Tune Tag #81 with Jackie Ralston of "Music of the Day": Rush, Billy Harvey, Toto, Eric Johnson, Liaison, Hall & Oates, System of a Down, Scritti Politti
Jackie's music of this day is a Tune Tag grab-bag of the classic, the legendary, and the little-heard, all designed to help you forget the cares of the day! C'mon in, and come see what you'll hear!
“Hey, Jackie…look who’s here!”
Welcome to Tune Tag, of Music of the Day!
Music of the Day taps in to Jackie’s deep love of music, mostly featuring whatever song pesters her until she writes about it! Her parents had eclectic musical tastes, which are represented and extended at MotD. One of her favorite things to do is discover unusual instruments and music to American ears, and share them.
Jackie has worn a lot of professional hats: The one that fits best is “word wrangler.” She’s currently an editor, proofreader, and fact-checker and is looking for work that adds “writer” to that mix. Her website, WordPlay, is where she focuses on a wider array of subjects!
Last week, Tune Tag enjoyed the company of of Music’s Most Underrated:
Next week, tune in for the Tune Tag stylings of of the brand new Linda Brady’s Revival Substack!
Jackie’s song #1 sent to Brad: Billy Harvey, “Piggyback Ride,” 2004
Jackie’s rationale: I was happily surprised when Brad invited me to play Tune Tag with him, then immediately splatted into a vat of impostor syndrome. The first song sets the tone for the journey, and how could I possibly choose just one song? I also didn’t want to be predictable right out the gate, so I set two rules that constrained me:
The first song couldn’t be from anyone I’ve featured at Music of the Day, and it couldn’t feature the flute, an instrument that both Brad and I learned to play.
After a couple of hours of fretting, the radio station in my mind fed me a terrific leadoff song: It’s got a meaty bass and lo-fi vocals that I’ve yet to get enough of. And, it’s brash, yet also sweet ...a perfect confidence booster for me to lead with!
I don’t remember how I discovered Billy Harvey over 20 years ago. My memory is that his website was interactive, simulating walking to different areas/rooms where one could click on Billy to hear one of the songs on his Pie album.
My kids and I had a lot of fun with it, and ultimately I decided I needed to have the music, so I bought a digital copy of the full album. I’m so happy to have been reminded of it, and to discover that he’s still making music.
Brad’s song #1 sent to Jackie: Eric Johnson, “Paperback Writer,” 2002
Per Discogs: Souvenir is an album by Eric Johnson released in 2002. It is a collection of previously unreleased material spanning 25 years. The album was unique in that it was only available for purchase through Eric Johnson’s website. The album was released between his Venus Isle in 1996 and Bloom in 2005.
Jackie’s response: First, I appreciate the gentle nudge to explore more of Johnson's work via this delectable cover. The combination of his style and a great Beatles song is fire!🔥
Both Billy Harvey and Eric Johnson have Austin connections (as does Brad, if memory serves [Brad: Yep! Eric was born in Austin in 1954; I was born the following year in Houston, and raised there; I moved to Austin in ‘93, and have lived here since]).
Both of these songs focus on achieving dreams or goals. I can also cover two links with one song, and I knew straight away whom I’d volley back with. But I had a rule for the rest of this Tune Tag: no repeats of songs I’ve written about at MotD. Fortunately, the song that came to mind has not yet turned up at my place, so I’m coming in hot with my favorite band, Rush.
Brad’s rationale: One guy with a very similar title that’s just shy of the same number of syllables (“Paperback Ride” to “Paperback Writer”)! Of the 115 + covers of this Lennon-McCartney classic since May 1966, most are by bands or groups of some kind (as opposed to single artists)! I didn’t listen to all, but I came close….and, it wasn’t pretty.
With such an iconic and unique-sounding song, you’d better either slay this thing out the box, or simply approach it from such a different direction, there’s no way your take will come close to being compared to The Beatles’ original! As most, if not all, were, Paul’s song is as much a product of George Martin’s production genius as the great players and singers who laid it down.
As Lennon told Hit Parader in 1972, “Paperback Writer” was primarily written by McCartney: “I think I might have helped with some of the lyrics,” he continued. “Yes, I did. But it was mainly Paul’s tune.”
But, the real story that pins this Tag is one Jackie couldn’t possibly know, but it’s why my mind went immediately to this song when I saw her “Paperback Ride”!
When The Beatles’ eventual chart-topper in the UK, the U.S., Ireland, W. Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Norway was released in May ‘66, I was 11, and clearly remember sitting in the back of the family car with Mom driving.
Thankfully, she always had Houston’s Top 40 KILT-AM on, and every time the song popped up, I always thought they were singing, “Paperback rider”! I, of course, would then picture a tiny guy flying through the air on a small, softcover book! Mom read paperbacks, so I was familiar with that term and the concept. Homophones being what they are, my pre-adolescent mind simply went to “someone who rides” rather than “someone who writes”….ironic, no? (he wrote).
Regular readers will know I generally pay little to no attention to lyrics (which was certainly true at 11…I started early ignoring a song’s words….I was the king of irony…apparently!), so me picking out a reference to Lear or a novel with a thousand pages was just not gonna happen!
My Beatles adoration began more than two years before (a month before I turned 9)…y’know, when this happened, and I was on the floor a foot away from the TV:
An informative video about the Austin, Texas native, Eric Johnson, and his axes: bold as love:
Jackie’s song #2: Rush, “Mission,” 1989 (live)
Brad’s response: From Eric Johnson’s Beatles cover to a live Rush track called “Mission.” Yeah, comin’ up short, I am, on finding a link of any sort. Something about a “dream with a mission.” I’m guessing perhaps a man….with a mission? I think I have my next song…
Jackie’s rationale: Eric Johnson opened for Rush on the Roll the Bones tour in 1991. My brother and I saw him in Cincinnati and were blown away (print ad for the show above). Our seats were stage right and decently close, which is where Johnson hung out for most of his set. That was also Alex Lifeson’s stage position, so we were treated to a good view of two guitar masters at work that night!
Rush didn’t play “Mission” on that tour, but it was already firmly established in my heart. It’s on their 1987 album Hold Your Fire, which was what made me a ride-or-die Rush fan, in part because that was the first tour I got to see them on. That’s why I chose this live performance from their A Show of Hands live album.
The music was excellent, and Alex, Geddy, and Neil were having a lot of fun the night we saw them in Dayton. Alex had a pizza delivered to him on stage, and Geddy switched up some lyrics in “Tom Sawyer” that had the audience laughing.
Hold Your Fire came out about a month after my mom had been diagnosed with glioblastoma (the same brain cancer that took Neil Peart’s life in 2020), and had surgery, which revealed a grim prognosis. So several songs on the album have intense personal meaning for me:
“Mission” was instrumental in motivating me to finish my doctoral dissertation—so much so that I included a sentence crediting them and the song in its acknowledgments. Obviously, it also continues the positive theme here, which has become important to me again.
Brad’s song #2: Liaison, “Man With a Mission,” 1989
Jackie’s response: Well, the “mission” connection is obvious, which makes me think Brad has an ulterior motive here. Is he trying to hint that I’m getting too sappy? Or is he leaning in on that late ‘80s rock sound? The band’s overall sound is reminding me of some other band whose name escapes me... kinda generic though too, except for the drumming. [Brad: At the time, Jackie, I was hearing traces of ‘70s classic rockers like REO, Head East, and Foreigner in Liaison’s sound…slickly-produced melodic dynamism with up-front guitars!]
Discovering that Liaison was a Christian rock band was the equivalent of a needle-scratch across an LP for me. No disrespect intended to any true Christians, but that’s a path I can’t pursue. So what else is there?
Digging around, I discovered that the drummer is someone I should have known back in the day. Jeff Porcaro did a lot of session work and was a cofounder of Toto. So I have options: Porcaro worked with scads of other music legends. Uhhhhh ... that’s too many options for this indecisive person and I want to explore Toto’s discography anyway, so that’s where we’re going.
Brad’s rationale: Popular session drummer (and Toto timekeeper), Jeff Porcaro, a man on a musical mission, guested on the Liaison sessions; he’d be gone 3 years later. For 1989, and a band in the little-heard and musically unheralded CCM genre, to me, the dynamics are off the charts (courtesy of producer, Bruce Baumgart), with stunning guitar work throughout, not to mention the drums!
I happened to be in the very Orange County (CA) studio the band used to record it to listen to the entire album upon its completion, at a listening party. My fiancé at the time was a bigwig for a local Christian record and book store, Lighthouse (in Long Beach). She knew the Melby brothers (Lary, lead vocals, guitar, bass, keys, and Tim, guitar, keys, backing vocals), and invited me to their debut Liaison album unveiling.
Jackie’s song #3: Toto, “She Knows the Devil,” 1992
Brad’s response: From their 1992 Kingdom of Desire album, Jackie’s obviously tagging to the Christian message of the Melby brothers’ “Man With a Mission,” and Toto’s “She Knows the Devil (and the devil knows me),” in a keen, cagey tag!
Toto is in the midst, here (as I research), of a radical metamorphosis: They’re but a shell of their former ‘70s and ‘80s hit-making selves. This would be drummer Jeff Porcaro’s final album, as he passed away, at 38, during tour rehearsals in August ‘92. Guitarist, Steve Lukather has taken over the lead vocalist role after Bobby Kimball and Joseph Williams. John Jessel and Steve Porcaro share synth roles. The band and Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar produced. Veteran producer, Bob Clearmountain, mixed.
Jackie’s rationale: I thought it would take me a while to find something suitable, but I found the perfect song on the first Toto album I looked at: “She Knows the Devil” is a banger from the band’s 1992 album, Kingdom of Desire. It’s the last to feature Jeff Porcaro, as he died at just 38 years old one month before it was released.
His brother, Mike’s tasty bass riff is the perfect intro, Steve Lukather burns up both the guitar and lead vocals, and David Paich’s keys and backing vocals round out the rich, tight sound. The entire band is credited with writing “She Knows the Devil,” leaving me unable to shout out whoever decided to drop “Mephistopheles” in the rhyme scheme. I don’t know how I slept on Toto, but damn, I’ve been missing out!
FRONT ROW & BACKSTAGE with a bit of a kick-start for you, Jackie!👇
Brad’s song #3: Hall & Oates, “Dance on Your Knees/Out of Touch,” 1984
Jackie’s response: Day-umn! I didn’t need another reason to despise music execs, but this track delivered one. I’ve never heard “Dance on Your Knees” before, and that is criminal. It’s so energetic and out there—then it backs off, the synths swell, and the “Out of Touch” motif drops in ... my knees go weak every time. If I’ve learned nothing else from this little adventure, it is that I definitely need to listen to more studio albums. “Soul really matters to me,” indeed!
But what’s the connection? Not seeing anything obvious, I started digging in to the personnel, and saw that Bob Clearmountain (above, in decades an arm’s length apart) mixed both Kingdom of Desire and Big Bam Boom. Reading up on him, I learned that he’s credited with being the first “mixing engineer.” We all owe him a great debt for that. Like Jeff Porcaro, Clearmountain has a long list of music legends he’s worked with!
Brad’s rationale: This’ll get us out of the thematic tags of the previous coupla songs, but, it was close! So, Bob Clearmountain: He mixed the Toto album, and along with co-producing with Hall & Oates (and Arthur Baker on “Dance on Your Knees”), Clearmountain engineered this 1984 album.
He also produced and mixed the 1981 G.E. Smith solo album, In the World (Mirage/Atlantic Records, U.S.), from which album I was going to choose “Nuns with Guns” to go up against the “She” who “Knows the Devil”! Hey, you can’t be too careful! And, of course, Mr. Smith was H&O’s lead guitarist for many years (and the SNL bandleader for years), including the recording of this song….and, in this live performance:
A bit of a drill-down on the far-overlooked 1989 album by Arthur Baker:
Jackie’s song #4: System of a Down, “Boom!,” 2002
Brad’s response: 1/3 of the Hall & Oates Big Bam Boom album…..“BOOM!” This album was produced by the remarkable Rick Rubin. Many productions from which to choose with the Rubin name…none more impressive (or altruistic or historically significant) than his production of Johnny Cash’s cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt.” But, this “Boom,” I’m afraid, led me right to my Scritti Politti sweet spot, 1985’s “Boom There She Was”!
Jackie’s rationale: Again, Brad has given me many tempting streams to fish in. This time, I’m staying true to my oeuvre at MotD and returning with an obvious shot, because it’s what the radio station in my mind served up when I saw the title of the album “Dance on Your Knees/Out of Touch” is on.
As with so many artists in my music library, I don’t remember how I discovered System of a Down (SoaD). A vague memory is that one of my step-kids played a song for me, thinking I’d be shocked or summat. I liked the infusion of Middle Eastern sounds into metal, so I went looking for more and really liked what I found. I have three albums in my library, including Steal This Album!. It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to any of them.
The theme of “Boom!” is pretty obvious and sadly, still too relevant today. There’s an official song video that was filmed by
Brad’s song #4: Scritti Politti, “Boom There She Was,” 1988
Jackie’s response: Whew! Looking so ‘80s and sounding so fresh and funky ... what a way to wrap up! I’d heard of Scritti Politti back in the mid-’80s, but to my knowledge, I haven’t heard any of their music. Judging by this song, it’s probably just as well—not being able to look up all the references online would have been frustrating. Thanks for giving me another band to explore, Brad!
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Thank you so much, Brad; this was buckets of fun! I suspect you've infected a few people with your "paperback rider" mondegreen too.
This was a lot of fun! Jackie’s one of my regular reads on Substack and she didn’t disappoint. Both of you threw out a bunch of gems, both from artists well known and completely unknown to me. Lots to explore!