https://exchange.prx.org/p/518440
We start this week with a set of tunes from 1971, including an extended version of a song from Grand Funk Railroad's Survival album. From there it's a freeform set that mixes a couple of popular singles with seldom heard album tracks from people like Tommy Bolin and Joy Of Cooking and finishes with a nice instrumental jam from Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and friends.
Artist: Five Man Electrical Band
Title: Signs
Source: Mono 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Les Emerson
Label: Lionel
Year: 1971
Everybody has at least one song they have fond memories of hearing on the radio while riding around in a friend's car on a hot summer evening. Signs, from Canada's Five Man Electrical Band, is one of mine.
Artist: Doors
Title: L.A. Woman
Source: LP: L.A. Woman
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1971
Ray Manzarek became justifiably famous as the keyboard player for the Doors. Before joining up with Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, however, Manzarek was already making a name for himself as an up-and-coming student filmmaker at UCLA. Although he didn't have much of a need to pursue a career in films once the Doors hit it big, he did end up producing and directing an outstanding video for the title track of the 1971 album L.A. Woman years after the band had split up. I only mention this because, really, what else can I say about a song that you've probably heard a million times or so?
Artist: Yes
Title: Long Distance Runaround/The Fish (Schindleria Praematuris)
Source: CD: Fragile
Writer(s): Anderson/Squire
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1971
The fourth Yes album, Fragile, introduced the "classic" Yes lineup of John Anderson (vocals), Bill Bruford (drums), Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass) and Rick Wakemen (keyboards), and features some of the band's best known songs. Among the most popular is Long Distance Runaround, which was also released as the B side of the hit single Roundabout. Anderson's lyrics express his disillusionment with "the craziness of religion" and intolerance of other viewpoints in general, including opposition to the war in Vietnam. On the album, the song segues directly into The Fish (Schindleria Praematuris), a mostly instrumental piece written by Squire, with a vocal refrain by Anderson repeating the name of a species of prehistoric fish toward the end of the track.
Artist: Wishbone Ash
Title: Jail Bait
Source: LP: Pilgrimage
Writer(s): Powell/Turner/Upton/Turner
Label: MCA (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1971
Although Wishbone Ash's second LP, Pilgrimage, saw the group moving away from blues rock toward a more layered sound, the most popular song on the album was as good a straight blues rocker as you're likely to ever hear. Jail Bait soon became a concert staple for the band.
Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Country Road (unedited original version)
Source: CD: Survival (bonus track)
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1971
The opening track of the fourth Grand Funk Railroad studio album, Survival, was a Mark Farner composition called Country Road. The song was probably chosen to open Survival because of its stylistic consistency with earlier Grand Funk Railroad albums. The version of Country Road heard on the album, however, differs significantly from the original seven and a half minute version of the song heard here. This original version includes a second verse and an entire new section not included on the album itself. Is it better? That's for you to decide.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Tumbling Dice
Source: Mono 45 RPM promo single
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Rolling Stones
Year: 1972
The lead single from what is sometimes cited as the Rolling Stones' greatest album, Exile On Main Street, Tumbling Dice was a top 10 single on both sides of the Atlantic, hitting #5 in the UK and #7 in the US. The song started off as a piece called Good Time Woman, but was reworked on August 4, 1971, with a new intro riff and a bass track played by Mick Taylor (Bill Wyman being away from the studio at the time the track was recorded).
Artist: Joy Of Cooking
Title: Three-Day Loser
Source: CD: Castles
Writer: Terry Garthwaite
Label: Acadia (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1972
Joy of Cooking was unique among folk-rock groups in that it was co-led by two female artists: Multi-instrumentalist Toni Brown and guitarist Terry Garthwaite, who sang lead vocals as well. Between the two of them, they wrote all the band's original tunes. The rest of the lineup was Fritz Kasten on drums, Jeff Neighbor on bass and Ron Wilson on harp, tambourine and congas. After recording their second album in Los Angeles, the group opted to return to their native Berkeley for their third and final LP, Castles. Garthwaite's unique style of singing and songwriting can be heard on tracks like Three-Day Loser, and presaged her shift to a more jazz-oriented sound as a solo artist.
Artist: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Title: Breakdown
Source: LP: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Writer(s): Tom Petty
Label: MCA (original label: Shelter)
Year: 1976
Just about everyone knows thatTom Petty was one of the most popular rock stars of the 1980s and beyond, but few realize that he released his debut single, Breakdown, in November of 1976, and was considered part of the punk/new wave movement at the time. It took over a year for his debut LP with the Heartbreakers to catch on in the US, but once it did it became obvious that Petty actually had little in common with bands like the Ramones or Sex Pistols. In fact, he was often compared to the Byrds, as well as early Rolling Stones. Breakdown itself is a bit of a departure from the rest of the album, but nonetheless has become a staple of classic rock radio.
Artist: Tommy Bolin
Title: Gypsy Soul
Source: CD: Private Eyes
Writer(s): Bolin/Cook
Label: Columbia
Year: 1976
Following the breakup of Deep Purple, guitarist Tommy Bolin began work on his second solo LP, Private Eyes. Many of the tunes on the album, including Gypsy Soul, were co-written by Jeff Cook, who had been a bandmate of Bolin's in a group called American Standard when Bolin was still a teenager in Boulder, Colorado. Bolin's career had taken him from American Standard to another Boulder band, Ethereal Zephyr, which had shortened its name to Zephyr after signing a contract with ABC's Probe label. After two albums, Bolin left Zephyr at the age of 20 to form his own jazz-rock-blues fusion band called Energy. That band was unable to secure a recording contract, and Bolin briefly reunited with two of his Zephyr bandmates in a group called the 4-Nikators before taking a year off from playing professionally. During this time Bolin was far from inactive; in fact he wrote nearly a hundred songs during his hiatus from public performing. In 1973 he accepted an offer to become the third James Gang lead guitarist, replacing Dominic Troiano, who had in turn replaced Joe Walsh. While with the James Gang, Bolin was already showing signs of wanting to move on, contributing to Billy Cobham's Spectrum album in between the James Gang LPs Bang and Miami. After Miami he concentrated on session work for a while before beginning work on his first solo album, Teaser. Just before Teaser was released Bolin accepted an offer to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple, which had the negative side effect of giving him virtually no time to promote his own album, which came out just one month after the last Deep Purple LP, Come Taste The Band. Although the album did moderately well, audiences expected Bolin's guitar work to sound like Blackmore's, which of course wasn't going to happen, and ultimately led to Deep Purple disbanding following their 1975-1976 tour. Bolin's second solo album, Private Eyes, was released in September of 1976. Bolin went on tour to promote the album, opening for Peter Frampton and Jeff Beck. On December 3rd he played his final show, opening for Beck. A few hours later he was found dead in his hotel room of a drug overdose. He was 25 years old.
Artist: Mike Bloomfield/ Al Kooper/ Skip Prokop/John Kahn
Title: Her Holy Modal Highness
Source: LP: The Live Adventures Of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper
Writer(s): Bloomfield/Kooper
Label: Columbia
Year: 1969
With the unexpected success of the 1968 jam album Super Session, it was inevitable that Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield would release a followup LP, and probably just as inevitable that it would be a live album. Most of the tracks on The Live Adventures Of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper are covers of classics blues tunes, although there are a few jams that are credited to Bloomfield and Kooper as well. One of these, Her Holy Modal Highness, is a sequel of sorts to His Holy Modal Majesty, and instrumental track from Super Session. Like its predecessor, Her Holy Modal Highness uses the Kooperphone, a tubular keyboard instrument from Sweden technically known as a tubon, extensively.
Artist: Brewer And Shipley
Title: One Toke Over The Line
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Brewer/Shipley
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1971
Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley might be considered the link between the folk-rock of the late 1960s and the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. The two of them had met on more than one occasion in the mid 1960s, doing coffeehouse gigs across the midwest, until both decided to settle down in Los Angeles and start writing songs together in 1968. After recording two albums together, the duo relocated to Kansas City in 1969, spending much of the next two years on the road, playing small towns such as Tarkio, Missouri, which in turn inspired the title for their third album, Tarkio. That album, released in 1971, included what was to be their biggest hit. One Toke Over The Line went to the #10 spot on the charts (#5 in Canada) and prompted the Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, to denounce the song as "blatant drug-culture propaganda". Concerning the origin of the song itself, Mike Brewer had this to say: "One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, “Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight.” I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it." He said it was written as a joke as the duo was setting up for a gig.
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