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: Danger When You Taste Brown Sugar

With a hard charging cover of Hot Chocolate's "Brother Louie" , the troubled power pop band Stories hit #1 on August 25 1973. Stories was formed when Michael Brown of The Left Banke met Seattle native Ian Lloyd (born Buonconciglio) and the two decided to make Beatlesque music. They made one decent album before Brown left. While recording the second album, as an afterthought, the remaining band has to seek out a single. Ian Lloyd spent a weekend listening to demos when he heard the Hot Chocolate tune, already a Top 10 hit in the UK. As he told Classic Bands.com:

When "Brother Louie" was played, it was crazy because when I heard it, I thought "that's different." Then they got to the chorus. As soon as they hit the chorus, I said "This is the one. This is the one we should do." Obviously I was surprised because you can think something's a number one record, but it won't be a number one record. But the fact that I had really been listening for two days to all this stuff and then heard that and said "This is a number one record," when it finally went to number one, I was surprised. I was kind of like, "Wow! I was right!"

The single shot up to #1 forcing the Kama Sutra label to re-release the band's About Us album with "Brother Louie" as the lead off cut.

The song, about an inter-racial love affair, was very edgy for its time. Billboard Magazine wrote

 "When our review panel heard the song, they like it but felt the sensitive nature of the material would keep radio stations at arms length".

That wasn't the case. Had American's radio listening public decided it really didn't "make no difference if you're black or white" or was there a certain shock value in the lyrics that helped propel the tune to the top of the charts?

Maybe it's just the performance. The funky bass line, the wah wah guitar and Ian Lloyd's Rod Stewart styled vocals just sounds like a soundtrack to a steamy Summer.

There was a second 1973 cover of "Brother Louie" worth noting. Vibes master Roy Ayers recorded a version for his album Virgo Red.

And in 1974 the Undisputed Truth recorded a cover for the album Down to Earth