NOTHING TO LOSE

MICHAEL LEARNS TO ROCK

SONGWRITERS: JASCHA RICHTER; KARE WANSCHER; MIKE LENTZ & SOREN MADSEN

COUNTRY: DENMARK

ALBUM: NOTHING TO LOSE

LABEL: MLTR MUSIC

GENRE: ROCK

YEAR: 1997

 

           Michael Learns to Rock(also known as MLTR) is a Danish soft rock and pop rock band formed in 1988. The band currently consists of Jascha Richter, Mikkel Lentz and Kåre Wanscher. Søren Madsen was an original member of the group since its formation but left in 2000. The band has sold over 11 million records over the course of their career, with the majority sold in Scandinavia and Asia. Despite being Danish, the band performs songs in English. The band has attributed its success in Asia to their drug-free, clean-living image and to singing in English as a second language.

            MLTR has earned gold and platinum status for records in many countries and won many awards, including the Gold Preis Award from RSH, Germany and "The Best Performing Act of the Year" at the SEA Grammy Awards in Singapore. In addition, their song "Take Me to Your Heart" was awarded "most downloaded single of the year 2006" with 6 million or more paid downloads. The band has recorded nine studio albums as well as a number of live and greatest hits albums. Their latest studio album, Still, was released on 21 March 2018.

           During the peak of their popularity in the mid and late 1990s, MLTR was described by critics as being "as good (if not better) a band as any current big name group out of America or the UK or the Australia." According to the band's record label releases, their sound is "the perfect balance of a Scandinavian glow and the international pop song that has been instrumental in forming the compelling sound of the band", although the lead singer and songwriter, Jascha Richter, disagrees with this, maintaining that the music defies geographical categorization.

            Nothing to Lose is the fourth studio album of the Danish soft rock band Michael Learns to Rock. It was released on September 12, 1997 by Medley Records in Denmark. Like the previous album, Played on Pepper(1995), it was mainly produced by the band itself. Guitar player Mikkel Lentz said the band programmed new beats during the mixing process as they wanted to experiment a bit more with this album. While the band's previous albums relied heavily on soft rock ballads, Nothing to Lose also contains a rockier sound intended to suit the European market. Bass guitar player Søren Madsen debuts as songwriter on the track "Magic".

           In Denmark, Nothing to Lose sold 25.000 copies on the day of release. In May 1998, the album had sold 500.000 copies worldwide, with 70.000 copies being sold in Denmark.

          The fourth single, "I'm Gonna Be Around" was re-produced by Per Magnusson and David Kreuger for its single release. The song was "written especially for the United States" according to lead singer Jascha Richter. It was later included on the compilation álbum MLTR(1999).

There are times

When you make me laugh

There are moments when you drive me mad

There are seconds when

I see the light

Though many times you made me cry

 

There's something

You don't understand

I want to be your man

 

Nothing to lose

Your love to win

Hoping so bad

That you'll love me in

I'm at your feet

Waiting for you

I've got time

And nothing to lose

 

There are times

When I believe in you

These moments when I feel close to you

There are times I think

That I am yours

Though many times I feel unsure

 

There's something

You don't understand

I want to be your man

 

Nothing to lose

Your love to win

Hoping so bad

That you'll let me in

I'm on your feet

Waiting for you

I've got time

And nothing to lose

 

I'll always be around you

Keep an eye on you

And I won't let you run

'Cause you are the only one

 

Nothing to lose

Your love to win

Hoping so bad

That you'll let me in

I'm at your feet

Waiting for you

I've got time

And nothing to lose.

THE GIRL I KNEW SOMEWHERE

THE MONKEES

SONGWRITER: MICHAEL NESMITH

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: HEADQUARTERS

LABEL: RCA VICTOR

GENRE: POP ROCK

YEAR: 1967

 

          The Monkees were a rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose line-up consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was conceived in 1965 by television producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the situation comedy series of the same name(described by Dolenz as "a TV show about an imaginary band ... that wanted to be the Beatles... was never successful".). Music credited to the band was released on LP, as well as being included in the show, which aired from 1966 to 1968. The group's popularity would ultimately endure well beyond the television series.

         While the sitcom was a mostly straightforward affair, the music production quickly generated tension and controversy. Music supervisor Don Kirshner was dissatisfied with the actor/musicians' musical abilities, and he limited their involvement during the recording process, instead using a stable of professional songwriters and studio musicians to craft multiple hit albums and singles. Upset with the arrangement and facing public backlash for not playing on the recordings, the band members soon gained full control over the recording process. For two albums, the Monkees mostly performed as a group, but within a year, each member was pursuing his own interests under the Monkees name. By the end of 1968, they were once again a group in name only, the show had been canceled, and their motion picture, Head, had flopped. Tork left the band soon after, followed by Nesmith a year later, and the Monkees officially broke up in 1970.

         A revival of interest in the television show came in 1986, leading to a series of official reunion tours, a television special, and four new full-length records, spanning the next 35 years (though these rarely comprised all four members performing together). With Jones' death in 2012 and Tork's in 2019, Dolenz and Nesmith were left to embark on a farewell tour in 2021, finishing shortly before Nesmith's death at the end of the year.

         Spurred by the success of the show, the Monkees were one of the most successful bands of the 1960s. The band sold more than 75 million records worldwide making them one of the biggest-selling groups of all time with international hits, including "Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", and "Daydream Believer", and four chart-topping albums. Newspapers and magazines falsely reported that the Monkees outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined in 1967, a claim that originated from Nesmith in a 1977 interview.

       "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" is a song by the American pop rock band the Monkees, written by Michael Nesmith and first released as the B-side to the "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" single on Colgems Records on March 8, 1967. It was distributed in support of the group's third álbum Headquarters, and later appeared on the reissued version of the LP. The song was recorded as the Monkees finally achieved the independence that enabled them to freely produce their own material, with the actual band members featured on both vocals and instrumental arrangements.

          "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" peaked at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100, while its A-side "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" reached #2.

You tell me that you've never been this way before

You tell me things I know that I've heard somewhere

You're standing in the places and you're staring down through faces

That bring to mind traces of a girl, a girl that I knew somewhere

 

I just can't put my finger on what it is

That says to me, watch out, don't believe her

I can't give any reasons girl, my thoughts are bound down in a whirl

I just can't think who in the world was that girl, I know I met her somewhere

 

Someway, somehow this same thing was done

Someone, somewhere did me this same wrong

Well goodbye dear, I just can't take this chance again

My fingers are still burning from the last time

And if your love was not a game, I only have myself to blame

That's as maybe, I can't explain, just ask the girl that I knew somewhere

 

And if your love was not a game, I only have myself to blame

That's as maybe, I can't explain, just ask the girl that I knew somewhere.

 THE PRICE OF LOVE

THE EVERLY BROTHERS

SONGWRITERS: DONALD EVERLY & PHIL EVERLY

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: IN OUR IMAGE

LABEL: WARNER RECORDS

GENRE: COUNTRY ROCK

YEAR: 1966

 

           The Everly Brothers were an American country rock duo, known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing. Consisting of Isaac Donald "Don" Everly(February 1, 1937 – August 21, 2021) and Phillip "Phil" Everly(January 19, 1939 – January 3, 2014), the duo combined elements of rock and roll, country and pop, becoming pioneers of country rock.

       The duo was raised in a musical family, first appearing on radio singing along with their father Ike Everly and mother Margaret Everly as "The Everly Family" in the 1940s. When the brothers were still in high school, they gained the attention of prominent Nashville musicians like Chet Atkins, who began to promote them for national attention.

        They began writing and recording their own music in 1956, and their first hit song came in 1957, with "Bye Bye Love", written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The song hit Nº 1 in the spring of 1957, and additional hits would follow through 1958, many of them written by the Bryants, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems". In 1960, they signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", written by the brothers themselves, which was their biggest selling single. The brothers enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1961, and their output dropped off, though additional hit singles continued through 1962, with "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be)" being their last top-10 hit.

          In Our Image is an album by The Everly Brothers, originally released in 1966.

          Several of the songs had appeared on singles in 1965, where their biggest success came in the United Kingdom off the back of "The Price Of Love" (present on this album) and "Love Is Strange" (from Beat & Soul), the former of which ascended to Nº 2 on the UK Charts, but only Nº 104 in America.

          Included on the album also was the flipside for "The Price Of Love", "It Only Costs A Dime", a self-written piece.

          In December of that year, the final single "It's All Over" appeared, in an arrangement containing harpsichord and vocals. In a break from the usual routine, however, this song would feature Phil singing the principle vocal line and Don singing the harmony line a third lower. The song would later be covered by Cliff Richard.

        Revisiting their classic style of singing, they recorded the Sonny Curtis-written "I Used To Love You". Curtis, former member of The Crickets, had previously written another Everly Brothers hit single, "Walk Right Back".

          For the first 45 release of 1966, they visited the songwriting partnership of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, with a rendition of "Glitter And Gold". This arrangement, featuring fuzz guitar and harpsichord, was backed with another Brill Building number, the Howard Greenfield and Jack Keller-written "Lovey Kravezit".

          With hardly enough time to gauge the success of this single "(You Got) The Power of Love" (written by Delaney Bramlett and Joey Cooper), containing Motown influences aplenty and backed with "Leave My Girl Alone", was to hit the stores.

           Filling out the album, "The Doll House Is Empty" (later to become Warner Brothers single 5689 in February 1966), the mainstream-orientated "(Why Am I) Chained To A Memory" (Edward A. Snyder/Richard Ahlert) and "June Is As Cold As December" from Marge Barton.

Wine is sweet and gin is bitter

You drink all you can but you won´t forget her

You talk too much, you laugh too loud

You see her face in every crowd

 

That´s the price of love, the price of love

The debt you pay with tears and pain

The price of love, the price of love

Costs you more when you´re to blame

 

Kiss one girl, you kiss another

You kiss themall but you won´t recover

You´re dancing slow, you´re dancing fast

You´re happy now but that won´t last

 

That´s the price of love, the price of love

The debt you pay with tears and pain

The price of love, the price of love

Costs you more when you´re to blame

 

That´s the price of love, the price of love

The debt you pay with tears and pain

The price of love, the price of love

Costs you more when you´re to blame

 

That´s the price of love, the price of love

The debt you pay with tears and pain

The price of love, the price of love

Costs you more when you´re to blame

 

Wine is sweet and gin is bitter

You drink all you can but you won´t forget her.

LULLABY IN RAGTIME

HARRY NILSSON

SONGWRITER: SYLVIA FINE

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: A LITTLE TOUCH OF SCHMILSSON IN THE NIGHT

LABEL: RCA VICTOR

GENRE: POP-ROCK

YEAR: 1973

 

            Harry Edward Nilsson III(June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994), known professionally as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experiments, returns to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. A tenor with a 3+1⁄2octave range, Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours. The craft of his songs and the defiant attitude he projected remain touchstones for later generations of indie rock musicians.

             Born in Brooklyn, Nilsson moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to escape his family's poor financial situation. While working as a computer programmer at a bank, he grew interested in musical composition and close-harmony singing, and was successful in having some of his songs recorded by various artists such as the Monkees. In 1967, he debuted on RCA Victor with the LP Pandemonium Shadow Show, followed by a variety of releases that include a collaboration with Randy Newman(Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970) and the original children's story The Point!(1971). His most commercially successful album, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971), produced the international top 10 singles "Without You" and "Coconut". His other top 10 hit, "Everybody's Talkin'" (1968), was featured prominently in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. A version of Nilsson's "One", released by Three Dog Night in 1969, also reached the U.S. top 10.

         During a 1968 press conference, the Beatles were asked what their favorite American group was and answered "Nilsson". Sometimes called "the American Beatle", he soon formed close friendships with John Lennon and Ringo Starr. In the 1970s, Nilsson, Lennon and Starr were members of the Hollywood Vampires drinking club, embroiling themselves in a number of widely publicized, alcohol-fueled incidents. They produced one collaborative album, Pussy Cats(1974). After 1977, Nilsson left RCA, and his record output diminished. In response to Lennon's 1980 murder, he took a hiatus from the music industry to campaign for gun control. For the rest of his life, he recorded only sporadically. In 1994, Nilsson died of a heart attack while in the midst of recording what became his last album, Lost and Founnd(2019).

            Nilsson created the first remix album(Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, 1971) and recorded the first mashup song ("You Can't Do That", 1967). He was voted Nº 62 in Rolling Stone's 2015 list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time", where he was described as "a pioneer of the Los Angeles studio sound, a crucial bridge between the baroque psychedelic pop of the late Sixties and the more personal singer-songwriter era of the Seventies". The RIAA certified Nilsson Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson (1972) as gold records, indicating over 500.000 units sold each. He earned Grammy Awards for two of his recordings; Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male in 1970 for "Everybody's Talkin'" and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1973 for "Without You".

             A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night is a 1973 album of classic 20th-century standards sung by American singer Harry Nilsson. The album was arranged by Frank Sinatra's arranger Gordon Jenkins, and produced by Derek Taylor.

       In 1988, it was reissued as A Touch More Schmilsson in the Night, containing an intro and outro (studio chatter) and six additional songs from the recording sessions. The reissue cover art was based on Frank Sinatra's album cover art from In the Wee Small Hours.

         This album is notable in being a standards album produced a decade before such works started to become popular again. The title is an allusion to Shakespeare's Henry V, Act 4, in which the Chorus refers to Henry's nocturnal visit to his troops as "a little touch of Harry in the night".

Won't you play the music so the cradle can rock

To a lullaby in ragtime

Sleepy hands are creeping to the end of the clock

Play a lullaby in ragtime

You can tell the sandman is on his way

By the way

That they play

As still, as the trill, of a thrush, in a twilight high

 

So you can hear the

Rhythm of the ripples on the side of the boat

 

As you sail away to dreamland

High above the moon you hear a silvery note

As the sandman takes your hand

So rock-a-by my baby

Don't you cry my baby

Sleepy-time is nigh

Won't you rock me to a ragtime lullaby

So rock-a-by my baby

 

Don't you cry my baby

Sleepy-time is nigh

Won't you rock me to a ragtime lullaby.