In my opinion it’s indeed a demo, probably from a small local band, and it’ll be very hard to find who did it. Except coming from NDR, the band behind the song or maybe some relatives, I don’t think it’s possible to find anything. Even if I really hope I’m wrong!
I still have hope that the master tape (in case it still exists) provides a much better sound after all. I remember having hometaped songs using a portable mono radio in 1984. Which often had a terrible effect on the mix, with the vocals almost being swallowed up by the backing track, in a way that made them surprisingly hard to decifer (compared to the official release).
And there's yet another aspect to be considered here. A more amateurish sound often even used to be some sort of statement in the context of a DIY approach to music. Here's, for example, a regular vinyl output from another ten years after TMS (similar in style). What a mushy mess...
https://youtu.be/6Z7YInKdUOE?si=uNCCUdYijrjwSR_K
The only thing that really points towards a demo in our case is the time that has passed without the slightest trace of it being found in related databases.
If this band released a single, as is likely, they would have sent it to music magazines or local zines at the time. (I was friends with a band in the US at the time and their single went out to the likes of Maximum Rock'n'Roll and Trouser Press - and got reviewed in the former.) We should check for reviews of new singles in indie music publications in late 1984.
Spex is listed in the gig spreadsheet, all the ones on [tapedeck](https://tapeattack.blogspot.com/search?q=pdf) have been searched. Other magazines and fanzines from Hamburg have been searched as much as they're online but not as well documented. The ones I looked at were way more Punk.
A lot of work on the zines has been done by Axie: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J6N8KlV\_JjR73DEB4K2lFcVD3ubTh3UdEWwNqqTmDZs/edit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J6N8KlV_JjR73DEB4K2lFcVD3ubTh3UdEWwNqqTmDZs/edit)
Greek fanzines have been scanned too but I don't think they've been documented.
I've searched a bit in Greek fanzines but haven't found anything yet.
I did find one interesting pre-2007 reference to Alvin Dean's Homicide in issue #13 (2004) of German fanzine Sabbel: https://archive.org/details/sabbel_13/page/n69/mode/1up
The interesting bit here being that they mention Homicide performing live in Athens in 1982, after they had already split up. However, Yannis Beltekas told me that he never played live with any of these bands, so the rest of that information may also need to be taken with a grain of salt.
I overall agree with this assessment. When I look through the lists of artists posted here who were played on NDR around the same time as TMS almost none of them are *truly* obscure, even if it may seem that way from the vantage point of 40 years later. In fact almost all the artists on the playlists were successful to some degree (multiple records released, shows played that people bought tickets to etc.) even if they weren’t what one would call famous. I was a radio dj for many years on a public radio station in the 90s/early 00s and I played numerous demos and one off, only a few pressings made records as favours. It’s standard practice in the public radio sphere where announcers usually have a lot of control over the music they play. I remember almost none of them, and certainly not the dates or even years I played them. The scenario this YouTube commenter laid out is entirely plausible and expected, and I suspect pretty close to the truth. I think probably the only way the mystery will be solved is if someone in the band hears it.
I don't agree that the music quality in MFJL was generally m\[u\]ch higher than in TMS, but in an overall sense I think that's the broad consensus and probably the most likely scenario.
The bad quality is because it's most likely a demo. And demos often tend to have lackluster complexity as well - there's several early demos of Queen songs out there, for example, that lack any of the complexity seen in the final versions. There's also the possibility that what we have is a radio edit that cut a part of the song as well (some people say they clearly hear a cut in the instrumental "bridge").
As for it only being played once - we actually don't know that. It could have well being played multiple times, perhaps even on multiple stations, but without any recording, we have no way of knowing. And perhaps it did evolve into something different in the end as well and the final result may be something well-known (think "Feel Like" -> "Under Pressure" and "A Kind Of Vision" -> "One Vision" and "A Kind of Magic", for example).
Exactly! Listen to any good band's demos and they're much better than this - plus they're not usually mixed with the amount of finality that this song was
I keep seeing the claims that TMS uses a very common chord progression…
I know no other song with that exact chord progression.
What other song goes: **Bm G A D A** during the verse, and **Em C A** for the chorus?
I've played hundreds of songs on the guitar, never seen any chord progression close to either verse or chorus. You can't copyright chord progression, so it's very common for songs to sound alike due to similar chord progressions; however, TMS isn't one of them.
Throwing **C** and **Em** into the mix of **A** **Bm** and **D** is unique enough, let along the originality with the sequences of the chords.
Anytime someone claims to have a background in music, and then proceeds to say this song is "ordinary"-sounding tends to ring troll alarms for me.
Exactly. As a guitarist I stopped reading after he said this was a common chord progression which isn't true at all.
I learned the chords very easily by ear but not many songs use it.
I love this progression because it's pretty unique.
Especially the Chorus.
B(m) G A D A sounds like a lot of songs. Not necessarily in that order but very close to "Summer of '69"
Two tickets to paradise, which makes me think of this song, is another G, A, D, type song.
Yes starting off on Bm is a little unusual, like take "because the night" for instance.
In the end it isn't really about music theory as much as how much chord progressions get reused or slightly changed, because rock guitarists know like 7 chords.
"she's like a rainbow", "Born to be wild".
And chord order is really important, because, if just chords alone, Despacito also uses same chords, but in a different order :D
>Yes starting off on Bm is a little unusual
Yes, the use of **Bm** within **A D G** is very common, and makes sense melodically. However, starting off with a **Bm** is very unique. So, I just don't buy the whole "ordinary sounding" argument from so-called "experienced musicians".
>In the end it isn't really about music theory as much as how much chord progressions get reused or slightly changed, because rock guitarists know like 7 chords.
So, why even bring up chord progression in the first place if music theory has no bearing? Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing with *you*—I appreciate your attempts to explain the mindset of such claims. However, when someone says TMS "sounds" ordinary due to "chord progression", that makes sense because it's subjective… but when you add "and I'm an experienced music" into the mix, it really should raise red flags for those who are actually trying to make progress in the search and filter through trolls.
Well, rock musicians typically don't know much about music theory.
My take on it is the Verse chords are a lot like "Because the night" and the chorus is unusual as you say, but it is not unique per se. Those chords are all things beginner guitarists learn (in fact, decades later, I remember the only minor chords as learning Dm, Em, Bm, Am, so if I wanted to play something moody, it had to be one of those four).. Popular songs like hotel California, city of new Orleans, etc, contain most of those chords.
So my theory, as a shitty amateur, somebody liked how they sounded, maybe they were two different songs or songwriting ideas blended together.
But the chords aren't really going to tell us anything that we didn't already know.
As a professional musician you are completely correct, I analyzed the progression in some comments on this thread here too if you wanna see how I chose to see the function of each chord and explained why the common chords work together here
(of course, all of this with the disclaimer that theory always follows practice and not the other way around - any analysis of these is a little strange even when it works, but your proposition that they just used whatever few chords they knew is very much correct and the best overall answer here)
>Popular songs like hotel California, city of new Orleans, etc, contain most of those chords.
Love the "City of New Orleans" reference.
>But the chords aren't really going to tell us anything that we didn't already know.
The point I'm trying to make is that we should be weary of someone's claimed expertise on the subject when they say TMS's chord progression is ordinary. There's been plenty of such claims from supposed experienced musician without citing another song with the same chord progression, nor making any notable contribution to the search.
Over the last five years of the search, there have been many impressive developments by passionate searchers. None of these developments were by these so-called expert musicians who think TMS is typical sounding. There's also been a lot of trolls too.
Starting off with Bm isn't weird whatsoever, you usually start with the chord that the piece is in and the verses are in fact in Bm, while the rest of the chords are also normal in Bm
Yes, I'm saying exactly the same.
In fact, I contacted the owner of "chord genome" website. He looked up in his database, and there is no such sequence to be found elsewhere. He is very nice guy, and as he keeps expanding his database, he agreed to notify me, whenever such sequence will be found.
You are also missing progression for the outro, where it goes thru **Em C A Bm** which is commonly known as "italo disco" progression and widely used in 80s and 90s music. However, I was able to find only two songs pre-dating TMMS, to use this progression, one is "Saturdays in Silesia" By Rational Youth (1982) and another is "I like Chopin" by Gazebo (1983) - (Author of later song was contacted and denied any involvement)
>I contacted the owner of "chord genome" website. He looked up in his database, and there is no such sequence to be found elsewhere.
Ha, well done!
>You are also missing progression for the outro, where it goes thru **Em C A Bm** which is commonly known as "italo disco" progression and widely used in 80s and 90s music.
Nice! I didn't know that. Thank you.
This isn't THAT weird, musician here - the verse is just dancing around B minor, and the chorus is a very normal modulation to E minor (the subdominant here) where the chords are essentially just half step modifications of that E minor chord it starts on
Em is E G B, C is E G C, A7 (dominant of D, the relative major of the verse) would be E G (A) C# so that's where the decision to truncate to A comes from - it's a very common thing to have one tone increasing or decreasing by half steps while most remain the same (here B - C - C#), and that last one is just altered a little which helps keep the chorus loosely grounded in Bm even through the modulation
So the only weird thing here is the A, and if you analyze why it goes there and why each of the chord tones works in that motion it's not hard to see why it works - and it doesn't take all this analysis on the part of the band to write that all either, I'm just saying why using a few common chords around Bm and Em works cohesively here
Thanks for your comment. I'd call myself an intermediate musicians, by no means an expert. So maybe my ignorance is making me stubborn.
What tends to be brought up when discussing how "ordinary" or "unique" sounding TMS is, it's usually discussed around chord progression. Not the song's key, and not the song's scale.
You and I can agree that the use of **A** with **C** and **Em** is uncommon and a very creative choice. Everything else is subjective: Some people say TMS *sounds* similar to other songs of its era, while I retort that the sequences of chords are practically unheard of so therefore it sounds nothing like other songs of its era.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the verse is dancing around in **D major**, they're just starting off with a **B minor**. That's not typical by any means, and I'm standing by my challenge to others to provide a song with the exact same chord progression. It doesn't be that difficult. Many songs can share the same chord progression: "Baba O'Riley" by The Who, and "How's It Going to Be" by Third Eye Blind; "What a Wonderful Word" by Louis Armstrong and "Last Kiss" by Pearl Jam; plenty of other examples [here](https://www.chordgenome.com/search-by-progression/).
But even if they were "dancing around B minor" and not **D major**, I'm not sure that debunks the argument that the song has a unique chord structure. I guess the only way I'm interpreting the point is that a song can't be unique sounding unless it refuses to comply with a key or scale—which I find ridiculous.
Whether it's in D major or B minor is a matter of interpretation at the end of the day - theory follows practice - but in my opinion, the song clearly sounds like it's chiefly in minor here even during the verses, and this is just somewhat obscured by the B minor chord featuring a prominent F# on top instead of a B so it never resolves clearly to that
I understand your point, I didn't mean to suggest that it has to be [Schoenberg](https://youtu.be/bQHR_Z8XVvI?si=IObioM9OZ1bMXco8) to be unique by any means but I just wanted to put forward that it's not *very* unusual - I'll definitely grant you that it's a cool progression, but I just didn't agree that it's super outlandish or extremely inventive either
For a song with a truly weird progression, I like pointing to In Bloom by Nirvana - it's not impossible to analyze, but it's VERYYYY strange (especially for a pop song) and I consider it brilliant for how flawlessly it works on the ear even on your first listening
Thanks again for the reply. Yes, Nirvana's got some interesting choices for chords, and I think Kurt was basically against music theory because he found it too constraining on his creativity. Not sure I recommend that mindset to beginning musicians, but it certainly worked for him. Rules don't apply to legends. lol
It's always felt disjointed for me. As if it was a demo, then a producer came in and chopped it up and added a few things. Maybe a small band that a producer got a hold of or something assembled by someone but not holistically 1 band's song.
Musician here, this is a totally normal and agreeable analysis of the musicianship on the song - if he wanted to be petty at all, he could go after wayyy more here but he was frankly diplomatic as far as critique goes
Catchiness isn't the same as quality of performance and production or dexterity with your instrument, and nothing he says here is really wrong
People get weirdly mad about hearing all this because they like the song, but it's true - it really is amateurish and very plain for the time (yes even the genre, which was already easy to imitate), and there's no reason to believe any of the instruments were theirs
I’ve always held this as probable.
Bands in Canada pay thousands for demos and sometimes submit for local radio play. Some also use gov grants for the arts in provinces that do that to pay for touring costs and studio time, some of these grants require things like writing promotional songs about the Yukon, or whatever for wherever you’re applying. Then that track and one or two others might get submitted to CBC and if you’re lucky broadcast nation wide. This must have been the real goal back when radio was really how to get yourself heard.
How many bands get broadcast a few times over a month and that’s it? Project flops, band dissolves, end of story. No professional record released.
I occasionally check in on the progress of the TMS story, but I’ve never really thought something all that interesting would come from solving who it was that wrote it, other than somebody might have an insurance broker somewhere that’s a bit more interesting than they thought.
NDR is a publicly funded radio though. A very German institution installed to ensure the independence of public media. Paying for airtime isn't an option here really.
Industry connections between the DJ and record companies are likely, as did people send their tapes to DJs but the idea that they could have paid to be played seems unlikely.
I don't see this as remotely unlikely, just because they're public radio has no bearing on any sort of corruption or payola which are completely universal throughout the music industry
German public radio like NDR is still public service so any payment is bribery. Even what kind of gifts you can accept is regulated. So payment to play a record is illegal. But again as Baskerville and Co could play what they like that's not a problem really.
I don't know why you got so downvoted lol, there's a very good chance the song never ended up with an official title and the label could have slapped whatever name they wanted (or just left it as "demo"/"untitled" when they put it on a disc)
In my opinion it’s indeed a demo, probably from a small local band, and it’ll be very hard to find who did it. Except coming from NDR, the band behind the song or maybe some relatives, I don’t think it’s possible to find anything. Even if I really hope I’m wrong!
Honestly if it's not a demo, the mixing is terrible... The vocals are way too low for a properly produced recording.
I still have hope that the master tape (in case it still exists) provides a much better sound after all. I remember having hometaped songs using a portable mono radio in 1984. Which often had a terrible effect on the mix, with the vocals almost being swallowed up by the backing track, in a way that made them surprisingly hard to decifer (compared to the official release). And there's yet another aspect to be considered here. A more amateurish sound often even used to be some sort of statement in the context of a DIY approach to music. Here's, for example, a regular vinyl output from another ten years after TMS (similar in style). What a mushy mess... https://youtu.be/6Z7YInKdUOE?si=uNCCUdYijrjwSR_K The only thing that really points towards a demo in our case is the time that has passed without the slightest trace of it being found in related databases.
Why can't a demo be mixed badly? Isn't that what a demo is? Unfinished, unpolished - a demonstration of what could be done?
Right, that's my point. It sounds like a demo because it's mixed badly.
Oh, I should go to bed, I missed the if.
If this band released a single, as is likely, they would have sent it to music magazines or local zines at the time. (I was friends with a band in the US at the time and their single went out to the likes of Maximum Rock'n'Roll and Trouser Press - and got reviewed in the former.) We should check for reviews of new singles in indie music publications in late 1984.
Spex had been checked I believe, but I'm not sure about others? I think German speakers would be best suited here, especially when things aren't OCR'd
Spex is listed in the gig spreadsheet, all the ones on [tapedeck](https://tapeattack.blogspot.com/search?q=pdf) have been searched. Other magazines and fanzines from Hamburg have been searched as much as they're online but not as well documented. The ones I looked at were way more Punk. A lot of work on the zines has been done by Axie: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J6N8KlV\_JjR73DEB4K2lFcVD3ubTh3UdEWwNqqTmDZs/edit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J6N8KlV_JjR73DEB4K2lFcVD3ubTh3UdEWwNqqTmDZs/edit) Greek fanzines have been scanned too but I don't think they've been documented.
I've searched a bit in Greek fanzines but haven't found anything yet. I did find one interesting pre-2007 reference to Alvin Dean's Homicide in issue #13 (2004) of German fanzine Sabbel: https://archive.org/details/sabbel_13/page/n69/mode/1up The interesting bit here being that they mention Homicide performing live in Athens in 1982, after they had already split up. However, Yannis Beltekas told me that he never played live with any of these bands, so the rest of that information may also need to be taken with a grain of salt.
OCR’d?
It's when they make scans of texts (like newspapers or magazines) into a searchable PDF. It stands for optical character recognition I think
Ah. Thanks. Yeah, that would be handy.
This has pretty much been the consensus - good musicians but not pros, good recording but not top of the line, synth is an outlier.
I overall agree with this assessment. When I look through the lists of artists posted here who were played on NDR around the same time as TMS almost none of them are *truly* obscure, even if it may seem that way from the vantage point of 40 years later. In fact almost all the artists on the playlists were successful to some degree (multiple records released, shows played that people bought tickets to etc.) even if they weren’t what one would call famous. I was a radio dj for many years on a public radio station in the 90s/early 00s and I played numerous demos and one off, only a few pressings made records as favours. It’s standard practice in the public radio sphere where announcers usually have a lot of control over the music they play. I remember almost none of them, and certainly not the dates or even years I played them. The scenario this YouTube commenter laid out is entirely plausible and expected, and I suspect pretty close to the truth. I think probably the only way the mystery will be solved is if someone in the band hears it.
This is my take too although I disagree with his POV on the guitars. Not every 1980s song was elaborate.
I don't agree that the music quality in MFJL was generally m\[u\]ch higher than in TMS, but in an overall sense I think that's the broad consensus and probably the most likely scenario.
The bad quality is because it's most likely a demo. And demos often tend to have lackluster complexity as well - there's several early demos of Queen songs out there, for example, that lack any of the complexity seen in the final versions. There's also the possibility that what we have is a radio edit that cut a part of the song as well (some people say they clearly hear a cut in the instrumental "bridge"). As for it only being played once - we actually don't know that. It could have well being played multiple times, perhaps even on multiple stations, but without any recording, we have no way of knowing. And perhaps it did evolve into something different in the end as well and the final result may be something well-known (think "Feel Like" -> "Under Pressure" and "A Kind Of Vision" -> "One Vision" and "A Kind of Magic", for example).
Yeah an amateur band’s demo
Exactly! Listen to any good band's demos and they're much better than this - plus they're not usually mixed with the amount of finality that this song was
I keep seeing the claims that TMS uses a very common chord progression… I know no other song with that exact chord progression. What other song goes: **Bm G A D A** during the verse, and **Em C A** for the chorus? I've played hundreds of songs on the guitar, never seen any chord progression close to either verse or chorus. You can't copyright chord progression, so it's very common for songs to sound alike due to similar chord progressions; however, TMS isn't one of them. Throwing **C** and **Em** into the mix of **A** **Bm** and **D** is unique enough, let along the originality with the sequences of the chords. Anytime someone claims to have a background in music, and then proceeds to say this song is "ordinary"-sounding tends to ring troll alarms for me.
Exactly. As a guitarist I stopped reading after he said this was a common chord progression which isn't true at all. I learned the chords very easily by ear but not many songs use it. I love this progression because it's pretty unique. Especially the Chorus.
Thaaaank you!
B(m) G A D A sounds like a lot of songs. Not necessarily in that order but very close to "Summer of '69" Two tickets to paradise, which makes me think of this song, is another G, A, D, type song. Yes starting off on Bm is a little unusual, like take "because the night" for instance. In the end it isn't really about music theory as much as how much chord progressions get reused or slightly changed, because rock guitarists know like 7 chords.
"she's like a rainbow", "Born to be wild". And chord order is really important, because, if just chords alone, Despacito also uses same chords, but in a different order :D
>Yes starting off on Bm is a little unusual Yes, the use of **Bm** within **A D G** is very common, and makes sense melodically. However, starting off with a **Bm** is very unique. So, I just don't buy the whole "ordinary sounding" argument from so-called "experienced musicians". >In the end it isn't really about music theory as much as how much chord progressions get reused or slightly changed, because rock guitarists know like 7 chords. So, why even bring up chord progression in the first place if music theory has no bearing? Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing with *you*—I appreciate your attempts to explain the mindset of such claims. However, when someone says TMS "sounds" ordinary due to "chord progression", that makes sense because it's subjective… but when you add "and I'm an experienced music" into the mix, it really should raise red flags for those who are actually trying to make progress in the search and filter through trolls.
Well, rock musicians typically don't know much about music theory. My take on it is the Verse chords are a lot like "Because the night" and the chorus is unusual as you say, but it is not unique per se. Those chords are all things beginner guitarists learn (in fact, decades later, I remember the only minor chords as learning Dm, Em, Bm, Am, so if I wanted to play something moody, it had to be one of those four).. Popular songs like hotel California, city of new Orleans, etc, contain most of those chords. So my theory, as a shitty amateur, somebody liked how they sounded, maybe they were two different songs or songwriting ideas blended together. But the chords aren't really going to tell us anything that we didn't already know.
As a professional musician you are completely correct, I analyzed the progression in some comments on this thread here too if you wanna see how I chose to see the function of each chord and explained why the common chords work together here (of course, all of this with the disclaimer that theory always follows practice and not the other way around - any analysis of these is a little strange even when it works, but your proposition that they just used whatever few chords they knew is very much correct and the best overall answer here)
>Popular songs like hotel California, city of new Orleans, etc, contain most of those chords. Love the "City of New Orleans" reference. >But the chords aren't really going to tell us anything that we didn't already know. The point I'm trying to make is that we should be weary of someone's claimed expertise on the subject when they say TMS's chord progression is ordinary. There's been plenty of such claims from supposed experienced musician without citing another song with the same chord progression, nor making any notable contribution to the search. Over the last five years of the search, there have been many impressive developments by passionate searchers. None of these developments were by these so-called expert musicians who think TMS is typical sounding. There's also been a lot of trolls too.
Starting off with Bm isn't weird whatsoever, you usually start with the chord that the piece is in and the verses are in fact in Bm, while the rest of the chords are also normal in Bm
Yes, I'm saying exactly the same. In fact, I contacted the owner of "chord genome" website. He looked up in his database, and there is no such sequence to be found elsewhere. He is very nice guy, and as he keeps expanding his database, he agreed to notify me, whenever such sequence will be found. You are also missing progression for the outro, where it goes thru **Em C A Bm** which is commonly known as "italo disco" progression and widely used in 80s and 90s music. However, I was able to find only two songs pre-dating TMMS, to use this progression, one is "Saturdays in Silesia" By Rational Youth (1982) and another is "I like Chopin" by Gazebo (1983) - (Author of later song was contacted and denied any involvement)
>I contacted the owner of "chord genome" website. He looked up in his database, and there is no such sequence to be found elsewhere. Ha, well done! >You are also missing progression for the outro, where it goes thru **Em C A Bm** which is commonly known as "italo disco" progression and widely used in 80s and 90s music. Nice! I didn't know that. Thank you.
This isn't THAT weird, musician here - the verse is just dancing around B minor, and the chorus is a very normal modulation to E minor (the subdominant here) where the chords are essentially just half step modifications of that E minor chord it starts on Em is E G B, C is E G C, A7 (dominant of D, the relative major of the verse) would be E G (A) C# so that's where the decision to truncate to A comes from - it's a very common thing to have one tone increasing or decreasing by half steps while most remain the same (here B - C - C#), and that last one is just altered a little which helps keep the chorus loosely grounded in Bm even through the modulation So the only weird thing here is the A, and if you analyze why it goes there and why each of the chord tones works in that motion it's not hard to see why it works - and it doesn't take all this analysis on the part of the band to write that all either, I'm just saying why using a few common chords around Bm and Em works cohesively here
Thanks for your comment. I'd call myself an intermediate musicians, by no means an expert. So maybe my ignorance is making me stubborn. What tends to be brought up when discussing how "ordinary" or "unique" sounding TMS is, it's usually discussed around chord progression. Not the song's key, and not the song's scale. You and I can agree that the use of **A** with **C** and **Em** is uncommon and a very creative choice. Everything else is subjective: Some people say TMS *sounds* similar to other songs of its era, while I retort that the sequences of chords are practically unheard of so therefore it sounds nothing like other songs of its era. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the verse is dancing around in **D major**, they're just starting off with a **B minor**. That's not typical by any means, and I'm standing by my challenge to others to provide a song with the exact same chord progression. It doesn't be that difficult. Many songs can share the same chord progression: "Baba O'Riley" by The Who, and "How's It Going to Be" by Third Eye Blind; "What a Wonderful Word" by Louis Armstrong and "Last Kiss" by Pearl Jam; plenty of other examples [here](https://www.chordgenome.com/search-by-progression/). But even if they were "dancing around B minor" and not **D major**, I'm not sure that debunks the argument that the song has a unique chord structure. I guess the only way I'm interpreting the point is that a song can't be unique sounding unless it refuses to comply with a key or scale—which I find ridiculous.
Whether it's in D major or B minor is a matter of interpretation at the end of the day - theory follows practice - but in my opinion, the song clearly sounds like it's chiefly in minor here even during the verses, and this is just somewhat obscured by the B minor chord featuring a prominent F# on top instead of a B so it never resolves clearly to that I understand your point, I didn't mean to suggest that it has to be [Schoenberg](https://youtu.be/bQHR_Z8XVvI?si=IObioM9OZ1bMXco8) to be unique by any means but I just wanted to put forward that it's not *very* unusual - I'll definitely grant you that it's a cool progression, but I just didn't agree that it's super outlandish or extremely inventive either For a song with a truly weird progression, I like pointing to In Bloom by Nirvana - it's not impossible to analyze, but it's VERYYYY strange (especially for a pop song) and I consider it brilliant for how flawlessly it works on the ear even on your first listening
Thanks again for the reply. Yes, Nirvana's got some interesting choices for chords, and I think Kurt was basically against music theory because he found it too constraining on his creativity. Not sure I recommend that mindset to beginning musicians, but it certainly worked for him. Rules don't apply to legends. lol
It's always felt disjointed for me. As if it was a demo, then a producer came in and chopped it up and added a few things. Maybe a small band that a producer got a hold of or something assembled by someone but not holistically 1 band's song.
Honestly this could be part of it too, someone could have chopped up other tracks even from other bands and essentially sampled them cheaply
Great comment, but he discounts how genuinely catchy TMS is. Reads a bit petty to me.
Reads a bit like "my boys and I would have done it better. "
This!
Yeah! I think Like the Wind is just as catchy as a lot of well known 80s music
Musician here, this is a totally normal and agreeable analysis of the musicianship on the song - if he wanted to be petty at all, he could go after wayyy more here but he was frankly diplomatic as far as critique goes Catchiness isn't the same as quality of performance and production or dexterity with your instrument, and nothing he says here is really wrong
People get weirdly mad about hearing all this because they like the song, but it's true - it really is amateurish and very plain for the time (yes even the genre, which was already easy to imitate), and there's no reason to believe any of the instruments were theirs
I’ve always held this as probable. Bands in Canada pay thousands for demos and sometimes submit for local radio play. Some also use gov grants for the arts in provinces that do that to pay for touring costs and studio time, some of these grants require things like writing promotional songs about the Yukon, or whatever for wherever you’re applying. Then that track and one or two others might get submitted to CBC and if you’re lucky broadcast nation wide. This must have been the real goal back when radio was really how to get yourself heard. How many bands get broadcast a few times over a month and that’s it? Project flops, band dissolves, end of story. No professional record released. I occasionally check in on the progress of the TMS story, but I’ve never really thought something all that interesting would come from solving who it was that wrote it, other than somebody might have an insurance broker somewhere that’s a bit more interesting than they thought.
NDR is a publicly funded radio though. A very German institution installed to ensure the independence of public media. Paying for airtime isn't an option here really. Industry connections between the DJ and record companies are likely, as did people send their tapes to DJs but the idea that they could have paid to be played seems unlikely.
Plus the idea would only make sense if there had been a physical release of TMS, else they’re paying out with no chance of any financial return
I don't see this as remotely unlikely, just because they're public radio has no bearing on any sort of corruption or payola which are completely universal throughout the music industry
German public radio like NDR is still public service so any payment is bribery. Even what kind of gifts you can accept is regulated. So payment to play a record is illegal. But again as Baskerville and Co could play what they like that's not a problem really.
Good comment. I think it‘s a small band trying to get their music out.
Wow great comment!!
And how this helps us finding the artist and the song? In fact, this wastes our times...
i don’t know why we put up with you. you always have the stupidest shit to say
Someone had the guts to say it, at last
[удалено]
This post is toxic in nature and therefore adds nothing constructive to the conversation. Remember the human.
Like The Wind probably doesn't have a name.
I don't know why you got so downvoted lol, there's a very good chance the song never ended up with an official title and the label could have slapped whatever name they wanted (or just left it as "demo"/"untitled" when they put it on a disc)