40 Year Itch : Hollarin' Cussin', You Wanna Fight

[Purchase]

    

After knocking out soundtracks for two 1973 blaxploitation classics, Black Caesar and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, James Brown presented director Larry Cohen some new funk with tunes for a revenge thriller, a sequel to Hell Up in Harlem. That jive turkey Cohen turned him down, saying the songs sound like "the same old James Brown stuff". Maybe. But does it ever get much better than James Brown? In any case Brown had the last laugh when he released The Payback as a double album. The Payback needed all of two weeks to hit #1 on the Soul Charts. The first single was "Stoned to the Bone". The album version runs more than ten minutes as do three cuts on this funk fest which gives the JBs Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker plenty of room to burn.

    "Doing the Best I Can" changes the mood considerably. James Brown's eldest son Teddy had died in a car accident during the making of the album. This is the sound of a grieving father in torment.

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40 Year Itch: Airplane Wreckage

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Bummed out by Jefferson Airplane's break-up, neither RCA nor the fans of spin-off group Hot Tuna could get very excited by the latest album from guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady.  Phosphorescent Rat, released on January 4, 1974, never broke beyond #148 on the Billboard Album chart. It can be listened to as a transitional album from the acoustic blues of earlier efforts to the power trio that would emerge. I hear a little Dinosaur Jr on the track "Easy Now". 

                                       

   The following day, Grace Slick released Manhole, one of the most self-indulgent, drug and alcohol-fueled sets ever released in the 1970's and that's saying a lot. The 15 minute title track features Grace caterwauling over the backing of the London Symphony Orchestra.  I dare you to sit through the whole thing. But if you do, your reward is the best song on the album: "Come Again Toucan". All of the future members of Jefferson Starship perform on this album except Papa John Creach.

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40 Year Itch : Goodbye 1973

In 1973 The James Last Orchestra performs a medley of Hawkwind's Silver Machine, T. Rex's Children of the Revolution and Alice Cooper's School's Out.

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More 1973 Albums We Missed

[Out of Print]

Harper (the subject of Led Zep's "Hats off to (Roy) Harper" and the vocalist on Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar")   follows the now legendary Stormcock with an album of songs recorded when he was ill and facing the possibility of dying. Jimmy Page plays on several of the tunes including "Bank of the Dead". Side Two is one ambitious 23-minute track, "The Lord's Prayer", which begins with a long monologue and is made up of at least 5 movements. Harper would recover from what ailed him and follow this with another masterpiece in 1974, Valentine.

[Purchase]

John Martyn's follow-up to his masterpiece Solid Air. Recorded with members of Traffic, Inside Out is jazzier than Solid Air and highlighted by tunes "Fine Line" and "Make No Mistake". Some of the singing is too over-the-top for these ears.

[Purchase]

  1973's best live album? ( Bill Withers, Yes and Focus fans might disagree.) That's right, kids, people once had time to play four sides of a live album for their friends. Especially one recorded this well. Alvin Lee and his band raise the game from their legendary Woodstock appearance. Plenty of boogie. Plenty of blues. Most CDs don't contain the epic drum solo in "The Hobbit". 

[Purchase]

Cobbled together from a variety of session, Roadmaster still offers great tunes. Gene Clark recorded "Full Circle Song" again for the Byrds 1973 reunion album. Clark would top this effort in 1973 with the more complex No Other.

[Purchase]

With Uriah Heep near the peak of its success, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ken Hensley took Heep bassist Gary Thain and Heep drummer Kerslake into the studio to record this solo album. Mellower than what the Heep was putting out but great stuff.

[Purchase]

Milton Nascimento's backing band has made the transition from psychedelic rock to jazz fusion

[Out of Print]

Mexican garage rock. Ole!

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Some 1973 Albums We Missed

[Purchase]

Tainted by scatalogical songs about pissing , farting and Pamela's popo, Serge Gainsbourg's follow up to Histoire de Melody Nelson is saved by the title cut and his devastating goodbye song, "Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais" which translates into English as "I've Come to Tell You I'm Leaving" and features the real life sobbing of actress Jane Birkin.

[Purchase]

Recorded with CSN and Y's touring band as well as members of Neil Young's band ( and Neil himself on piano credited as Joe Yankee), Graham Nash's Wild Tales is darker material than his fans might expect. But it rocks as fine as anything he's ever done. One of the year's great surprises for me!

[Purchase]

Vibe master Roy Ayers knocked out one of the best blaxploitation soundtracks of all time on this 1973 effort, highlighted by the funky "Coffy is the Color".

[Purchase]

With the hit title track, which was also featured on the soundtrack to Cleopatra Jones, Millie Jackson hits her stride. She gets super funky on "Hypocrisy". She'd follow It Hurts So Good with Caught Up, which will be in the running for my fave soul album of 1974

[Purchase]

Late of Lindisfarne, Alan Hull released his first solo album, the very tasteful Pipedream, in 1973. File between Duncan Browne and John Martyn.

[Purchase Henry Cow Leg End]

Henry Cow set out to be avant rock and anti commercial. Signed to Virgin, Fred Frith and company  challenge listeners with dissonance,  moments of beauty and  on "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", a political statement. Robert Wyatt would soon proclaim Henry Cow his favorite group.

[Out of Print]

Is Lightnin' Rod's Hustlers Convention the birth of rap? With Kool and the Gang providing back tracking,  Last Poets member Jalal "Lightnin' Rod" Uridin ( Alafia Pudim) rhymes the story of two hustlers, Sport and Spoon, in the drug and crime infested inner city streets.

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40 Year Itch : Those We Missed December '73

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Big ass riffs and stadium-quality power chords made Bachman Turner Overdrive's second album one of the biggest of 1974. It ain't anywhere near as sophisticated as what Bachman had pulled off with The Guess Who, but with hits "Let It Ride" and  "Takin' Care of Business", BTO found the formula to success.

[Purchase]

Producer Andrew Loog Oldham told reporters "If you hated Cosmic Wheels, you'll love this one." Whereas the former was Donovan's entry into the Glam Rock fashion styles, Essence to Essence is a quiter more spiritual album with Donovan whispering cosmic lyrics over acoustic guitars.

[Purchase]

By most accounts recorded on acid in a French castle, Gong's follow up to Flying Teapot

[Purchase]

Live Dates is a double live album featuring the double lead guitar attack of Andy Powell and Ted Turner. It should make fans of Wishbone Ash's masterpiece, Argus, happy. Turner would leave after this album and many fans would follwo his example.

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40 Year Itch: 1973 in Christmas Songs

Merry Crimbo to the dearest readers in all the land!

While Slade and Wizzard were battling it out for greatest glam rock Christmas single ever in the UK, in the States it was an apathetic Christmas musically. There were a few country singles, a novelty tune or two and a late entry from The O'Jays that couldn't even hit the two minute mark.


1. Red Sovine never wrote a song that wasn't about a truck. "Trucking Trees For Christmas" came out Oct 31st.




2. With the return to the charts of "Monster Mash", Bobby "Boris" Pickett knocked out "Monster's Holiday" which was released November 7th




3. Commander Cody's "Daddy Drinkin' Up Our Christmas" came out November 14th.




4. November 14th is also the same day John Denver released Please Daddy ( Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)" from his current album Farewell Andromeda




5. The Canadian Beatles, Edward Bear, shipped out this dull effort, "Coming Home Christmas", November 28th.



6. Elton John also shipped his dashed off "Step Into Christmas" single that date, considered by many in the industry too late to be a hit.



7. Finally, the O'Jays gave us "Christmas Ain't Christmas New Years Ain't New Years Without the Ones You Love" which, despite the long title, ran 1:59.

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40 Year Itch : Comic Book Heroes

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       Eight years before "Jessie's Girl", handsome Rick Springfield is, in his own words, "famous for nothing other than being famous. Kind of a 70's version of Paris Hilton". Signed to Capitol Records, he records an album full of  pop tunes that should appeal to his Teen Beat fans. He even comes up with the album design concept, having a real comic book artist draw him and illustrate the songs in the gate fold. Rolling Stone gives Comic Book Heroes a good review and then the shit hits the fan: Capitol gets busted for payola and rumors fly around that the label paid kids to buy the album. Comic Book Heroes dies a quick death. But those who do pick it up are the lucky ones. Recorded in London, it's full of well crafted pop gems that span the bridge between bubblegum and power pop.

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40 Year Itch : Top of the Pops Dec 20, 1973

    From inside a Womble, Jimmy Savile hosted the December 20, 1973 episode of Top of the Pops featuring the two glam rocking heavyweights, Wizzard and Slade, battling it for the Christmas Song of 1973. Slade would win with "Merry Xmas Everybody".

     After the countdown, The Faces played their last Top 10 hit "Pool Hall Richard" with Ronnie Lane's replacement, Tetsu Yamauchi , on bass. The New Seekers play their eventual #1 hit "You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me".The 12 year old Dutch band, Golden Earring, then perform their raunchy Top 10 hit "Radar Love". 

    The hardest working rocker of 1973, Roy Wood,  performs his Beach Boys tribute "Forever", a UK #8 hit. The delightful Pan's People dance to Robert "Everlasting Love" Knight's "Love on a Mountaintop". 

    Wood returns with his band Wizzard to sing " I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday", looking just a but dispirited by never climbing higher than #4 on the UK charts with the tune. English songwriter Clifford T Ward performs his Top 40 hit "Scullery". Slade plays the smash "Merry Xmas Everybody", while Wood stands fuming backstage. 

    Finally the kids try to dance to Leo Sayer's "The Show Must Go On", a future hit for Three Dog Night.

Enjoy!

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40 Year Itch : Some Late Season Soul

[Purchase]

   On December 6, 1973 Al Green released his second Gold album of the year with Livin' For Your Love. Though not as indispensable as Call Me or I'm Still in Love With You, Livin' For Your Love does contain the #1 Soul single in its title cut, "Let's Get Married" ( Soul #3) and , best of all, an 8-minute improvisation called "Beware" which must be heard.

                                                                     {out of print}

  The last Norman Whitfield production for the Temptations is a rarely heralded psychedelic soul classic.  A clash of egos can rarely be good for art and The Temps didn't appreciate being turned into studio instruments by Whitfield. That said, Motown really needs to put out a box set of the Whitfield years. Like Masterpiece, All Directions and Solid Rock, 1990 is another huge seller that is out of frickin print.

[Purchase]

Some of the hardest drivin' funk of 1973 came from the home studio of Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Jones produced and arranged and played some down and dirty bass on Madeline Bell's first solo album in 5 years. ( She'd been singing with Blue Mink)  One listen to this puts Led Zep's Houses of the Holy, and especially "The Crunge", in a whole new light.

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40 Year Itch: Happy Xmas from the Pudgy Pop Star

    It has become one of the most legendary of the Peel Sessions. On December 18, 1973  Elton John, a serious artist reaching his peak of popularity, performs some rinky tinky pub style piano medleys surrounded by producers and managers drinking ales. He knocks out a Christmas medley first. Then a Dylan medley which is followed by one of classic pub tunes. Before the hour is up, Elton is impersonating the queen and launching boozy assaults on his own hits "Daniel" ( UK#4, 1973) and "Your Song" (UK#7,1971) while the small but clearly inebriated crowd sings along. 

If the whole thing seems rather out of the Christmas spirit well that may be because Peel didn't actually give a toss about Christmas, as he disclosed on his show in 1987:

 "I've been feeling sort of mildly fed up this evening, what with one thing and another. It's that kind of pre-Christmas 'triste'. Shopping was the main reason for it. I spent about five hours shopping this afternoon, achieved nothing, and you go round thinking, "Why am I doing this? Why am I feeling kind of social pressure to go round looking for stuff that people don't want, to give them on this particular day? Why not wait until they do want something and give it to them then?" Of course, quite clearly, this is not the way things go."

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40 Year Itch : The Dean's List

                           
                                                          [Purchase]

The  Deans' Lists 1973

Despite his hometown bias, New York rock critic Robert Christgau's list of favorite albums always offers music fans some esoteric treats along with some-- but never all --of  the year's universally acclaimed records.
No Dark Side of the Moon here, kiddies.

But among the albums on this list I'm really glad I've finally heard are Elliot Murphy's Aquashow, Esther Phillips's Black Eyed Blues, Meet "Mississippi Charles" Bevel and Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint's  Lo and Behold. 

Albums with orange numbers were reviewed in this blog.

 A+

 1. Al Green - Call Me
 2. New York Dolls 
  
 A 

 3. The Harder They Come
 4. Wilson Pickett’s Greatest Hits 
 5. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced Leh-nerd Skeh-nerd 
 6. John Prine - Sweet Revenge
7. Sly and the Family Stone - Fresh 
 8. Africa Dances

 9. Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits
 10. Al Green - Livin’ for You
 11. Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstasy 
 12. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions 
 13. Neil Young - Time Fades Away 

 A- 
 14. Asleep at the Wheel - Comin’ Right at Ya

 15. Bruce Springsteen - The Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
 16. Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall
 17. Slade - Slayed?
 18. Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
 19. The Move - Split Ends
 20. Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint - Lo and Behold
 21. Bonnie Raitt - Takin’ My Time
 22. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy 
23. Tom T. Hall - The Rhymer and Other Five and Dimers
 24. Spinners
 25. Roy Brown - Hard Times

26. The Who - Quadrophenia
 27. The Great Lost Kinks Album
 28. Mott the Hoople - Mott
 29. The Best of Laura Lee

 30. James Brown - Soul Classics Volume II
 31. Marvin Gaye - Let’s Get It On
 32. The Hollies’ Greatest Hits
 33. The Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters
 34. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band - Get Your Rocks Off
 35. Elliott Murphy - Aquashow
 36. Frederic Rzewski - Coming Together; Attica; Moutons de Panurge

 37. Roy Wood - Boulders
 38. Howlin’ Wolf - The Back Door Wolf
 39. Meet "Mississippi Charles" Bevel
 40. Marlo Thomas - Free to Be…You and Me

 41. Derek and the Dominos - In Concert
 42. Miles Davis in Concert
 43. Loudon Wainwright III - Attempted Mustache
 44. Mike Seeger - The Second Annual Farewell Reunion

 
 45. Esther Phillips - Black Eyed Blues
 46. Swamp Dogg - Gag a Maggott
 47. Taj Mahal - Ooh So Good ‘n Blues
                                           

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40 Year Itch: The Campus Report

What a few college radio stations were playing in December 1973

                    WSND- AM U of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana

1. Lou Reed Berlin

            2. Lighthouse "Pretty Lady"

3. Maria Muldaur

             Though best known for "Midnight at the Oasis", Maria Muldaur's debut album is a delightful collection of rock, blues, jug band, feel good music that will brighten anyone's day.

WTUL-FM Tulane University, New Orleans LA

1. PFM Photos of Ghosts

2. Billy Cobham Spectrum

             3. John Coltrane Concert in Japan

Concert in Japan is the original two disc live set released in 1973 but recorded in Tokyo in July of 1966. Coltrane's wife Alice plays piano. Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali and Jimmy Garrison make up the rest of the band. It's now part of a four CD box set.

WECI-FM Earlham College , Richmond, Indiana

1. Public Foot the Roman

2. New Heritage Keyboard Quintet NHKQ

3. Hawkwind Space Ritual

   Cambridge England prog rockers Public Foot the Roman  found a sweet spot between Wishbone Ash's double guitar attack and Yes's vocals and keyboards. 

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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?

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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




 

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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.

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

[Purchase]

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

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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.

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40 Year Itch : 1973 in Comedy

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