40 Year Itch: Like a Lazy Flowing River

[Purchase]Named after a slang word for one of them marijuana cigarettes, The Doobie Brothers got their start as a Hell's Angels bar band. Their first album of country boogie failed to sell and Warner Brothers was tempted to drop the band when producer Ted Templeman stepped in to produce Toulouse Street. The album contains their first hit "Listen to the Music" ( US #11) as well as the Top 40 "Jesus Is Just Alright ( picked off from The Byrds'...

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40 Year Itch Have Pity on the Stranger in the Cold

[Purchase]A year before their partnership ended in an onstage explosion at Knott's Berry Farm, the brothers gathered at John Sebastian's house to record an album of dark and gloomy country tunes with a guest list of artists that read's like a who's who of 1960's rock: ex-Byrds, ex-Turtles, Burritos, Lovin's Spoonful and Delaney and Bonnie. The Everly Brothers' bandleader Warren Zevon was there with guitarist Waddy Wachtel and so was Ry Cooder....

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40 Year Itch: Music For The End of the World

[Purchase]Before Vangelis composed the soundtracks to Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner, he was Evangelos Odyssey Papathanassou, a keyboard wizard in a Greek 1960's rock trio called Aphrodite's Child. Their 1969 album It's Five O'Clock is a worthy listen.For 666, released in June of 1972, Vangelis teamed up with poet Costas Ferris to retell the Book of Revelation. Within the 78 minutes of this epic double album, you get Greek choruses, schoolchildren...

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40 Year Itch: Miles Visits The Corner

[Purchase]"It was with Sly Stone and James Brown in mind that I went into the studio in June 1972 to record On The Corner, " said Miles Davis. "During that time everyone was dressing kind of 'out on the street', you know, platform shoes that were yellow, and electric yellow at that, handkerchiefs around the neck, headbands, rawhide vests, and so on. Black women were wearing them real tight dresses that had their big butts sticking way out back."Miles...

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40 Year Itch: Can I Sit In Your Lap?

[Purchase]Give it up for Leon Russell! He played on The Byrds' "Mr Tambourine Man", Herb Alpert's "A Taste of Honey", Bob Dylan's "Watching The River Flow",  organised the backing band for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour, toured with The Rolling Stones and played at George Harrison's Concert for Bangla Desh.Then in June of 1972, he released Carny, a #2 Billboard album that sold a million copies thanks to the Top 20 single "Tight Rope"....

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40 Year Itch: Welcome Foghat

[Purchase] When "Lonesome" Dave Peverett decided he had enough of Savoy Brown the singer/guitarist took the band's drummer Roger Earl and bassist Tony Stevens with him. With the addition of lead guitarist Rod Price, the band signed with Bearsville and went into the studio, first with Todd Rundgren and later with Dave Edmunds.  "Dave was very much into early Elvis and the Sun Records thing," Peverett recalls. "I loved the phasing effects...

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40 Year Itch: Our Bodies, Ourselves

1972 was an odd year for artists who wanted to bare more than their souls on record. Here are eight of the most, um ,  interesting examples.CAETANO VELOSO : ARACA AZULI don't go to Caetano Veloso for odd, avant garde experimental sounds. Not when he can deliver albums like Transa. I guess I'm not alone. Araca Azul has established itself as the Brazilian Metal Machine Music. It's not that bad  but, really, what music...

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40 Year Itch: The Bloody J-Word

[Purchase]Living in the Past, released June 23 1972, is an odds and sods two disc collection of album tracks, singles, B sides, outtakes and cuts from "Life Is a Long Song" EP that reveals the band in its finest, most prolific form. It may be one of the great arguments , like Kinks Kronikles, for collections less based on the hits than on giving an overall picture of a band at its peak.With its blues based rock, the band was at first proclaimed by...

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40 Year Itch: Amazing Grace

[Purchase]Aretha Franklin's best selling album of all time, released in June of 1972, remains her greatest achievement. She may have achieved worldwide fame with secular soul song's like "Respect" and "I Never Loved A Man ( The Way That I Love You)" but Aretha was first and foremost a preacher's daughter. Her father, The Rev. C.L. Franklin, had earned the nickname "The Million Dollar Voice" for his sermons at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit.On...

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40 Year Itch: Lost Computers of a Shattered Tribe

[Purchase]The Dutch band Golden Earring gave the world more than 1973's "Radar Love" and 1982's "Twilight Zone".They formed in 1961 and recorded wonderful Beatlesque pop songs in the mid 60's that are truly worth exploring ."Another Man In Town" is from the 1967 album Winter Harvest.Together, released in June of 1972--13 months before "Radar Love", is a spotty hard rock album that finds Golden Earring pulling together all the elements that would...

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40 Year Itch: James Brown There It Is

[Purchase]Jam packed with hot funk, There It Is , released in June of 1972, offers listeners four hits: "There It Is", "I'm a Greedy Man" ( with a chant every parent of a school kid should know: Now brother don't leave/your homework undone") and the funkiest of them all the #1 R and B hit "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing" ( at the 5:28 mark the band stops while James Brown and Bobby Byrd rap the rhythm with interchanging "Keep On Singin'"s). And...

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40 Year Itch: No More Pencils, No More Books

[Purchase]What's the greatest three minutes of your life? One is Christmas morning... The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'-Alice CooperThe Alice Cooper Band emerged from the Arizona desert in the late 60's  to sign with Frank Zappa's Straight label in Los Angeles. Two years...

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40 Year Itch: Hating The Eagles

[Purchase it, see if I care]After backing up Linda Ronstadt on her 1971 album Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles --Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner-- formed their own band, signed with Asylum Records and recorded their West Coast country rock album in that sunniest of Southern California cities : uh...London, England.   That's how much the band wanted to work with Glyn Johns who had produced or engineered The Who, The...

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40 Year Itch : Remake and Remodel

[Purchase]With their debut album, released June 16, 1972, Roxy Music set out to re-make and re-model rock and roll. The new sound deconstructs fifties rock, adds electronic bleeps and blitzkriegs courtesy of a synthesizer playing Brian Eno ( who looked like a "balding, long-haired eunuch" to critic Robert Christgau), features the hyperactive saxophone sounds of Andy Mackay and stars the quavering  vocals of the lovelorn front man, former art...

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40 Year Itch : You Can't Pin A Label On LaBelle

[Purchase]                           5 Interesting facts about LaBelle who released their second album Moon Shadow June 10, 1972.1. LaBelle ( made up of Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash who combined rock, gospel and soul) went on tour as an opening act for The Who in 1970. They would cover "Won't Get Fooled Again" on their second album. Their 1971 debut album...

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40 Year Itch : The Reunion

 Days after Elvis played four sold out shows at Madison Square Garden, Simon and Garfunkel reunited there for a seven song performance on behalf of Democratic Presidential candidate, South Dakota Senator George McGovern. The break up of S and G was one of those demarcations of the end of the Sixties. Simon has said Art's movie career ( Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge) and personal differences led to the break up right after they released their most...

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40 Year Itch: The Subversive Sounds of...

[Purchase]Though they may have since earned a reputation as the brother-sister act that could have performed on the Lawrence Welk Show without disturbing a single senior citizen, The Carpenters could be subversive. Yes, subversive. For "Goodbye To Love", the first single to be released after their fourth album , A Song For You , hit record store shelves on June 13, 1972, Tony Peluso records not one but two fuzzy guitar solos.Peluso first played something...

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40 Year Itch : Que Pasa New York?

[Purchase]While most of John and Yoko's Some Time In New York, released June 13 1972, sounds like a mess made with the best of revolutionary intentions, the title track is more than a worthwhile listen. It's kind of an update to "The Ballad of John and Yoko".  Standing on the cornerJust me and Yoko OnoWe was waiting for Jerry to land ( Jerry is most likely Jerry Rubin who, along with Abbie Hoffman, were the first people to get in touch...

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40 Year Itch: King Of The Garden

[Purchase Album]Elvis may not generate the polymorphously perverse hysteria the Rolling Stones arouse, he may not move around and jump into the air and wiggle his hips as much as he used to, but he's come through superstardom without forgetting what it means to rock, that's the important thing. So everybody gets enough of what they want to get what they need.-Bob Palmer, Rolling Stone On June 10 and 11 of 1972, Elvis Presley performed four sold out...

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40 Year Itch : Empty Words

In 1972 there was no bigger song in Italy than Mina and Alberto Lupo's "Parole, Parole" ( "Words, Words"). The song made its debut on an Italian variety show called Teatro 10. While Lupo offers a series of complements, ( "If you didn't exist I would have to invent you ") Mina sings that they are just words, empty words. When Lupo says "You're like the wind that brings violins and roses", Mina sings "Candy does not want any more"."Parole, Parole" has been covered many many times over the decades. In 1973 Dalida and Alain Delon recorded a french...

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40 Year Itch: The Candy Man

  My home has always been show business. Sammy Davis, Jr. From the same album as "I Am Over 25-But You Can Trust Me", Sammy Davis Jr hit #1 for three weeks in June of 1972 with "The Candy Man", a cover of the Leslie Bricusse/ Anthony Newley song from the soundtrack of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Davis got a Grammy Nomination for Pop Male Vocalist. That's the same year he gave Archie Bunker a kiss on All In The Family. ...

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40 Year Itch: Bak 'Ome with Slade

[Purchase]"Take Me Bak 'Ome was an old song I'd had kicking around for ages. I re-vamped it a bit and nicked a phrase or two from The Beatles 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey'. Nobody ever noticed."Jim Lea who wrote the song with Noddy HolderOn this rocking single's way to #1 in the UK (#97 in the US), Slade performs "Take Me Bak 'Ome" on Top Of The Pops on June 8, 1972. Check out the clothes, the teenage girls, Noddy Holder's...

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40 Year Itch: Like A Leper Messiah

[Purchase]"I fell for Ziggy too. It was quite easy to become obsessed night and day with the character. I became Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie went totally out the window. Everybody was convincing me that I was a Messiah, especially on that first American tour (late 1972). I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy." - David Bowie ( 1976)With The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, released June 6th , 1972, we can all witness David...

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