40 Year Itch: Those We Missed from Nov '73

[Purchase]"Mr Bojangles" songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker's Viva Terlingua! must have offered Jimmy Buffet a blueprint for the rest of his career. It's full of good-time, hangover-healing progressive country tunes including the legendary Ray Wylie Hubbard satiric number "Up Against the Wall Red Neck Mother". Other "must hears" are Guy Clark's "Desperadoes Waiting For a Train" and Gary P. Nunn's Austin City Limits anthem "London Homesick Blues" with its...

Read More

40 Year Itch: Happy Times Together

                                                                     [Purchase]   In November of 1973, The Beach Boys released a critically acclaimed double live album that would  thrust them back into the Top 40. It comes at an interesting point in their career....

Read More

40 Year Itch : Close Cropped Rockers

In the November 24, 1973 edition of Billboard Magazine an editor noted what appeared to be a new trend: shorter hair among rock stars. "Close-cropped hair is cropping up a la Mahavishnu John McLaughlin. The near skinhead is typified by John Lennon on the cover of the current Apple album Mind Games and last week at New York's Academy of Music, the new Hot Tuna band ( new in that Papa John Creach no longer plays with them) found guitarists Jorma...

Read More

40 Year Itch: November 1973's Best Prop Pop Moments

[Purchase]By the time The Electric Light Orchestra recorded their third album, Roy Wood has left them for good to prance about in what was then the much greener grass of Wizzard. Now Jeff Lynne could pursue his Beatles fixation unabashed. It was an admiring John Lennon who called him out on that  regarding "Showdown", the single that may or may not be on the album depending on what you country you bought it:I call them ‘Son of Beatles’ although...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Bonjours Caravan

[Purchase]On November 26, 1973, to help promote their new ( and some say best ) album, For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night, progressive rockers Caravan allowed French television cameras to shoot their sold out concert at the Bataclan in Paris. A month later the show was broadcast. You'll hear the classic Plump track "The Dog, The Dog, He's At it Again" in its entirety as well as snippets of Plump's "Memory Lain, Hugh Headloss" and their classic...

Read More

40 Year Itch : UK Top 10 November 24, 1973

 On November 24, 1973 Gary Glitter's "I Love You Love Me Love" enters the UK charts at #1 where it would spend the next four weeks and establish itself as Britain's #1 selling single of 1973. The Rest of the Top 102. Osmonds Let Me In3. David Cassidy Daydreamer/Puppy Song4. David Bowie Sorrow5. Mud Dynamite6. Donny Osmond When I Fall in Love7. Carpenters Top of the World8. Ringo Starr Photograph9. Barry Blue Do You Wanna Dance10. Detroit...

Read More

40 Year Itch: Lost in the Cartoon

[Purchase] In November of 1973, Neil Young was treating fans to a preview of most of the new songs that wouldn't appear on record for another two years. But what a record! Recorded for the most part on August 26, 1973 ,Tonight's The Night is mostly a dark album by an artist grieving the deaths of Crazy Horse's Danny Whitten and Young's friend and roadie Bruce Berry, overshadowing some lighter moments about partying and the birth of Neil's son....

Read More

40 Year Itch: Sammy!

"All in all, I'd say all my dreams came true"-Sammy Davis, JrOn November 16, 1973, NBC and General Electric presented "Sammy!", a TV special starring Sammy Davis, Jr. MGM followed the performance with a soundtrack album. There are moments here that capture the glitz and glitter of 1973 better than anything Marc Bolan or David Bowie did: like this cover of the 1971 Chase hit "Get It On!" That's a lot of yellow!Top Ten Soul Hits This Week:1. Billy...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Oh Cheeky, Cheeky

[Purchase]I didn't think ( Here Come The Warm Jets) deserved the good reviews it got. There was sort of a mystique about it which protected it --made you think that if you didn't like something about it, it was your fault, not mine.-Brian EnoIn late 1973 Brian Eno released his first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, a noisy, weird and inventive onslaught of art-glam that still rewards its listeners every time it's played. Eno had left Roxy Music...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Two Beatlesque Confections

[Purchase]  There was already a glut of post Beatles music on the market when the Lennonesque Stealers Wheel and the McCartneyesque Badfinger released albums in November of 1973. Ringo's album had entered the US charts at #15. Harrison's Material World was still in the charts, at #133. McCartney's Red Rose Speedway was at #167 but his new UK single, "Helen Wheels" had just been released. Lennon's single "Mind Games" was climbing the US  pop...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Can Anybody Play the Drums?

That's not Moon!      On November 20, 1973 a fan's biggest dream came to life when he found himself plucked from the audience to play drums with The Who.       It happened at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco on the opening night of the Who's Quadrophenia Tour...and the moment has been captured for all to see on YouTube. About 70 minutes into the show, just as Roger Daltry makes his ear-splitting scream at the...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Seven Virgins and a Mule

Music with me is an instinctive thing. I can , and have, disciplined it but when you want to put on an emotion such as aggression and the music is not enough to express it, I let myself loose. Sometimes it's sad to think it;s only the visuals that people remember.-Keith EmersonOn November 19, 1973 Emerson Lake and Palmer released Brain Salad Surgery, the best known of their albums thanks, in large part, to the cover art by Swiss surrealist painter...

Read More

Six Degrees of Separation: Deaf School to Death Cab

[Purchase]1. Liverpool art rockers Deaf School record "Get Set Ready Go" for their debut album 2nd Honeymoon, released in 1976. The band's guitar player and songwriter is Clive Langer.2. When Deaf School breaks up producer Clive Langer gets Elvis Costello's help with the lyrics to a song he's written called "Shipbuilding". Robert Wyatt has a Top 40 hit with the song recorded as a bonus track for his 1982 compilation album Nothing Can Stop Us.3. Wyatt...

Read More

The Great Mandala

[Purchase] According to family lore, my Dad was awakened one night by a call from his brother insisting he listen to this song. The next day, my uncle boarded a catamaran, set sail off the coast of Hawaii and was never seen aga...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Bowie Does the Midnight Special

By late 1973 David Bowie was one of the biggest rock and roll stars in the UK. In America, not so much. Ziggy Stardust had only peaked at #75 in the Billboard charts. "The Jean Genie" stalled at #71 on the Hot 100 charts. For Bowie, NBC's "Midnight Special" was seen as the best opportunity for a big breakthrough in the U-S.  That meant resurrecting his retired Ziggy Stardust persona for one last wham bam thank you ma'am.     The...

Read More

Stranded in the Slums of Beverly Hills

Let's Make a Deal audience in 1973Duty calls! I am in Beverly Hills knocking around the city, hoping someone will want to option this blog for a film. Actually, I'm knocking out some interviews for another job. Good news! I will be allowed four minutes in the presence of T Bone Burnett to discuss Inside Llewyn Davis. Bad news! I may not have time to write the rest of this week's 40 Year Itch posts. Stay tuned for a little 1001Songs piece on Llewyn...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Sauntering Around Like a European Elvis

For five weeks, Algerian -French singer Sharif Dean's "Do You Love Me?" was the #1 song in the Netherlands. This week in 1973 it also topped the charts in Rio.The video, below, is a classic time capsule...with Dean sauntering around like a European Elvis and a Joe Flynn lookalike eating a younger woman's corsage.Dean, a philosophy and literature major, wrote this so...

Read More

40 Year Itch : The Inhuman Showman

[Purchase]I don't think any album I've discovered this year has given me more pleasure than Human Menagerie, released in November of 1973. Not even Elliot Murphy's Aquashow. And that is saying a lot!   The Cockney Rebel debut made no commercial impact in America.  The group's biggest hit, 1975's UK#1 "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)", only managed to sneak into the Billboard Hot 100 for a week at #96. Well I'm here to tell you the...

Read More

40 Year Itch : This Week's New UK Hit Singles

   While David Cassidy held the top spot on the UK charts with his double A side single "Daydreamer/Puppy Song", some noteworthy challengers entered the charts on the week of November 10,  1973.Debuting at #31, Barry Blue, songwriter behind Lynsey de Paul's "Sugar Me", follows up his #2 hit "Dancin' ( on a Saturday Night) " with "Do You Wanna Dance?" which would peak at #7 in the UK.Debuting at #33, "Helen Wheels" --the first single...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Somebody Bite The Whip

[Purchase]       When it comes to socially conscious soul music, Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and The O'Jay's Ship Ahoy, released November 10, 1973, stand head and Afro above everything else released in 1973. On songs composed and arranged by Philadelphia International's Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, The O'Jays tackle corruption ( "For the Love of Money" #3Soul/#9 Pop), pollution ("The Air That I Breathe") black-on-black crime (...

Read More

40 Year Itch : The Rise of TK Records

[Purchase]On November 10, 1973 Harry Stone's TK Records, out of Hialeah, Florida,  took out a small  ad in Billboard Magazine celebrating the success of some current singles on the Hot Soul Singles chart including one that peaked at #27 on the soul charts called "Blow Your Whistle" by a band called KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band.Harry Stone had mainly been in the record distribution business when he lost one of his biggest clients during...

Read More

40 Year Itch : Can I Put My Hands On You?

[Purchase]   Someone's got to come along and say to all of us "all of your ideas about rock and roll, all your ideas about sound, all your ideas about guitars, all your ideas about this and that are a load of wank!"-Alex Harvey to NME   Nearly 40 years old, Scotsman Alex Harvey had already played skiffle, R and B and in Hamburg clubs before meeting up with the members of  the prog rock band Tear Gas and forming SAHB, The...

Read More

40 Year Itch: Methedrine and Revolution

"The Pink Fairies make me sick"Peter Jenner, manager of the Edgar Broughton Band      In November of 1973 a French TV crew captured The Pink Fairies in all their messy, anarchic glory...stomping their way through what I have to believe is a version of "Uncle Harry's Last Freak Out" ( from their debut album) with former Pretty Things drummer Twink who had rejoined the band he founded for a brief spell. The Pink Fairies had their own...

Read More