My Top Ten : Pete Wylie of Wah!

To promote " Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me) ",the follow up single to his UK #3 "The Story of the Blues", former Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch bandmate Pete Wylie of Wah! provided Smash Hits with this list of his ten all time favorite songs in April of 1983. List comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened

40 Year Itch: Smack! Baby! Smack!

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More urgent and far more challenging than its predecessor, Aladdin Sane (released April 13, 1973) explores stardom from the inside. Many of the songs were written during Bowie's 1972 tour ( "Time" in New Orleans; "Drive-In Saturday" between Seattle and Phoenix) which is why it's been called the American Ziggy Stardust.

Note: Bowie supposedly shaved his eyebrows when Mott the Hoople turned down "Drive In Saturday"

What kind of debauchery did David Bowie witness in America? The album oozes with sex ("Cracked Actor", "Drive In Saturday") violence ("Panic in Detroit") and rock and roll ("Watch That Man"). Mick Ronson's guitar is often higher in the mix than Bowie's voice but it's free form pianist Mike Garson who steals the show with his freaked out solos on the title cut ( starts 2:00 in).

Bowie has been accused of , to put it kindly, borrowing ideas from other artists. "Panic in Detroit" has a Bo Diddley beat. " The Jean Genie" sounds like the Yardbirds doing Diddley. And there's the final cut, the fan favorite "Lady Grinning Soul".

Some say it sounds an awful lot like the Quincy Jones track "On Days Like These" , featured in the 1969 film The Italian Job. I don't really hear it. Can you?

I'll let Bowie off on this one. The cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together" ,however, is an appalling preview of the covers album Pin Ups that would come out in October.

40 Year Itch: That'll Be The Day

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Months before American audiences would be seduced by the 1950's nostalgia of American Graffiti, UK audiences got their 1950's fix with That'll Be The Day which made its premiere on April 12, 1973.
The movie, starring David Essex,  was shot on location at Warners Holiday Camp and tells the story of a rock obsessed teen growing up in 1950's Britain.

Two of rock's greatest drummers have roles in the movie: Ringo Starr ( in his best performance on film) and Keith Moon. For Ringo, it was a chance to revisit the camps where he and Rory Storm played. Keith would appear in the sequel Stardust. The soundtrack went #1 in the UK.





THE ENTIRE FILM:

40 Year Itch : Gatherin' Up The Tears

On April 13, 1973 Steely Dan performed their #11 US hit " Reelin In The Year"on the Midnight Special, hosted by Bill Cosby. The dual guitar solos by Denny Dias ( in purple pants) and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is really quite extraordinary. Singer David Palmer was on his way out as Donald Fagen developed his vocal prowess ( and hopefully lost the 'flicking of his head after every line" tic).

 Fanny, Waylon Jennings and Billy Preston also performed that night.

40 Year Itch: Your Mouth Is Driving Me Mad

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With the short-lived Wizzard, Move and Electric Light Orchestra co-founder Roy Wood had an amazing run of UK singles in 1973 beginning with the Top 10 "Ball Park Incident" in January, and two #1 hits "See My Baby Jive" ( peaking for four weeks in May) and "Angel Fingers" (in September) before rounding out the year with the perennial hit "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday". You could hardly escape the vision of this wild man in his star child makeup.( Nor could we in America, when Kiss adopted his look).



Here's where things get weird. Not one of these singles appear on the original album Wizzard Brew ( though all appear on CD releases). This is a strange and inconsistent concoction, as the album's own liner notes make clear:

In this group there might be cellos and such, but never would they give forth the sound of a chamber music quartet. This group was to be coarse, loud, and unruly,  and it would never lose sight of its dedication to primal rock n roll. Yet it would still be experimental because Roy Wood was a man of many ideas.


 All of those ideas come to strange fruition on Wizzard's 13 and a half minute  "Meet Me at the Jailhouse". Ornette Coleman, eat your heart out.



Wood would become a bit of a recluse by the mid 70's but he had one more gift for music lovers of 1973: the extraordinary solo album Boulders, about which we'll write in August.

40 Year Itch : The Birth of Outlaw Country

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                   When the producer-driven Nashville sound reinvigorated country music, Waylon Jennings wasn't happy. It meant producers chose his songs and session players recorded them -- not his band. When his contract came up for renewal in 1972 he and his manager demanded Waylon produce himself. Lonesome On'ry and Mean, which debuted on Billboard's Hot Country LP chart on April 7, 1973,  is the first album under the new deal.



 Honky Tonk Heroes, released later in 1973 is considered the first of the outlaw country albums but Lonesome is where the transition happens. Three songs were recorded before the deal  but the rest were recorded by Waylon Jennings and the Waylons. The sound is more stripped down. The songs are just more "real" than what anybody else was recording.



     Jennings covers Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues", Mickey Newbury's "San Francisco Mabel Joy" and Kris Kristoffersen's "Me and Bobby McGee".  His cover of the country standard, "You Can Have Her", hit the Top Ten. But the title cut, by renegade Steve Young, captured the new outlaw image that would make Jennings a legend:


Now I'm down in this valley,
Where the wheels turn so low
 At dawn I pray,
to the Lord of my soul
 I say do Lord, do right by me
 You know I'm tired of being lonesome on'ry and mean

Lonesome On'ry and Mean comes with bonus cuts including the previously unreleased single  "The Last One to Leave Seattle".

40 Year Itch : Can You Show Me A Dream

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Rod: The Autobiography is far more charming and enjoyable than you might think. Credit "editor" Giles Smith and Rod himself for capturing Stewart's self deprecating humor. Unfortunately, it was that kind of humor that may have doomed the last Faces studio album before it ever came out. By 1973, smart concert promoters were already putting up "Rod Stewart And The Faces" on the marquees, infuriating Stewart's band mates.

Bickering increasingly prevailed. I didn't particularly help the deteriorating atmosphere within the band when, in an interview, I described the Faces' third album Ooh La La as "a bloody mess". I guess that was me and my previously noted tendency to turn against things I had recently done, but it was not the most helpful thing you could hope to hear from a lead singer on the eve of an album's release -- although a true enough reflection of my feelings. I did apologize to the guys, but Mac (Ian McLagan) was clearly thinking, "Typical bloody singer".

Rod did have a point. Ooh La La would have a made a great 5 song EP had it just come with "Silicone Grown", the single "Cindy Incidentally", "Borstal Boys", "Glad and Sorry" and "Ooh La La" ( sung by Ronnie Wood). Part of the problem was a distracted Rod Stewart missing a number of recording sessions. 

Despite all the filler, the album topped the UK charts while "Cindy" went to #2.

Faces would tour through November 1975, but with Ronnie Wood becoming a Rolling Stone and Rod Stewart's superstar solo status, the band's days were numbered. On December  19, 1975, Faces broke up.

If "Glad And Sorry" sounds familiar to 90's rock fans, it was covered by Golden Smog with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and The Jayhawks's Gary Louris singing lead.