The Way Sunny Cellophane Skies Made Ed Feel?

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I can’t be terribly objective about any assessment of Ed Kuepper’s “The Way I Made You Feel”. The song evokes such pangs of sweet nostalgia the instant those first muted guitar strums sound. These pangs are even more pronounced when hearing it with the original video that received late night saturation play on Rage throughout the 1990s. But when I discovered a certain song from Status Quo’s very first LP record, released in 1968, some weird nostalgic echoes suggested to me I had found a musical influence for Ed’s masterpiece.





“Sunny Cellophane Skies” was written (and maybe sung) by bassist Alan Lancaster. It’s a loping fuzz-driven piece of psychedelic pop. After the intro riff, it jumps straight into a signature chord progression: the major chord that starts the bar then descends, after the second beat of the bar, to the major chord a semitone lower, and a semitone lower again, in eight note steps. 


This clumsy description won’t ring any bells, although the music might. But just wait another 40 seconds for the chorus to finish, and bang, there it is again, that descending chord progression, this time heralding the line “I like the way you make me feel”! For maximum ear-worm value, this chord/vocal call-and-response should be immediately repeated, and so it is.


Now, please understand I’m not suggesting there is any plagiarism here. This sort of unconscious influence happens all the time in every art form. If Ed had never heard this track, then it remains an uncanny coincidence.


“Sunny Cellophane Skies” eventually really got under my skin, so I started playing and jamming with it, eventually recording my own version. In my version, some might notice a little license has been taken with some of the chords. My excuse is that I was running with that semitone movement idea (semitone movements are near and dear to me, whether it be melody, harmony, bass or chords). Also, I felt the unexpected substitutions enhanced the “psychedelic-ness” of the piece.




MCM on BANDCAMP 

MCM on SPOTIFY




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