40 Year Itch : I Am The True Fairy of Rock

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Rock's first openly gay artist was already making waves months before Elektra released his debut album. ( He was the last artist signed by the legendary Elektra president Jac Holzman who had also signed The Doors, Love and The Stooges). 

Thanks to the bulldog tactics of manager Jerry Brandt, Billboard Magazine wrote an article about the new star for its October 13, 1973 issue announcing that the Paris Opera House has been booked for four days for Jobriath to perform his own music "backed by a rock band, 12 dancer-singers and $200,000 worth of sets he designed himself." The article suggested ticket holders would get to see the 22 year old Pennsylvanian veteran of some Hair companies perform some mime with their rock and roll and that's not all:

One of the scenic effects in preparation is Jobriath's first entrance as a floating clown head from a box. The box then expands into a 36-foot tower which becomes first a Kama Sutra altar and then the Empire State Building, where Jobriath is to re-enact the death scene of "King Kong"

 There was a giant Jobriath billboard on Times Square the month the album finally came out  to mostly good reviews. Rolling Stone even wrote that Jobriath " has talent to burn".    



At this point you're probably asking yourself "Why haven't I heard of Jobriath?"
   
Well, the world was't ready.

The critics called him a Bowie clone and even his appearance on the Midnight Special did nothing but alienate the rock and roll crowd.

In an article for The Guardian Jobriath fan Mark Almond of Soft Cell fame writes

Everyone hated Jobriath - even, and especially, gay people. He was embarrassingly effeminate in an era of leather and handlebar mustaches.

The result was a fall even more dramatic than that of Ziggy Stardust. Jobriath became a male hustler and died on Aids in 1983 at the age of 36. In that short life he left behind some songs and a legacy. Among his fans you can count Morrissey.

40 Year Itch: Fusion Gets Funky

Instead of getting jazz cats who knew how to play funk, I got funk cats who knew how to play jazz.

-Herbie Hancock on Head Hunters

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By the early 1970's Herbie Hancock had already played with Miles Davis, taken bop to new heights, and had even begun experimenting with electronic sounds. But there lingered a part of him, that just wanted to play the kind of music he was listening to on the radio.

I listened to James Brown and Sly and said "Look, I want to find out what this is, and I'm going to go as far as I can." That's why I got some cats who can play funk. I knew that I had never heard any jazz players really play funk like the funk that I had been listening to.

Hancock gathered a new group of musicians together in San Francisco. He called them The Headhunters. Sax player Bennie Maupin, a veteran of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew sessions, was the only holdover from the previous album. There was bassist Paul Jackson from Oakland. Percussionist Bill Summers from New Orleans. And drummer Harvey Mason who would later play on George Benson's Breezin' album.

From Hancock's opening synth riff on " Chameleon", you know you're in for a different kind of jazz album. In fact Head Hunters was the first jazz album to be certified gold and the best selling jazz album of all time. Fusion would never get so funky.

The album received rave reviews for finding the sweet spot between jazz and funk. All of which must have upset Miles Davis whose On the Corner ( featuring Hancock on keyboards)  mined the same territory a year earlier.

A note about the cover: Hancock is wearing a face mask inspired by the Baoule tribes of the Ivory Coast. Artist Victor Moscoso, who also worked on Zap Comix with the likes of Robert Crumb, designed the mask to look as though it were made out of studio equipment.

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I don't want to go through the year without scratching the 40 year itch on Hancock's other great album Sextant, which came out in January of 1973 and features avant garde experiments with electronic sounds that are totally out of the world. 

40 Year Itch : Till The Gold Is Cold

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I was very keen to try and focus our Englishness because American music at the time was the critics' darling and I thought it would be nice to respond with something of our own. -Peter Gabriel

On October 12, 1973 Genesis released their fifth studio album Selling England By The Pound, their most commercially successful, and arguably their most creative effort to date. The album rose to #3 in the UK while the single "I Know What I Like ( In Your Wardrobe)", released in the Spring of '74,  peaked at #21 in their native country.

The song is sung from the point of view of a young groundskeeper pictured on the album cover.

"What I like about that song ," Gabriel has said, "is the fact that here's a character in a rural situation where he's being dominated by the people around him. He's lacking an identity of his own. He lives a life that is preconceived by the people around him and the only time that his own identity comes out is when he's actually on the lawn, mowing the grass. I mean, I get this tremendous, physical buzz by the sensation of cutters slicing through a whole layer of grass, There's really sort of a therapeutic ultra-violence in the act of mowing the lawn."

"Wardrobe" may have been the doorway for new fans. But once they entered the surreal world of Selling England, they were treated to some epic Genesis suites, two of which ran over 11 minutes in length. Fan favorite "Firth of Firth" may be the album's highlight, a brilliant nine and a half minute suite combing three ideas Tony Banks had come up with. The album also features "More Fool Me" , a bittersweet love tune sung by Phil Collins. Talk about foreshadowing! 

       The band probably could have used some editing. Selling England ran over 53 minutes in length, so the vinyl pressings could be less dynamic than the songs deserved. So here's at least one hurrah for the CD age.

   

40 Year Itch : Top of the Pops

Looky- here! An entire episode of Top of the Pops from October 11, 1973!! No Jimmy Savile thank goodness.Instead funnyman Kenny Everett fills in, introducing ELO, Elton John and Slade. Not a bad night!

1. ELO: Showdown ( at 2:40)

2. Elton John : Goodbye Yellow Brick Road ( at 7:00)

3. Status Quo : Caroline (9:30)

4. Pan's People ( dancing to "Ghetto Child") ( 13:15)

5.Engelbert Humperdinck:  Love Is All" (16:15)

6. Slade : My Friend Stan (21:00)

7. Limmie and Family Cooking : Dreamboat ( 24:00)

8. Simon Park Orchestra: Eye Level (28:00)

40 Year Itch: The Lost Weekend Takes to the Air

John Lennon( who would have turned 73 yesterday) could not have been a very happy person in the 1970's. In the years following "Imagine", her comes across as an angry man at war with the world, himself and Yoko. Eventually Yoko said enough and sent him packing to the West Coast with assistant May Pang. Perhaps everybody was hoping an affair with a young woman and the California sunshine would have a renewing effect. Instead Lennon spent a good deal of the time partying too hard and even getting into fights with fans. Lennon had no respect for his fans. So you can imagine what it must have been for him to be trapped in the middle of an airplane full of them. According to Pang, in an article for the UK Mail, that's what happened:

In early October 1973, John and I went to Las Vegas for a few days. We flew there from Los Angeles on a shuttle booked by our friend Elliot Mintz, who came with us. 

Our seats were in the middle of the aircraft. Everybody was going nuts over John, who looked at Elliot and said: "Why are we back here in the middle of all this?" 

When Elliot explained there was no first-class section, John snapped: "Please think before putting me in this situation again!"

    At least "The Lost Weekend" was a productive time for Lennon who recorded both his Wall and Bridges (featuring his only US #1 solo hit "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and "#9 Dream") and Rock 'n'Roll albums. He also produced Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats. Should we continue this blog into 2014, we'll be getting into a few more "Lost Weekend" moments including a visit from Paul McCartney that resulted in a recorded jam session.

40 Year Itch : The Soul Top 10 for October 13,1973

1. Eddie Kendricks : Keep on Truckin'
  The former Temptation ( he sang lead on  "Just My Imagination ( Running Away From Me)" and "The Way You Do The Things You Do") is often credited with recording the first true disco song ("Girl, You Need a Change of Mind"). For his third album, Eddie Kendricks recorded a seven minute version of "Keep On Truckin", a phrase popularized by underground comic writer Robert Crumb. The song, big with the "bump" crowd, crossed over to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November.





2. Gladys Knight and the Pips : Midnight Train to Georgia
3. The Jackson 5: Get It Together
4. Millie Jackson : Hurts So Good




5. Stevie Wonder: Higher Ground
6. Temptations : Hey Girl ( I Like Your Style)



7. Marvin Gaye : Let's Get It On
8. James Brown : Sexy, Sexy, Sexy
9. Bloodstone: Never Let You Go
10. Kool and the Gang : Funky Stuff



Bonus Cuts:

20. 



26.



40.



55. 

65.

1973 In Film Scores

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Rota is on a roll, following up his Godfather soundtrack with the best of his Fellini scores. Of Rota Fellini said "He was someone who had a rare quality belonging to the world of intuition. Just like children, simple men, sensitive people, innocent people, he would suddenly say dazzling things. As soon as he arrived, stress disappeared, everything turned into a festive atmosphere; the movie entered a joyful, serene, fantastic period, a new life." You can hear all of that in Amarcord. 

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Goldsmith had already composed memorable scores for Planet of the Apes and Patton, when he creates the gorgeous Oscar nominated melodies for Papillon. Nominated 17 times, he would win the Oscar in 1976 for The Omen.

Marvin Hamlisch takes home two Oscars for his work in 1973. One for adapting Scott Joplin's ragtime era compositions; the other for The Way We Were. The Sting soundtrack hits #1 on the Billboard album charts in May of 1974 and stays there for entire month.

Ennio Morricone gets whimsical on the soundtrack to My Name is Nobody which is, after all, a spaghetti western comedy.

Alain Goraguer's funky and jazzy score to La Planete Sauvage is our cult classic soundtrack from 1973. Goraguer did orchestration for French ye-ye singers like France Gall before taking us all on this head trip.

As with Morricone, you always want to check in to see what Lalo Schifrin has laid down. In '73 the Argentinian composer (of Mission Impossible theme) scored Enter the Dragon, one of the most masculine movie themes of all time. Just reeking with testosterone.

Lesser known, but just as brilliant, is Schifrin's score for Charley Varrick. Nobody does spy thriller soundtracks like Lalo Schifrin