https://exchange.prx.org/p/566405
We're rockin' in free-form mode this week, with a whole bunch of high-energy tunes (and one not so high-energy tune that is just as intense in its own way) from a dozen different artists.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Before the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then generally known as pop music) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was also a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on US top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masked guitar and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US the label hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Neil Young/Graham Nash
Title: War Song
Source: Mono 45 RPM single (promo)
Writer: Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Around the same time that Neil Young was working on his Harvest LP he recorded War Song with Graham Nash and the Stray Gators. It was never released on an LP, although it did appear on CD many years later on one of the various anthologies that have been issued over the decades since the song was originally released.
Artist: Edwin Starr
Title: War
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Whitfield/Strong
Label: Rhino (original label: Gordy)
Year: 1970
Edwin Starr's War is the highest charting antiwar song in history, as well as Starr's biggest hit, going all the way to the top of both the top 40 and R&B charts in 1970. It is also a solid example of Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong productions, which, although part of Motown, was a semi-autonomous entity (as was Holland-Dozier-Holland productions, which had brought Motown its greatest commercial success in the 60s, cranking out hit after hit by the Supremes and other acts). In fact, when Motown first signed the Jackson 5ive, the label took steps to avoid yet another independent company-within-a-company by forming a collective called The Corporation to write and produce all the new group's records.
Artist: Argent
Title: Hold Your Head Up
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Argent/White
Label: Sony Music (original US label: Epic)
Year: 1972
Following the dissolution of the Zombies, keyboardist Rod Argent went about forming a new band called, appropriately enough, Argent. The new group had its greatest success in 1972 with the song Hold Your Head Up, which went to the #5 spot on the charts in both the US and UK. The song originally appeared on the album All Together Now, with a running time of over six minutes. The first single version of the tune ran less than three minutes, but was quickly replaced with a longer edit that made the song three minutes and fifteen seconds long.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Hoochie Coochie Man
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: Idlewild South)
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
The second Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South, generally got better reviews than the group's debut LP, mostly because of shorter tracks and tighter arrangements, both of which appealed to the rock press. Their version of Willie Dixon's Hoochie Coochie Man, for instance, actually comes in at less than five minutes. The band's next album, Live At The Fillmore East, proved to be the Allman's commercial breakthrough, however; the fact that the album is made up almost entirely of long jams with extended solos from guitarists Duane Allman and Dickie Betts and keyboardist Gregg Allman only goes to show that sometimes what the public wants is not the same thing as what the critics think they should.
Artist: Wishbone Ash
Title: No Easy Road
Source: CD: The Collection (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Wishbone Four)
Writer(s): Turner/Turner/Powell/Upton
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1972
The first Wishbone Ash song to include a horn section was No Easy Road, a semi-autobiographical tune originally released as a single in 1972. The song was later included on the album Wishbone Four, the last Ash album to feature the band's original lineup.
Artist: David Bowie
Title: It Ain't Easy
Source: CD: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Writer(s): Ron Davies
Label: Ryko (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1972
David Bowie had little need to record cover songs. He was, after all, one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. But when he did record the occasional cover tune, you can bet it was a good one. Take It Ain't Easy, for instance. The song was already well known as the title track of two different albums, one by Three Dog Night and one by Long John Baldry, when Bowie recorded it, yet he still managed to make the song his own. The song itself was written by Nashville songwriter Ron Davies, whose younger sister Gail is notable as the first female producer in country music.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: On The Road Again
Source: CD: The Very Best Of Canned Heat (originally released on LP: Boogie With Canned Heat)
Writer: Jones/Wilson
Label: Capitol (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Canned Heat was formed by a group of blues record collectors in San Francisco. Although their first album consisted entirely of cover songs, by 1968 they were starting to compose their own material, albeit in a style that remained consistent with their blues roots. On The Road Again is built on the same repeating riff the band used for their extended onstage jams such as Refried Boogie and Woodstock Boogie; the same basic riff that ZZ Top would use (at double speed) for their hit LaGrange a few years later.
Artist: Jo Jo Gunne
Title: Run Run Run
Source: European import CD: Jo Jo Gunne/Bite Down Hard/Jumpin' The Gun/So...Where's The Show (originally released on LP: Bite Down Hard)
Writer(s): Ferguson/Andes
Label: Rhino/Edsel (original label: Asylum)
Year: 1972
After Spirit called it quits following the disappointing sales of Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes hooked up with Andes's brother Matt and William "Curly" Smith to form Jo Jo Gunne. Their best known song was Run Run Run, which hit the British top 10 and the US top 30 in 1972, receiving considerable amount of airplay on progressive rock stations as well as being the highlight of the band's live performances.
Artist: Genesis
Title: The Musical Box
Source: CD: Nursery Cryme
Writer(s): Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford
Label: Atlantic (original label: Charisma)
Year: 1971
In a sense, the story of the rock band known as Genesis gets underway with the release of the 1971 album Nursery Cryme. Technically it was the third Genesis album. However, the first two albums, From Genesis To Revelation and Trespass, were not really rock albums at all. It was only after the departure of original guitarist Anthony Phillips and his replacement by Steve Hackett, along with the addition of drummer Phil Collins, that Genesis became a true electric rock band, albeit one with a heavy element of British folk music. Although Genesis sounded nothing like harder British progressive rock bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer, their music was every bit as innovative and complex, as plainly can be heard on the ten minute long opening track from Nursery Cryme, The Musical Box. The lyrics of the song are based on a fairy tale by Peter Gabriel about two children in a country house, one of which (a girl) kills the other by beheading him with a croquet mallet. From there, it only gets weirder (and more adult). The Musical Box is considered one of Genesis' s most influential works, and has even inspired a group of young musicians to call themselves The Musical Box.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: High Priestess
Source: British import CD: Salisbury
Writer(s): Ken Hensley
Label: Sanctuary/BMG (original US label: Mercury)
Year: 1971
The shortest track on Uriah Heep's 1971 album Salisbury was a Ken Hensley composition called High Priestess. The song was one of only two tunes on the LP's second side, with the title track taking up the other sixteen minutes.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Prelude: Happiness/I'm So Glad
Source: LP: Shades Of Deep Purple
Writer(s): Evans/Lord/Paice/Blackmore/Simper/James
Label: Tetragrammaton
Year: 1968
Deep Purple was originally the brainchild of vocalist Chris Curtis, whose idea was to have a band called Roundabout that utilized a rotating cast of musicians onstage, with only Curtis himself being up there for the entire gig. The first two musicians recruited were organist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, both of whom came aboard in late 1967. Curtis soon lost interest in the project, and Lord and Blackmore decided to stay together and form what would become Deep Purple. After a few false starts the lineup stabilized with the addition of bassist Nicky Simper, drummer Ian Paice and vocalist Rod Evans. The group worked up a songlist and used their various connections to get a record deal with a new American record label, Tetragrammaton, which was partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. This in turn led to a deal to release the band's recordings in England on EMI's Parlophone label as well, although Tetragrammaton had first rights to all the band's material, including the classically-influenced Prelude: Happiness, which leads directly into a cover of the Skip James classic I'm So Glad. The band's first LP, Shades Of Deep Purple, was released in the US in July of 1968 and in the UK in September of the same year. The album was a major success in the US, where the single Hush made it into the top five. In the UK, however, it was panned by the rock press and failed to make the charts. This would prove to be the pattern the band would follow throughout its early years; it was only after Evans and Simper were replaced by Ian Gillan and Roger Glover that the band would find success in their native land.
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