anyway. But she had that business knack and that little edge to try to make things happen, and she still does.

I think I know her mostly through Chicago and her work with David Foster. And also, she wrote that Celine Dion song “Because You Loved Me”, which is a fantastic song.

Yeah, she’s done some wonderful stuff. She has no illusions about her own writing, she really is motivated to try to write the very best song she can, and that’s something that I try to keep in my mind that I learned from her. But I was trying to help her get her stuff a little more polished, more mainstream, and we hung out for a while in those days, and who knew what was going to happen. She still acknowledges me as a friend who helped her.

That brings me to another thing. I mentioned Celine Dion, and she’s an artist that obviously hasn’t got a lot of credibility for the hardcore music press guy. Which is horrible, you know, ’cause she’s a fantastic talent, but somehow sincere songs about love, you know, ballads in major keys, don’t go over well with the hip crowd these days. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I’m sort of piecing it together. I think you’re talking about a certain climate in a certain time. I did a radio interview last night, and the guy was talking about how back in the sixties and early seventies, you could turn on the radio and hear such a variety of music. You’d hear something by Frank Sinatra and then something by James Brown, you know. And then it all got parcelled out into little sections. The top 40, I don’t listen to it anymore. I don’t think there is a top 40, there’s a top 40 for certain kinds of people who like certain kinds of stuff, and it’s all sectioned out into little pieces. What I miss about the music business is that camaraderie of hearing something – I’m sure that among young people, that’s probably still going on, you know – “ooh, did you listen to KK-whatever radio station, wasn’t that a hip song this morning?” It’s mostly within the hip hop thing, which is not very melodic usually.

No, it’s more like “did you download that last song illegally?”

Ha ha, yeah. That’s a whole other story.

People are sort of piecing together their own playlists. A song can be a great hit, but your neighbor might not have heard of it.

Yeah, it’s more “me, me, me” rather than “we, we, we.” At least that’s how it seems to me at my age. And I don’t have kids, so I’m not intimately connected with the music scene, but it is kind of an iPod generation, and there’s some good in that. On one hand, there’s more selections of stuff that you can find, on the other hand, most of it’s crap.

At least compared to a lot of the great songs of the seventies and eighties.

I know you mentioned Jeff Porcaro. I can’t say Jeff was a close friend, but he was great to me. Dean Parks played on one of my first albums, and I think I met Jeff through Dean or at a session with Dean, and Jeff liked my songs. This was pre-Toto. I remember going to see Jeff at an ASCAP awards thing where Toto received an award, and I came over to him in my rented tux, and he was just so genuine. He said, “let me know if you need me to play on any demos for free”, you know. He just loved doing the music and was so enthusiastic. I was invited over to his house on a street called Valley Heart, and for a few minutes I was in a band with Dean and Jeff and, I can’t remember who else. Musically, I wasn’t up to par, but they never said anything about it, I could just tell. ‘Cause they were just there to have fun. I think we called ourselves the Valley Heart Band, and we probably were in existence for about a week [chuckles].

Sounds like a pretty good band, though.

Oh God. I knew even then I was out of my league, but nobody was making me feel that way, it’s just, you know, I was more the songwriter type, self-taught and not using the right fingers on the keyboard, no technique. Those were great times, and there was an equanymity across the line, there wasn’t anybody looking arrogantly at anybody else, you know. Jeff’s passing was a surprise and a big loss, because he kind of symbolized that era of “hey, let’s just hang out and play, let’s jam. So-and-so’s got a song, let’s play it.” It was not all business, you know.

That’s what I’m getting, I think, from listening to the music. There’s this vibe that just leaps out at me. The songs are diverse, and some of the records that those guys you mentioned, Jeff and Deane and the session crew, some of them are geared towards soul, and some of them are more jazz-oriented, but there’s this playfulness, this “let’s have a good time” type vibe. That’s what makes this music so special to me, I think. It’s neat to hear you describe it like that.

Yeah. Some of that may have been slightly enhanced by drug use.

Were you into drugs at all?

No, I drank. I didn’t drink to excess, but that was my drug of choice, and that’s a drug. I’m not saying that I saw much of it, like when I described the Valley Heart Band situation – nobody was high that I knew about, but Jeff had a reputation, and I know that musicians would use a lot of marihuana and various versions there of. Some people I guess were into cocaine. I didn’t really pay that much attention ’cause I stayed away from it, but I remember at my first album, seeing some drug use going on while they were playing, and watching it kind of in a naïve way, going “oh, wow”, you know. I don’t want to go into details, because it’s no big deal that somebody did something back in the seventies. They’ve all come to terms with themselves, and they’re either here, or they’ve self destructed. But a lot of the rock ‘n’ roll stuff was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, you know.

That continues to be a motivation for some people to this day, getting into music to get free drugs.

Yeah, but I certainly wouldn’t reduce it all to that, because you’re onto something that was legitimate, and it was about people’s attitudes and feelings, and I don’t want to lay it all at the feet of chemicals.

Well, that’s good to hear. By some accounts, coke was pretty prevalent in the session scene. (LE tells an anecdote from David Foster’s book about session contractors asking about drugs of choice)

I’m glad I wasn’t that hip, because I’m glad I’m still here. I got by with relatively little damage. I realized that alcohol was not as fun as it once was, and I was pissed about that, because I used to be able to have a couple of drinks and play the same old songs, and not feel that it was boring, you know. When I was playing other people’s songs. It got to be where it wasn’t getting me off like it used to, so I looked at my family history and got some information about the disease of alcoholism, and I just decided to stop, and I never started again. So that’s been about 30 years.

Good for you, man.

Well, it was. And at the same time, I’d been medicating myself with alcohol for depression, and I realized that I had a problem with depression, and I started figuring out how to deal with that. It wasn’t like “he quit drinking and everything was fine,” you know, it was “he quit drinking and got more in touch with himself and the reasons why he was drinking in the first place” [chuckles].

End of part one. Read part two of this interview here, and be sure to check out Alan’s music at his website, alanoday.com.

I’m listing 10 must-own albums in an attempt to define the musical genre of the music scene this book project is all about. Read part 1 of this article here.

The final five albums you need to run out and purchase ASAP are as follows:

	Christopher Cross: Christopher Cross (1979) Christopher Cross’ rapid slide from omnipresence into obscurity is one of the great mysteries of pop music history. A fresh face on the scene at 29, he swept away the four major Grammys at the 1980 award ceremony – an unmatched feat to this day. His self-designated “pop ‘n’ roll” immediately hit a major chord with the American public, and his self-titled debut album, propelled by three hit singles, found its way into many a record shelf across the country. Cross’ pleasant melodies, coupled with Michael Omartian’s crisp production and stellar cameos by some of SoCal’s finest singers, provided the perfect musical companion to carefree days along the California coast. Standout Tracks: Ride Like The Wind, Sailing Get it here: iTunes Amazon
	Boz Scaggs: Middle Man (1980) With “Middle Man”, producer Bill Schnee and arranger/keyboardist David Foster brought the absolute best out of erstwhile bluesman Boz Scaggs and created one of the coolest albums in LA history. Everything from the effortless, playful swing of the drum tracks to Scaggs’ trademark detached yet soulful delivery is almost uncannily impeccable. Gone is the grittiness of the artist’s previous offerings, in favor of Schnee’s sparkling hi-fi approach. The songwriting is outstanding, treading a fine line between dance numbers and controlled yet energetic rockers. If Christopher Cross is the sound of a long, sunny day out in the yacht, Scaggs takes us to his penthouse pad for the afterparty. Standout tracks: Jojo, You Got Some Imagination Get it here: iTunes Amazon
	Kenny Loggins: Keep The Fire (1979) After striking up a writing partnership with then Doobie Brothers frontman Michael McDonald, Loggins was setting himself up for several Grammy awards at the turn of the decade. His vocal performance on “This Is It” earned him well-deserved accolades the same year that the Doobies took “What a Fool Believes” to the top of the charts. Though not the most polished-sounding album, “Keep The Fire” showcases Kenny Loggins and his backing band at the top of their game. Multi-track recording pioneer Tow Dowd helped Loggins couple his penchant for old-school rock ‘n’ roll with his flower power aesthetics to create a true west coast classic. Standout tracks: This Is It, Love Has Come of Age Get it here: iTunes Amazon
	Gino Vannelli: Nightwalker (1981) Canadian drummer/vocalist/songwriter Gino Vannelli moved to Los Angeles in the mid-seventies after landing a record deal with Herb Alpert’s A&M Records. Over the next few years, Vannelli, aided by his brothers Joe and Ross, made dramatic vocals over meticulously constructed backing tracks his trademark sound, and eventually found mainstream success with his 1978 ballad “I Just Wanna Stop.” On “Nightwalker”, his label debut on Arista, he perfected his progressive fusion approach to the California sound with a set that was destined to give burgeoning musicians worldwide sore fingers for decades. Standout tracks: Santa Rosa, Stay With Me Get it here: Amazon
	Bill Champlin: Runaway (1981) Despite initial doubts and a concerned phone call from Kenny Loggins, Bill Champlin joined then-struggling horn outfit Chicago in 1981. Bringing with him his friend and longtime collaborator David Foster, the former Sons of Champlin singer played a key role in the band’s sudden turn of fortune. The one downside to the union was that it didn’t give Elektra much incentive to market the album Champlin had just recorded with Foster at the helm. Champlin’s second solo album, “Runaway” came and went largely without notice. Still, it remains a cult favorite to this day, striking the critical balance between commercial appeal and musical sophistication with pinpoint precision. Standout tracks: Satisfaction, Without You Get it here: iTunes

Whew, that’s a lot of quality stuff right there. There are a few glaring omissions from the list, like Marc Jordan’s seminal “Blue Desert” and Maxus’ self-titled album, but they’re nigh on impossible to find on CD or even iTunes these days. I’ll do a write-up of the hard-to-find classics in a week or two.

Disclaimer: One of the criteria for selection is availability. That means that some of my favorite genre milestones will have to wait for the collector’s guide list. Also, a lot of albums have one or two fantastic songs without being a great album as a whole. I have a feeling these albums will be discussed at length later.

It appears I’m not the only one interested in getting my favorite music more attention. The Norwegian business daily Dagens Næringsliv ran an article today, written by Norwegian journalist and musician Ole Martin Ihle, commenting on how commercially-minded music is generally disregarded in music history. I’d post a link, but it appears to be a paper-only piece so far.

Ole Martin and I are definitely on the same page here, and he was kind enough to mention my book and this website in the final paragraph of the article. This is a labor of love for me, and I’m thrilled that other people also find value in my work.

Also, it appears that several sites have posted links to this site today, Blue Desert and The Westcoast/AOR Music Site among them. Thanks, you guys!

Defining a musical genre is trickier than you might think. I’ve been poring over my music collection trying to come up with a phrase that evokes the characteristics of the music I’m writing about, but I’ve had no luck so far. Describing the style in musical terms is also pretty tough, considering the wide range of musical expressions within the style. Artists and producers bring their own influences and sensibilities to the table – some are jazz crooners, some are fusion fiends, some are full-on rock singers in sheep’s clothing, and there’s a lot of soul going on, blue-eyed or otherwise.

All I know so far is this: After listening to this music most of my life so far, I can pretty much tell when I listen to an album whether it was recorded in Los Angeles between 1975 and 1985. Sometimes I can tell just by looking at the cover. There’s a certain California vibe to it all, the late seventies/early eighties sound is easy to spot, and the cast of characters in the studio invariably bring their own special brand of style.

So I’ve decided that I’m not really writing about a musical genre, as much as I’m writing about a body of music produced in a geographically limited area, for a limited time, by a limited group of people. In other words, I’m writing about the output of the Los Angeles studio scene from roughly 1977 through 1983.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the music in question, and you feel the need to know what the fuss is about, I’ve compiled a list of CDs that are easily available at several online retailers. If you give one or more of these albums a reasonable amount of attention and nothing sticks, maybe this music isn’t for you. I wouldn’t give up too easily, though. Once you work your way through the layers of retro sound and attitude, there’s a lot of great music to be found.

Here are the first five albums, in no particular order:

	Airplay: Airplay (1980) By 1980, David Foster and Jay Graydon were hitting their stride. Fresh off a huge hit single and songwriting breakthrough with Earth Wind & Fire’s “After the Love Has Gone”, the duo were given the chance to shine on their own. The result is a showcase of the talent in their circle of friends and colleagues. Strong melodies and arrangements as well as amazing musicianship throughout helps make Airplay the must-own CD for any serious fan of the genre. Standout tracks: Nothin’ You Can Do About It, After The Love Has Gone Get it here: Amazon
	Toto: Toto IV (1982) Three brothers, two of their high school friends, and a couple of session aces picked up along the way, Toto built their chops backing major touring and recording artists before striking out on their own in 1978. Their double platinum debut album proved a hard act to follow, but they hit it out of the park in 1982 with “Toto IV”. Panned by the critics and adored by the public, IV received six Grammy awards and spawned five hit singles. A true classic. Standout Tracks: Rosanna, Africa Get it here: iTunes Amazon
	Pages: Pages (1981) Childhood friends Richard Page and Steve George lit up the LA scene with their sensitive, soulful songs and fusion-informed sophisti-pop as the nucleus of Pages. Unlikely candidates for mass appeal, the pair were most successful as the background vocal darlings of the session world. That is, until they went out and bought DX-7s and industrial strength hair products, formed Mr. Mister and wrote “Broken Wings” and “Kyrie” in the mid-eighties. Their last album under the Pages moniker stands as testimony to their amazing songwriting skills. Produced by Jay Graydon and featuring top-shelf session players, their second eponymous effort should not be missed. Standout tracks: O.C.O.E. (Official Cat of the Eighties), Sesatia Get it here: Amazon
	Michael McDonald: If That’s What It Takes (1982) Missouri native McDonald moved out west and immediately made a splash as touring keyboardist and background vocalist for Steely Dan. When the ‘Dan disbanded their touring ensemble to focus on their studio endeavors, McDonald was picked up by San Jose rockers The Doobie Brothers. He made his mark right away, penning the title track for their 1976 album “Takin’ It to the Streets”, which gave the Doobies a much-needed hit single. By the turn of the decade, fans and critics alike were screaming for a solo album, and they were not disappointed. Though not as crisp-sounding as some of its contemporaries, “If That’s What It Takes” makes up for it with deep, soulful grooves and quality playing throughout. Standout tracks: I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near), Love Lies Get it here: iTunes Amazon
	Al Jarreau: Breakin’ Away (1981) A preacher’s kid from Milwaukee, Al Jarreau grew up singing in the church choir. After paying his dues at wedding receptions and jazz clubs, he was spotted by a Warner Bros. Records representative in 1975, and promptly launched himself into an international career that’s still going strong. After a few initial jazz-tinged albums, he hooked up with producer Jay Graydon and found widespread commercial success, spearheaded by the singles “Mornin’” and “We’re In This Love Together”. “Breakin’ Away” earned Jarreau two Grammys and remains his biggest selling album. Rolling Stone called it “an engaging mixture of strutting slow songs and jazzy set pieces”, and claimed it placed the artist “dead center in Los Angeles’ haut monde melting pot of pop-funk fusion music.” Who am I to disagree? Standout tracks: Breakin’ Away, My Old Friend Get it here: iTunes Amazon

That’s the first batch. Go ye forth and get educated.

UPDATE: Read part 2 here.

Disclaimer: One of the criteria for selection is availability. That means that some of my favorite genre milestones will have to wait for the collector’s guide list. Also, a lot of albums have one or two fantastic songs without being a great album as a whole. I have a feeling these albums will be discussed at length later.

Welcome to the site! You’re probably wondering why you’re here. I’ll try to explain:

The big bang of the LA studio scene took place somewhere half-way through the seventies. The singer-songwriter crowd crawled out of their Laurel Canyon enclosure and discovered soul music and jazz, and a handful of young but supremely skilled musicians, songwriters and producers were standing by to further guide them towards the light.

Together they owned the charts and hearts of the world for nearly a decade, culminating in Michael Jackson’s 1983 Grammy landslide. When Lionel Richie ushered the Olympic Games – and with it, the collective focus of the world – out of Los Angeles in 1984, the Brits had already grabbed the baton back and run away with it.

I’ve been researching this golden era of commercially oriented popular music for a while now, and I’m ceaselessly fascinated by all aspects of it. If success in terms of airplay, record sales and awards doesn’t warrant closer inspection in and of itself, the sheer geographical concentration of musical talent should be enough to raise a few eyebrows.

The music from this period is usually disregarded by critics and historians as conveyor belt music, soulless bubble-gum ditties with little to no artistic merit, wrapped in calculated fluff designed to move feet and dollar bills.

In my ears, there’s always been so much more to it than that. Although the DIY ethics of the punk movement remain fashionable to this day, being good at what you do shouldn’t have to equal immediate disqualification from the annals of music history.

So I’ve decided to gather as much information on the subject as I possibly can, and collect the available facts, the memories from the people who were part of the scene, as well as a few thoughts of my own, in a documentary-style book.

I’m hoping to be able to use this blog as a writing tool. I will be publishing article drafts, finished snippets, raw interview transcripts, and random thoughts here – as well as the odd album recommendation. A podcast with samples from the music I’m writing about will also be a semi-regular feature on the site. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got something on your mind.

Now let’s go write that book.