40 Year Itch: Some We Missed from Oct '72

[Purchase]Mellow man David Gates takes center stage on Bread's follow up to Baby I'm A Want You, the final album before a 1977 reunion. Guitar Man hit #18 in the album charts thanks to the soft rock numbers like the #11 title track, "Aubrey" (#15) and "Sweet Surrender" (#15). The rest sounds like filler.[Purchase]The second James Gang album after the departure of Joe Walsh is probably the low point. By the following album Tommy Bolin would be adding...

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40 Year Itch: Bad Bad Dreams

[Purchase]I can't speak for the entire album, but the single "Run To Me" is one of my 5 all time favourite Bee Gees tunes. That's sibling harmony at work.( And to think I probably heard it first on my cassette copy of Here At Last...Bee Gees Live ) I 've also gained an awful lot of respect lately for the way Maurice Gibb played bass. Mo gets to work out his bass quite a bit on the album's sole rocker "Bad Bad Dreams". But I've also heard "Paper Mache,...

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40 Year Itch : Getting Fresh

[Purchase]So you want to be the American Beatles? Then you'd better put out two album a year like the Fab Four did. Fresh is the second Raspberries album and the second to be released in 1972. Led by singer Eric Carmen, the Cleveland quartet borrowed the best ideas from The Beatles ( tight pop songs), Beach Boys ( four part harmonies) and The Who ( wicked guitar lines like the ones featured in the Top 5 hit "Go All The Way"). There's a little less...

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40 Year Itch : Heart's Blazing Like a 5 Alarm Fire

Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong. —Stevie [Purchase]Talking Book begins with one of the most generous gestures in music history. The first two voices you hear on Track One, the future #1 hit "You Are The Sunshine of My Life", belong to back up singers Jim Gilstrap and Gloria Barley.For the most part, Talking Book is an album of lost love -- a reaction to Wonder's failing marriage...

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40 Year Itch : Italian Prog Rock In 1972 part 2

[Purchase]Don't be afraid of Italian Prog!-1001SongsFusing a little Bach ,Brahms or Corelli, violin player Don V. Lax of Quella Vecchia Locanda  literally fused classic rock with classical music. This is pleasant stuff for the ears. After the band's critically acclaimed career ended, Lax played on Camper Van Beethoven's 1989 album Key Lime Pie. [Purchase]Though formed in Genoa in the mid 60's, by the early 70's Garybaldi wore their Jimi...

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40 Year Itch: Italian Prog Rock in 1972 Part 1

                                                Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso hanging out When prog rock started taking over FM Radio and filling record store bins in the 1970's you had to expect the Italians would come knocking down the doors. Adding vocals to symphonic music with lots of tempo changes, key changes and lyrics?...

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40 Year Itch : Frankenstein

In 1972 French ye ye stinger France Gall records "Frankenstein", her last Serge Gainsbourg written song. It was Gainsbourg who had written many of her 1960's hits like the Eurovision Grand Prix winner  "Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son", "Laisse Tomber Les Filles " and "Les Sucettes". In 1971 she firmly turned down the lead role in Last Tango In Paris.France Gall - Frankenstein by antonych...

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All Time Top 10 : Peter Gabriel

To help promote his recently released fourth album, best known as Security, Peter Gabriel made this Top 10 List for Smash Hits Magazine. NPR All Music Considered host Bob Boilen must have seen this list before he recently asked Peter Gabriel to guest DJ because the first two songs got played..This comes to 1001Songs courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happe...

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40 Year Itch: Al Green Is Still In Love With You

[Purchase]Al Green already had everything in place on his earlier 1972 album Let's Stay Together: his smooth singing "Lover Man" persona, Willie Mitchell in the producer's seat and a hot Memphis band featuring former MG's drummer Al Jackson Jr and guitarist "Teenie" Hodges. I'm Still In Love With You, released October 23, 1972,  is more of the same...just better.The album kicks off with the Top 5 title track, and includes another Top 5 hit,...

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40 Year Itch : My Ding A Ling Hits #1

[Purchase]Chuck Berry's right. It's a fourth grade song. Dumb and Silly. And yet, "My Ding A Ling" did something "Sweet Little Sixteen", "Maybelline" and "School Day" never did. "My Ding a Ling" is the only Chuck Berry single to hit #1. The song was originally recorded on 1968's From St Louie to Frisco  as "My Tambourine\" Two future members of Average White Band play on the single : Onnie McIntyre on guitar and Robbie McIntosh on dru...

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40 Year Itch: A Binder Full of Women

We just realized we didn't have enough great music here from the women of 1972 so we went to a number of women's groups and said: ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. [Purchase]Some women sing soft. Others sing hard. And then there are those who can do both. Though best known for the softer 1973 Top 40 hit "I Can't Stand The Rain", Ann Peebles could sing up a storm. Her 1972 Hi Records album Straight From...

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Going Over The Cutting Edge (1986)

Over  Mardi Gras weekend of 1986, MTV's "The Cutting Edge" came to New Orleans to videotape various musical acts for their Mardi Gras special which aired March 30th. Producers from IRS Records called college radio station WTUL to find someone who would work for free on the production crew. Since I was writing a fanzine ( The Now Zounds) to promote my band's tune "Jefferson Avenue", I agreed to help out. And that's how I wound up buddy-buddying...

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40 Year Itch : Psychedelic Hangovers

By 1972, the psychedelic buzz was starting to fade away. Especially the "incense and peppermints" kind of free love, free acid style of psychedelia. But in that haze of a hangover, there was some righteous music being made. Here are some of our favorites from 1972. [Purchase]Two California friends, Bill Cooley and Alan Munson, printed up just 500 copies of their bedroom acid folk album In Debt. It is now a cult classic full of tasteful, somewhat...

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40 Year Itch : Can't Buy A Thrill

                                                           [Purchase for $4.99]The greatest debut album of 1972, Can't Buy A Thrill , released in October of 1972, introduces Steely Dan as a fully formed, sophisticated, complex and cynical rock band. Best of all, they knew how to write and play catchy...

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40 Year Itch: Who Came First

[Purchase]Like Odds And Sods, that 1974 multi-dimensional Who compilation that would also contain "Pure And Easy", Pete Townshend's Who Came First, released in October of 1972,  shows many sides of the guitar smasher. While it may sound preachy at times, it's never a dull album.  There are two massive Who-style rockers: "Pure And Easy"  and "Let's See Action" ( which had both been recorded for the Lifehouse project that became...

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40 Year Itch: GET OUT COCKER

 "If I had my way Joe Cocker and his drugged up group would be airlifted straight back across the Pacific."     --John Sorell, ATV News    On October 14, 1972 Adelaide police arrested Joe Cocker after claiming to find "indian hemp" in his motel room. In an editorial  ATV's John Sorell says "I'd make sure their passports are marked, never to return. We don't want this type here, they are as welcome as a load...

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40 Year Itch: "Mouldy Old Dough" Hits #1

[Purchase]It took seven months for this messy honky tonk instrumental to hit #1 but when it finally topped the charts on October 14, 1972 it held on for four weeks, becoming the UK's second biggest hit of 1972, after the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards' "Amazing Grace". The song won the Novello Award that year.Mrs Hilda Woodward is one of the piano players. Her son Rob started the band.In 2005, Jarvis Cocker put this song among his Desert Island Discs...

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40 Year Itch: Spread the A Capella Word

[Purchase]Brooklyn ,NY a capella quintet The Persuasions didn't get the doo wop is dead memo and released a series of strong and sensitive albums in the 1970's including Street Corner Symphony, Spread the Word and Chirpin' which received a rare 5 Star rating from The Rolling Stone Record Guide. I certainly did not want to spend a year scratchin that 40 year itch without a shout out to The Persuasio...

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40 Year Itch: Stealers Wheel

[Purchase]  When they harmonized together, childhood friends Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan sounded like two Lennons singing through clenched teeth. With Beatlesque melodies, producing by songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and the Fab Four's fave engineer Geoff Emerick at the controls, Stealers Wheel's debut album, released in October of 1972, hits that sweet spot for fans of well made pop. One problem. Rafferty had already...

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40 Year Itch: Carlos Goes Soul Searching

[Purchase]Rarely has an artist or a group made such a dramatic turn in the span of just one record. After three classic albums of Afro Cuban blues rock ( the last two hitting #1 on US charts), Carlos Santana apparently needed to stretch out both musically and spiritually.           Musically Carlos was getting into the fusion sounds of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra .He also began following the teachings...

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40 Year Itch: Round 2

[Purchase]What a run Philly's Stylistics went on in the early 1970's! 12 straight Top Ten R and B singles. Nobody could refuse the syrupy falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr belting his way through those great Thom Bell/Linda Creed tunes.     The sophomore album Round 2, released in October of 1972, contains more big hits: the #5 Pop hit (#5 R and B) "Break Up to Make Up", the Top Ten ( R and B #4) "I'm Stone in Love with You", the #23...

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40 Year Itch : 8 Days On The Road

[Purchase]Howard Tate could effortlessly shift from a dirty Macon, Georgia soul singer ( the same city that gave us Otis Redding, Little Richard and the Allman Brothers) to an angelic grief stricken wailer in not just the same song. Or the same breath. But in the same word. His immaculate Jerry Ragavoy produced singles for Verve in the 1960's are among the classics of that era.  In October of 1972, now a part-time cab driver, he teamed up with...

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All Time Top 10: Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode

[Purchase A Broken Frame]To promote the second Depeche Mode album A Broken Frame and the most recent single "Leave In Silence" (UK#18) the newest member of the band, keyboardist Alan Wilder offered this list to Smash Hits which comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happe...

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40 Year Itch: Foxtrot

[Purchase]The first time I really sat down to listen to Genesis, I was a kid in boarding school. I'd borrowed A Trick Of The Tail from one of the smartest Seniors on my floor. An eccentric honors student who specialized in French, Latin and wearing his hair in the style some of us called "cumulo-nimbus". Somehow he got one of the prettiest girls in the school to fall for him. What was his secret? That strange music he listened to while he studied?Apparently...

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40 Year Itch : Feel The Need

[Buy The Greatest Hits]If you want proof that the British have better taste than their American counterpoints, consider the Detroit Emeralds of 1972 and the powerhouse single "Feel The Need In Me" which was released in October of 1972. On the US pop charts the song peaked at an abysmal #110 in 1973. In the UK the song hit #4."Feel The Need" instantly sounds like the great lost Al Green hit. That's because the Detroit Emeralds had made it a practice...

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40 Year Itch: The Sex Album

[Purchase]Dear Penthouse;   Though I've been a long time reader of your fine magazine, I never thought I'd have a reason to write you a letter. That is, until a September day in 1972, when I purchased Tim Buckley's new album Greetings From L.A. The cover may have shown a smogged-in City of Angels, but the music inside was a crystal clear celebration of energetic, banging against the bedposts sex.The album opens with "Move With Me" in which...

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