Deep Cuts: Pictures of Home

[Purchase]For all those hours we've spent trying to dissect lyrics and admiring musicality, sometimes we just want our music to be big and stupid. With Machine Head ( released March 31, 1972), Deep Purple is all riffs, banal lyrics and instruments turned up to 11. Which is about the age you need to let yourself feel to really enjoy it.The album kicks off with "Highway Star" which , to me at least, signifies their ambition to finally conquer the United...

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Lester Bangs And The Spotlight Kid: 40 Years Ago Today

[Purchase]In the March 20, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, legendary music critic Lester Bangs gave the new Captain Beefheart album, The Spotlight Kid, a rave review. Bangs said Beefheart had finally found that sweet spot where great artistry and mass appeal intersected.He has been called everything in the past from a man wasting the clear ability to be the world's greatest white blues singer, to an impossibly complex musician who may or may not be...

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Forgotten Funk from 1972

[Purchase]Southern fried stone cold afro-funksters from Louisiana pay respect to The Godfather of Soul on this cut. The whole album is full of sizzling, greasy funk.[Purchase]From Atlanta G-A comes the hot funk of Black Heat, another band featuring so many musicians ( Hammond Organ, Congas, Harmonica, horn section) you have to wonder if anybody got paid enough to buy themselves a fried chicken lunch. True phonksters say this is a must have.[Purchase]Between...

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40 Years Ago Today: A Hunk, A Hunk Of Burning Love

[Purchase]On this day in 1972, Elvis Presley recorded his final Top Ten hit "Burning Love". The song would rise all the way to #2 before getting blocked from the top spot by "My Ding A Ling", an egregious novelty hit by another rock n roll veteran Chuck Berry. (And yet you can buy the song on Elvis's 30#1 Hits collection.Presley reportedly did not care for the song which was first recorded by Arthur "You Better Move On" Alexander in 1971.The song...

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40 Years Ago Today: Mott The Hoople Break Up ( Or Do They?)

[Purchase Brain Capers]It happens more often than we'd like to remember. Great bands end not with a bang but with a whimper. And so it would have been for Mott The Hoople. On March 26, 1972 Ian Hunter and the boys decided to call it quits. Had it not been for David Bowie, Mott's last album would have been Brain Capers ( a hard rocking effort that kicks off with  "Death May Be Your Santa Claus") and their last single would have been their cover...

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40 Years Ago Today : Kinks Kronikles

[Purchase]      Like a lot of Americans when I thought of The Kinks I thought of "You Really Got Me", "All Day And All Of The Night" and "Lola" and not about a hell of a lot more. I was familiar with the One For The Road live album and Give The People What They Want but, added together, I wasn't getting much more than the three chord anthem side of this band. And then, in college, somebody lent me The Kink Kronikles, a bargain...

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40 Years Ago This Month : Alone Again ( Naturally)

The Irish son of a butcher, Gilbert O'Sullivan achieved international fame with "Alone Again ( Naturally)". The single, released in March of 1972, had a six week run at the top of the Billboard charts that was interrupted for one week by Looking Glass's "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)". Casey Kasem's American Top 40 ranks the song as the 5th most popular of the 70's.Gilbert O Sullivan dressed as a British schoolboyAny song that sells three million copies...

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40 Years Ago This Month: Feedback

[Purchase]With only the middle aged drummer Ed Cassidy  remaining from Spirit's original line-up, Feedback should probably be considered an asterisk. Much like The Velvet Underground's Squeeze ( which only had John Cale replacement Doug Yule leading the band) or The Doors's Morrison-less Other Voices .That's the conclusion of The Rolling Stone Album Guide which gives Feedback one star out of five calling the album "not really...

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March 1972 : When The Blues Meet The Boogie

All of these albums were released in March of 1972[Buy Smokin']With co-founder Peter Frampton off seeking solo glory, Clem Clemson comes aboard to play some smokin' guitar on this Top Ten hit. Humble Pie is Steve Marriott's band now. He produces the album and actually collapses from nervous exhaustion during recording. The album's best known for "30 Days In The Hole" but "You're So Good To Me" is one of 1001Songs fave songs of the 70's. You can almost...

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40 Years Ago Today : Fog On The Tyne Hits #1

[Buy the album]On March 20, 1972 the British folk/rock band Lindisfarne scooted Paul Simon out of the way to clinch the top spot on the UK album chart with Fog On The Tyne. It's a position the likable Geordies would hold for four weeks. At the time Lindisfarne were touring the US first with The Kinks...where one UK journalist was asked by a new American fan "Have you heard of Linda's Farm? They're going to be big, big, big!" Well, maybe not in the...

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Top 5 "Wrecking Crew" Tunes

[Buy The Book]Kent Hartman has pulled back the curtain to reveal the great session musicians who really played on many of our favorite hits. The Wrecking Crew was a group of incredibly talented artists who played on records by The Beach Boys, The Mamas and The Papas, The Monkees, The Grass Roots, Sonny And Cher and Paul Revere and The Raiders.The Wrecking Crew at a Phil Spector session Among them: Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, drummer Hal Blaine,...

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The New Beach Boys : 40 Years Ago Today

[Buy "So Tough"]When the Beach Boys took the stage at State University Plaza in Albany on March 16th 1972, you couldn't blame the crowd for looking confused. The Boys had invited two members of the South African band The Flames to join them on tour and record.Ricky Fataar ( third from the right in the photo above) was there to drum in the place of Dennis Wilson who accidentally injured his hand when he put it through a glass door. Blondie Chaplin...

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Here's How You Give Away a Grammy: 40 Years Ago Today

40 years ago today, on March 15, 1972, The Fifth Dimension sang songs from artists nominated for Best Pop Vocal Perfomance by a Duo Or Group. And the winner is....you'll just have to watch to find out.This was a big night for Carole King and Tapestry. Best New Artist was Carly Simon. James Taylor won Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male. Simon and Taylor got married in Novemb...

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The Busiest Beatle : 40 Years Ago This Week

[Get A Blast From Your Past]This week, 40 years ago,  Ringo released  "Back Off Boogaloo". The George Harrison produced single would be a Top Ten Hit in both the US and UK. Ringo says he wrote the song after having dinner with Marc Bolan of T. Rex. Apparently Bolan used the word "boogaloo" over and over again. The promotional video featured Ringo befriending Frankenstein.On March 18th, Ringo was at London's Wembley Empire Pool filming...

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Southern Fried Country Soul Grab Bag

To mark the crazy reality show that is the Republican presidential contest heading into the Deep Southern states of Alabama and Mississippi this week, enjoy this grab bag of 1972's best Southern-fried country soul.[Buy It]Louisiana native Joe Simon followed up 1971's "Drowning In The Sea of Love" with his million selling #1 R and B hit "The Power Of Love".[Buye Some Bettye]Another Louisiana native, Bettye Swann recorded a series of great singles...

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40 Years Ago Today " Without You " is Number One

[Buy Nilsson Schmilsson]On March 11, 1972 Harry Nilsson's "Without You" ended its four week run at number one in the US and began its five week run at the top of UK charts.Credit booze. Really. Nilsson has been up all night drinking and listening to albums.He told the story to Dick Clark:"After sobering up the next day, I said, 'What was that Lennon tune we were listening to last night?' We went though a bunch of (Beatles) albums and couldn't find...

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Thick As a Brick : 40 Years Ago Today

[Get Thick]I've already heard Americans give all sorts of explanations for its title, Thick As A Brick. That's a common British slang expression. It means someone's as intelligent as a bunch of crap.~Ian AndersonIan Anderson was a little pissed off about the way critics and fans called Aqualung a concept album. While it's true that quite a few songs mention religion in one way or another Anderson says, really, it was just a bunch of songs.And...

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I Was A College Radio DJ In The 80's: Salem 66 - Pony Song

[out of print]Salem 66 began as an all-female trio who named their band after the famous witch trials locale and Dylan's favorite highway. They released "Across the Sea" as a single in 1984. Then they added a male guitarist for their first album, 1985's A Ripping Spin. Those of us in the WTUL basement were already digging the Rainy Day compilation and LA's Opal. To our ears, this was another welcome addition to The Paisley Underground. But Judy Grunwald...

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40 Years Ago: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil Return to Brazil

[Buy Transa]In the late 1960's the Tropicalismo movement transformed popular music in Brazil by combining traditional salsa rhythms and bossa nova harmonies with electric guitars and psychedelic lyrics. The leaders of the movement, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, brought a new level of excitement to Brazilian music. But they also threatened that nation's military dictatorship. Both men were jailed for two months and then deported. They lived under...

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Six Degrees of Separation: The Merseybeats to The Mothers

[Buy The Very Best Of The Merseybeats]  In 1964 Beatles contemporaries The Merseybeats release "Really Mystified", a B side to the UK #13 hit "Don't Turn Around", from their self-titled album. Elvis Costello and The Attractions record a cover which appears on Imperial Bedroom reissues.[Get Happy!!] Two years earlier, EC and the Attractions drop Get Happy!!, a R and B influenced album Costello with twenty peppy tracks like "Beaten To The...

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40 Years Ago This Week: Oh Girl

[Buy The Album]On March 2, 1972  The Chi-Lites released "Oh Girl", their only single to top the Billboard Hot 100 charts.(  "Being In Love" is the flip side and an indication of just how good the album, A Lonely Man, is.)  Give it up for the smooth sensitive soul man and his harmonica."Oh girl/I'd be in trouble if you left me now/'Cause I don't know where to look for love/I just don't know how"...

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40 Years Ago This Week: Glitter

[Buy The Greatest Hits][Give To Safe Horizon]Born Paul Frances Gadd, the man who would become Gary Glitter reinvented himself several times (first as Paul Raven then as Paul Monday) before he invented his trademark sound. With two drummers, a guitarist who played the same lines as the sax player, and football stadium cries like "HEY!" and "C'MON C'MON" the Glitter sound took the UK by storm. Even teenage girls could barely contain themselves in front...

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