40 Year Itch : The Selling of Kiss

Kiss : Firehouse

[Purchase]


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

[Purchase]

   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

[Purchase]

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

[Purchase]

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

[Purchase]

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!

40 Year Itch : Goodbye 1973

In 1973 The James Last Orchestra performs a medley of Hawkwind's Silver Machine, T. Rex's Children of the Revolution and Alice Cooper's School's Out.

40 Year Itch : Fave Nuggets of 1973

1973 Nuggets Sampler

Some of our favorite tunes from 1973 are the ones we didn't really know until we immersed ourselves in the music of that year.

Buckingham Nicks "Long Distance Winner"



Elliot Murphy "Hangin' Out"

Fanny "All Mine"

Judee Sill "The Kiss"

Neu "Fur Immer"



Yoko Ono "Move On Fast"

T. Rex "Electric Slim and the Factory Hen"

Jane Birkin "Help Camionneur!"

Al Green "Beware"



Marcos Valle "Nao Tem Nada Nao"

Terry Reid "River"

Cockney Rebel "Muriel The Actor"

Golden Earring "Just Like Vince Taylor"

Deodato "Super Strut"




Hall and Oates "Las Vegas Turnaround"

Kim Jung Mi "Wind in the Trees"

Neil Sedaka and 10cc "Breaking Up is Hard to Do"

The O'Jays "Ship Ahoy"

Syl Johnson "Back for a Taste of Your Love"

Roxy Music "The Bogus Man"



Procol Harum "Grand Hotel"

Electric Light Orchestra "Momma"

Secos e Molhados "Sangue Latino"

Bachman Turner Overdrive "Blue Collar"



Willie Nelson "Devil in a Sleeping Bag"

Pescado Rabioso "Cementerio Club"

Rory Gallagher "A Million Miles Away"

Can "Moonshake"

Earth Wind and Fire "Evil"

40 Year Itch: Top 40 Albums of 1973

My list of fave 1973 albums is a good mixture of records I've loved all my life and some I've discovered just this year. Yes, all year, while most people were paying attention to Miley and Beyonce, I listened almost exclusively to the music of 1973. Next year I'll be scratching the 40 year itch by listening and reviewing the records and events of 1974. Hope you'll join me.

Stevie Wonder Innervisions
Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets
Paul Simon There Goes Rhymin Simon
Elliot Murphy Aquashow
Cockney Rebel Human Menagerie
Roxy Music Stranded

Paul McCartney and Wings Band on the Run
Mott the Hoople Mott
David Bowie Aladdin Sane
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
Sly and the Family Stone Fresh
Al Green Call Me

The Who Quadrophenia
Genesis Selling England By the Pound
Iggy and the Stooges Raw Power
Isley Brothers 3 + 3
The New York Dolls
Roxy Music For Your Pleasure

Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Roy Wood Boulders
The Wailers Burnin
Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy
Can Future Days
Hall and Oates Abandoned Luncheonette

10cc
Terry Reid River
John Martyn Solid Air
Pescado Rabioso Artaud
King Crimson Lark's Tongue in Aspic

John Cale Paris 1919
Marvin Gaye Let's Get it On
The Wailers Catch a Fire
Black Sabbath Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Dan Penn Nobody's Fool
Lynyrd Skynyrd Pronounced

Secos e Molhados
Allman Brothers Brothers and Sisters
Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall
Judee Sill Heart Food
Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies

40 Year Itch: Top 40 Singles of 1973

My fave singles from 1973.

1 Stories "Brother Louie"
2 Isley Brothers "That Lady, Pt 1 and 2"
3  Dobie Gray "Drift Away"
4 Ringo Starr "Photograph"
5 Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes "The Love I Lost"



6 Jose Feliciano and Bill Withers "Compartments"
7 ELO "Showdown"
8 Elton John "Daniel"
9 Beach Boys "Sail On Sailor"
10 Bob Dylan "Knockin on Heaven's Door"



11 Sensational Alex Harvey Band " Faith Healer"
12 Roxy Music "Pyjamarama"
13 Spinners "I'll Be Around"
14 Can "Moonshake"
15 Ann Peebles "I Can't Stand the Rain"



26 Judee Sill "The Kiss"
17  Edgar Winter Group Frankenstein
18 Al Green Here I Am ( Take Me)
19 Bobby Womack "Across 110th Street"
20 Stevie Wonder "Living for the City"



21 BB King "To Know You is To Love You"
22 Marvin Gaye "Let's Get It On"
23 Sweet "Ballroom Blitz"
24 The Who "5:15"
25 Sly and the Family Stone "If You Want Me To Stay"




26 Aaron Neville "Hercules"
27 Bloodstone "Natural High"
28 Genesis "I Know What I Like In Your Wardrobe"
29 Sylvia "Pillow Talk"
30 Steely Dan "My Old School"



31 Temptations "Masterpiece"
32 Timmy Thomas "Why Can't We Live Together"
33  Paul McCartney and Wings "Live and Let Die"
34 Aerosmith "Dream On"
35 Paul Simon "Kodachrome"




36 Detroit Emeralds "Feel the Need In Me"
37 Stevie Wonder "Higher Ground"
38 The Pointer Sisters "Yes We Can Can"
39 Dr John  "Right Place, Wrong Time"
40 Aretha Franklin "Master of Eyes"

More 1973 Albums We Missed

[Out of Print]

Harper (the subject of Led Zep's "Hats off to (Roy) Harper" and the vocalist on Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar")   follows the now legendary Stormcock with an album of songs recorded when he was ill and facing the possibility of dying. Jimmy Page plays on several of the tunes including "Bank of the Dead". Side Two is one ambitious 23-minute track, "The Lord's Prayer", which begins with a long monologue and is made up of at least 5 movements. Harper would recover from what ailed him and follow this with another masterpiece in 1974, Valentine.

[Purchase]

John Martyn's follow-up to his masterpiece Solid Air. Recorded with members of Traffic, Inside Out is jazzier than Solid Air and highlighted by tunes "Fine Line" and "Make No Mistake". Some of the singing is too over-the-top for these ears.

[Purchase]

  1973's best live album? ( Bill Withers, Yes and Focus fans might disagree.) That's right, kids, people once had time to play four sides of a live album for their friends. Especially one recorded this well. Alvin Lee and his band raise the game from their legendary Woodstock appearance. Plenty of boogie. Plenty of blues. Most CDs don't contain the epic drum solo in "The Hobbit". 

[Purchase]

Cobbled together from a variety of session, Roadmaster still offers great tunes. Gene Clark recorded "Full Circle Song" again for the Byrds 1973 reunion album. Clark would top this effort in 1973 with the more complex No Other.

[Purchase]

With Uriah Heep near the peak of its success, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ken Hensley took Heep bassist Gary Thain and Heep drummer Kerslake into the studio to record this solo album. Mellower than what the Heep was putting out but great stuff.

[Purchase]

Milton Nascimento's backing band has made the transition from psychedelic rock to jazz fusion

[Out of Print]

Mexican garage rock. Ole!

Some 1973 Albums We Missed

[Purchase]

Tainted by scatalogical songs about pissing , farting and Pamela's popo, Serge Gainsbourg's follow up to Histoire de Melody Nelson is saved by the title cut and his devastating goodbye song, "Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais" which translates into English as "I've Come to Tell You I'm Leaving" and features the real life sobbing of actress Jane Birkin.

[Purchase]

Recorded with CSN and Y's touring band as well as members of Neil Young's band ( and Neil himself on piano credited as Joe Yankee), Graham Nash's Wild Tales is darker material than his fans might expect. But it rocks as fine as anything he's ever done. One of the year's great surprises for me!

[Purchase]

Vibe master Roy Ayers knocked out one of the best blaxploitation soundtracks of all time on this 1973 effort, highlighted by the funky "Coffy is the Color".

[Purchase]

With the hit title track, which was also featured on the soundtrack to Cleopatra Jones, Millie Jackson hits her stride. She gets super funky on "Hypocrisy". She'd follow It Hurts So Good with Caught Up, which will be in the running for my fave soul album of 1974

[Purchase]

Late of Lindisfarne, Alan Hull released his first solo album, the very tasteful Pipedream, in 1973. File between Duncan Browne and John Martyn.

[Purchase Henry Cow Leg End]

Henry Cow set out to be avant rock and anti commercial. Signed to Virgin, Fred Frith and company  challenge listeners with dissonance,  moments of beauty and  on "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", a political statement. Robert Wyatt would soon proclaim Henry Cow his favorite group.

[Out of Print]

Is Lightnin' Rod's Hustlers Convention the birth of rap? With Kool and the Gang providing back tracking,  Last Poets member Jalal "Lightnin' Rod" Uridin ( Alafia Pudim) rhymes the story of two hustlers, Sport and Spoon, in the drug and crime infested inner city streets.

40 Year Itch : Those We Missed December '73

[Purchase]

Big ass riffs and stadium-quality power chords made Bachman Turner Overdrive's second album one of the biggest of 1974. It ain't anywhere near as sophisticated as what Bachman had pulled off with The Guess Who, but with hits "Let It Ride" and  "Takin' Care of Business", BTO found the formula to success.

[Purchase]

Producer Andrew Loog Oldham told reporters "If you hated Cosmic Wheels, you'll love this one." Whereas the former was Donovan's entry into the Glam Rock fashion styles, Essence to Essence is a quiter more spiritual album with Donovan whispering cosmic lyrics over acoustic guitars.

[Purchase]

By most accounts recorded on acid in a French castle, Gong's follow up to Flying Teapot

[Purchase]

Live Dates is a double live album featuring the double lead guitar attack of Andy Powell and Ted Turner. It should make fans of Wishbone Ash's masterpiece, Argus, happy. Turner would leave after this album and many fans would follwo his example.

40 Year Itch: 1973 in Christmas Songs

Merry Crimbo to the dearest readers in all the land!

While Slade and Wizzard were battling it out for greatest glam rock Christmas single ever in the UK, in the States it was an apathetic Christmas musically. There were a few country singles, a novelty tune or two and a late entry from The O'Jays that couldn't even hit the two minute mark.


1. Red Sovine never wrote a song that wasn't about a truck. "Trucking Trees For Christmas" came out Oct 31st.




2. With the return to the charts of "Monster Mash", Bobby "Boris" Pickett knocked out "Monster's Holiday" which was released November 7th




3. Commander Cody's "Daddy Drinkin' Up Our Christmas" came out November 14th.




4. November 14th is also the same day John Denver released Please Daddy ( Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)" from his current album Farewell Andromeda




5. The Canadian Beatles, Edward Bear, shipped out this dull effort, "Coming Home Christmas", November 28th.



6. Elton John also shipped his dashed off "Step Into Christmas" single that date, considered by many in the industry too late to be a hit.



7. Finally, the O'Jays gave us "Christmas Ain't Christmas New Years Ain't New Years Without the Ones You Love" which, despite the long title, ran 1:59.

Memories of The Natural 92

   I just spent the evening making a Christmas CD for my sister who grew up with me in Guilford, CT where our Dad's favorite radio station in the late 70's was WWYZ-FM ("YZ the Natural 92") out of Waterbury. The format was mellow rock. Sure, there was some of that easy listening crap but, more often, deep mellow cuts from rock albums. And tracks from albums other radios stations weren't touching. 

     Apparently Program Director Bob Craig picked songs that would hit "The Three L's": life, love and loneliness. I just know they provided one of the key soundtracks to my childhood. 

The format didn't last more than a few years. WWYZ-FM is now a Clear Channel Hot Country station. And so it goes...

Here are the CD tracks based on my memories of 'YZ playlist.

1. Michael Franks "Popsicle Toes"

2. Fleetwood Mac "Never Going Back Again"

3. Van Morrison "Moondance"

4. Youngbloods "Sunlight"

5. Mark-Almond "One Way Sunday"

6. Dobie Gray "Drift Away"

7. Joni Mitchell "In France They Kiss On Main Street"

8. Stephen Bishop "On and On"

9. Judee Sill "The Kiss" 

10. John Denver "Sunshine on My Shoulders"

11. Cat Stevens "Wild World"

12. Todd Rundgren " Hello It's Me"

13. Nick Drake "Thoughts of Mary Jane"

14. Elton John "Come Down in Time"

15. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway "Where is the Love"

16. Tim Hardin "Misty Roses"

17. Maria Muldaur "Midnight at the Oasis"

18. George Harrison "Dark Sweet Lady"

19. Eagles " Best of My Love"

20. Judy Collins "Who Knows Where the Time Goes"

21. CSN " Just a Song Before I Go"

    

Top 5 Albums of 2013

5. David Bowie The Next Day

2013 began with the year's biggest surprise: a new album from David Bowie, his first of new material in ten years. Every song on The Next Day seems to be inspired by one of the pop chameleon's former phases. Give it a few years and we may look back upon The Next Day as the best album of the year. It certainly is the best of the many come back albums to spring up ( beating out Prefab Sprout, Wire, Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine among others)

4. Janelle Monae Electric Lady Suites IV and V

The modern pop album is a cinematic effort and Janelle Monae is the most inventive of the mainstream pop stars I'm hearing these days. She's making the kind of music you'd hope Prince would be releasing. 

3, Bob Dylan Another Self Portrait ( 1969-1971)

1970's mellow and family-oriented New Morning is one of my all time favorite Dylan albums and you get a half dozen alternate takes on those tunes, including two versions of "Went to See the Gypsy" about meeting Elvis Presley. There's an immediacy to the Self Portrait recordings which somehow failed to impress many in its released form back in the day. Glad I got this one!

2 Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City

It doesn't matter how fine your prep school was, at some point even the most precious prepster has to grow up and that's what Vampire Weekend has done of their third and most accomplished album.

1. Parquet Courts in Light Up Gold

This generation's Pink Flag. If I didn't live--musically--in 1973, I'd be listening to this all the time.