Those We Missed : March 1974

[Purchase]   Buddha and the Chocolate Box and the single "Oh Very Young" gave Cat Stevens fans reasons to hope he had returned to the form that attracted his massive following. Fans had met his last album, Foreigner,  and its pretentious 18-minute, side long suite with puzzlement.  There is still plenty to puzzle over here. Cat's life-long spiritual journey leads him to compare Jesus with Buddha and there are lyrics like "He was...

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40 Year Itch: All the Kids Want Somethin' To Do

[Purchase]     On March 30, 1974 The Ramones played their first show. It happened at Performance Studios on East 23rd Street in Manhattan in front of about 30 people. Mostly friends.     The set list reportedly consisted of ":I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You", "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", "I Don't Wanna Be Learned/ I Don't Wanna Be Tamed", "I Don't Wanna Get Involved With...

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40 Year Itch : A Toot and a Snore

On March 28, 1974 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were reunited in an LA studio where they jammed with Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson as tapes rolled. It would be their only post Beatles recording session. Ever.  Wow! With that set-up , you're probably expecting something amazing. You'd be wrong.It happened during Lennon's infamous "Lost Weekend", a year of drugs, drinking and debauchery the ex-Beatle spent with Harry Nilsson and others. Lennon...

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40 Year Itch: Hazy, Shell-Shocked and Crazy

[Purchase]Peaking at #5 on the charts, Queen II is the first UK hit album for these pomp rockers. And, to these years,  one of 1974's most rewarding "growers". The first dozen times you hear the album, you may get lost in the muddle of its soupy mix, busy arrangements and  lyrics about ogres, black queens and fairies. Robert Christgau probably did. He calls the album a "wimpoid royaloid heavyoid android void." Actually this is the...

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40 Year Itch: Prog Rock in March 1974

[Purchase]The nine minute Lord of the Rings inspired "Nimrodel-The Procession-The White Rider" suite is my personal favorite highlight of Camel's second album, Mirage. While far better known bands were ego-tripping into the Land Of Excess, Camel kept things melodic. Credit goes to the musicians who were at the top of their game: Andrew Latimer (electric and acoustic guitars, flute, and vocals); Pete Bardens (Hammond organ, electric piano, acoustic...

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40 Year Itch: Put Your Glad Rags On

[Purchase]On March 25, 1974 Bill Haley and the Comets, riding a wave of 50's nostalgia courtesy of "Happy Days" and movies like American Graffiti,  played the Hammersmith Palais in London England. The concert was recorded for the album Live in London '74. Earlier, the band performed at Tops of the Pops and , in the recording below, at the Wheeltappers and Shunters TV show in Manchester, England. The tour coincided with the return of "Rock Around...

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40 Year Itch: Sleazy Pancakes

[Purchase]   On March 22, 1974 Frank Zappa released his 18th , most commercially successful and highest charting album, Apostrophe ('). Recorded at the same time as its predecessor Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe is filled out with outtakes from 1969's Hot Rats ("Excentrifugal Forz") and 1972's  Grand Wazoo ("Uncle Remus").    The title cut is an instrumental jam featuring some very busy licks from Ex Cream bassist Jack...

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40 Year Itch: Ya Faith Is You

[Purchase]On March 22, 1974, Earth Wind and Fire released Open Our Eyes, a future R and B chart topping album so good rock critic dean Robert Christgau called it a "fucking tour de force" . Whatever elements you love in your favorite Earth Wind and Fire album ( mine is All 'N'All) can be traced back to this, their fifth studio album. You'll find funky horn charts, thumb popping bass licks, soothing ballads,uplifting lyrics, Latin rhythms and Maurice...

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40 Year Itch: Under the Sun

[Purchase]   Alan Price, the former keyboard player with the Animals, followed up his O Lucky Man! soundtrack with Between Today and Yesterday, an autobiographical album he re-recorded four times before Warner Brothers finally released it. The album is broken up into two distinct sides. One marked Yesterday and the other marked Today.    "Jarrow Boy" was the UK#6  hit single but "Under the Sun" is the song that caught...

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40 Year Itch: Down in Groover's Paradise

[purchase]I has an opportunity to visit Dallas earlier this month. My conclusion: I never again want to get closer to Dallas than a flyover in a DC 9 at night.     But since my college days in New Orleans, when I'd run across the Vaughan brothers, Charlie Sexton, Zeitgeist,  True Believers and the long legged pianist Marcia Ball, I've always been curious about Austin. How did this city become a cultural oasis in the heart of Texas?  ...

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40 Year Itch: Checking in with the Pinner Pop Star

"I could fart and reach Number 1"-Elton John   At some point in 1974, probably when Elton's Greatest Hits, Caribou and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road were all riding high on the US charts, Elton John's records accounted for 2 percent of the world's record sales.   He spent much of March touring Australia and New Zealand   His concerts opened with "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and closed with "Crocodile Rock" and...

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40 Year Itch: Ups and Downs

On March 16, 1974, beleaguered President Richard Nixon appeared at the inaugural show of the new $15 million Grand Old Opry where he praised country music, saying that it "radiates love of this nation and patriotism". He also played with a yo-yo and performed three tunes at the piano, including "Happy Birthday" to First Lady Pat Nixon.    In fewer than 5 months Nixon would get drummed out of office thanks to the Watergate scandal. Minnie...

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40 Year Itch: Can You Love A Virgin Man?

[Purchase]  On his second album since retiring from the Miracles, Pure Smokey, Smokey Robinson finds some sweet grooves. Especially with the single "Virgin Man" which, in retrospect, may be the best song from 1974 you never got around to hearing. It hit #12 on the R and B charts but peaked at only #56 on the pop charts.         Robinson knew he was taking a chance writing a song called "Virgin Man" for the over-sexed radio...

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40 Year Itch: Competing with the Joplin Poltergeist

[Purchase]    When former Stones the Crow singer Maggie Bell finally released her first solo album, Rolling Stone Magazine made it the lead review of an issue that also included Van Morrison's It's Too Late to Stop Now and Deep Purple's Burn. Bell had won recent UK polls for best female vocalist and had often been compared to Janis Joplin, "among rock's most powerful necrophiliac myths" as writer Dave Marsh put in.    With Jerry...

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40 Year Itch: Gonna Rip It Up

[Purchase]OK. So I was drunk. When it's Errol Flynn, all those showbiz writers say "Those were the days when we had Sinatra and Errol Flynn, socking it to the people." I do it...I'm a bum-John LennonThis week in 1974 John Lennon's lost weekend hit its low points. First, at a dinner in a Santa Monica restaurant with May Pang and Jesse Ed Davis, Lennon emerged from the bathroom with a kotex on his forehead. The three went to the Troubador where, even...

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40 Year Itch: A-Ho-Ho Ho-A-Ho

When (Stardust) came on telly, (future Oasis founders Liam and Noel Gallagher) would mime along and pretend to be Alvin and I'd always catch them singing into hairbrushes and playing air guitar-Thomas Gallagher, their dad     40 years ago, glam bandwagon jumper Alvin Stardust celebrated his one and only UK#1 single, "Jealous Mind". Born Bernard Jewry, Stardust appropriated just about everything he could from Elvis's 1968 TV special....

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40 Year Itch: The Worst Singles of 1974

 Telly Savalas : If"People know that singing is not my bag, but if I say 'Hey, this is how Telly feels about this or that song,' I can't make mistakes. I can only make mistakes by pretending to be a great singer."    Telly Savalas hit #1 in the UK in 1975 with his 1974  spoken word, smooth as fuck version of the Bread classic "If". Did he know how God awful this was? I've learned never to underestimate the intelligence of a successful...

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