Of this week's 11 tracks, all but two have never been played on either Rockin' in the Days of Confusion or Stuck in the Psychedelic Era before. Check it out:
Artist: Sugarloaf
Title: Green-Eyed Lady
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released on LP: Sugarloaf and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Corbetta/Phillips/Riordan
Label: Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1970
The unwritten rules of radio, particularly those concerning song length, were in transition in 1970. Take Sugarloaf's Green-Eyed Lady, for example. When first released as a single the 45 was virtually identical to the album version except that it faded out just short of the six-minute mark. This was about twice the allowed length under the old rules and it was soon replaced with an edited version that left out all the instrumental solos, coming in at just under three minutes. The label soon realized, however, that part of the original song's appeal (as heard on FM rock radio) was its organ solo, and a third single edit with that solo restored became the final, and most popular, version of Green-Eyed Lady. The song went into the top 5 nationally (#1 on some charts) and ended up being the band's biggest hit.
Artist: Van Morrison
Title: Caravan
Source: LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: Moondance)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1970
Following the lukewarm commercial reception of his Astral Weeks album, Van Morrison set out to deliberately make a more accessible album. The result was Moondance, the album that established him as a major force in modern music. Among the many tracks on the album to get airplay on FM rock radio was Caravan, a song that was based on Morrison's memories of living on a country road in Woodstock, NY, where the nearest house was a fair distance away. In the song, which is basically about the gypsy lifestyle, he mentions the radio prominently in the song. As he later explained: "I could hear the radio like it was in the same room. I don't know how to explain it. There was some story about an underground passage under the house I was living in, rumours from kids and stuff and I was beginning to think it was true. How can you hear someone's radio from a mile away, as if it was playing in your own house? So I had to put that into the song, It was a must."
Artist: Kak
Title: Trieulogy
Source: British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released in US on LP: Kak)
Writer(s): Yoder/Grelecki
Label: Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year: 1969
The story of Kak is one of the strangest in rock history. Guitarists Gary Yoder and Dehner Patton had both been members of the Oxford Circle, the legendary East (San Francisco) Bay area band that broke up in early summer of 1967. Not long the breakup Yoder was approached by a guy named Gary Grelecki, who introduced himself as a fan of the band and offered to get Yoder a deal with Columbia, then the second largest record label in the country. Yoder figured that he didn't have anything to lose by saying yes; sure enough, two months later he got a call from Grelecki saying the contract was a done deal. Yoder got into contact with Dehner, who had been playing in a band called Cherry Jam since the Oxford breakup, performing original material in the Davis area. One of the other members of Cherry Jam was percussionist/harpsichordist Chris Lockheed, who had previously played in a band called the Majestics. The lineup was completed with the addition of bassist Joe-Dave Damrill, who had been playing with another Davis band called Group B. It turned out that Grelicki's father was with the CIA and had been using Columbia as a front for agency activities in East Asia, and actually had legitimate contacts at the label. The new band, Kak, was signed to Columbia's Epic subsidiary, releasing their only LP in 1969. Although neither the band (which played fewer than a dozen gigs in its entire existence) or the album was not a commercial success at the time, Kak gained a cult following that exists to this day. The most ambitious track on the album, Trieulogy, is made up of three originally unrelated pieces, Golgotha, Mirage and Rain, that Yoder later said "blended well together", adding that "it's a logical pattern, lyrically and musically."
Artist: Todd Rundgren
Title: When I Pray
Source: 45 RPM single B side (taken from LP: Faithful)
Writer(s): Todd Rundgren
Label: Bearsville
Year: 1976
For his seventh album, singer/songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist Todd Rundgren decided to do something a bit different. The first side of Faithful was made up entirely of cover songs, while side two of the LP was all Rundgren originals. Both sides of the album got praise from the rock press, with Rolling Stone rock critic John Milward calling it "his strongest collection of pop runes since...Something/Anything." The only single from the album followed the same cover/original pattern, with Rundgren's dead-on cover of the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations backed with When I Pray, a rather tasty tune utilizing exotic rhythms to create a hypnotic effect.
Artist: T. Rex
Title: Metal Guru
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Marc Bolan
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Metal Guru was the fourth and final T.Rex song to top the British charts, hitting the #1 spot in late spring of 1972. By then, glam-rock had already run its course in the Western hemispheere, however, and the song did not chart at all in the US. Singer/songwriter Marc Bolan described Metal Guru as "a festival of life song. I relate 'Metal Guru' to all Gods around. I believe in a God, but I have no religion. With 'Metal Guru', it's like someone special, it must be a Godhead. I thought how God would be, he'd be all alone without a telephone. I don't answer the phone any more. I have codes where people ring me at certain times." I'm not sure what all that means, but there it is.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: One Of These Days
Source: CD: Works (originally released on LP: Meddle)
Writer(s): Waters/Wright/Gilmour/Mason
Label: Capitol (original label: Harvest)
Year: 1971
In their early years Pink Floyd was a band that was talked about more than heard, at least in the US. That began to change with the release of their 1971 LP Meddle and its opening track, One Of These Days, which got a significant amount of airplay on FM rock radio.
Artist: Ten Years After
Title: Spider In My Web
Source: CD: Undead
Writer(s): Alvin Lee
Label: Deram
Year: 1968
Ten Years After was always known more for their live performances than for their studio work. In fact, their biggest break was playing live at Woodstock. It should come as no surprise, then, that they chose to release a live album as their second LP in 1968. The album is basically a showcase for Alvin Lee's guitar pyrotechnics, although there are a couple tunes, such as Spider In My Web, that he wrote himself.
Artist: Joni Mitchell
Title: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Source: LP: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Writer(s): Joni Mitchell
Label: Asylum
Year: 1975
Although it was not well-received by the rock press when it was first released, Joni Mitchell's seventh studio album, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns has since come to be regarded, in the words of one critic, Mitchell's masterpiece. The title track, which opens side two of the original LP, is a critical view of a businesslike marraige where the wife has come to be thought of as part of the husband's portfolio.
Artist: Sly And The Family Stone
Title: Family Affair
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: There's A Riot Goin' On)
Writer(s): Sylvester Stewart
Label: Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year: 1971
Although credited to Sly And The Family Stone, Family Affair was actually almost a solo effort by the the group's leader, Sly Stone, who played keyboards, guitar and bass on the track, with his friend Billy Preston providing additional keyboards. The song is one of the first uses of a drum machine (then known as a rhythm box), which was programmed by Stone himself. Sly provided lead vocals on the track, backed up by his sister Rose. He initially did not consider the song strong enough to be released as a single, but as it turned out, Family Affair was the biggest hit of his career, becoming his final #1 hit on both the pop and soul charts.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Sentimental Lady
Source: CD: Bare Trees
Writer(s): Bob Welch
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
One of the great rock love songs of the 1970s, Bob Welch's Sentimental Lady spent several weeks in the top 20 in late 1977. Welch's solo version of the song, from his French Kiss album, was not the original recorded version of the song, however. That title goes to the 1972 Fleetwood Mac version of the song from the Bare Trees album, featuring Welch on lead vocals backed by Christine McVie. Unlike the Welch version, Fleetwood Mac's Sentimental Lady has a second verse and runs about four and a half minutes in length (Welch's solo version is about three minutes long).
Artist: Yes
Title: And You And I
Source: LP: Close To The Edge
Writer(s): Anderson/Bruford/Howe/Squire
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1972
Recording technology has been evolving since the first recordings were made on wax cylinders over a hundred years ago. That evolution has been anything but steady, however. The process was entirely acoustic until about 1930, when microphones began to replace the large horns that had been previously required to gather in sounds. From there, things stayed pretty much as they were until the late 1940s, when tape technology made it possible to edit recordings for the first time. Stereo came along in the 1950s, but was considered a luxury rather than an industry standard until the late 1960s, when the record labels began to phase out monoraul records altogether. Perhaps the biggest and most revolutionary change, however, was the invention of multi-track technology, or rather the expansion of such technology to more than three or four tracks. As first eight, and then sixteen track machines became common, the artists themselves began to use the recording studio itself as part of the creative process. There were times, however, when the process got a bit too complicated, at least for some musicians. Bill Bruford, the drummer for Yes, absolutely hated the slow development of material in the studio that went into the making of the album Close To The Edge, to the point that it would be his last studio LP as a member of Yes. Only one track on the album was credited to the entire band: And You And I, which was also the only single released (in edited form, since the original runs over ten minutes) from the album. The song originated as an acoustic piece by vocalist Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe that was fleshed out by Bruford and bassist Chris Squire in the studio. The edited version of And You And I barely missed the top 40, peaking at #42.
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