40 Year Itch : Amid Fusions of Wonder

  On December 14, 1973 Yes released the double album Tales From Topographic Oceans, which would wind up underneath enough UK Christmas trees to knock Goodbye Yellow Brick Road out of the #1 spot.  Each of the four sides represents a class of Hindu scripture known as the Shistras ( "sacred books") which singer Jon Anderson discovered in footnotes to Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. That explains lyrics like:

Dawn of thought transferred through moments of days under searching earth
Revealing corridors of time provoking memories, disjointed but with purpose,
Craving penetrations offer links with the self instructor's sharp and tender love as we took to the air, a picture of distance.

  No doubt this album remains an all time favorite among certain fans, but many critics expressed a lack of patience with all the noodling involved in 83 minutes + of symphonic prog rock. Sounds Magazine headlined their review "Close to Boredom". Rolling Stone's Gordon Fletcher described the effort as "psychedelic doodling". Melody Maker summed up its reaction with "No".

   As for keyboard player Rick Wakeman who would depart Yes after the TFTO tour:

 “Tales From Topographic Oceans is like a woman’s padded bra, The cover looks good but when you peel off the padding there’s not a lot there.”

Could the punk revolution be far behind?

40 Year Itch : Slade Crushes Wizzard in the UK Xmas Charts

[Purchase]

   Every year Christmas brings joy to Slade front man Noddy Holder and bassist Jim Lea. 40 years after Slade's smash hit, "Merry Xmas Everybody", entered the charts at #1 ( selling 250,000 copies on December 7th, its first day of release), Holder and Lea will earn more than half a million pounds for the festive hit, making it the top Christmas earner for 2013. "Merry Xmas Everybody" re-charted every year from 1981-1994 and just entered the UK charts again last week at #57.

   The song is based on an 1967 psychedelic tune Noddy had written called " Buy Me a Rocking Chair". After a night out drinking, Noddy wrote the new lyrics in one draft:

We'd decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the grave-diggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That's why I came up with the line 'Look to the future now, it's only just begun'. Once I got the line, 'Does your Granny always tell you that the old ones are the best', I knew I'd got a right cracker on my hands.

Slade's Christmas smash famously beat Wizzard's classic  Glam rocker "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" to th etop of the charts. The Roy Wood penned theme peaked at #4 in the UK Charts and held that position for four straight weeks. Over the years it's become a bit of a standard overseas. In a way it encapsulates the UK's tongue in cheek approach to Christmas in its first second: the sound effect of a cash register.


 

   Elton John had a head start on the competition when he dashed off "Step Into Christmas", written and recorded on the same Sunday at London's Trident Studios.

    Elton invites fans to "hop aboard the turntable". Most didn't bother. Due its crappy sound, an apparent homage to Phil Spector, the single only peaked at #24 in the UK and failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100. A poor showing for the star who'd had three Top 10 hits in the UK and a #1 hit with "Daniel" in the US




 

40 Year Itch: Judge Magney and the Jury

In  late December, Billboard Magazine revealed that the band recording in November at LA's Village Recorder as Judge Magney and the Jury was actually Bob Dylan and the Band to be called Lovesongs for Dylan's new Ashes and Sand label. (That album would actually be called Planet Waves). All recording personnel were sworn to secrecy for the three days of recording and ten days of mixing. Sessions were closed to everyone but Elektra/Asylum chairman David Geffen, Dusty Springfield and Cher. Mixing was handled by the Band's Robbie Robertson and engineer Rob Fraboni with input from Dylan.

"A week was spent sequencing the album, which reportedly runs the gamut from country rock to simpler acoustic playing with a folk feel, and is expected to ship in January."

 Judge C R Magney State Park is in the same corner of Minnesota as Duluth and Hibbing, Dylan's birth place and hometown. 

Tickets for an upcoming Dylan and Band tour were already being scalped for $50.

40 Year Itch : Big Star Plays Max's Kansas City

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In early December, 1973 Big Star had just finished mixing Radio City, the band's second album, when they performed for two nights at the New York City club Max's Kansas City. They played mostly to music writers on the first night. Among them was Billboard Magazine's Sam Sutherland.

Big Star at Max's Kansas City

   During the last year several young bands have emerged with a striking command of the tight, vibrant pop and rock styles that made Top 40 radio a high-energy delight in the mid '60's. Big Star seemed among the most promising, despite the disappointing reaction to their debut Ardent LP, but the lucky core of followers who heard that powerful first bow were soon dismayed by the collapse of the band and a parallel lack of general interest in the act.

    Well, weep no more. Big Star is back as a trio, and , on the strength of a hastily-scheduled two-day shot at Max's, there is some strong new material on the way. If anything, the departure of the band's second guitarist and writer has provided a new coherence to the act, which centers logically around Alex Chilton, lead guitarist and vocalist, and composer of the band's best material.

   Chilton, who first emerged as lead vocalist of the Box Tops while still in his middle teens, has evolved into a superb rocker whose reverence for the Beatles and the Byrds is balanced by his own explosive approach to straight-ahead rock 'n' roll.

   The band opened with a solo slot by Chilton, singing "The Ballad of El Goodo" and "Thirteen", two of the most evocative songs on the group's first release. Chilton's aura of fragility was perfect for those songs, one an anthem of self-realization, the second a  bittersweet but loving re-creation of true teen first love that is parenthetically a eulogy for the innocent vitality of rock in the early 60's.

  From there, Big Star shifted into electric overdrive with full force. Chilton's electric guitar taking command. Despite  some rough edges--the band hadn't played, except for a quick rehearsal, in months--the set was a triumph, covering some exciting bases with the new tunes.

  With virtually no publicity outside the industry itself, the second night crowd was lean. Hopefully , this one group that won't suffer the frustrating fate of the best critics' bands: a second LP is due in January, and, with Chilton's presence and some solid material, it would be sad indeed to see Big Star lost in the shuffle.

--Sam Sutherland, Billboard Magazine, Dec 22, 1973

40 Year Itch: The Natural

[Out of Print]

"Music is obviously the thing I should have been doing all of my life"

-Charles Bevel

  "Mississippi" Charles Bevel was 34 years old by the time he released his 1973 debut album for A and M Records. Born the 14th of 17 children in Mississippi, Bevel lived on cotton plantations, joined the Navy, lived in Alaska, San Diego, Hawaii and then moved to Liberia for three and a half years. In Baltimore he lived in a commune. In Cleveland he pulled straight 8's as an engineer at a TV station. Through a miraculous turn of events, he managed to get some homemade tapes to Jerry Butler who introduced him to producer Calvin Carter. The eventual  result is an album that marries the sublime soul of Bill Withers with the churning percussion and political consciousness of Curtis Mayfield.

In an A- review of the album Robert Christgau wrote:

His songs are about black courage, hypocrisy, and ambivalence in a world shaped but not defined by racism; many of them ring like the proverbs and fables that provide him with crucial bits of language. The melodies are as sensible and eloquent as the lyrics, and Calvin Carter's production respects and augments Bevel's relaxed folk-soul voice.

 Though the album has vanished, Bevel has been nominated for a Tony Award for writing the blues revue It Aint't Nothin' But the Blues as well as for the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor In a Revue.

40 Year Itch : 1973 in Comedy

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40 Year Itch: Zappa Plays The Roxy

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    On December 8, 1973 Frank Zappa and The Mothers began a three night stand at the Roxy Theater in Hollywood. The shows were recorded for what would become the 1974 live double album Roxy and Elsewhere. ( The "elsewhere" tracks were recorded in Chicago and in Edinboro,PA). With the comic heroics of Flo and Eddie gone, Zappa and an otherwise stable group of musicians focused on technically precise progressive rock and jazz. There are even some funky moments on the album .

    Like Neil Young's 1973 album, Time Fades Away, Roxy And Elsewhere consists of all new live material (though both "Son of Orange County" and "More Trouble Every Day" are variations of familiar Zappa cuts) . Zappa had spent $30,000 filming the concerts but the footage has only recently made it to YouTube. All invited guests were asked to wear black.

One of the fan favorites from the album is "Cheepnis" which features a Zappa monologue dedicated to low budget monster movies.