Rate Your Music score: 3.38 out of 5!
This jazzy instrumental was a big hit back in 1978 but never gets any airplay on regular radio now. And when I say regular radio, I mean FM or AM broadcasting like we had in 1978. We don't call it "terrestrial radio." We just call it radio. Radio is what comes out of a radio.
As Chuck's record was one of very few instrumentals to be such a success in 1978, it prompted an obvious joke: Whenever someone mentioned "Feels So Good", somebody would inevitably ask, "Who sings it?" I also remember hearing the track emanating from a speaker when I was on a giant slide (the kind where you sit on a "magic carpet") at some park.
I also recall being at my grandparents' house and seeing Chuck perform this tune live on TV. It was widely noted in the media that Chuck pressed the wrong valve on his flugelhorn as he was playing, but a flugelhorn is a very hard instrument to play, so there was sure to be some spontaneity like this - even from a talented musician such as he.
In my entry on "Runner" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, I talked about how I had a funny dream in which the Manfreds' lead singer Chris Thompson attacked me in an online post. I have a similar story about Chuck Mangione. In 2017, I had a hilarious dream in which I was watching a TV show where Chuck was performing. During the performance, he blew a bubble with bubble gum through his flugelhorn.
After I posted about this online, a friend commented that Chuck's signature tune was an example of a genre of music that was particularly popular in the 1970s: Electric Company music. That term actually has a real meaning. It's not one of these terms like "yacht rock" or "bubble gum" that is applied to certain songs or acts but you don't know what the origin of the term is. Electric Company music is a style of music that sounds like the funky music beds that were used on The Electric Company. Maybe in a future entry, I'll explore how that sound suddenly went away as soon as the 1980s hit.
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