The Walker Brothers

I was driving today, and had my #InternalDJ playlist on. You may remember it from a previous post.

The Walker Brothers song The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore played.

This song hit the UK charts in 1966, six years before I was born. It was originally released by Franki Valli in 1965.

I discovered recently that it is listed as Baroque Pop which was a new one to me. To be honest, I assumed it drew on Phil SPector's Wall of Sound production method and it's no big jump to assume there was influence. Then I read some more and found that Spector's work is included in the Baroque Pop category.

The mid-to-late sixties has several big musical sounds. One was Phil Spector, another was the numerous bands coming out of Britain (have you heard of The Beatles?).

British bands were certainly influenced by American Blues (eg The Animals 1964 House of the Rising Sun), then American producers took the BritSound and added to it, upon which UK musicians used techniques recieved from discs flown in from the USA. It has to be assumed influence worked back and forth, especially when you have the USA's 'Walker' brothers going to the UK in late 1964.

One of the things which happened was an inclusion of instruments beyond the tradititional pop staples of guitar, bass, and drums. While we think of these instruments in a visual of various sixties bands, those which fall into baroque pop had other orchestral instrumentation layered into the production of their music.

Harpsichords, oboes, and whole string sections right there in some of the best of the 3 minute masterpieces of the age.

Oddly music diverged somewhat. One branch embraced the depth and nuance baroque pop pioneered and developed into the much maligned Prog Rock, which helped spawn New Wave and Punk.

The other side stripped things back down to basics and focused on simple sounds and riffs which led to more involved Disco and Glam Rock, which in turn led into Electronica and New Romantic music.

Of course, that is a gross simplification of things, but provides a broad brushstroke of the action/reaction forces which moved through branches of the the music industry at the time.

The long and short of my musings from today are that it's about time Scott Walker's ouevre received a revival.

text by stuarcturnbull image from GDJ via Pixabay