https://exchange.prx.org/p/568280
This week we start out rockin' hard and slowly work our way to more acoustical stuff by the end of the show. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys
Title: Changes
Source: LP: Band Of Gypsys
Writer(s): Buddy Miles
Label: Capitol
Year: 1970
Jimi Hendrix must have had some sort of sense of irony (at least in the back of his mind) when he worked out a deal to settle a lawsuit for breach of contract brought against him by Capitol Records in 1969. A few years earlier, in 1965, he had sat in on some sessions for Capitol with Curtis Knight, and had signed a generic management contract that covered his participation in the recordings. What he didn't realize at the time is that the contract also covered future recordings, even though he was only a session man for the Knight tracks. After Hendrix became famous, someone at Capitol pulled out their copy of that old contract and used it to leverage the guitarist into doing another album for them. As Hendrix had no studio material anywhere near being ready for release, he instead provided Capitol with a live album, recorded over a period of days at Madison Square Garden. Since the Jimi Hendrix Experience was no longer a viable entity at that time, Hendrix put together a three-piece band consisting of himself, bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles, who had already established himself as a member of the Electric Flag and leader of the Buddy Miles Express. This was reflected in the fact that of the six songs that appeared on the album Band Of Gypsys, three (including Changes) were written (and sung) by Miles, rather than Hendrix, just as all of the songs from the 1965 sessions had been penned by Curtis Knight.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: 21st Century Schizoid Man
Source: CD: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer: Fripp/McDonald/Lake/Giles/Sinfield
Label: Discipline Global Mobile (original US label: Atlantic)
Year: 1969
There are several bands with a legitimate claim to starting the prog-rock movement of the mid-70s. The one most musicians cite as the one that started it all, however, is King Crimson. Led by Robert Fripp, the band went through several personnel changes over the years. Many of the members went on to greater commercial success as members of other bands, including guitarist/keyboardist Ian McDonald (Foreigner), and lead vocalist/bassist Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) from the original lineup heard on In The Court Of The Crimson King. Additionally, poet Peter Sinfield, who wrote all King Crimson's early lyrics, would go on to perform a similar function for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, including their magnum opus Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends. Other original members included Michael Giles on drums and Fripp himself on guitar. The uncannily prescient 21st Century Schizoid Man, as the first song on the first album by King Crimson, can quite accurately be cited as the song that got the whole thing started.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: American Woman
Source: European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: American Woman)
Writer: Bachman/Cummings/Peterson/Kale
Label: Sony Music (original US label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1970
American Woman is undoubtably the most political song ever recorded by the Guess Who, a generally non-political Canadian band. My family was living on Ramstein AFB, which was and is a huge base in Germany with enough Canadian personnel stationed there to justify their own on-base school. From early 1969 until mid-1970 (when we moved back to the States) I found myself hanging out with the Canadian kids most of the time and I gotta tell you, they absolutely loved this song. They also loved to throw it in my face as often as possible. I guess that's what I got for being the "token American" member of my peer group.
Artist: Crow
Title: Heading North
Source: CD: The Best Of Crow (originally released on LP: Crow By Crow)
Writer(s): Larry Wiegand
Label: Sundazed (original label: Amaret)
Year: 1969
Crow is a classic example of a band that came up the honest way, through hard work and steady gigging, but still got screwed in the long run. It started in late 1966, when seven local Minneapolis musicians (many of whom were already veterans on the local music scene) formed a band called South Forty. The band proved popular enough to release an album and a pair of singles on the local Metrobeat label before winning first place in a battle of the bands in September of 1968. The prize was a recording session with Columbia Records in Chicago the following January. South Forty recorded five songs that day. Although Columbia decided not to sign the band, the recordings caught the ear of Bob Monaco of Dunwich Productions, which by then had shut down their own record label in favor of shopping bands to major labels such as Atlantic Records (which had distributed Dunwich) and Capitol (which had always had a strong presence in the industrial cities of the Great Lakes region). It was the people from Dunwich that added horns to some of the tunes before taking the tapes to reps from the major labels. At the same time, the band members themselves decided that South Forty sounded too much like the name of a country band, and came up with the name Crow. Eventually the band had to choose between signing with Atlantic (their preference) or Amaret, a new label distributed by Capitol. The Dunwich people felt that the band might by overlooked as just one of many rock bands in the Atlantic stable and talked the band into signing with Amaret instead, where Crow was indisputably the biggest name on the label. The band released their first LP, Crow Music, in 1969, with Time To Make A Turn as their first single. It was their second single, however, that made the band internationally famous. Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me) was a major success, spawning cover versions by Black Sabbath (their first UK single) and Ike and Tina Turner. The success of the song, however, showed the drawbacks of Dunwich's decision to sign Crow to Amaret, as the label's distribution deal with Capitol was found to be inadequate; the band often played places that did not have any of their records available for sale. Spotty distribution and the lack of a solid hit song hurt the sales of their second LP, Crow By Crow, despite the presence of several fine songs such as Heading North.
Artist: Santana
Title: Soul Sacrifice (live at Woodstock)
Source: CD: Santana (bonus track)
Writer(s): Brown/Malone/Rolie/Santana
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1969
Although this is the original recording of Santana performing Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock, it does not sound quite the same as what you may have heard on the Woodstock original movie soundtrack album. That's because they doctored the recording a bit for the original soundtrack album, adding in audience sounds, including the crowd rain chant that seques into the piece on the original LP, and leaving out about five minutes' worth of the actual performance. More recent copies of the movie itself sound even more different because the people doing the remastering of the film decided to record new versions of some of the percussion tracks.
Artist: Journey
Title: Nickel & Dime
Source: LP: In The Beginning (originally released on LP: Next)
Writer(s): Valory/Schon/Rolie/Tickner
Label: Columbia
Year: 1977
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Los Angeles was home to several studio musicians known collectively as the Wrecking Crew that played on literally hundreds of hit records by almost as many featured artists. In San Francisco, however, the emphasis was more on live performances than studio work, and in 1973 and group of former members of Santana and Frumious Bandersnatch formed the Golden Gate Rhythm Section to back up various Bay Area musicians. After just one gig, however, with drummer Prarie Prince, they decided that being a backup band wasn't going to work for them, and they ended up developing their own jazz-rock fusion style and taking the name Journey. Prarie Prince soon rejoined his former band, the Tubes, and the remaining members of Journey held auditions for a permanent drummer, finally settling upon Ainsley Dunbar, who was already well established as a former member of the Mothers Of Invention as well as leader of his own group, the Ainsley Dunbar Retaliation. Although bassist George Tickner left the band after their first album, he is listed as co-writer of Nickel & Dime, the only fully instrumental track on Journey's third LP, Next. For their next LP, Infinity, Journey would add vocalist Steve Perry. The rest is history.
Artist: Bad Company
Title: Movin' On
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Mick Ralphs
Label: Swan Song
Year: 1974
It's pretty much a given that there are no guarantees in the entertainment industry, but there have been artists that seemed destined to hit it big right out of the box. One of the most successful was the British rock group Bad Company. It had a lot going for it; vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke had been members of Free, while guitarist Mick Ralphs was a veteran of Mott the Hoople. Even the bass player, Boz Burrell, had a stint with King Crimson under his belt. The band was the first group signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label, even before they began work on their debut album. And sure enough, their debut album went right to the top of the US charts, going on to become the 46th best selling album of the 1970s. The first single from the album, Can't Get Enough, peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is a staple of classic rock radio to this day. Although not as big a hit as Can't Get Enough, Bad Company's followup single, Movin' On, made it into the top 20 in early 1975.
Artist: ZZ Top
Title: Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers
Source: LP: Tres Hombres
Writer(s): Gibbons/Hill/Beard
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: London)
Year: 1973
The second single released from ZZ Top's 1973 breakthough album, Tres Hombres, could well qualify as a Texas state anthem, although a majority of the state's politicians no doubt would never allow that to happen. The title says it all: Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers.
Artist: Hot Tuna
Title: Water Song
Source: LP: Final Vinyl (originally released on LP: Burgers)
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: Grunt
Year: 1972
Hot Tuna was originally formed as a side project by Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady in 1969, while Grace Slick was recovering from surgery and was unable to perform. By late 1971 Hot Tuna was a fully functional band that included violinist Papa John Creach (who was also a member of the Airplane) and drummer Sammy Piazza. Although they had already released a pair of live albums, Burgers was the group's first studio effort. The instrumental Water Song, was written by Kaukonen specifically for the album, and has gone on to become one of Hot Tuna's most popular numbers.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Factory Girl
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
One of the more overlooked tunes in the Rolling Stones catalog, Factory Girl features an odd assortment of instruments (including Tabla, Violin, Congo and Mellotron) on what is essentially an Appalachian kind of song. Guest musicians include Rick Grech on violin and Dave Mason on either guitar or mellotron (simulating a mandolin).
Artist: Duane and Gregg Allman
Title: Well I Know Too Well
Source: LP: Duane & Greg Allman
Writer(s): Steve Alaimo
Label: Bold
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1972
Sometime after the breakup of Hour Glass, brothers Duane and Gregg Allman returned to Jacksonville, Florida, where they soon joined forces with a band called the 31st Of February that had released their debut LP in early 1968. In September, the new lineup began work on what was meant to be their second album, working with engineer/producer Steve Alaimo, who wrote Well I Know Too Well. The band submitted the tapes to the shirts at Liberty Records, who promptly rejected the recordings. This prompted Gregg Allman to go back to California to record a contractual obligation album in order to release the other members of Hour Glass from their contract with Liberty. The 31st Of February tapes sat on the shelf until 1972, when, following the phenomenal success of the 1971 double LP Allman Brothers At Fillmore East, they appeared as an album called Duane & Greg Allman on the Bomb label. I can't say for sure that the album qualifies as a bootleg exactly, but it has several of the earmarks of one, the most obvious being the fact that they misspelled Gregg Allman's first name.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Like Crying
Source: LP: Then Play On
Writer(s): Danny Kirwan
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Danny Kirwan was only 17 and fronting his own band, Boilerhouse, when he came to the attention of Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green. Green invited the band to play a few opening gigs for Fleetwood Mac and before long the two guitarists were participating in after hours jams together. Drummer Mick Fleetwood invited Kirwan to join the band, and Kirwan became the group's fifth official member (Christine McVie still having guest artist status at that point). After making his debut sharing lead guitar duties with Green on an instrumental single, Albatross, Kirwan settled in as a songwriting member of the band in time for their 1969 LP Then Play On, contributing as many songs to the album as Green himself (although the US version left two of those songs off the LP). Another two Kirwan tunes were deleted from the US version when the album was revised to include the eight-minute track Oh Well. Among the few Danny Kirwan songs to be included on every version of Then Play On was the low-key Like Crying, which appears toward the end of the album.
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