Those that know me tolerate my sometimes-incessant ramblings about various rock and pop music genres and artists spanning the last 50-yrs or so. The reason I possess this “knowledge” is a miss-spent life working on-air at radio stations of various formats when the engineering aspect of the business was slow over the years (which, in my mega-ego mind, always felt like a CEO turning to street-level prostitution). All the years worth of useless minutia being stored at the expense of wedding anniversary’s and children’s medical conditions now yields moments when, similar to a dementia patient, I will have a somewhat interesting revelation for no reason that makes me go back and re-examine an artist or genre to find something positive I might have missed the first time. Usually when this happens, I ping a collection of like-minded, and similarly medicated, friends with my findings and await their response…or self-esteem crushing derision. I have been encouraged by one of the members of the existential peanut gallery to include YOU on such. Anyhoo, let’s shoot the opening act and move on to today’s headliner…
For your consideration, let’s examine the band Bread. Now, most folks know this band for all the gawd-awful, delicate, love ballads that have been played millions of times by hacks with effing Ovations (probably plugged into Radio Shack adapters), at weddings dating back 30-yrs. But, at their core, Bread was typically an excellent, 2-3 guitar, rock band featuring great arrangements, vulnerable vocals, and a nice tonal sandwich of Telecasters and acoustics punctuated every now and again by tasty, humbucker-fueled, tonal shrapnel via a fellow named Larry Knechtel (RIP 2009) who usually sported a 3-pickup LP Custom. For today’s music selection, I ask you to look past the 70′s aesthetics of the video clip and dig on the tune “Guitar Man“. It is a good song, delivered with an excellent vocal and sweet, wah-wah lead work throughout…and, its all played live, nice and tight. What more could you ask for in 70′s pop?
