40 Year Itch : The Selling of Kiss

Kiss : Firehouse

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On January 8, 1974 Future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Kiss performed a special dress rehearsal for the press at Fillmore East in New York City. A representative from Rolling Stone wrote:

The four Kissers play very heavy, loud and ultimately monotonous rock in the Black Sabbath tradition; they wear sheet-white makeup and black leather and studs. Midway in their act, dry ice overtakes the stage and the bassist flashes a flaming torch in the air. And they finish in a rain of firecrackers. A sure crowd-pleaser. For crowds of kiddies, that is...

Kiss originally only sold 75,000 copies of the debut album despite heavy touring and publicity. This strange appearance on The Mike Douglas Show probably did not help matters. Before playing "Firehouse", Gene Simmons tries to convince Douglas he's evil incarnate. But comedienne Totie Fields says beneath all that make up Simmons is just a nice Jewish kid. "You can't hide the hook", she says in reference to his nose.



 

40 Year Itch : Yes Indeedo

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   On January 7, 1974 Carly Simon gave the world two major productions with husband James Taylor: the single "Mockingbird" and their first child,  Sarah Maria "Sally" Taylor. Within days, upon the release of Hotcakes, Sally, though still in utero, made her first appearance on an album cover. 

Sally is the inspiration of one of Carly's most humorous sets of observations, "Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby"

You're puttin' out too many phonograph records/

I think I'm gonna have a baby, a baby/  

Babies do such nice things, they rock on your knee

   Who's putting out too many phonograph records? Arguably, David Geffen. Hotcakes would have to compete with the simultaneous Elektra-Asylum  releases of rival Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. And Geffen slung an arrow when he stated , at the time, that Hotcakes was the most expensive record ever made.

If so, it's money you can hear in the grooves and in the Paul Buckmaster string arrangements. Listen to the last 50 seconds of "Haven't Got Time for the Pain", Carly's big Adult Contemporary hit of 1974. ( Buckmaster had also arranged for Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water and for Lloyd Cole's glorious Side Two of Don't Get Weird On Me Baby.)

   

  Hotcakes is one of the albums with which I grew up. Looking back I can see how this might have been a suitable soundtrack to our lives in a small Connecticut town. Carly's lyrics reflect a kind of upper middle class domestic bliss ( "Write what you know") and yet her marriage with James Taylor already had its troubles. Pregnant with Sally, She would visit Taylor in rehab. The Hotcakes cut "Mind On My Man", in which she airily whistles,  may only hint at her worries.

Sometimes he's sleepy
And I don't think he loves me
 I worry about his lovin'
 Ain't I crazy?

As on No Secrets, Carly's voice and sense of humor are the stars of this particular show. She's got an all star cast helping her out, including Dr John, Robbie Robertson, James Taylor, and Billy Cobham among others.

 The remake of the 1963 Inez and Charlie Foxx tune, "Mockingbird", was the big hit, peaking at #5 in March of 1974. Here the couple perform the tune ( and the Carolina shag)  at the No Nukes concert in 1979.

Sally would also become the subject of  her dad's "Sarah Maria" which appears on the 1975 album Gorilla. Like brother Ben, Sally has become a singer-songwriter.

  One more footnote: Before 1974 was over, Carly sold Heinz Ketchup the rights to use her 1971 hit "Anticipation" in a commercial. 

40 Year Itch : Hollarin' Cussin', You Wanna Fight

James Brown: Shoot Your Shot

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It didn't take us long to find the best soul album of 1974.    

After knocking out soundtracks for two 1973 blaxploitation classics, Black Caesar and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, James Brown presented director Larry Cohen some new funk with tunes for a revenge thriller, a sequel to Hell Up in Harlem. That jive turkey Cohen turned him down, saying the songs sound like "the same old James Brown stuff". Maybe. But does it ever get much better than James Brown? In any case Brown had the last laugh when he released The Payback as a double album. The Payback needed all of two weeks to hit #1 on the Soul Charts. The first single was "Stoned to the Bone". The album version runs more than ten minutes as do three cuts on this funk fest which gives the JBs Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker plenty of room to burn.

    "Doing the Best I Can" changes the mood considerably. James Brown's eldest son Teddy had died in a car accident during the making of the album. This is the sound of a grieving father in torment.

From Ziggy Stardust to Cobbler Bob?

For everyone else on a Bowie binge...

40 Year Itch : Phil Everly "Invisible Man"

  In memory of Phil Everly, here's a track from his 1974 gem Phil's Diner, the cover of which was shot outside the much loved North Hollywood greasy spoon.

40 Year Itch: Airplane Wreckage

Hot Tuna : Easy Now

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Bummed out by Jefferson Airplane's break-up, neither RCA nor the fans of spin-off group Hot Tuna could get very excited by the latest album from guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady.  Phosphorescent Rat, released on January 4, 1974, never broke beyond #148 on the Billboard Album chart. It can be listened to as a transitional album from the acoustic blues of earlier efforts to the power trio that would emerge. I hear a little Dinosaur Jr on the track "Easy Now". 

                                       

   The following day, Grace Slick released Manhole, one of the most self-indulgent, drug and alcohol-fueled sets ever released in the 1970's and that's saying a lot. The 15 minute title track features Grace caterwauling over the backing of the London Symphony Orchestra.  I dare you to sit through the whole thing. But if you do, your reward is the best song on the album: "Come Again Toucan". All of the future members of Jefferson Starship perform on this album except Papa John Creach.

40 Year Itch : Bob Dylan Hits the Road

This event is the biggest of its kind in the history of show business

-David Geffen

On January 3 1974, at Chicago Stadium, Bob Dylan and The Band kicked off a 40 show, six week tour of the US. This would be Dylan's first time on the road since 1966. Though ticket prices were considered high at the time ( $8), all 658,000 were sold, generating a gross of about five million dollars.

Although they had rehearsed for weeks, Dylan decided to begin the first show with "Hero Blues", a tune they'd never played together. 

Throughout the show, the Band played furiously while Dylan barked out the lyrics. They sounded nothing like the band that had just recorded Planet Waves.

Robbie Robertson is quoted in Down the Highway:The Life of Bob Dylan

"Whenever we would so something in the studio it was like one group of musicians. When we played live the music got very dynamic and violent and explosive...When we got together to do the Tour '74 thing, the same thing happened again. We just automatically reverted to a certain attitude towards the songs...it's fast and aggressive and hard and tough."

We knew we were in the presence of greatness

-photographer Barry Feinstein

After years of domestic isolation, Dylan reasserted himself as a star. Crowds cheered and raised their lighters as one. It was the first time anyone had seen this at a concert and photographer Barry Feinstein captured the moment for the forthcoming live album Before the Flood.

40 Year Itch : Rolling Stone Takes Down the Dead

Grateful Dead : Stella Blue

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On January 3 1974 Rolling Stone critic Jim Miller described the Grateful Dead as "professional amateurs" in his review of the band's Wake of the Flood. He said the album's lyrics "plumb new depths of dull-witted, inbred, blissed-out, hippy-dippyness". 

An example:
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world/
 but the heart has its beaches its homeland and thoughts of its own

     Of vocalists Jerry Garcia Bob Weir and Keith Godchaux, Miller wrote "those poor bastards still can barely sing" and described their voices as "generally sick, usually woozy, and often afflicted with perpetual head cold, twinges of sinus trouble, you name it".

40 Year Itch: Welcome to 1974!

            Welcome to 1974 kids! This is the year prog rock gave us three more great albums ( King Crimson's Red, Camel's Mirage and Genesis's Lamb Lies Down on Broadway); the year Patti Smith recorded her first single ("Hey Joe/Piss Factory"); the year The Ramones, Blondie, The Saints and Joe Strummer's 101ers and David Byrne's Artistics formed; the year of Court and Spark, Country Life, Sheet Music, On the Beach, and Taking Tiger Mountain ( By Strategy); the year King Crimson, Sparks, Queen, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison gave us- not one- but two great albums; the year of "Kung Fu Fighting", "Waterloo" "The Night Chicago Died" and two competing versions of "Billy Don't Be a Hero". I must let the show must go on!