40 Year Itch: No Hassles Guaranteed

The Ozark Music Festival can only be described as a disaster. It became a haven for drug pushers who were attracted from throughout the United States. The scene made the degradation of Sodom and Gomorrah appear mild. Natural and unnatural sex acts became a spectator sport. Frequently, nude women promoted drugs with advertisements on their bodies
   -Missouri Senate Committee Report

   An "ocean of youth" showed up at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia for a weekend of rock concerts that began on July 19, 1974.

   Concert organizers promised "no hassles guaranteed" in a full page ad in Rolling Stone. They were expecting 50-60,000 people to show up. Instead at least three times that number overran the fest.  Traffic backed up 17 miles. 

A farmer reported 30 pigs stolen by the ravenous crowd. 

   They came to see bands like The Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith who played as temperatures hit triple digits with high humidity. Clothing was optional as photographer David Mann documented.

When it was all over, one concertgoer was dead, 1000 overdoses and $100,00 in property damage. But there was a baby born. His name: Wolfman Johnson.

Following State Senate hearings and Grand Jury probes, it was pretty much decided there would be no more rock concerts in the Ozarks. I hope that helps explain why Branson is such a cheeseball country music town. Cuz I got nothing else.

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40 Year Itch: Night of the Butterflies

On July 18, Zoo World: The Music Magazine related the story of how Peggy Lee wound up recording a song written by Paul McCartney.

Los Angeles – What do you do when Peggy Lee asks you to dinner? Well, if you’re Paul McCartney, you just don’t buy a bottle of rare champagne to show your appreciation. You sit at your piano and compose her a song. That’s what Paul did when the McCartneys were to meet Miss Lee in London earlier this year. And that’s why he and a most flattered Peggy – one of the greatest pop vocalists of the era, whose name is certainly known to as many people as the Beatles – were at the Record Plant studios one day the first week in June: McCartney was producing his song, "Let’s Love," for the title track to what must be Peggy Lee’s fortieth album.



  After a hard day’s work, Paul, unmustachioed and dressed sharply in a black satin shirt and washed-out blue jeans, and Peg, looking trim in a tan suede suit (having recently taken off some weight) and youthful, though at 54 years of age she could be Paul’s mother, held a mini press conference/photo session around Studio C’s grand piano. In high spirits, they casually sang a couple of songs together, elaborated on their surprising collaboration and then took the small mob into the control room to hear the finished track.

  "Well, of course," said Peggy to Paul, "I was a fan of yours before you knew about me."

  "No, that’s not right," answered McCartney. "No. I was a fan of yours before you knew about me, Peggy."

 "Yeah, I used to have records of Peggy. I did ‘Til There Was You’ because I had Peggy’s record of it [see Latin a la Lee]… So I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time, you know. And she came to London and she invited us for dinner over at her hotel. So I thought ‘I’m going along to dinner. Well, I’m either gonna take a bottle of champagne or a song…’"

  "I’d rather have a song anytime," added Peggy. "I can always get some champagne, but it would be very difficult to get a Paul McCartney song – written especially for me."

   "So I took a song along and Peggy said, ‘Great. Let’s do it.’ So we got a hold of Dave Grusin (who with Peggy is producing the rest of the album). And really that’s all there is to it." The logistics were no problem.  


"I was delighted, naturally," said Peggy. "And Linda didn’t mind."

  "Let’s Love," recorded with Paul on piano, is a simple romantic tune with characteristic McCartney production. From the lone piano introduction, strings and woodwinds enter in stages as Peggy sings in her rich, becalming tones: "Lover, let’s be in love with each other / Tonight is the night of the butterflies / Let’s love…"

  When the new album (her first on the Atlantic label) – and "Let’s Love" in particular – are released sometime in August Peggy Lee may very well have another hit in the Hot 100 charts. "I hope so," she said, speaking in her lavish – but not opulent – Beverly Hills home. "I am so thrilled about the whole thing. The material is strong and I love the one Paul wrote. And to think that he would go to all that trouble. He said it was his way of returning an inspiration… You know I met him and Linda in London an it was instant friendship. And somehow I feel that with all the great things Paul has done, his talent is just growing and growing."

Despite its lazy lyrics, the single did hit the mid 20's in the Easy Listening charts the Thanksgiving week Neil Sedaka's "Laughter in the Rain" held the the top spot.

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40 Year Itch: The Slow Boogie Roll

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No album from 1974 means more to me than Rejuvination. All nine songs take me right back to my years as a college student in New Orleans. The chicken scratch guitar lines, the funky drumming, the bass runs and keyboard padding are the sounds that inspire other senses. Listening to the album I'm reminded that spending humid Summer days in the city is as close as you may ever come to learning what it's like to breathe underwater. At night you feel like you're walking through spider webs. The sight of cockroaches darting for the shadows of your shoes.

By the Summer of 74 The Meters were due. Guitarist Leo Nocentelli sums up why in the Sunburst reissue of the CD's liner notes ( written by Bunny Matthews):

We were the in-house rhythm section for Allen Toussaint when he was hot. We got the opportunity to perform behind Robert Palmer ( Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley), Patti LaBelle ( Lady Marmalade) and Dr John ( In the Right Place) . 

The Meters with Cyril Neville: Leo Nocentelli, Cyril, Ziggy Modeliste, Art Neville, George Porter

We did some things with Lowell George . Actually, I'm proud to tell people this bit of trivia because I don't think it was even mention of the Rejuvination album cover: Lowell came with Robert Palmer to do "Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley" and "Hey Julia" --he brought in Lowell to play slide. We did that session and Lowell had a couple of songs from Little Feat that he wanted to record so he made a trade with me. He recorded on two of The Meters' songs ( "Just Kissed My Baby" was one of them) in exchange for The Meters recording on two of his songs for Little Feat.

Out of the gates, Rejuvination was hailed as a "Crescent City masterpiece" by Rolling Stone. The first RS Record Guide would give the album 5 stars. ( The most recent deducts half a star and wrongly suggests you go with the anthology Funkify Your Life first). The album didn't sell in the numbers dreamed up by the Meters and Reprise/Josie. In fact it never even made the R and B album charts. But down in New Orleans Rejuvination remains the must-own album of all time.

    That Rejuvination went out of print for decades is unfathomable. I taped my copy from a crackling WTUL record. In the mid-90's, I ran into George Porter who confessed he lost his last copy. 

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   Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Mardi Gras indians who make up The Wild Magnolias also released an album of New Orleans music in the Summer of 74. Willie Tee and guitarist Snooks Eaglin provide support on what is otherwise a lot of street chanting and percussion.

 Their 1975 follow-up album ( They Call Us Wild originally released only in Europe) and the 1976 Wild Tchoupitoulas album ( produced by Allen Toussaint with The Meters) are better examples of what can happen when Mardi Gras indians get the right back up. Even so, seeing them live is the best way to experience the scene.

  How much do I like the Wild Tchoupitoulas album? I didn't have to look up how to spell "Tchoupitoulas".

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40 Year Itch : Pissin' in the Wind

  Weeks into the big Crosby Stills Nash and Young reunion tour, Neil Young released On The Beach, an album he described as "probably one of the most depressing records I've ever made". Early reviewers seemed to agree. The album failed to make the Pazz and Jop Critics Poll that year. When the record industry entered the CD age, On the Beach was one of the few albums Neil Young didn't bother to release to disc. Until 2003.

     "It was only a reflection of what I was going through at the time." Young shrugged when he was asked why the album hadn't come out.

      It was something America was going through at the time. The hippie dream was over. It ended in a series of massacres conducted by Charlie Manson and his followers. It ended in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. The drug overdoses of young artists and musicians. In the uptick of the divorce rate. The disillusionment of rock stardom and despair over various political crises from the Oil embargoes to Watergate.

      And Neil was closer to a lot of that shit than most of us. 

      He'd met Manson at Dennis Wilson's house.

    And , though he didn't it know at the time he wrote "Motion Pictures ( "I'm deep inside myself,/but I'll get out somehow/And I'll stand before you/and I'll bring a smile to your eyes") he and wife Carrie Snodgrass weren't going to save their marriage. He was a man standing alone on a Malibu beach.

    "Vampire Blues" takes on the oil industry "suckin' blood from the earth".

      "For the Turnstiles" is about moving merchandise and "Singing songs for pimps with tailors/who charge ten dollars at the door".

   But the highlight, for me at least, is "Revolution Blues", the darkest song to come out of LA since Jim Morrison got fat and moved to France. Though Manson and his family are not mentioned by name, the lyrics could have come from a letter left on his doorstep by homicidal hippies camping on his lawn.

I see bloody fountains, 

And ten million dune buggies comin' down the mountains.

 Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, 

But I hate them worse than lepers

 and I'll kill them in their cars.

No doubt that Young had met his shared of confused, unwashed people who discovered secret personal messages in his lyrics. It reminds me of John Lennon's meeting with a starry eyed hippie in England:

     "So we met. I'm just a guy. I write songs".

  Maybe it's no coincidence, an NME editor compared On the Beach to Lennon's primal scream therapy era. On the Beach is certainly on of the first 5 Neil Young albums you should own.

    

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40 Year Itch : Coast to Coast

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  Of all the bands to emerge from England's pub rock scene, Ducks Deluxe was thought to have the best chance to breakthrough in the US. Something neither Brinsley Schwarz nor Bees Make Honey could do. Despite decent reviews, comparing them favorably to Dave Edmonds,  Ducks Deluxe is now best known for what its members did after the band broke up. Singer/guitarist Nick Garvey and keyboardist Andy McMaster formed The Motors. Sean Tyla formed The Tyla Gang while guitarist Martin Belmont formed The Rumour, with Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews, and backed Graham Parker. But take a listen to the debut album, and you'll hear the link between 70's rock and New Wave/Punk.

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40 Year Itch: Feeling the Fire

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   On July 14, 1974 Ron Wood and his famous friends gave fans at London's Kilburn Gaumont State Theatre a preview of his upcoming all-star affair, I've Got My Own Album to Do. The show was recorded, filmed and released in 2007 by the name The First Barbarians. Woody has Keith Richards by his side throughout the night and his old Faces mate Rod Stewart shows up to help sing "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody". In a snarky comment around this time, George Harrison said First Barbarian Willie Weeks is the best bass player he knew ( Take that, Paul!) Andy Newmark plays drums. Ian McLagen is on keyboards.

        The album, released in September, is loose and sounds like it must have been fun to record. Among the stars who showed up for the sessions: Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, George Harrison ( who gave Wood "Far East Woman"), Keith Richards and, reportedly, David Bowie. The A side of I've Got My Own Album To Do is one of the very best of 1974. The B side is okay. Wood --who helped pen "It's Only Rock'n'Roll" with Jagger--would soon join the Rolling Stones.

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40 Year Itch: Spirit in the Tables

I think I was more in a morass mentally than Yoko was. If you listen to Walls And Bridges you hear somebody that is depressed. You can say, ‘Well, it was because of years of fighting deportation and this problem and that problem,’ but whatever it was, it sounds depressing. The guy knows how to make tables, but there’s no spirit in the tables. I’m not knocking the record. But I’m saying it showed where I was. It’s a reflection of the time.
-John Lennon

    On July 13-14, 1974, at the tail end of his self-described "Lost Weekend" and after producing Nilsson's Pussy Cats,   John Lennon and his band entered New York City's Record Plant to go over new tunes--most of which would appear on Walls And Bridges. Lennon was not only rehearsing the songs but he banned alcohol and drugs from the studio. This Beatle was all business. Guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, bass player Klaus Voorman and drummer Jim Keltner would eventually be augmented by other musicians ( among them Nicky Hopkins on piano and vocals from both Harry Nilsson and Elton John) as well as heavy production that --to the ears--weighed down the final product. Lennon had a great voice. He was one of the few who never appreciated that fact. The only song recorded that day to not appear on Walls And Bridges is "Move Over Ms. L" which was pulled from the album at the last minute. In 1975, another version became a B side to "Stand By Me".

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40 Year Itch : Strength To Carry On

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   I'll state it right out front: 461 Ocean Boulevard is not a great album. But it is immensely better than anything Clapton had given us in the three years leading up its release in July of 1974. In those three years, we heard nothing but silence from Clapton. Well, we heard rumors that he had become a heroin addict. But outside of the Bangladesh tribute and Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert in 1973, an unimpressive affair that probably saved our hero's life, we were all left wondering: what happened to "God"? In a 1974 Rolling Stone interview Clapton admitted he was trying to live the life of a secret junkie.

Also, when you're on H the last thing you want is to be bothered by people. A telephone ringing or a doorbell drives you up the wall.

   By the time that interview ran, a healthy looking Clapton was on a 23 date US tour to promote an album that would shoot up the charts to #1. His cover of Bob Marley and The Wailers' "I Shot the Sheriff" would also hit #1. What made the difference? Well, Clapton did spend some time working on a farm in Wales. But my guess is Layla probably had something to do with his renewed interest in life. After years of being in love with Pattie Boyd, she finally left George Harrison for him in 1974.

    In any case Clapton wanted to get back to work. He didn't have any songs but he wanted to make an album. His manager Robert Stigwood suggested Miami.There, in a studio surrounded by Tulsa musicians and Hellmann's Mayonaise scion Yvonne Elliman, Clapton jammed and jammed until he came up with most of the songs on the album. 

     

To hear these songs in their best light, you need Give Me Strength, The '74/'75 Recordings box set. Not only do you get the original 461 Ocean Boulevard cuts remixed and remastered, you also get seven cuts of Clapton and the band "getting acquainted". I prefer hearing the band knocking out these instrumental jams to what the songs eventually became: three minute numbers like "Motherless Children", "I Can't Hold Out" and "Steady Rollin' Man". 

   At the end of the day you've got an album with seven covers sung by a man who wasn't yet confident about his voice. ( But , hell, he must have been thinking, if J J Cale can sing on his records why can't I?) Rolling Stone critic Ken Emerson said the album " suffers from timidity" and..."is easier to appreciate than it is to enjoy". 

    No 461 Ocean Boulevard isn't a great album...but it IS great seeing Clapton standing in the sunshine on the album cover and hearing songs that proved he was very much still alive.

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40 Year Itch : Rocking His Gypsy Soul

    On July 10, 1974, a week after the Montreaux performance in which he played mostly songs unfamiliar to the audience, Van Morrison appeared on the German version of Rock Concert, Musikladen. He played "Warm Love" ( from Hard Nose the Highway) and "Into the Mystic" ( from Moondance) as well as a few of the tunes he played in Switzerland. When the upcoming Veedon Fleece met with a collective shrug from fans, Van would take a three year hiatus from recording.

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40 Year Itch : CSNY Begins Doom Tour in Seattle

“It was insane.We were completely high every moment. Cocaine, marijuana – oh, and sleeping pills, too, because you have to come down."
       Graham Nash

     On July 9, 1974, in Seattle, Crosby Stills Nash and Young began a notorious  two month 31-concert, 24 city stadium tour that has just been documented in a new box set called CSNY 1974. ( You can stream four tracks here. )

  Rehearsals lasted for three weeks at Neil Young's Broken Arrow ranch in La Honda. Stills told Crawdaddy's Cameron Crowe:

“Neil built a beautiful stage right across the road from his studio. We get out there in the sun and play for about four or five hours a day. We haven’t done the old tunes in years, man, it’s almost like playing them for the first time. Everybody’s a better musician. And there’s plenty of new songs too. We’ve all been writing a lot, especially Neil. It’s been tons of fun and no hassles. 
    

The concerts were epic affairs, especially the first one which began at 9 and ended well after one in the morning and consisting of up to 40 songs ranging from the expected "Ohio" and "Our House" to solo cuts like Neil Young's "Revolution Blues" and Stills' "Change Partners".

      There are also rare cuts on the new box set like "Goodbye Dick", performed five days after Nixon 's resignation. 

  It had been four years since all four had worked together ( which led to the Four Way Street recording) But the promise of a big pay day and the success of the Dylan and Band tour had helped convince the guys to get together. Young--barely recognizable after getting a haircut-- had released a few commercial clunkers (Journey Through the Past and Time Fades Away) and agreed to the tour as long as he had his own bus.

The Seattle concert opened with a six minute version of "Love the One You're With" and ran for three and a half hours.

After Seattle, we realized we could hold on to tens of thousands of fans through a diversity of electric and acoustic sets.
-Graham Nash to Wall Street Journal

The rest of the set list looked like this:

wooden ships
immigration man
cowgirl in the sand
change partners
traces
grave concern
black queen
almost cut my hair
ohio
suite: Judy blue eyes
helplessly hoping




blackbird
human highway
prison song
as I come of age
carry me
for free
Guinnevere
southbound train
another sleep song
our house
4 and 20
know you got to run
word game
love art blues
long may you run
a man needs a maid
don't be denied
first things first
deja vu
my angel
pre road downs
my favorite changes
long time gone
revolution blues
pushed it over the end
carry on
what are their names/Chicago

Of the camaraderie Crowe wrote:


The hostility between Stills and Young that at one time often stopped just short of onstage fisticuffs no longer hangs threateningly in the air. The same lessening of tensions since the last tour has infused the backstage atmosphere with a good deal of genuine warmth, back-slapping, hugging and verbal repartee.

It was David Crosby that called it "The Doom Tour". Why? You can read this Rolling Stone article for stories of drugs, groupies and inter-band squabbling. The tour was supposed to end in a recording session for a new album tentatively titled Human Highway ( the title cut, "Tonight's The Night" and "New Mama" were all going to Neil's contributions to the album). Obviously that never happened.

  

For a single soundbite try road manger Chris O'Dell's memory might explain why:

"One time they spilled cocaine on the carpet. They just got down on the floor and sniffed it off the carpet. I just went, 'Oh my God, this is so weird.' I'd never seen anything like it. They probably don't remember that." 

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40 Year Itch: That Latin Thing

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If Latin music was ever going to crack the mainstream, 1974 was the year it would happen. And Fania, the most important label in New York, was probably going to release it. That fact it never happened is our loss. We settled for whitewashed disco from the likes of KC and the Sunshine Band and the Miami-based Bee Gees instead.

     Among the albums we--as a Nation-- missed out on are Fania All Stars's Latin-Soul-Rock, released a year after 45-thousand fans packed Yankee Stadium. The album features some of the tunes played that night including the precursor to a myriad of 70's disco tunes : "Smoke".

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   Fania co-founder Johnny Pacheco provides the grooves for  the legendary "La Guarachera de Cuba" Celia Cruz for a straightforward set featuring the brassy Afro-rumba hit, "Quimbara". This is where your Celia Cruz infatuation should start.

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     A tribute to the hard driving tipica sounds of 1950's Cuba, Larry Harlow's Salsa was a big hit on Latin dance floors thanks to high energy horn charts played by some of Fania's best musicians. Harlow studied old 78's to get the 'authentico' sound.  "No Quiero" is sung by Junior Gonzalez. who gave Harlow the nickname "The Jewish Marvel". Harlow--no longer an outsider on the Salsa scene-- would soon put a kid he met in the mailroom a chance to sing with his band. The kid's name is Rueben Blades.

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      Recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios, The Sun of Latin Music fuses Latin dance music with acid rock. The standout cut is the 14 minute "Un Dia Bonito" which begins with a dramatic 5 minute free-jazz piano solo, transitions into a horror film soundtrack, and then launches into a swinging dance number featuring a 16 year old vocalist named Lalo Rodriguez . The Sun of Latin Music is the first salsa album to win a Grammy.

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   From Puerto Rico, timbale master Rafael Cortijo along with some young musicians from the University of Puerto Rico play traditional bomba and plena rhythms in support of experimental jazz fusion . According to 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die author Tom Moon, "the result is one of the most imaginative cross-genre eruptions in Latin music history".

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40 Year Itch: Let Your Hair Hang Down

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Former Easybeats singer Stevie Wright topped the Australian charts in the Summer of '74 with an 11-minute, three part single called "Evie". Written by his former bandmates, "Evie" stayed #1 for six weeks and spent half a year on the charts. 

      Radio stations usually just played the first part "Let Your Hair Hang Down", which  chugs along like a bouncy glam rock tune. (It actually sounds like something the White Stripes might have recorded). 21 year old AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young ( brother of songwriter George) plays the solo.  Flip the 45 over and you get the other two parts. Part two ("Oh Evie...I'm Nothing Without You") is a quiet piano ballad in the manner of Bread. Stevie was worried he sounded to much like Engelbert Humperdinck.  Part three ("I'm Losing You"), a disco rave,  may be the biggest surprise. 

Stevie Wright is one of rock's survivors. He lost all of his money thanks to his addiction to heroin. He told Off the Record author Shar Adams:

   "I have undergone shock treatment, sedation, two years of rehabilitation treatment with Salvation Army, and two lots of six month treatments at a rehabilitation centre called Westmount. I was dying really."

The sedation treatment probably didn't help. Wright underwent Deep Sleep Treatment, a controversial method that had killed at least 24 people by using drugs to put them in comas for days or weeks at a time.

Wright is still alive and can still be persuaded to get on stage and sing "Evie".

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40 Year Itch : Dressing Fine, Making Time

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     By the time American critics began reviewing Bryan Ferry's first solo album, These Foolish Things, Ferry had come out with his follow-up, Another Time, Another Place, released on July 5, 1974. Like Foolish, the album is a collection of covers. The only exception being the title cut. Unlike Foolish, the album gets bogged down by too many country covers, including a wretched 7-minute version of "You Are My Sunshine"... and Vegas-style arrangements. Aside from "The 'In' Crowd" ( a UK Top 20 hit), the best thing about the album is the cover. One imagines Ferry dressed like this for all occasions, from lonely poolside cocktail parties to running down to the corner grocer for smokes. The album reached #4 in the UK charts. Its songs are still part of Ferry's solo sets.

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40 Year Itch : Dr and Mrs Love

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   On July 4, 1974 Barry White married Love Unlimited singer Glodean Jones in a private ceremony. The pair invited Jet Magazine to their sprawling "28-bedroom house" ( is that even possible?)  near Los Angeles where White pointed out a baby blue piano parked outside the master bedroom. Because, you never know when inspiration might strike...but if you're Barry White, it probably strikes in the boudoir. That's what happened with "Can't Get Enough of Your Love", a #1 hit released in the days following the honeymoon.

"In fact, I remember that night, " he said. "It was about a quarter to one. We called ourselves going to bed at ten o'clock and I got up at a quarter to one and wrote Can't Get Enough of Your Love."

   "Those are my two ladies...Glodean and music, " he allows. "When I'm making love to one, I can turn right around and make love to the other and there is never no conflict of interest because they both understand what's happening."

  Glodean blushed at her husband's candor and said shyly, "I think he's getting a little personal."

  She didn't want to leave him dangling like he was flaunting his amorous accomplishments so she confirmed that he was right on "all the way".

   "Thank you, baby" he smiled. 

Barry White only owned the charts for two years or so but in that time he earned $16 million in sales. He died on the 4th of July, 2003.

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40 Year Itch : Happy as a Monkey with a Peanut Machine

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    July 1974 is one of the funkiest months on record. Exhibit #1 is the second album from Parliament, Up For the Down Stroke, released on July 3. Signed to Casablanca Records and joined by members of James Brown's band ( including bassist Bootsy Collins and the Horny Horns), George Clinton got a chance to wipe the slate clean from the psychedelic funk rock directions of Funkadelic and set his sights on Pure OUTrageous Cosmic Funk with heaping sides of sexual innuendo. The result is Parliament's first Top 10 R and B hit : the anthemic " Up For the Down Stroke". There are plenty of deep cut nuggets as well. Check out "The Goose".

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40 Year Itch : Bang a Gong

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   The James Brown double album Hell, released June 28. 1974,  is a bit of a mixed bag. Two sides of glorious soul-powered  funk and two sides of curiosities. The funk sides include the big hit single "My Thang", lead off track "Coldblooded" and a 14-minute autobiographical tune called "Papa Don't Take No Mess". 

   

   

  Among the oddities are chestnuts like "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Stormy Monday" and a Latin remake of "Please Please Please" that must be heard to be believed. Was The Godfather trying to out-do Stevie Wonder's Spanish quips in "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing"? "Don't Tell a Like About Me And I Won't Tell the Truth About You" is a believed to be a response to the people who accused Brown of cozying up with Richard Nixon.

For some God awful reason Brown starts most tracks off with a gong. That might have worked for Kool and the Gang. Once. But once is enough.

As Brown toured Hell, he brought along his daughter Deanna who danced with him on Soul Train. She shared her memories with Soul Train's website:

   (That day on Soul Train)  I remember being on the set all day. I wasn’t nervous or anything. I just got on stage and danced. It was just a part of my life. My dad had matching outfits especially designed for us to wear during our performance.

    He was just daddy to me. Daddy was just going to work. It did not dawn on me until I was a college student; one time I was in the library and I went through some encyclopedias and read write-ups on my dad. What got me was that they had all of our names listed, me and all of my siblings, not just dad. It really hit me how deep he was.  

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40 Year Itch : Van Plays Montreux

   Every so often, an artist reaches that point where they want to wipe the slate clean, ignore the hits that made them stars, and start all over again. On June 20, 1974 Van Morrison, looking  like John Denver's shaggier brother,  brought a stripped down band to the Montreux Jazz Festival and played a nine-song set. With the exception of the deep cut "Street Choir", all of the songs were unfamiliar to the audience. Listen closely and you can hear a lone voice screaming for "Wild Night". Not tonight. The audience doesn't look thrilled especially after they endure two straight instrumentals with Van playing sax. The band is made up of Crosby, Stills and Nash drummer Dallas Taylor, British Keyboardist Pete Wingfield and bassist Jerome Rimson.



   Here's your set list and eventual album on which the song appeared

1. Twilight Zone   The Philsopher's Stone ( a 1998 archival set)
2. I Like It Like That  Never Released ( written in Them days)
3. Foggy Mountain Top   The Philsopher's Stone
4. Bulbs   Veedon Fleece single
5. Swiss Cheese    Never Released ( instrumental with VM on sax)
6. Heathrow Shuffle   Never Released ( instrumental with VM on sax)
7. Naked in the Jungle The Philsopher's Stone
8. Street Choir   His Band and Street Choir
9. Harmonica Boogie

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40 Year Itch : Too Cool to Bluff

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   By the time they recorded their seventh album , From the Mars Hotel, released June 27, 1974, The Grateful Dead had become a well-oiled and even better rehearsed band capable of intricate arrangements. For me, the highlight is the concert staple "Scarlet Begonias". Everyone is in the percolating groove, Jerry sings with confidence, guitar lines are sweeping in and out and Donna Godchaux's wailing is kept short and buried in the mix. ( As opposed to the live performance at "the retirement concert" at San Francisco's Winterland that October.)

  Casual fans will recognize the single "U.S. Blues" even though it never charted. True deadheads can spend hours talking about "Unbroken Chain", written and sung by bass player Phil Lesh ( who had also written another of my favorites, "Box of Rain"). Three minutes in, the tune goes all free jazz on your ass and at times it sounds like you're hearing two songs at the same time. No wonder the Dead neglected to play it live much.

The album is named after a Mission District dive where Jack Kerouac once spent a few nights. Hold the cover upside down in the mirror and you'll be able to make out the words "Ugly Rumors" which became the name of  former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's band.

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Also, this month Jerry Garcia released his second solo album, Complements,  a curious affair full of uninspired covers. However, the album was reissued in 2005 with some real treats including the funky "I'll Forget You".

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