Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Give Me Perfection, Give Me Phil! 
Knowing where you are going is as important as knowing how to get there. In music and in life, you need to have a road map, a storyboard, and if you are Phil Spector, a gun because his “wall of sound” was not always enough. And that is saying a lot. 
What do Ronnie Specter, from the Ronettes, Joey Ramone, from Ramones, and Brian Wilson, from the Beach Boys have in common? If you heard the title, you know it. Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”. The fullness of the music is created by using several instruments, one over the other. Why have one guitar when you can have three? Why have one piano if you can have an organ and a harpsichord too? 
Fullness, reverberation, integration… enough to create the finest neurological reactions. Musical frisson or getting the tingles when listening to music. 
There are geniuses that come up with the most amazing things. Phil Spector is one of them. What he did to the bands he was producing and his family, now that is another part of the story. I don’t intend to glamourize his violence, by any means, I just want to give a little context to the album  “The End Of The Century”.  When I hear Joey’s voice in “Baby I Love You”, my fantasies have switched from being on the dance floor of my next wedding to being in the studio, held at gunpoint, while Joey recorded vocals. I listen to the song over and over again listening for the stress in his voice, the exasperation from recording multiple times a song his heart wasn’t in. You couldn’t tell that if you didn’t know the story. Ramones loved performing covers, however, this is not their style. This is not their speed. Literally.  In general, the album is like dressing the Ramones in preppy clothing and giving them crew cuts. Their sound was corrupted. Which also makes it pretty remarkable. I like it. Joey’s New York crackly punk voice, imploring in contrast with the honey-laced strings in the song make it so memorable. Was the gun necessary? From what I’ve read, he probably wouldn’t have done it. There is no way we can really know. This is not a justification for the use of violence. This is just how it happened.
Ramones were geniuses before Spector and inspired Bono to sing. But I’ve told you that story before. I think. This is just something on the way. A story of creation. 
Ronni Benette, later Ronnie Spector, and her career were held hostage in her home, by Phil Spector. The music she made with Phil Spector put her on the map, with Cher and Sonny Bono singing “Baby I Love You” with her on the album “Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes”. This song has been recorded, covered, and obsessed over. The “wall of sound” bolsters Ronnie’s vocals, beautiful, full, and inviting to fall in love. There are so many instruments.  A producer with a dream and a motherload of instruments: pianos, horns, guitars, and maracas. It feels like a musical; operatic and deadly romantic. You know if you let it in, you won’t ever recover. 
Now, I’ve told you how Brian Wilson wrote a song for Ronnie Spector, answering her pleas in another song… “Be My Baby”. I didn’t tell you that he was obsessed with the song. Obsessed with Spector after he dismissed him from the recording of another song he had written. The vocals here overpower the instruments. Reverberating, like in a church, the instruments are merely supporting actors in the ahs and oos that make “Don’t Worry Baby” so magnificent. Continue reading

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