Tune Tag #86 with Matt Fish of Best Music of All Time, Pt. 2: Neil Young, Jennifer Warnes, Miles Davis, Syreeta, Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, MFSB, Big Boy Groves
A dizzying array of the new and the old, with a jaunty mix of varied genres add to the fun in today's Tune Tag! It only gets better when one of the rising 'Stack stars joins in the festivities!
Welcome back, Matt! We missed you…until today…TAG! You’re IT!
Tune Tag is happy to host the return visit of , creator of Best Music of All Time!
Matt’s first visit was back in June 2024:
Matt: I was that kid who stayed up late, listening to my record collection on a semi-busted CD player or after-hours radio shows, where they played the deeper, weirder cuts. I became a DJ in my teens, and a full-time radio host before I was 25.
I’m that guy whose idea of time well-spent on a weekend afternoon is thumbing through record store bins for eclectic finds to add to my enormous album collection (over 150,000 songs if you count all the digital files I’ve accumulated over the years).
And now, I want to share my passion with you by exploring the greatest albums, songs, artists, labels, and eras in music history. Feel free to fall by Best Music of All Time and subscribe!
Last week, Tune Tag was pleased to give jazz guitarist, , a place to play:
And, next week,
of Musings of a Broken Record will log his return trip to The Tag!
Matt’s song #1 sent to Brad: Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker, “Up Where We Belong,” 1982
Matt’s rationale: Last time I did a Tune Tag, I was knee-deep in vintage funk and soul doing research for a write-up that ultimately went nowhere (I won’t say precisely what it was, since there’s the possibility I may try and resurrect it at some point this year)!
I’m starting this edition in much the same way: When I submitted this starting track, I was wrapping my outline for a post dedicated to the best pop songs to win an Oscar for Best Original Song. This classic narrowly missed the cut, but I thought it deserved a bit of shine in another forum, so here we are.
Whenever I hear this track, I pine for everything it represents in the “they don’t make them like they used to” conversation. Every movie from the ‘80s and ‘90s used to hinge (or literally end) on a big, sweeping ballad that, more often than not, made a dent in the pop charts, but they scarcely make them in this way anymore.
Can we chalk it up to the bummer vibes Gen Z (and others, I suppose) wallow in more frequently these days? Your mileage may vary. But, to add to that theme, they don’t make movies like An Officer and a Gentleman anymore, either, no matter how good you feel when Richard Gere carries Debra Winger out of the factory in the middle of her shift. Love stories aren’t bankable like the MCU or whatever.
Brad’s response: One thing I noticed is that the single release was listed as being 5 seconds longer (at 4 minutes) than the album track’s 3:55! That never happens! Singles, if they were at all, were always edited down to be more airplay-friendly to the good folks at commercial radio!
I was also never aware of just who wrote this song! Turns out it was longtime Phil Spector ‘60s studio-right-hand-man, Jack Nitzsche, and erstwhile ‘60s “protest singer,” Buffy Sainte-Marie as the composers, with Will Jennings penning the lyrics (Stewart Levine producing)!
(
, on her excellent Rock’n’Roll With Me, has covered protest singers at length, and all is worth enjoying by clicking here.)This song was the anchor to the soundtrack of the hit movie, An Officer and a Gentleman, a starring vehicle for both Richard Gere and Debra Winger. The song went to #1 in the U.S., and won the songwriters both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Matt’s first selection is confounding and be-deviling me with all the places I could go in finding a linking song! And, I can’t thank him enough!
One place to go would be Joe Cocker’s canon; not normally a likely place for me go, but I did go to Joe’s catalog for his 1984 cover of Squeeze’s “Tempted,” back in September ‘24 in a Tune Tag with
of The Bus.And, we welcomed lyricist, Will Jennings, FRONT ROW & BACKSTAGE, on a recent collab with
of The Vinyl Room, and our peek at Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have It All”:
We’ll try to find a new direction, this time, just to shake things up! Ah, this ought to do it!👇
Brad’s song #1 sent to Matt: Neil Young, “There’s a World,” live, 1971
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