Johnny Ramone: My All Time Top Ten

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Johnny Ramone's list was provided to Smash Hits in 1979, the year The Ramones put out their first live album, It's Alive. As always, big thanks to Brian at Like Punk Never Happened.

40 Year Itch: Paul Simon Kicks off Live Rhymin' Tour

On May 6, 1973, one day after releasing There Goes Rhymin' Simon, Paul Simon launched his Live Rhymin' tour in Boston. It was his first tour without Garfunkel.Simon warmed up for the tour in London where he introduced audiences to the South American group Urubamba and the gospel sounds of the Jessy Dixon Singers. Both would join him on the US tour.

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Yes, there were a few calls of "Where's Art?" from the audience but Simon had put together a strong set. His Simon and Garfunkel tunes were "Homeward Bound","El Condor Pasa", "The Boxer", "The Sounds of Silence"( heard below) and a gospel-infused  "Bridge Over Troubled Water".






There Goes Rhymin' Simon ranks among my favorite albums of all time. It's one of the soundtracks to my childhood and that of my own children. Two songs were inspired by newborn Harper Simon ( "St Judy's Comet" and "Learn How To Fall"). Half of the tunes ( the #2 "Kodachrome", "Take Me to the Mardi Gras", "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor", "Saint Judy's Comet" and the #2 "Loves Me Like a Rock" -- featuring the Dixie Hummingbirds) were recorded with "The Swampers" in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Allen Toussaint handled arrangements on "Mardi Gras"; Quincy Jones on "Something So Right". Maggie and Terre Roche appear on "Was A Sunny Day".

  Although the album seems to celebrate domestic bliss, "Tenderness" suggests not all is well.

You say you care for me 
But there's no tenderness
 Beneath your honesty

 Shortly after the tour, Simon moved out of the family home and channeled his misery into Still Crazy After All These Years.

40 Year Itch: Focus Plays The Rainbow Theatre

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   By 1973, "the Dutch masters of progressive rock", Focus had hit their peak. Sire Records claimed, thanks to the top ten hit single "Hocus Pocus" and the Top 40 albums Moving Waves and Focus 3,  "everyone is getting into Focus". Maybe they had a point. In the UK, live shows were greeted with standing ovations. Melody Maker  voted Jan Akkerman "Best Guitarist in the World", beating Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.
   On May 5 the Pye Mobile Recording Studio recorded Focus in concert for two nights at London's Rainbow Theatre. The band played no new songs but as Akkerman pointed out to NME:

"Every night is different...it's actually like building a new word or a new language out of the words you know...if people have heard us four or five nights, it's all right. Because they still hear new things."

  Fans of "Hocus Pocus" certainly heard something new. The tune begins in a herky jerky style that anticipates Gang of Four before it's played at more than twice its normal speed. Still, 40 years later, I just can't relate to Focus. Too many of their tunes sounds like TV themes to me. Maybe it's my fault.




 Released in October, At The Rainbow only peaked at 135 in the US ( 23 in the UK). There would be two more Focus albums ( including 1974's classic Hamburger Concerto) before Akkerman and the boys split up.

40 Year Itch: Led Zeppelin Kicks off 1973 US Tour

Led Zeppelin posing in front of The Starship

We did 53,000 at Atlanta and then 55,000 at the following concert in Tampa, Florida — it was quite clear that if people were going to come along to see us in those kind of numbers we weren’t going to have problems doing concerts that would fulfill the demand
-Jimmy Page

The Led Zeppelin North American Tour got off to a rousing start on May 4, 1973 when the band drew 49,236 fans to Atlanta's Braves Stadium. They paid $6 each for tickets. The following night the group broke the Beatles' attendance record for a single night in the US with 56,000 at Tampa Stadium. Two days in, they had grossed  more than half a million dollars prompting one reporter to call Led Zeppelin the top rock 'n' roll band in the world. On May 12, the band's fifth album, Houses of the Holy, shot up to Number 1 on Billboard's album charts. Their three night stand at Madison Square Garden was filmed for the concert movie The Song Remains The Same.





The fairly typical set list for the tour was:
"Rock and Roll" (Page, Plant, Jones, Bonham)
"Celebration Day" (Jones, Page, Plant)
"Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"Over the Hills and Far Away" (Page, Plant)
"Misty Mountain Hop" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"Since I've Been Loving You" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"No Quarter" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"The Song Remains the Same" (Page, Plant)
 "The Rain Song" (Page, Plant)
"Dazed and Confused" (Page)
"Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
"Moby Dick" (Page, Jones, Bonham)
"Heartbreaker" (Bonham, Page, Plant)
"Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)
Encores (variations of the following list):
"The Ocean" (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant)
"Communication Breakdown" (Bonham, Jones, Page)
"Thank You" (Page, Plant)
"Dancing Days" (Page, Plant) (one time only, on the second night in Detroit)

40 Year Itch: Black Moses In The Mountains

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This is our last night and last show so we gonna get down tonight
-Isaac Hayes


With his 20 piece orchestra, the Issac Hayes Connection, in the shadows and the man himself draped in gold chains and sunglasses, Live at the Sahara Tahoe is Issac "Black Moses" Hayes's contribution to my collection of great live albums from 1970's soul singers. ( Along with Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall, Donny Hathaway Live and Curtis Mayfield's  Curtis/Live!). Hayes was on a roll at the time, with five consecutive million selling albums.



Tahoe may seem to be strange place to record a R and B album but I saw Funkadelic there and I can promise you it's not the locals who show up but fans who drive in from the Bay Area. Live at the Sahara Tahoe is a double album and features extended reinterpretations of classic 70's fare like Carole King's "It's Too Late" and Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine" (in which Hayes picks up the saxophone and goes it alone to the ecstatic cheers of audience members).



The album ends with a cover of  "Feelin' Alright" which, one year later, Hayes would perform with the Osmonds on The Osmond Brothers Musical Special.Clearly there was no decade quite like the 70's.

40 Year Itch: Sing A Song Of Long Ago

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RCA record execs were probably pretty nervous. In 1972 Harry Nilsson and producer Richard Perry made a platinum album called Nilsson Schmilsson, a gold album called Son of Schmilsson, and two gold singles , Melody Maker's record of the year and future Grammy winner "Without You" and "Coconut".
   But now their cash cow was off in London recording a collection of pop standards with Gordon Jenkins. For that reason perhaps, RCA saw fit to re-release 1970's all but ignored Nilsson Sings Newman.



It's an absolutely delightful, absolutely short ( with running time of just over 25 minutes) collection of intimately performed pop tunes showcasing Newman's more sentimental, less sarcastic side ( with perhaps the exception of "Yellow Man") and Nilsson's warm, perfect voice.


 
Record exec fears were well-founded.While A Little Touch of Schmilsson In The Night  remains a favorite to some, it undermined Nilsson's pop music cache and was met with critical slings and arrows. The Village Voice's Robert Christgau wrote "I wouldn't give my extra copy to my mother".

40 Year Itch: She Has Sisters!

On May 1, 1973 at the Ahmanson Theatre in LA, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band  took the stage as the opening act for Dr Hook And The Medicine Show and headliners New Riders of The Purple Sage. The 40 minute set was shot by a film crew on behalf of CBS Records. Among the songs were "Spirit In The Night", "Wild Billy's Circus Story" from the forthcoming The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle and fan favorite " Thundercrack".The footage stayed locked in CBS vaults for years before its release as part of the Wings for Wheels documentary in 2005.

  By June the band would be opening for Chicago.