Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1924 (starts 6/10/19)

    Once again, Rockin' in the Days of Confusion takes you on a musical journey through the years 1968-1975, with a few extra tunes thrown in for good measure. It starts with Golden Earring...

Artist:    Golden Earring
Title:    Radar Love
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Kooymans/Hay
Label:    Track/MCA
Year:    1973
    Formed in The Hague in 1961, the Golden Earrings (they dropped the plural in 1969) released 25 studio albums and took nearly 30 songs into the top 10 over a period of nearly 30 years...in their native Holland. They were completely unknown in the US, however, until 1973, when Radar Love became an international hit. They returned to the US charts in 1982 with Twilight Zone, and had a final international hit in 1984 with When The Lady Smiles, although that song did not do as well in the US.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Boogie Music
Source:    British import CD: Living The Blues
Writer(s):    L T Tatman III
Label:    BGO (original label: Liberty)
Year:    1968
    Canned Heat was formed in 1966 by a group of San Francisco Bay Area blues purists who by 1968 had relocated to Southern California's Laurel Canyon. Although a favorite on the rock scene, the band continued to remain true to the blues throughout its existence. The band's most popular single was Going Up the Country from the album Living the Blues. The B side of Going Up The Country was a tune called Boogie Music. The song is credited to L T Tatman III, which may be a pseudonym for the entire band, much as Nanker Phelge was for the Rolling Stones. Unusually, the single version of the song is actually longer than the album version heard here, thanks to a short coda made to sound like an archive recording from the 1920s.

Artist:      Grand Funk Railroad
Title:     Mr. Limousine Driver
Source:      CD: Grand Funk
Writer:    Mark Farner
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1969
     When Grand Funk Railroad first appeared on the scene they were universally panned by the rock press (much as Kiss would be a few years later). Despite this, they managed to set attendance records across the nation and were instrumental to establishing sports arenas as the venue of choice for 70s rock bands. Although their first album, On Time, was not an instant hit, their popularity took off with the release of their second LP, Grand Funk (also known as the Red Album). One of the many popular tracks on Grand Funk was Mr. Limousine Driver, a song that reflects the same attitude as their later hit We're An American Band.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Snowblind Friend
Source:    CD: Born To Be Wild-A Retrospective (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf 7)
Writer(s):    Hoyt Axton
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1970
    One of the most popular tracks from the first Steppenwolf album was a Hoyt Axton tune called The Pusher. For their next few albums the group wrote most of their own material, but included another Axton tune, Snowblind Friend, on their seventh LP. Although not released as a single, the tune did well on progressive rock radio stations, and is generally considered one of their better tunes from 1970. The band had gone through a few personnel changes by that point, and the song features new members Larry Byrom (guitar) and George Biondo (bass), both of which had been members of a band called T.I.M.E. before replacing Michael Monarch and Nick St. Nicholas in Steppenwolf.
       
Artist:    Black Oak Arkansas
Title:    Lord Have Mercy On My Soul/When Electricity Came To Arkansas
Source:    LP: Black Oak Arkansas
Writer(s):    Black Oak Arkansas
Label:    Atco
Year:    1971
    The final phase of my summer of '71 adventures started with a concert. I had arrived at the Southwestern College campus in Weatherford, Oklahoma on a September evening, hoping that our band, Sunn, would be able to regroup after losing our lead guitarist and driving force, David Mason (no, not THE Dave Mason). Our rhythm guitarist, DeWayne Davis and drummer, Mike Higgins, were both starting their freshman year at Southwestern and were rooming together at one of the dorms. Our second lead guitarist, Doug Philips, had stayed in Mangum while I had gone back to New Mexico to visit my parents for a couple weeks following Dave's decision to quit the band and join the Air Force so he could marry his pregnant girlfriend. The day following my arrival in Weatherford, DeWayne, Mike and our roadie, Ronnie, were planning on going down to Norman to see Grand Funk Railroad, and had already bought their tickets. I was invited to go along and buy a ticket at the gate. I did, but the only tickets left at that point were way up in the bleacher seats, while the other guys had floor tickets. So, at least for the opening band, I got to sit by myself in the cheap seats. It turns out that was actually a blessing in disguise, as I was able to focus my attention completely on the band itself, without any distractions. This was a good thing, since it was a band I had never even heard of before called Black Oak Arkansas, performing, in its entirety, their self-titled first album. I found myself imagining that I was a music critic up there in the bleachers, and, thanks to an enhanced state of mind, had a very clear picture of Black Oak Arkansas as a band by the time their set was done. My favorite part of their set was the final two songs, a rocker called Lord Have Mercy On My Soul that sequed directly into an instrumental called When Electricity Came To Arkansas that featured twin lead guitars playing in harmony in a way remiscent of Wishbone Ash or the Allman Brothers Band. The next time I had enough money to buy an album I snatched up a copy of the debut Black Oak Arkansas LP, which is still my favorite out of the ten albums they recorded in the 1970s.

Artist:    Fanny
Title:    Think About The Children
Source:    LP: Fanny Hill
Writer(s):    June Millington
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1972
    So you're 19 or so, and you see this album on the racks that has four chicks dressed in black turtleneck sweaters against a white background. What do you do? You buy it, of course. It turns out the album in question was called Fanny Hill, and it was the third LP from Fanny, one the first self-contained female rock groups. The band was centered around the Millington sisters, June (guitar) and Jean (bass), who had moved from the Phillipines to Sacramento, California while in their teens. They were eventually joined by drummer Alice de Buhr and keyboardist Nicky Barclay. Released in 1972, Fanny Hill was the most successful album for the band, thanks to a combination of solid musicianship and quality songwriting on tunes like Think About The Children. June Millington left the group in 1974, however, partially due to pressures from the band's producers to dress more provocatively, which Millington resisted. After one final album without their original leader, Fanny called it quits in 1975.

Artist:    Emitt Rhodes
Title:    In Desperate Need
Source:    LP: Farewell To Paradise
Writer(s):    Emitt Rhodes
Label:    Dunhill
Year:    1973
    Emitt Rhodes is a songwriter who has a clear idea of what his songs should sound like. He also has the talent to not only sing and produce, but to play every instrument and engineer his own professional quality recordings in his own studio. Rhodes first came to regional fame in Los Angeles at the age of 16, when he was the drummer for a group called the Palace Guard that had a local hit called Like Falling Sugar. That same year he formed his own group, the Merry-Go-Round, scoring another local hit, Live, in 1967. This was followed by two LPs for the A&M label, one by the Merry-Go-Round and one solo LP, The American Dream, which remained unreleased until 1970. Following the breakup of the Merry-Go-Round Rhodes built his own home studio, where all of his solo recordings were made. Unfortunately, he made a tactical error by signing a contract with Dunhill Records requiring him to provide the label with six albums over a three year period. As he was recording and playing all the instruments and vocals himself, this proved to be an impossible commitment to live up to, resulting in Dunhill suing him for breach of contract and withholding royalties on the three albums he did release during that period. The last of these albums, Farewell To Paradise, took a year to make, even with the help of Curt Boettcher, who did the final mixdown of the LP. Keeping in mind that Rhodes played and sang (and engineered) everything on songs like In Desperate Need, it's easy to understand why it took so long to make the album.

Artist:    Frank Zappa
Title:    Uncle Remus
Source:    CD: Apostrophe (')
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Zappa (original label: Discreet)
Year:    1974
    One of the shortest free-standing songs in the entire Frank Zappa catalogue, Uncle Remus is a bit of a rarity in that it was a collaboration with another musician, George Duke, who also performs on the track. The song itself is more serious in tone than the rest of the tunes on the Apostrophe (') album, dealing as it does with the subject of continuing racism in America.

Artist:    ZZ Top
Title:    Heard It On The X
Source:    LP: The Best Of ZZ Top (originally released on LP: Fandango)
Writer(s):    Gibbons/Hill/Beard
Label:    London
Year:    1975
    ZZ Top's fourth album, Fandago, was a unique mixture of live recordings and new studio tracks. Among those studio tracks was the somewhat autobiographical Heard It On The X. The "X" refers to the various high-powered AM stations that used to broadcast American top 40 style shows in English from Mexico, where the 50,000 watt legal limit imposed by the FCC on US radio stations did not apply. I don't know specifically which station the trio from Texas listened on, but in southern New Mexico it was XELO, out of Ciudad Juarez, directly across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The 100,000 watt station was well-known in the area as the home of DJ Steve Crosno, who also hosted a popular teen dance show on an El Paso TV station. Sometime in the early 1970s XELO became XeROK and started carrying the Wolfman Jack show.

Artist:    Styx   
Title:    You Need Love
Source:    LP: Styx II
Writer(s):    Dennis DeYoung
Label:    Wooden Nickel
Year:    1973
    The Chicago-based Styx can trace its roots all the way back to the early 1960s, but their classic 1970s lineup didn't come together until guitarist James Young joined the band, then known as TW4, in 1970. In 1972 the band signed with the local Wooden Nickel label, changing their name to Styx in the process. The group recorded four albums for the label from 1972 to 1974, but were unable to break nationally until a power balled called Lady, from their second album, began to get airplay, first on Chicago's WLS, and then nationally. The song eventually peaked in the top 10, prompting the group to leave Wooden Nickel for the much larger A&M label, in late 1974. Meanwhile, Wooden Nickel, now distrubuted by RCA, released the opening track of Styx II, You Need Love, as a followup single to Lady in early 1975.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Heart Of The Sunrise
Source:    CD: Fragile
Writer(s):    Anderson/Squire/Bruford
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    Although it is the fourth most played song in the Yes catalogue, Heart Of The Sunrise, from the 1971 album Fragile, was never issued as a single. This is due mostly to the fact that the track runs over ten minutes in length, far exceeding even such lengthy tunes as Paradise By The Dashboard Light, American Pie or MacArthur Park. The song was written by Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman, but due to contractual reasons, Wakeman's name had to be left off the credits.