40 Year Itch: Carlos Goes Soul Searching

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Rarely has an artist or a group made such a dramatic turn in the span of just one record. After three classic albums of Afro Cuban blues rock ( the last two hitting #1 on US charts), Carlos Santana apparently needed to stretch out both musically and spiritually. 

       

   Musically Carlos was getting into the fusion sounds of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra .He also began following the teachings of McLaughlin's Indian guru Sri Chimnoy (who dubbed Carlos "Devadip" meaning "light of the lamp of the Supreme"). 

Despite warnings from CBS executive Clive Davis that he would sabotage the band's Top 40 potential, on Caravanserai Carlos led the band through a new set exploring jazz fusion with mixed results.

 The instrumentals still contain the trademark crystal clear guitar lines fronting the heavy rhythm sections and many Santana fans heap praise on songs like "Waves Within" and "Song of the Wind". However some of the singing sounds not just dated in 2012 but like "Gillette Commercial vocals" to Robert Christgau's ear way back in '72.

Caravanserai went platinum but the revolving door that was Santana began spitting out band members. Seattle keyboardist Greg Rolie and teenage guitar wunderkind Neal Schon both left but they landed on their feet. They founded a band called Journey.

40 Year Itch: Round 2

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What a run Philly's Stylistics went on in the early 1970's! 12 straight Top Ten R and B singles. Nobody could refuse the syrupy falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr belting his way through those great Thom Bell/Linda Creed tunes.




     The sophomore album Round 2, released in October of 1972, contains more big hits: the #5 Pop hit (#5 R and B) "Break Up to Make Up", the Top Ten ( R and B #4) "I'm Stone in Love with You", the #23 ( R and B #8)"You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)" and a sweet cover of Carole King's "It's Too Late".

40 Year Itch : 8 Days On The Road

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Howard Tate could effortlessly shift from a dirty Macon, Georgia soul singer ( the same city that gave us Otis Redding, Little Richard and the Allman Brothers) to an angelic grief stricken wailer in not just the same song. Or the same breath. But in the same word. His immaculate Jerry Ragavoy produced singles for Verve in the 1960's are among the classics of that era.  In October of 1972, now a part-time cab driver, he teamed up with Ragavoy again and  released a funky non-charting single called "8 Days on The Road".

       In his A- review of the eponymous album that contained the single, Robert Christgau wrote "This does almost as much for Tate's amazing vocal and emotional range--as cocksure as Wilson Pickett one moment, as sweet and hurting as B.B. King the next, and as corny as Joe Tex to top it off--as his Verve stuff with Ragovoy".  

All Time Top 10: Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode

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To promote the second Depeche Mode album A Broken Frame and the most recent single "Leave In Silence" (UK#18) the newest member of the band, keyboardist Alan Wilder offered this list to Smash Hits which comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened

40 Year Itch: Foxtrot

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The first time I really sat down to listen to Genesis, I was a kid in boarding school. I'd borrowed A Trick Of The Tail from one of the smartest Seniors on my floor. An eccentric honors student who specialized in French, Latin and wearing his hair in the style some of us called "cumulo-nimbus". Somehow he got one of the prettiest girls in the school to fall for him. What was his secret? That strange music he listened to while he studied?

Apparently not. I was bored by the borrowed cassette. And what a shame I started my discovery of Genesis with the first post-Peter Gabriel album. Because I didn't bother to try to learn more for decades.

I'd argue today the album to start with is their fourth: Foxtrot. Released October 6, 1972, Foxtrot reveals a confident band, jamming together, performing together and composing together. Some of the songs actually rock, including the dark sci fi opener "Watcher of the Skies", featuring Tony Banks on mellotron.

"I look back on 'Watcher of the Sky', it's got a fantastic intro. The rhythm's great. I think the words are a bit suspect. They're kind of OK." says Mike Rutherford " Tony and I wrote them. But looking back it's a little too busy. But I think that rhythm "bumpetee bum bum bum bum was a nice rhythm under those chords"

An inventive rhythm Phil Collins chalks up to the influence of Yes, a band he saw play as often as he could.

Peter Gabriel added some darkness to the tune by dressing in a cap and glow in the dark makeup.

Foxtrot ends with "Supper's Ready" a dreamy 23 minute, seven part epic Gabriel has described as "a  personal journey which ends up walking through scenes from Revelation in the bible". It has also been said that the song was inspired by a supernatural encounter Gabriel and his wife shared. Like most of the album, all members contributed ideas, riffs, lyrics and arrangements.

"I think we were writing better as a group" says Tony Banks who had written section VII "As Sure As Eggs is Eggs" on guitar as a university student.

"So you had these quite specific bits like "Willow Farm" (section V) was Peter's and then we had these big chunks that were all written by people, kind of put them all in the same song, and then it was kind of  the filling out stuff that almost ended up being the strongest stuff there like the Apocalypse part (section VI) which really was Mike, Phil and I just wrote together. When the group can all feel they're involved in the composition it tends to produce a better result."

The group dynamic would not last forever. Gabriel appeared on the front page of Melody Maker wearing a red dress and a fox mask, without running it by the band leading to a ton of arguments. " I thought 'fuck it. I'm just going to do it', laughs Gabriel. "Because there was always this band democracy stuff and actually it wasn't a real democracy 'cuz some people were more powerful than others. And the more bloody minded of us tended to get their way more often as it is in every band the world over."

40 Year Itch : Feel The Need

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If you want proof that the British have better taste than their American counterpoints, consider the Detroit Emeralds of 1972 and the powerhouse single "Feel The Need In Me" which was released in October of 1972. On the US pop charts the song peaked at an abysmal #110 in 1973. In the UK the song hit #4.




"Feel The Need" instantly sounds like the great lost Al Green hit. That's because the Detroit Emeralds had made it a practice to record down home rough cuts in Willie Mitchell's famous Memphis studio. Then they'd take the cuts back home and sweeten them up with smooth vocals.  That worked on the #5 R and B hit "You Want It You Got It", the #4 R and B hit "Baby Let Me Take You (In My Arms)" (Check out that opening guitar line) and here on a song so catchy the band revisited "Feel The Need" in the pre-Disco era.

40 Year Itch: The Sex Album

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Dear Penthouse;

   Though I've been a long time reader of your fine magazine, I never thought I'd have a reason to write you a letter. That is, until a September day in 1972, when I purchased Tim Buckley's new album Greetings From L.A. The cover may have shown a smogged-in City of Angels, but the music inside was a crystal clear celebration of energetic, banging against the bedposts sex.

The album opens with "Move With Me" in which our "hero" meets a big ol' healthy black girl in a meat rack tavern and winds up in bed with her. It's all good until the man of the house walks in, grab shim by the throat and tosses him down the stairs. "Get On Top" was my introduction to Buckley: a celebration of the cowgirl position, speaking in tongues and squeaky bed springs.





  Side Two finds Buckley driving a cab with a dangerous Vietnam vet in the back seat; remembering a love making session on a train and hitching a ride with hopes of finding the kind of girl who will "beat me whip me spank me"..and make it right again.




For the folksinger turned esoteric jazz man, Buckley's Greetings introduced a new phase featuring the "sex funk" sound that would last until Buckley's fatal overdose in 1975 at the age of 28. He left behind a strange assortment of albums and, of course, a son named Jeffrey Scott ( Jeff Buckley).