K3 in HD! If you’ve been paying attention, and you’ve got a really good ear, you’ll recognize a snippet of a piece of music that’s been heard previously here on DogRat, and it’s not by K3. I’ll point it out later.
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Dec/K3_2012.flv 640 360]
From the late comedian Morty Gunty is this timely and timeless ditty, detailing the death and destruction of his time, and ours.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/GuntyTheresAWar.mp3]WGBH FM 89.7 didn’t play The Writer’s Almanac Monday morning at 8:55. Is this a permanent schedule change? I hope not.
Whew! Not to worry. It’s playing right now. Don’t know what happened yesterday.
One more time trying to put my appreciation of K3 into perspective. I once posted the Rubettes’ song “Sugar Baby Love,” but it was lost eighteen months ago when a bug-ridden WordPress plug-in allowed my database to be destroyed, forcing me to restore from a backup. Here again is “Sugar Baby Love.”
http://youtu.be/3X7PvU6qYEA
No, I never cared in the least for The Bay City Rollers, but this I love. If I were going to write and produce a pop tune, you can bet it would sound like “Sugar Baby Love.” Next, ABBA ranks right up there with the best of the 70’s sicky-sweet stuff.
Listen to the 15+ seconds that start at :45 into the song. That’s it! For me that’s the song. Perfection! The same bit is repeated at 1:45. (The song is over a little after 2:30, but they drag it out.) If you think my liking ABBA means I would be inclined to see “Mama Mia!” then you don’t get it. It’s the song itself. How it’s put together, and how it sounds, that I appreciate. Something that’s “based upon it” is of no interest to me at all. In the case of ABBA, the “how it sounds” aspect depended completely upon the girls, Anni-Frid and Agnetha.
And now K3, in a piece I can’t praise enough. “Hart Verloren” pushes all sorts of buttons in so many ways, even with the terrible quality of this video. And I’m speaking as a confirmed disco hater from the 70’s who favored The Ramones, Elvis Costello and The Clash.
http://youtu.be/sEackIhp-O4
The people who create this stuff really know what they’re doing. But the thing that I didn’t get when I first encountered K3, but I certainly do now, is that K3 is successful not because of the formula, but because of Karen, Kristel and Kathleen. Accept no substitutes, of which there are now two sets.
Finally, another reason why I push K3 so much is the fact they’re happening NOW. I caught them before they stopped having hits, broke up, or went into semi-retirement. Not everything I write should be about the pop culture I loved when I was 10-15 years old. There’s also the fact I can’t compete with the big sites that talk about the Beatles, Marvel Comics, etc., and here in America I have K3 practically all to myself as a topic.
As a good counterpoint to the audio clip I posted with Jordan Rich introducing Steve LeVeille’s replacement, this is a brief excerpt from an interview LeVeille did a couple of years ago with Ed Walsh, when he was replacing longtime WBZ morning man Gary LaPierre.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/LeVeilleWalsh.mp3]I had assumed that “Overnight America” was an existing program, but apparently not. Its premiere was last night, on four stations.
http://www.kmox.com/pages/3583198.php
According to Arbitron, Boston is the #10 radio market, and St. Louis is #20. Am I missing something here about taking the overnight slot from Steve LeVeille and giving it to Jon Grayson? Who besides the guys making the decision think it was a good one to make?
http://www.arbitron.com/home/mm001050.asp
