https://exchange.prx.org/p/538642
This week we work our way up from 1967 until we get close enough to 1974 to announce our first Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel winner (we're still waiting for mailing addresses for the other two). From there it's 1971 time, followed by a Joni Mitchell track making its Rockin' in the Days of Confusion debut.
Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Paranoid
Source: CD: Grand Funk
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
I spent a good portion of the summer of 1971 riding around in a 1954 Ford panel truck listening to Grand Funk (aka the Red Album) on 8-track tape. One thing I noticed was that, unlike the Black Sabbath song with the same name, Grand Funk Railroad's Paranoid has lyrics that actually make sense, albeit in a not entirely healthy way. The sad part, of course, is that there are actually people who live that way.
Artist: Doors
Title: Love Me Two Times
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Strange Days)
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the band's debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Grammophone Man
Source: LP: Spirit
Writer(s): Ferguson/Locke/California/Andes/Cassidy
Label: Epic (original label: Ode)
Year: 1968
Like most of the tracks on Spirit's 1968 debut LP, Grammophone Man combines rock and jazz in a way that has yet to be duplicated. Rather than create a jazz/rock fusion the group chose to switch gears mid-song. After a couple of minutes of a section that can best described as light rock, the song suddenly shifts into a fast-paced bop instrumental featuring Wes Montgomery style guitar work by Randy California and a short Ed Cassidy drum solo that eventually drops the tempo for a short reprise of the piece's main section.
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: John Ono Lennon
Title: Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): John Lennon
Label: Apple
Year: 1970
Following the failure of Ike & Tina Turner's version of River Deep, Mountain High to break into the US top 40 in 1966 (although it was a top 5 hit in the UK), legendary producer Phil Spector reportedly lost his enthusiasm for the music business in general, only briefly emerging in 1969 to produce a couple of singles for A&M Records. In early 1970, however, he was persuaded by the Beatles' new manager, Allen Klein, to come to England and visit Apple Records, where a chance meeting with George Harrison led to Spector being invited to produce John Lennon's new single, Instant Karma! Spector applied his "wall of sound" production technique to the recording, which became a top 5 hit in both the US and UK and the first solo effort by a member of the Beatles to sell over a million copies. The song was remixed and retitled Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) for its US release. The success of the record led to Spector's being asked to salvage the taped sessions that became the Let It Be album.
Artist: J. Geils Band
Title: Whammer Jammer
Source: Mono 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Juke Box Jimmie
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1971
First they were a Boston bar band called Snoopy and the Sopwith Camel. Then they became the J. Geils Blues Band. Finally they dropped the "blues" from the name and became famous. Whammer Jammer, an early B side showcasing "Magic Dick" Salwitz on lead harmonica, shows why the "blues" part was there in the first place.
Artist: Jerry Garcia
Title: Sugaree
Source: Mono 45 RPM single (promo)
Writer: Garcia/Hunter/Kreutzmann
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1972
In 1972 Warner Brothers gave the individual members of the Grateful Dead the opportunity to record solo albums. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and drummer Micket Hart took them up on the offer. Garcia's effort was unique in that he played virtually all the instruments on the album himself (except for the drum parts, which were played by Bill Kreutzmann). One of the best known songs from that album is Sugaree, which was soon added pretty much permanently to the Dead's concert repertoire.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: China Doll
Source: CD: From The Mars Hotel
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia
Label: Rhino (original label: Grateful Dead)
Year: 1974
In a way, the Grateful Dead's seventh studio album was all about changes. The title of the album itself changed twice, first from Ugly Roomers to Ugly Rumours, and finally to From The Mars Hotel (although if you hold the cover upside down and hold it up to a mirror you can plainly see the word "Ugly Rumours"). The title of the second song on the album went through changes as well. Originally known as The Suicide Song, China Doll was first recorded in February of 1973 for the LP Wake Of The Flood, but ended up on the cutting room floor. The re-recorded version of China Doll has been called "haunting, beautiful, sad, and confusing" by one of our listeners, who added that it "depresses the hell outta me that I love this song". I really have nothing to add to that.
Artist: George Carlin
Title: Divorce Game
Source: Mono LP: FM & AM
Writer(s): George Carlin
Label: Little David
Year: 1972
George Carlin had been doing comedy since the late 1950s, first as a radio disc jockey in Fort Worth, Texas, and then as a stand up team with fellow DJ Jack Burns. In 1962 Carlin decided to go solo, making appearances as various comedic characters on TV variety shows as well as making frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, both as a performer and a "guest host". In the late 60s he began to shed his previously clean-cut image, switching to jeans and t-shirts, growing a beard and letting his hair grow long. His material began to change as well, as documented on the album FM & AM, with the AM side (recorded in mono) featuring some of his best-known bits that he had performed on television such as Divorce Game, while the FM side (in stereo) showcased the more controversial material he was performing in clubs. Carlin would go on to become an icon of the counterculture, appearing as the host of the debut episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975 and starring in 14 stand-up comedy specials on HBO, which became increasingly political over time. Carlin, who died of heart failure at the age of 71 in 2008, is now considered one of the most influential stand-up comedians of all time.
Artist: Kinks
Title: God's Children
Source: French import 7" 33 1/3 RPM EP: From the soundtrack of the film "Percy"
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary (original label: Pye)
Year: 1971
The final Kinks album released on the Pye label in the UK was the soundtrack album for a film called Percy. In addition to the LP, Pye issued a four-song EP from the album as well, promoted as a "maxi-single", perhaps the first ever use of the term. The opening track from both the album and the EP was God's Children; the song was also released as a single in the UK but did not chart. None of these records, by the way, were ever given a North American release, resulting in the Percy soundtrack being the best selling Kinks import album in the US for several years.
Artist: Elton John
Title: Friends
Source: LP: Friends (soundtrack)
Writer(s): John/Taupin
Label: Pickwick (original label: Paramount)
Year: 1971
Elton John and Bernie Taupin started work on the soundtrack for the film Friends before John hit it big in the US with Your Song, a tune from his self-titled second LP (his first to be released in the US). Although the film itself was a flop, John's album did respectively well, with the title track being released as a single in 1971. The album itself, however, is long out of print and has never been released on a CD.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Wond'ring Aloud
Source: CD: Aqualung
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1971
If the first three Jethro Tull albums can be considered steps on a path, then Aqualung would have to be the destination. The first Tull album to achieve massive commercial success, Aqualung shows the band finally divorced from its beginnings as a blues band and firmly in the control of vocalist/flautist/acoustic guitarist/songwriter Ian Anderson. An expanded version of Wond'ring Aloud called Wond'ring Again was recorded around the same time and was included on the 1973 album Living In The Past.
Artist: Joni Mitchell
Title: Edith And The Kingpin
Source: LP: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Writer(s): Joni Mitchell
Label: Asylum
Year: 1975
Joni Mitchell was always known for sophisticated lyrics, but after making her switch from Reprise to Asylum, her music began to take on a sophistication of its own. While still based in folk-rock, it increasingly incorporated jazz idioms to create a sound that was uniquely Mitchell's. This trend reached its fulfillment with the 1975 album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, with songs such as Edith And The Kingpin, set in the jazz age and chronicling the developing relationship between a crime boss and his new moll.
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