https://exchange.prx.org/p/630813
This week we're breaking the show up into shorter sets, in order to keep the back announcing breaks shorter. Of course that means there are more interruptions, so we're putting it to you: which do you prefer? Long sets with a laundry list of what you've been hearing (which to be honest is easier for me), or shorter sets like on this week's show? Let me know, OK?
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Before the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then generally known as pop music) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was also a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on US top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masked guitar and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US the label hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Doors
Title: Spanish Caravan
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Waiting For The Sun)
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1968
The third Doors album, Waiting For The Sun, was somewhat of a departure from the first two, covering a greater variety of styles than their previous efforts. A prime example is Spanish Caravan, which starts with a flamenco solo from guitarist Robbie Kreiger and continues in a highly Spanish (not Mexican) flavored musical vein.
Artist: Joni Mitchell
Title: Shades Of Scarlett Conquering
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, featuring complex songs such as Shades Of Scarlett Conquering. The song is a poetic observation of women who actually look to fictional character Scarlett O'Hara as a role model. If at first that seems a bit absurd, rest assured that I have met such women as recently as the 1990s.
Artist: Jeff Beck
Title: Constipated Duck
Source: CD: Blow By Blow
Writer(s): Jeff Beck
Label: Epic
Year: 1975
Following the dissolution of Beck, Bogert And Appice in 1974, guitarist Jeff Beck, after doing session work for various bands, decided to work on his first entirely instrumental solo album. To help with the project he recruited keyboardist Max Middleton from the second Jeff Beck Group and hired George Martin to produce the album. Filling out the group instrumentally were bassist Phil Chen and drummer Richard Bailey. The shortest track on the album, Constipated Duck, is also the only one solely credited to Beck as a songwriter, as much of the album's songs were written (or co-written) by Middleton. The album was a critical and commercial success, prompting Beck to record mostly instrumentals for the rest of his long career.
Artist: Carole King
Title: Corazón
Source: Mono 45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s): Carole King
Label: Ode
Year: 1973
Both sides of Carole King's fifth album, Fantasy, play as one continuous side, making it hard to play individual songs on the radio without cutting off part of the song itself. Luckily, King released two singles from Fantasy, the first of which was the Latin flavored Corazón. Because her primary audience was the Adult Contemporary crowd, which meant mostly AM radio stations in 1973, promo copies of the single were monoraul rather than stereo, as opposed to the retail version of the record.
Artist: Savoy Brown
Title: Take It Easy
Source: Looking In
Writer(s): Simmonds/Peverett
Label: Deram (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1970
In mid-1970 lead vocalist Chris Youlden and the rest of Savoy Brown parted company, leaving Dave Peverett to double up as vocalist and guitarist for the band. The remaining four members (Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens, drummer Roger Earl and guitarist/founder Kim Simmonds) immediately went to work on what would be Savoy Brown's sixth LP. Looking In, when released, ended up being the most successful album in the band's entire run, and the only one to make the British charts (Savoy Brown had always done better with US audiences than in their native UK). Among the many listenable tunes on Looking In is Take It Easy, written by Peverett and Simmonds. Unfortunately, this particular Savoy Brown lineup was not to last, as Simmonds summarily dismissed the rest of the group shortly after Looking In was released, citing musical differences. Simmonds set about putting together a new lineup, while the other three erstwhile members formed their own band, Foghat, a group that would ironically have far more commercial success than Savoy Brown ever achieved.
Artist: Bacchus
Title: Carry My Load
Source: LP: Brown Acid-The First Trip (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Peterson/Turner/Souza
Label: RidingHigh (original label: Johnson)
Year: 1971
Bacchus was a power trio from the Tampa Bay area that was formed in 1970 by Eric Turner (guitar, vocals, songwriter), Charlie Souza (bass), and Bill Peterson (drums), following the breakup of their previous band, the Tropics. Bacchus served as opening act for several major headliners, including Grand Funk Railroad, Lynyrd Skyryrd and Ted Nugent, before disbanding around 1974. One of their best remembered songs was Carry My Load, which was released as the B side of the band's first single in 1971.
Artist: Troyka
Title: Early Morning
Source: LP: Troyka
Writer(s): Troyka
Label: Cotillion
Year: 1970
Depending on whose opinion is being voiced, Edmonton, Alberta's Troyka was either Canada's first psychedelic band, Canada's first prog-rock band, or Canada's first hard-rock power trio. After checking out the instrumental Early Morning I would have to add a touch of soul to that mix as well.
Artist: Graham Nash
Title: Chicago
Source: French import 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Graham Nash
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1971
This song always struck me as a bit of an anachronism. The Democratic Convention in Chicago happened in 1968, after all, while this song, which is obviously about the demonstrations that were happening across the street at Lincoln Park, didn't come out until 1971. So what's the deal? Well, it turns out there was something called the Chicago 8 Defense Fund that was holding a fundraising concert that summer, and Nash wrote the song in part to pressure some of his bandmates (David Crosby was already on board) into performing for free. Did it work? I have no idea. Anyone in the Chicago area know if they played a benefit concert there in 1971?
Artist: Neil Young
Title: Old Man
Source: CD: Decade (originally released on LP: Harvest)
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Neil Young had his greatest success as a solo artist with the album Harvest, released in 1972. In fact, the song Heart Of Gold was so successful that Young deliberately set out to make less commercial sounding records from then on. Less successful on the charts was a second single, Old Man, that nonetheless got tons of exposure on FM rock stations that were just beginning to realize that they could be economically viable alternatives to top 40 AM stations.
Artist: National Lampoon, featuring Chevy Chase
Title: Colorado
Source: CD: Greatest Hits Of The National Lampoon (originally released on LP: Lemmings)
Writer(s): Guest/Kelly/Hendra
Label: Uproar (original label: Blue Thumb)
Year: 1973
In January of 1973 National Lampoon began running a stage show called Lemmings that ended its run after 350 performances. The second half of each show was subtitled Woodshuck: Three Days of Peace, Love and Death, and was made up of parodies of many of the musical acts that had appeared at Woodstock. One popular performer who wasn't at Woodstock (although he apparently wished he had been) was John Denver. Nonetheless, writers Christopher Guest, Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra decided to include a Denver parody in Lemmings. The song Colorado, about being stranded in winter in the Colorado Rockie Mountains, was sung by a then-unknown Chevy Chase, with instruments and backup vocals provided by the Lemmings cast.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: My Mistake
Source: British import CD: Living The Blues
Writer(s): Alan Wilson
Label: BGO (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Although Robert "The Bear" Hite was the main lead vocalist for Canned Heat, guitarist Alan "Sunflower" Wilson had his share of the spotlight as well, particularly on songs that he wrote himself, such as My Mistake, from the 1968 album Living The Blues. Similar in sound and structure to his most famous song, Going Up The Country, My Mistake is a worthy companion to that classic.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Come Together
Source: LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple
Year: 1969
After the Beatles released their 1968 double LP (the so-called White Album), they went to work on their final film project, a documentary about the band making an album. Unfortunately, what the cameras captured was a group on the verge of disintegration, and both the album and the film itself were shelved indefinitely. Instead, the band decided to record an entirely new group of compositions. Somehow, despite the internal difficulties the band was going through, they managed to turn out a masterpiece: Abbey Road. Before the album itself came out, a single was released. The official A side was George Harrison's Something, the first Harrison song ever to be released as a Beatle A side. The other side was the song that opened the album itself, John Lennon's Come Together. In later years Come Together came to be one of Lennon's signature songs and was a staple of his live performances.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Hats Off To (Roy) Harper
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s): Trad., arr. Charles Obscure
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1970
The final track on Led Zeppelin's third album at first sounds like a throwaway track featuring Jimmy Page noodling slide guitar and Robert Plant throwing out blues cliches. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the writing credits on the label read "Traditional, arr. Charles Obscure". The reality, though, is that Hats Off To (Roy) Harper is based on a 1937 recording of Shake 'Em On Down by delta bluesman Bukka White. The title of the Led Zeppelin version is a tribute to the band's friend Roy Harper, who would come to international prominence in 1975 as the guest lead vocalist on Pink Floyd's Have A Cigar, from their Wish You Were Here album.
No comments:
Post a Comment