40 Year Itch : Captain Beefheart Sells Out?

[Purchase with Spotlight Kid]

What does Don Van Vliet , The Doobie Brothers and David Lee Roth have in common? The answer is producer Ted Templeman. For Captain Beefheart's second album of 1972, Templeman somehow talked the  avant-garde dictator into trying something  accessible. The result is not only my favorite Captain Beefheart album, Clear Spot , but probably the easiest way to turn the casual rock fan onto the Captain. It's also his most romantic album and his biggest seller, peaking at #191 on the Billboard 200.

   With its horn section and backing vocals by the Blackberries, "Too Much Time" sounds like a great Van Morrison cover. That's your golden wedge. Now turn your friends onto the gorgeous "My Head Is My Only House Until It Rains".

Things get wilder but they never challenge listeners the way Trout Mask Replica does. Unfortunately his most famous album is probably the first one people hear...and the last one.

Legend has it, Don Van Vliet wrote all the songs on Clear Spot on I-95 between Boston and New Haven. But several of the songs, including the title track were leftovers from Spotlight Kid. Still, I love the idea of the Captain writing "Too Much Time" as he rode past the Guilford, CT exits where I was growing up that year.

David Essex's All Time Top 10

[Purchase]

Tho' best known for his 1970's hits "Rock On" (UK#3,US#5) "Gonna Make You A Star (UK#1) and "Hold Me Close (UK#1), David Essex was about to release a theatrical comeback single in 1982 with his UK#2 single "A Winter's Tale" when he made this list for Smash Hits. The image comes courtesy of Brian from Like Punk Never Happened.

 

40 Year Itch: Ouch!

[Purchase]

On October 1st 1972, while on tour with Joe Cocker, Jon Mark of the Mark Almond band fell out of a tree in Hawaii and he lost most of his left-hand ring finger. As he told Melody Maker, he "climbed like a native and fell like an Englishman". The tour ended though Jon would recover and continuing playing guitar.

 Mark met Johnny Almond when they were both members of as John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. After playing on The Turning Point and Empty Rooms, they would record together off and on as Mark Almond throughout the 1970's. Their sound was progressively  mellow jazz-pop. The highlight might be "One Way Sunday", a New England staple. Especially on WWYZ-FM, "The Natural 92",  when I was growing up



As a bonus, here they are playing with Mayall circa 1969.

 

40 Year Itch: Those We Missed

[Purchase]

Joe Walsh leaves The James Gang and that band's hard rock sound behind for acoustic guitars, harmony vocals and even some experiments with an ARP Odyssey synthesizer on his first solo album Barnstorm.  "Comin' Down" is the final track on the album. This one's a grower and the best of the bunch in today's post.

[Purchase]

"Dinah Flo" was the single on Boz Scaggs's fifth album My Time, recorded with the mighty Muscle Shoals backing band. Surprising that it would take four more years for Boz to make what seems to my ears a small leap from "Dinah Flo" to Silk Degrees.

[Purchase]

For their second album of 1972, Manfred Mann's Earth Band get heavier  and more experimental than on their magnificent debut. Then they close the whole thing out with a Dylan cover that ranks among the best ever.

[Purchase a Styx Anthology]

Chicago based prog rockers showed off their classical training on their Wooden Nickel eponymous debut which featured a 13 minute suited called  "Movement for the Common Man", the third section of which is Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". Styx could also get heavy handed. Witness  "After You Leave Me", the final cut on the album.These were probably not the best of times.

[Purchase]

Founders of World Music, the African and Caribbean expats who recorded as Osibisa in London may sound stale compared to the more authentic high life recordings we can all hear in this digital age. But they were the shit in the 1970's.

40 Year Itch : The Moonshadow Tour

After 12 months of virtual silence. 12 months without any new music. Or Shows. Or interviews. The Cat came back.
   Cat Stevens ,with an 11 piece orchestra, opened his 31 date Moonshadow American tour on September 29, 1972 before a sold-out crowd of 6,500 at L.A.'s Shrine Auditorium. Ramblin' Jack Elliot opened the show followed Cat's own cartoon short, Teaser and the Firecat.

 

 Cat's album Catch Bull At Four had been released two days earlier. Despite it's lack of a major single ("Sitting" peaked at #16 in the US), it would be Cat's most successful US album--topping the Billboard album charts for three weeks. Some of that success may be related to his soundtrack for the 1971 cult film Harold and Maude.

 Cat's 1972 setlist went something like this.
 This one's from an October gig in Columbus OH.


1. Wild World



2. Trouble
3. On the Road To Find Out
4. Can't Keep It In.*
5. Maybe You're Right




6. Sitting*
7. 18th Avenue*
8. Hard Headed Woman
9. Time
10. Fill My Eyes
11. Lady D'Arbanville
12. Peace Train
13. Sad Lisa




14. Father and Son
15. Ruins
16. Angelsea*
Encore
17.King of Trees
18.Morning Has Broken
* denotes songs from Catch Bull At Four.

A New York Daily News reviewer wrote "He sings with quiet intensity; his lyrics are literate and evocative and he accompanies himself on guitar, piano, organ and in all, holds forth for a consistently entertaining 90 minutes on stage. He puts on a fine show. It's nice to have him back. It's also fun to watch him ducking his head from side to side, his black curls flying wildly, almost as if he kept time with his head."

40 Year Itch: Bowie Arrives in the US of A

"When David Bowie made his Carnegie Hall debut last fall everybody from Albert Goldman to Andy Warhol was there plus a gaggle of weirdo's expecting some kind of a British Alice Cooper. That's not what they got. The concert opened as Bowie, in clockwork orange hair, came onstage amid flashing strobe lights, to the Mooged up strains of Beethoven's Ninth. From there, except for a simulated sex act with silver haired guitarist Mick Ronson, it was a matter of music, ranging from hard rock laid down by Bowie's band, the Spiders From Mars, to a Jacques Brel song with guitar accompaniment..." - Playboy (1973)

 David Bowie arrived in America on September 27, 1972. That's the night he played a sold out show at Carnegie Hall in front of Andy Warhol, Tony Perkins, Truman Capote, Alan Bates, Todd Rundgren, The New York Dolls, men who spray painted their faces silver and women with see through clothes.

"Sound. Its swells like the booming of surf on a deserted shore. Ziggy and the Spiders. And there's Ronno, on his knees in front of the idol whose fame Bowie covets. The sexual movements are explicit and everybody is happy because it is happening just as it was reported by NME. Carnegie Hall is for a moment Wolverhampton. You can't fault the music. Or the group. They play hard, muscular chords, sharp and choppy, the tempo a futuristic quick-step that induces the adrenaline to flow. And Bowie as Ziggy cries to the crowd, head back, sweat running in glistening rivulets down the creases of his thin neck, staining his uniform. Put Your Space Face Close To Mine, Luv. Ronno rips off the chords. It's the first Bowie show with real power..." - Eric Van Lustbader (1976)

    Bowie performed for 90 minutes. The set list consisted of songs mostly culled from Ziggy Stadust. But Bowie also performed "Andy Warhol" from 1971's Hunky Dory and covers of the Velvet Underground's "Waiting For The Man" and "White Light/White Heat" which he introduced with the line "This is like bringing coals to Newcastle". A month earlier Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson had been producing Lou Reed's break through album Transformer. There was also a cover of Jacques Brel's "My Death" which was recorded and later appeared on RarestOneBowie in 1995.
 The entire Setlist:
 "Hang Onto Yourself"
 "Lady Stardust"
"Moonage Daydream"
 "Five Years"
 "Suffragette City"
 "Changes"
 "Life on Mars?"
 "Queen Bitch"
 "Starman"
 "Andy Warhol"
 "My Death"
 "Space Oddity"
 "Width of A Circle"
 "Waiting for the Man"
 "White Light - White Heat"
 "Round and Round"

 

Bowie had the flu that night and retired to his room instead of hosting an after concert party.

40 Year Itch: The Death of Rory Storm

On September 27 Rory Storme, the leader of one of Liverpool's earliest beat groups, mixed alcohol and sleeping pills and never woke up. His grief stricken mother killed herself shortly after finding the body.

His sisters said Rory was happy to be "the king of Liverpool" and didn't like to tour much. He didn't write many songs either which is one of the reasons his most famous drummer, Ringo Starr, decided to part ways with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes to beat the skins for The Beatles. The other reason was that John and Paul were offering more money.

  In his autobiography, Brian Epstein wrote that Storm was "one of the liveliest and most likeable young men on the scene 9 and0 was very annoyed when Ringo left and he complained to me. I apologised and Rory, with immense good humour said, "Ok, Forget it. The best of luck to the lot of you."

But there are other reports that Rory Storm was depressed at the time of his death. He had recently lost his father and he was haunted by his lack of success when all around him were bands that had made it big.

At his funeral, mourners sang his favorite song "You'll Never Walk Alone". Ringo did not attend which he dismissed by pointing out "I wasn't there when he was born either."