https://exchange.prx.org/p/597018
It's Thanksgiving week, and you have our solemn promise to NOT play Alice's Restaurant this year (you might, however, hear the original live version of the Motorcycle Song before the year's end).
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Reality Does Not Inspire
Source: LP: Blues Image
Writer(s): Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967, Blues Image cited Greenwich Village's Blues Project as their primary inspiration, and is generally acknowledged to be Florida's first jam band. They were also one of the few bands to open their own club, the legendary Thee Image, and played host to many big name acts during the club's short run. Among the Blues Images fans was Jimi Hendrix, who once told them they did great arrangements of other people's material, but their own stuff was relatively weak. The band responded by temporarily putting their original material on the shelf, pulling it out later and giving it the same treatment they would any other cover song. This approach seemed to work well, as Reality Does Not Inspire, the nine minute "showcase" track for their debut LP demonstrates.
Artist: Elton John
Title: Madman Across The Water (original version)
Source: CD: Tumbleweed Connection (bonus track)
Writer(s): John/Taupin
Label: Rocket
Year: Recorded 1970, released 1995
Madman Across The Water was originally recorded in 1970 and intended for the album Tumbleweed Connection. For reasons that are not entirely clear (although it's nearly nine minute length may have been a factor) the recording was shelved and the song re-recorded with a different guitarist as the title song of Elton John's next LP instead. The original version, featuring Mick Ronson on lead guitar, remained unreleased until 1995, when it was included as a bonus track on the remastered CD version of Tumbleweed Connection.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: When The Levee Breaks
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin IV
Writer(s): Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Douglas
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1971
Although it sounds like it could have been written about Hurricane Katrina, When The Levee Breaks, the last song on the fourth Led Zeppelin LP, was actually inspired by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, that saw levees along the river break in over 145 places, leaving over 700,000 people homeless. 29-year-old Lizzie Douglas was living with her family near Walls, Mississippi, when the levee there broke, and two years later, using her stage name of Memphis Minnie recorded the original version of When The Levee Breaks with her then-partner Kansas Joe McCoy. In 1971 Led Zeppelin used Douglas's lyrics as the basis for their own, musically different version of When The Levee Breaks. The track is instantly identifiable by John Bonham's distinctive opening drum beat, which has been heavily sampled by various hip-hop artists over the years.
Artist: Free
Title: Wishing Well
Source: 45 RPM promo single (from LP: Heartbreaker)
Writer(s): Rodgers/Kirke/Yamauchi/Bundrick/Kossoff
Label: Island
Year: 1972
The final album from Free featured a somewhat altered lineup from their previous albums. Bassist (and one of the band's primary songwriters) Andy Fraser had already left the band, while guitarist/keyboardist Paul Kossoff was often incapacitated due to his Quaalude addiction. As a result, several guest musicians, as well as a couple of more permanent replacement members, make an appearance on Heartbreaker. With Fraser gone, lead vocalist Paul Rodgers took on the bulk of the band's songwriting duties, although the official writing credit on several tracks, including the single Wishing Well, went to the entire band membership. Following a US tour (without Kossoff), the band finally called it quits, with Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke remaining together to form a new band, Bad Company.
Artist: Monty Python
Title: Bring Out Your Dead
Source: LP: Monty Python's Instant Record Collection (originally released on LP: The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Writer(s): Monty Python
Label: Arista
Year: 1975
Building on the success of the Monty Python's Flying Circus television show, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin released their first feature film, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, in 1975. They also released The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail containing several excerpts from the film itself, including Bring Out Your Dead, a scene that occurs early in the film as King Arthur passes through a village where a plague has struck. The entire scene was inspired by a skit on the television show called The Death Of Mary Queen Of Scots.
Artist: Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come
Title: Spirit Of Joy
Source: British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Journey)
Writer(s): Kingdom Come
Label: Polydor
Year: 1973
One of the great innovators in British rock history, Arthur Brown is best known for his 1968 hit Fire, which topped the charts in several countries. After his original band, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown disbanded in 1969, Brown formed a new group, Kingdom Come, which released three albums in the early 1970s. The third of these, Journey, is notable for being the first rock album to use a drum machine exclusively for its percussion parts. In fact, the entire album is now considered to be an early classic of the electronic rock genre, as can be plainly heard on the track Spirit Of Joy.
Artist: Stray Dog
Title: Worldwinds
Source: LP: While You're Down There
Writer(s): Snuffy Walden
Label: Manticore
Year: 1974
William Garrett "Snuffy" Walden is best known for the music he has composed over the past thirty years for various TV shows, including Thirtysomething, The Wonder Years, Roseanne, Friday Night Lights and The West Wing (for which he won an Emmy award). Before that, however, he was an accomplished guitarist, working with such notables as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and Eric Burdon and filling in for an ailing Paul Kossoff on Free's final album, Heartbreaker. For me his most impressive work, however, was with Stray Dog, a Denver-based band that Walden had started in his native Texas. Stray Dog recorded two albums for Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Manticore label, the second of which was While You're Down There. Walden wrote the final track on While You're Down There, an instrumental called Worldwinds that showscases Walden's considerable talent, both as a guitarist and as a composer.
Artist: Doors
Title: Tightrope Ride
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Manzarek/Krieger
Label: Elektra
Year: 1971
Following the death of lead vocalist Jim Morrison in 1971, the remaining members of the Doors decided to carry on without him, releasing the album Other Voices later that year. Many of the tracks had actually been started before Morrison's death, with the hope being that he would return from Paris to complete the album. When that didn't happen, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger ended up doing the vocals themselves. One single, Tightrope Ride, was released from the album. The tune features Manzarek on lead vocal.
Artist: James Gang
Title: The Bomber
Source: CD: James Gang Rides Again
Writer(s): Fox/Peters/Walsh/Ravel/Guarldi)
Label: MCA (original label: ABC)
Year: 1970
The second James Gang album saw the addition of a new bass player, Dale Peters, who replaced founding member Tom Kriss. Unlike the group's debut LP, James Gang Rides Again consisted almost entirely of material written by the band members themselves. The only exceptions were adaptations of Ravel's Bolero and Vince Guaraldi's Cast Your Fate To The Wind that guitarist Joe Walsh incorporated into the instrumental section of The Bomber, which at seven minutes was the longest track on the album. The beginning and end of The Bomber consist of a piece called Closet Queen, which was composed by the entire band. Shortly after the album's release the Ravel estate initiated legal proceedings against the band for using Bolero without permission. In response the record was recalled and a new version with Bolero edited out of the track was released in its place. By the time the album The Best Of The James Gang came out (in 1973) the track had been restored to its original length (although the shorter time appears in the credits) and that is the version used on subsequent CD releases of James Gang Rides Again as well.
Artist: Redbone
Title: The Witch Queen Of New Orleans
Source: Mono 45 RPM single (originally released on LP: Message From A Drum)
Writer(s): Pat and Lolly Vegas
Label: Epic
Year: 1971
Citing part-Cherokee Jimi Hendrix as an inspiration, brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas, already veteran performers who had appeared several times on ABC-TV's Shindig, among other venues, decided to form an all Native American band in 1969. Their first hit single was The Witch Queen Of New Orleans, from the 1971 LP Message From A Drum. Redbone recorded a total of six albums for the Epic label in the early 1970s, and are known for being the opening act at the first Earth Day event.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: Spider Woman
Source: European import CD: The Magician's Birthday
Writer(s): Box/Byron/Kerslake/Thain
Label: Sanctuary (original US label: Mercury)
Year: 1972
Although Uriah Heep was known as an album-oriented band in the US and their native UK, they did have some top 40 success in Scandanavia and Northern Europe, especially in Germany, where they scored three top 20 hits from 1970-72. The last of these was Spider Woman, from the Magician's Birthday album, which went to the #14 spot on the German charts.
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