Sunday, April 26, 2020

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2018 (starts 4/27/20)



    It's time once again for an hour of free-form, as we start off rockin' hard with Deep Purple and end up on a soulful number by the Undisputed Truth. As for what comes between the two, read on...

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Lazy
Source:    LP: Machine Head
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1972
    The longest track on Deep Purple's most popular album, Machine Head, Lazy was long a concert favorite, often running over 10 minutes in length. The original studio version starts with a Jon Lord solo on a heavily overdriven Hammond organ. This leads into the first instance of the song's main riff, played by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. The two of them continue to trade licks as the rest of the band comes in, building to one of the hardest rocking songs ever recorded.

Artist:    Humble Pie
Title:    The Fixer
Source:    CD: Smokin'
Writer(s):    Steve Marriott
Label:    A&M
Year:    1972
    Peter Frampton left Humble Pie for a solo career in 1971, leaving Steve Marriott as both the frontman and primary songwriter for the band. The first album without Frampton, Smokin', was also Humble Pie's most successful thanks in large part to Marriott's 30 Days In The Hole, which quickly became a rock standard. Another standout Marriott composition on the album was The Fixer, a hard rockin' tune that helped establish Humble Pie as the premier British boogie band of the early 1970s.

Artist:    Badfinger
Title:    No Matter What
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Pete Ham
Label:    Apple
Year:    1970
    Aside from the Beatles, the band most closely associated with Apple Records was Badfinger. Originally known as the Iveys, Badfinger was the first band signed to Apple and remained with the label throughout its existence. Led by Pete Ham, Badfinger had a string of successful singles for the label, including No Matter What, a Ham composition from the band's second LP, No Dice. The song, released in 1970, is considered by many to be the earliest example of what would come to be known as power pop later in the decade.

Artist:    Wishbone Ash
Title:    Sometime World
Source:    CD: Argus
Writer(s):    Turner/Turner/Upton/Powell
Label:    MCA/Decca
Year:    1972
    Guitarist Andy Powell shines on Sometime World from the third Wishbone Ash album, Argus. The song, about missed opportunities and second chances, starts quietly, building slowly to become a powerful rocker over the course of nearly seven minutes. Although the song was seldom performed live, Powell has since stated that Sometime World is his favorite track on Argus.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    25 Or 6 To 4
Source:    CD: Chicago
Writer(s):    Robert Lamm
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1970
    For their second LP, Chicago (which had just dropped the words "Transit Authority" from their name in response to a threatened lawsuit) tried out all three of their vocalists on each new song to hear who sounded the best for that particular song. In the case of Robert Lamm's 25 Or 6 To 4, bassist Peter Cetera did the honors. The song became a top 10 single both in the US and UK. Despite rumors to the contrary, Lamm says 25 Or 6 To 4 is not a drug song. Instead, he says, the title refers to the time of the morning that he was awake and writing the tune.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Breathe/Speak To Me/On The Run
Source:    CD: The Dark Side Of The Moon
Writer(s):    Mason/Waters/Gilmour/Wright
Label:    Capitol (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1973
    Is there really anything I can say about Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon that hasn't been said a hundred times already? Probably not, so let's just kick back and enjoy the album's opening tracks, Breathe/Speak To Me and On The Run.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Motherless Children
Source:    LP: Anthology (originally released on LP: Your Saving Grace)
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Miller
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    Motherless Children is one of those songs that seems to have always been there. The first known recording of the song was made by Blind Willie Johnson in 1927, and the tune was considered a traditional ballad  even then. Over the years several versions of Motherless Children have been recorded by such notables as Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Clapton, Rosanne Cash and Lucinda Williams. Perhaps the most unusual arrangement of the tune, however, was the opening track of side two of the Steve Miller Band album Your Saving Grace, released in 1969. Rather than take a traditional blues approach to the tune, Miller slows down the song, giving it an almost drone-like quality and stretching it out to a full six minutes in length. An edited version of the recording was included on Miller's 1972 Anthology compilation.

Artist:    Savoy Brown
Title:    Sunday Night
Source:    CD: Looking In
Writer(s):    Kim Simmonds
Label:    Deram (original label: Parrot)
Year:    1970
    Despite being a British blues-rock band, Savoy Brown released their sixth LP, Looking In, to a US audience nearly two months before it was available anywhere else, including their native England. The album, which put more emphasis on hard rock than any other Savoy Brown LP, ended up being their most successful, hitting #50 in the UK and doing even better (#39) in the US. Songwriting duties were spread out among band members, with founder and lead guitarist Kim Simmonds supplying the instrumental Sunday Night, among other tunes. Not long after Looking In was released, Simmonds let the entire band go due to differences in opinion about the band's future musical direction. Savoy Brown, with an ever-changing lineup, would remain solidly based in the blues, while the new band formed by the other three members, Foghat, would continue in a more hard rocking vein. 

Artist:     Ringo Starr
Title:     Early 1970
Source:     45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Richard Starkey
Label:    Apple
Year:     1971
     The first gold record by an ex-Beatle did not come from John Lennon or Paul McCartney, as one would expect. Rather it was drummer Ringo Starr, who topped the charts in 1971 with It Don't Come Easy (co-written by an uncredited George Harrison). The B side of that single, Early 1970, is a thinly disguised message to Ringo's former bandmates describing where things stood just after the breakup of the Beatles became public knowledge and expressing the hope that they could still play together from time to time.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Ships w/Sails
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Krieger/Densmore
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1971
    The seventh Doors studio album, Other Voices, was the first to be released following the death of the band's front man, Jim Morrison, in 1971. Most of the songs had been recorded while Morrison was in Paris, with the expectation that he would soon be returning to Los Angeles to add vocal tracks to the master tapes. When that didn't happen, guitarist Robby Krieger and keyboardist Ray Manzarek added their own vocals to the songs. Interestingly, Ships w/Sails, which was written by Krieger and drummer John Densmore, was not sung by Krieger himself. Rather, it was Ray Manzarek's vocals that were featured on the tune, which was also released, in edited version, as a single in February of 1972.
   
Artist:    Mahavishnu Orchestra
Title:    Open Country Joy
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    John McLaughlin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1973
    John McLaughlin. Billy Cobham. Rick Laird. Jan Hammer. Jerry Goodman. All were destined to become jazz-rock fusion stars by the end of the decade, but in 1971 the term fusion, as applied to music, was not yet in use. Yet fusion was indeed the most appropriate word for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, whose five members came from five different countries: England, Ireland, Panama, Czechoslovakia (as it was then known) and the US, respectively. The members came from a variety of music backgrounds as well. McLaughlin (who wrote all the group's material) and Cobham had met while working on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew album, while Goodman had recorded two albums with the Chicago-based Flock. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was known for its ability to quickly shift between music styles on such tracks as Open Country Joy, which appeared on the group's second LP, Birds of Fire, as well as being released as a single.The original band disbanded after only two albums, but McLaughlin would later revive the group with a different lineup in the 1980s.

Artist:    Undisputed Truth
Title:    This Child Needs Its Father
Source:    British import CD: Nothing But The Truth (originally released on LP: Law Of The Land)
Writer(s):    Dino Fekaris
Label:    Kent (original label: Gordy)
Year:    1973
    Most of the songs recorded by the Undisputed Truth had already been recorded by other artists. There were a couple of exceptions on their 1973 LP Law Of The Land, however. One of these was This Child Needs Its Father, which would end up being released the following year as a B side by Gladys Knight And The Pips. Like many other early 1970s songs, This Child Needs Its Father addressed the growing trend of children being born out of wedlock.
   

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