This magic moment occurred on Soul Train on January 13,1972. Stevie , who can make even a grand piano sound funky, plays an impromptu tune about Soul Train and the Soul Train gang. Lovely the way the audience members sing along.
vrijdag 11 januari 2013
donderdag 10 januari 2013
On January 10, 1973 Genesis performed six songs at Le Club Bataclan in Paris for a French television program. Gabriel dressed up the fox on the cover of Foxtrot , the band's most recent release. Genesis was at the height of its powers. A live album, recorded the following month, would be their first album to enter the Top 10, and another magnificent album, Selling England By The Pound, would be recorded in August. It would be a few more years before Gabriel's theatricality would drive him out of the band and Phil Collins would take on singing duties.
The sequence:
1 The Musical Box
2 Supper's Ready ( a generous excerpt)
3 Interview
4 The Return of the Giant Hogweed
5 The Knife
woensdag 9 januari 2013
"I enjoy the B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, "Yeah, she's copying the B-52s."
-John Lennon to Playboy Magazine
This. Is. Why. I .Do. This. Blog. To pluck the transcendental among the sloughed off. Approximately Infinite Universe, released January 8, 1973, is one of those treasures,
In 1980 the kindest critics congratulated Yoko Ono for keeping up with her husband on Double Fantasy. But back in 1973, she surpassed him ( and his Mind Games) by combining the experimental avant garde and feminist screeds with the more approachable pop. Mick Jagger, who plays some guitar on the album, reported to friends that Yoko is "really trying to sing properly. She's not singing. She's really trying to sing".
Not that the critics got it. In his review for Rolling Stone Magazine, Nick Tosches absolutely trashes the double album:
To which I say: just listen.
This is music that sounds like it came out last week.
Yoko recorded the album with Elephant's Memory who shine here far more than on Some Time in New York. John Lennon produced and plays guitar on two songs ( "Move On Fast", "Is Winter Here To Stay?") The single "Death of Samantha" inspired the name of the 80's Homestead band.
The ironic footnote is that once DJ's got an opportunity to remix and update Yoko's songs they became dance club hits. In 2011, the year Yoko turned 76, "Move On Fast" hit #1 on the dance charts, her sixth consecutive chart topper.
dinsdag 8 januari 2013
After more than ten years of celebrating Southern California, living in Southern California, recording in Southern California and going crazy in Southern California, The Beach Boys ( even Brian Wilson!) gathered their wives, kids, technicians and hangers on and moved to the Netherlands for an expensive but apparently productive year.
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| From Creem Magazine |
The result is Holland, released January 8, 1973, the band's last studio album for more than three years. You can take the Boys out of California but apparently you can't take California out of the Boys. The centerpiece of Holland is a three song California trilogy highlighted by Al Jardine's cowpokey if not slightly redundant "California Saga: California" which became a Top 40 hit in the UK.
There's much better stuff on Holland. Carl Wilson's "The Trader" shows his terrific contributions on 1971's Surf's Up ("Feel Flows", "Long Promised Road") were no fluke. The highlights both come from Brian Wilson and friends. "Funky Pretty" is the deep cut. Listen closely. Five of the seven band members ( Carl, Mike, Al and the new South African members Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar ) contribute lead vocals as synthesizers swoop and wail in the background. Genius at work!
When the Boys returned from the Netherlands with Holland, Dave Bursyn at Reprise Records rejected the album because he didn't hear a single. It was Bursyn who got Brian Wilson in a room with his Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Together, with a great deal of credit apparently belonging to Parks, they finished an old Wilson song called "Sail On Sailor". Drummer Dennis got the first crack at lead vocals. He did one take and then left the studio to go surfing. Carl tried to sing the song and, while it was a passable effort, he felt Blondie's straight -forward voice best suited the song. Released as a single in 1973 "Sail On Sailor" only managed to reach #79 on the pop charts. In 1975, a re-release of "Sail On Sailor":fared better, reaching #49.
Holland would be followed up in 1973 with a live album. Chaplin and Fataar would leave. The Beach Boys became popular live acts but they wouldn't produce another studio album until the disappointing 15 Big Ones in 1976. To fill in the gaps, record buyers loaded up on those two amazing compilation albums, Endless Summer and Spirit of America.
maandag 7 januari 2013
For the December 23, 1982 issue of Smash Hits Magazine, Flock of Seagulls keyboardist and vocalist Mike Score came up with a list of new wave pop tunes, a White Album classic and two songs from former Be Bop Deluxe guitarist turned experimental art rocker Bill Nelson At the time, the Seagulls single "Wishing" was a top ten hit in the UK and #3 on the US Modern Rock charts. This image comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened.
zaterdag 5 januari 2013
"The rhyming dictionary was on fire."
Bruce Springsteen
On January 5, 1973 Bruce Springsteen released his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park to both critical acclaim and a mostly uninterested record buying public. And listening to the album with fresh ears, I can see why. Springsteen packs more words per stanza than any rocker before. It's Dylan at double-speed. And it can be jarring for a listener to try to try to keep up. What do some of those lines mean anyway?
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older, I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing, the calliope crashed to the ground
In an episode of VH1 Storytellers, The Boss gave us some insight on the lyrics and the way he was writing using word association:
"Madman drummers" : Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez ( his first drummer)
"Bummers" : The characters around the Jersey boardwalk
"Indians in the Summer": his little league baseball team as a kid.
"In the dumps with the mumps": another childhood memory, literally being sick with the mumps
"With a boulder on my shoulder": a really BIG "chip" on his shoulder.
These are all lines from Spingsteen's first single "Blinded By The Light" which hit #1 for Manfred Mann's Earth Band in 1977. Only Manfred Mann and his band pronounced "deuce" in the line "wrapped up like a deuce" as "douche"...leading Springsteen to tell the following story:
Greetings sold only 25,000 copies in its first year of release. Now, of course, we can all hear the birth of a rock n roll genius in the grooves. But it really wasn't until Born to Run became such a huge hit that fans and radio programmers ( especially "Spirit In The Night") rediscovered Greetings.
vrijdag 4 januari 2013
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