https://exchange.prx.org/p/617558
This week during recording there was a huge party going on just a few feet from the studio window. This may have been an influence on what turned out to be pure free-form madness from diverse places. Regardless, most of these tracks haven't been played on the show for several years, or in a couple cases like our opening tune, at all.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: Look At Yourself
Source: British import CD: Look At Yourself
Writer(s): Ken Hensley
Label: Sanctuary/BMG (original US label: Mercury)
Year: 1971
From Uriah Heep keyboardist Ken Hensley's liner notes: "Look At Yourself opens side one and is also our first world-wide single (fingers crossed)." Apparently they needed more fingers, as the song only charted in Switzerland and Germany, peaking at #4 and #33 respectively. A possible reason for this lack of success is the fact that the single version of the tune is only three minutes long, cutting out the entire extended end portion of the song featuring members of the Anglo-African band Osiboso on percussion.
Artist: Hot Tuna
Title: Sunrise Dance With The Devil
Source: CD: Yellow Fever
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: BMG/RCA (original label: Grunt)
Year: 1975
in 1974 Hot Tuna, which had always been primarily into blues and country folk, decided to take a stab at being a power trio, with guitarist/vocalist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady being joined by drummer Bob Steeler. As Kaukonen, who wrote Sunrise Dance With The Devil for the 1975 LP Yellow Fever put it: "it was just fun to be loud."
Artist: War
Title: Get Down
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): War
Label: United Artists
Year: 1971
Although officially formed in 1969, the band War actually can trace its roots to a band called the Creators. Formed in Long Beach, California in 1962 by Howard E. Scott and Harold Brown, the group expanded over the years to include Charles Miller, Morris "B. B." Dickerson and Lonnie Jordan, Lee Oskar and Papa Dee Allen. In 1968 the Creators changed their name to Nightshift and began backing up singer (and former NFL star) Deacon Jones. Producer Jerry Goldstein saw Jones and the band perform at a North Hollywood club called the Rag Doll and was captivated by the band's positive energy. Goldstein convinced the band to change their name to War and begin working with formers Animals frontman Eric Burdon. After recording two albums with War, Burdon left the group, who decided to continue on without him, releasing their first album as a standalone group in 1971. The LP was a modest success, but was eclipsed by their next effort, All Day Music, which was released in November of that same year. Among the many standout tracks on the album was Get Down, which was also released as the B side of the All Day Music single.
Artist: Stories
Title: Brother Louie
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Brown/Wilson
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1973
There are many examples in rock history of bands actually hating their biggest hit. Sometimes it's because they just get tired of playing it the same way over and over to please audiences. In a few cases, however, the band actually hated the song even before it became a hit. The Strawberry Alarm Clock, for instance, were so disgusted by the lyrics of Incense And Peppermints provided by professional songwriters that they refused to record their own lead vocals for the tune (a member of another band entirely sang on the record). Even worse is the case of one-hit wonders who become forever associated with the song they hated (like Steam with Na-Na-Hey-Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye). Generally, it gives the artist a choice of selling out or quitting the music business altogether. There really is no middle ground. Take the case of a band called Stories. After a few failed singles they hit it big with a cover of Hot Chocolate's Brother Louie, taking it all the way to the top of the US charts. The success of the single actually led to the departure of the band's two founding members, Michael Brown (formerly of the Left Banke) and Ian Lloyd. Although the band did continue on with new members, and even had a minor hit with a song called Mammy Blue later the same year, Stories will be forever known as the band that had a US hit with Brother Louie and not much else.
Artist: Jo Jo Gunne
Title: I Make Love
Source: LP: Jo Jo Gunne
Writer(s): Jay Ferguson
Label: Asylum
Year: 1972
I Make Love is the last track on side one of the first Jo Jo Gunne LP. Written by Jay Ferguson (formerly of Spirit), the song features a distinct opening guitar rift by Matt Andes. Other than that, it's probably the weakest track on a strong album, which puts it at a disadvantage.
Artist: Argent
Title: Hold Your Head Up
Source: European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: All Together Now)
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. In the years since, the longer LP version heard here has come to be the most familiar one to most radio listeners.
Artist: Strawbs
Title: Round And Round/Lay A Little Light On Me/Hero's Theme
Source: LP: Hero And Heroine
Writer(s): Cousins/Lambert
Label: A&M
Year: 1974
One of the hardest bands to wrap one's head around was the British group Strawbs. Formed in 1963 by Dave Cousins (vocals, guitar, banjo, mandolin, dulcimer) and Tony Hooper (vocals, guitar), the duo was originally known as the Strawberry Hill Boys and played, believe it or not, bluegrass music. Their early sets were made up of cover versions of songs from people like Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers, but over time Cousins began writing original material for them to perform. In their early years they did a lot of work for the BBC as well as live performances, appearing at the same venues as such big name acts as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. After adding bassist Ron Chesterman in 1966 they began gravitating more toward folk and pop music, shortening their name to Strawbs for a 1967 gig where they wanted to display their name on stage. That same year they added vocalist Sandy Denny and recorded several demos with her. This led to an album called All Our Own Work that included the first recorded version of what would become Denny's best known song, Who Knows Where The Time Goes. The band was unable to find a record label to release the album, and Denny left Strawbs to replace Judy Dyble in Fairport Convention (All Our Own Work was eventually released in 1973 on a budget label specializing in re-releasing deleted albums). Strawbs soon got the attention of Dave Hubert, owner of Horizons Records in the US, who convinced his distributor, A&M Records to sign the group. They did, releasing a pair of singles in 1968 and the album Strawbs the following year. These were all produced by Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti, who would soon become closely associated with Elton John and David Bowie, respectively. Guest musicians on the album included Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones on bass and session man Rick Wakeman, who would soon join Yes, on keyboards. Over the next few years Strawbs would go through several more personnel changes, with only Cousins remaining a member throughout the band's existence. Hooper, who co-founded the original group, left in 1971, to be replaced by electric guitarist Dave Lambert. This would correspond with a shift more toward progressive rock, which is where the band was in 1974 when they recorded the album Hero And Heroine. As can be heard on the album's three closing pieces, they were still quite musically diverse, making it difficult to attract a mass following. Cousins himself decided to leave the band in 1980, effectively bringing the saga of Strawbs to an end. Or so it seemed. Three years later Rick Wakeman, who was co-hosting a TV show called GasTank, invited the members of Strawbs to perform a piece called The Hangman And The Papist, a track that originally appeared on From The Witchwood, the last Strawbs album to include Wakeman as a member. Following the broadcast, Cousins decided to revive Strawbs as an ongoing band with a rotating membership, a situation that lasted until 2023. Cousins died at the age of 85 in 2025.
Artist: Captain Beyond
Title: Thousand Days Of Yesterday (intro)/Frozen Over/Thousand Days Of Yesterday (Time Since Come And Gone)
Source: LP: Captain Beyond
Writer(s): Evans/Caldwell
Label: Capricorn
Year: 1972
The first thing you notice when you look at the credits for the first Captain Beyond album is that all the songs were composed by vocalist Rod Evans (formerly of Deep Purple) and drummer Bobby Caldwell. This may seem odd, considering how the entire album, including songs like Thousand Days Of Yesterday and Frozen Over, which open side two of the LP, are so completely dominated by the guitar work of Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt and bassist Lee Dorman. It turns out that, in spite of the official credits, all the songs on the album were actually written by the entire band. So how did the blatant misrepresentation come about? Actually, it's pretty simple. At the time Captain Beyond was formed in 1972, both Reinhardt and Dorman were still officially members of Iron Butterfly, even though that band had actually disbanded following the departure of founding member Doug Ingle in 1971. Blame the lawyers.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Listen, Learn, Read On
Source: CD: The Book Of Taliesyn
Writer(s): Blackmore/Evans/Lord/Paice
Label: Eagle (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
Deep Purple's second LP, The Book Of Taliesyn, was recorded only three months after the release of the debut LP, Shades Of Deep Purple, in 1968. The reason for this rush job was that they were about to embark on their first US tour, and their US label, Tetragrammaton, felt that they needed to have a new album to promote while on the road. This is actually a case of forward thinking, since putting out a new album just before starting a tour is now standard practice for popular artists. Given the lack of time the band had to come up with new material, The Book Of Taliesyn actually came out pretty well overall, although I have to say that every time I hear the album's opening track (Listen, Learn, Read On) images of Spinal Tap on stage with their miniature Stonehenge come to mind.
rtist: Jethro Tull
Title: My God
Source: LP: Aqualung
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Reprise
Year: 1971
The fortunes of Jethro Tull improved drastically with the release of the Aqualung album in 1971. The group had done well in their native UK but were still considered a second-tier band in the US. Aqualung, however, propelled the group to star status, with several tracks getting heavy airplay on FM rock radio. Although Ian Anderson has always maintained that Aqualung was not a concept album, that doesn't account for the fact that the two sides of the album were subtitled Aqualung and My God. Maybe that means Aqualung was actually two HALF concept albums, I don't know. Speaking of My God, in addition to being the obvious theme of the entire second side of the LP, it was also the title of the first (and longest) track on that side, and lyrically lays down all the basic ideas presented on the second half of the Aqualung album.
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