40 Year Itch : Two Beauties from November '72

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Colin Blunstone could sing the obituary section of a newspaper and make it gorgeous. The former Zombies singer released his second solo album, Ennismore, in November of 1972. The lead-off track, "I Don't Believe in Miracles", was he first single and peaked at #31 in the UK. It was written by Argent singer Russ Ballard. In fact Argent backed up Blunstone on most of the album making this the closest thing to a new Zombies record any fan could hope to hear. This album and the first solo effort, One Year, are both offer beautiful examples of baroque pop. These days you don't have to choose between the two. Amazon, I noticed, offers a box set of the first three Blunstone solo albums for  $13.78.

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The eclectic Englishmen who make up Stackridge never took their music too seriously. Band members were made up of a former timber yard worker, a bookstore clerk, a cleaner in a birdseed factory and other odd jobbers. With titles like "Keep On Clucking", "Syracuse the Elephant" and "Father Frankenstein Is Behind Your Pillow" you know the phonograph needle is about to land on something odd. But the music is also quite beautiful and diverse. The title cut is a multi-tracked vocal wonder but that's just one aspect of the album. There's also reggae (!) and heavy duty prog rock to be found on this exceptional effort. Critics loved it. The public ignored it. The follow-up, The Man in The Bowler Hat, would be produced by George Martin.

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40 Year Itch : Thanksgiving at Sing Sing

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There was a riot at Sing Sing Prison but it was a riot of music, emotion, enthusiasm and good feelings. What a day. What a concert!

-Jerry Oster, New York Daily News

On Thanksgiving Day in 1972, Joan Baez her sister Mimi Farina, B B King, The Voices of East Harlem and comedian Jimmy Walker performed at the maximum security prison Sing Sing in New York State. Joan Baez opened with " I Shall Be Released". Then her sister joined her for a duet of the Spanish song "Viva Mi Patria Bolivia". Finally Baez sang her own  "Prison Trilogy" with the chorus "And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons/To the ground".

Then it was blues giant B B King's turn. He performed three numbers : "How Blue Can You Get?", "Someone Really Loves You" and "I Think You're Cheatin' On Me Baby".


 

A documentary called Sing Sing Thanksgiving, released in 1972, intercuts the performances with inmate interviews.

The concert must have gone pretty well. A few week later an almost completely unknown musician, just signed to Columbia Records, performed a two hour show with his pick up band at the Sing Sing chapel. His name was Bruce Springsteen. He let Clarence Clemons sing the Buddy Miles tune "Them Changes" and pretty much stuck to covers. Of the audience, Springsteen said "They're tough dudes. They got nobody to impress at all. It was good that they liked us."

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40 Year Itch : Alligator Lizards In The Air

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The critics never forgave America for "A Horse With No Name".  Aping Neil Young was bad enough. Knocking the real Neil Young out of the #1 singles chart with a Neil Young sound-alike was nearly criminal. Having lyrics like "the heat was hot" in that song was apparently unforgivable. The Rolling Stone Album Guide still gives all of America's studio albums one star ( "Disastrous") ratings and the most recent edition complains of thin production and sums up the band's discography in this way: "Without exception, all America's records are lame.

That really isn't fair. First of all, I think Dewey Bunnell really does share Neil Young's reedy voice. And America wasn't the only band trying to hit it big using the Crosby, Stills and Nash formula. As for thin production, Homecoming opens with a perfectly engineered single in "Ventura Highway". "Only In Your Heart" shares the the piano-based do-it-yourself feel of an early Paul McCartney solo album. 



In fact, only Dan Peek's Come-To-Jesus single "Don't Cross The River' could really be called "thin". How bad could America be when the band eventually attracted both George Martin and Beatles engineer  Geoff Emerick?
 If you're ready to give America a second chance, Homecoming is the place to begin.

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40 Year Itch: Aloha From Hawaii Press Conference

On November 20, 1972 reporters gathered at the Hawaiian Village Hotel where Elvis Presley announced he'd be performing a live concert called "Aloha From Hawaii" on January 14, 1973 that would be beamed around the world via satellite.He also announced the concert would also raise money for the local Kui Lee Cancer Fund. If the King seemed a bit off, he may have been tired. Elvis had performed three shows on November 17 and 18.

 

 To prepare for the concert Elvis rehearsed like mad and lost about 20 pounds by dieting and training with his Karate master Kang Rhee.

Reporters were told about a billion people in 40 different countries would see the live broadcast. More than saw the moon landing. That's probably not even close. In fact, most Americans didn't get to see the concert until April of 1972 when NBC broadcast the concert.

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40 Year Itch : An Ocean Full of Faces

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Seventh Sojourn, released on November 19, 1972 is the seventh and last of a stretch of gold albums released by the classic line-up of the Moody Blues before group members took a long sabbatical to pursue solo careers. Its late 1972 release helped ensure Seventh Sojourn would be the #1 Billboard album for weeks leading to Christmas.

The best known song on the album is the US # 13 single "I'm Just A Singer ( In a Rock n Roll Band), Justin Haywards's response to fans trying find deep wisdom in Moody lyrics.  Charles Manson was still in the news for the murders he and his followers committed in the belief that the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" was citing a race war. Of course, the worst thing Moody Blues lyrics could inspire would be some kind of  New Age retreat in an Arizona desert.

For the most part this is a pretty satisfying effort but will it make a Moody Blues believer out of you? There's a second single in "Isn't Life Strange" with  its Bee Gees reminiscent opening. The bass line to the lead off track, "Lost in a Lost World" might remind you of the Talking Heads version of "Take Me To The River". Our fave cut is beautifully arranged "The Land of Make-Believe".

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40 Year Itch : "American City Suite" Peaks at #27

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1972 began with an epic hit single in the eight minute long #1 "American Pie" and ended with another epic single , Cashman and West's ten minute "American City Suite", which peaked at #27 on November 18. Terry Cashman and Tommy West were best known for producing Jim Croce hits like "Operator", "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Operator" .

With the help of great studio musicians, including Jeff "Skunk" Baxter ( Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers) on guitar and Jim Gordon on drums, Cashman and West recorded the suite as a tribute to Cashman's hometown of New York City. The first of the four songs ( "Sweet City Suite") in the suite will remind you of Simon and Garfunkel. The second part, "Hello Jack",  was removed, so the single would run just 7 minutes. The final two songs are called "All Around The Town" and " A Friend is Dying". That friend is NYC.

As Cashman told SongFacts.com, 

"It was actually four songs strung together as a suite. Tommy and I signed as an act, Cashman and West, with ABC Dunhill. We had written a number of songs, but I really wanted to do something that would be special for the album. And it was a very sad time for me. A lot of my friends were leaving the city and going off, getting married, and you know, things were changing. I was 30 years old, and New York where I had grown up all my life was really deteriorating. It was a very bad time financially, and it was a time of turmoil and of racial strife. It looked like the city was gonna collapse. This great place where I had grown up and enjoyed so many friendships and so many good times - the city that I love - was actually dying. I was going into our office the next day, and I said to Tommy, 'I had this thought about New York in particular, but it's really happening to all the Eastern cities. They're decaying and white people are moving out of the cities and going to the suburbs. There are only very rich people and very poor people in the cities, and homelessness.' We started talking about the whole phenomenon, and we came up with this idea to do a song about how it was, which was the first movement of the first song of the suite was called, 'Sweet City Song,' and it was very happy, it was about growing up in a city where everyone got along and it was fun to be there - rock and roll was in the air. And then tracing that through, going away to school and coming back and seeing that things had changed, and then the third movement is an up-tempo song about how things were at that particular time as opposed to ten years before. And then it goes into 'A Friend Is Dying,' which is the last movement of 'American City Suite,' which is about the city dying. And that's the way it seemed to us at the time. That it was not only New York City, but all the Eastern industrial cities were having the same problems."

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Blancmange Picks All Time Top Ten

To promote the 1982 Blancmange debut album Happy Families,  founders Stephen Luscombe and Neil Arthur gave Smash Hits a Top Ten list showcasing their love of synth pop and exotic world music. This list comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened.

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