Apparently the radio gods knew I'd have a lunchtime errand to run. On KFOG's New Music Thursday, I heard the latest R.E.M. single. Forget the lyrics but the chord structure blew my mind:
vi - bVI - IV - bIII in the verse, I - V - IV - ii in the chorus.
(Or if you prefer sheet-music style: E minor, E-flat major, C major, B-flat major in the verse; G (the tonic), D, C, A minor in the chorus. Then the crescendo to the finish, with a sustained E-flat chord until the E minor at the *very* end.)
Now from the sublime to the ridiculous: You know how classic rock stations sometimes use the "[band name] yesterday... [band name] today" to link together two songs from one been-around-awhile band. This time it was Scorpions yesterday and today. Their new song sounds like what you'd expect a Scorpions song to sound like, though come to think of it even it had fairly interesting chord structure.
Even though the song is in C (not really major, not really minor, I guess more minor), most of the verse stays on an Ab (major 7) chord, finally resolving to Cm(7), guitar riff C-C-Eb-C-(ascending)-Bb, etc. Or, from the chorus, you could say the song is in E-flat, since the sequence there is Cm, Fm, Eb, Bb.
And then enough of the music theory and onto the fun stuff: "The Bad Touch" and "Closer" back-to-back on Live 105, where they did an hourlong block of sex-themed music. I claim you can't hear "The Bad Touch" in your car without rolling a window down and cranking, at least I can't.
Bonus points if you offend someone, massive bonus points if you offend someone in a community where you'd have thought it'd be difficult to, as in Berkeley, CA. (Asian Mom conspicuously rolled her window up one lane over.) As for "Closer," a couple of you know Mark Coen, who beyond his TRASH status used to "chaperone" the Boston U. team to tournaments to fulfill a bureaucratic requirement.
Once we had a really crowded van and as Mark was getting into the van, his size and its size led to mild slapstick, made 100 times funnier in that "Closer" happened to be in its opening bars on the radio as Mark was making his squeeze-in entrance. All about the mental image, I suppose.
