1974. Home, Home on the Range New Riders of the Purple Sage live.
The annoyingly jolly chirp of the pedal steel permeates the album, busy, entertaining and at times distracting. At times I find myself wishing it would shut up. At least by Groupie the band settle into a country rocking sound that ditches the pedals steel for awhile. As they settle into the set and decide country is a stance not all involved with pedal steel guitars things get better.
At times they are so country it’s a parody, although my suspicion is that they are deadly serious. That’s what hanging out with Jerry Garcia and too many drugs can do. Although I will forever insist that Henry is the greatest country rock song about smuggling drugs other than The Free Mexican Air-force.
1974 what a strange year when glam collided with prog and we created art rock, well Bowie had been doing it for awhile but this was the years that eccentricity became so normal it became a trope.
So Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel burst into the scene with their second album. Vocals with a camp sardonic wit, glam rock sounds and a delivery that is shall we say Dylanesque via The Kinks.
It’s a fun weird self conscious album in its attempt to be surreal and different. Dramatic and fun and very serious. It’s an album of contradictions.
Eventually Harley shed the band, they forgot they were the vehicle for his ideas and settled down for a hit.
Can you ever get enough Horse? The answer of course is no, maybe, well if you like The Horse how could you ever get too much.
Fu##in’ Up by Neil and the Horse simultaneously subverts record store day by making the album available to order online instead of going to the store, it also celebrates a weirdly strange low point or f’ you moment as it’s recorded at the Rivoli during a private party for some rich dude.
It’s Ragged Glory in its almost entirety which makes it a great thing anyway.
Im choosing to believe this is all deliberate in order to demonstrate the futility of independence in a world ruled by corporations where the individual is no longer valued.
Nothing on this planet sounds like Neil and the Horse. I also am about to have 3 CD’s of this in case anyone wants one.
I’ve been back for two weeks and reading blogs and books and thinking.
Thinking, it’s a thing.
Is it the right job? Is it time to retire? When is death going to steal in and silence things for good? Is there an afterlife? What will I do with all the books and records?
There are also better lighter thoughts.
Spring is here. There are birthdays to celebrate. Things are going well. Retirement is becoming an attractive thought. I have a partner who values me.
I find myself these days to be an intermittent writer. I am not always putting the thought into the words. The consideration into the thought.
Sometimes thoughts cascade through my brain. Brought into reality by a trigger however strange.
I found a picture of an old girlfriend at Treworgey before things there got weird. Some would say they were always weird. She’s stood there in a white shirt and long grey skirt to the ground and her bare feet. Her hair is in dreads and she’s looking at the stage but there’s no band. Her eyes are bright and she has a blissful smile. Her name was Ann and for a moment we were inseparable.
Everything slowed down when we were together. We would watch frogs and butterflies and rabbits in the meadows. On crazy days we would climb and fall and laugh at the real climbers in there tight shorts and cut off shirts, they would laugh at us laying there never getting far. There was no judgement and we shared warm beer and cheese with them in the afternoons and evenings as we lit a fire to stay warm. Sleeping wild under a bush before walking to the road.
This year I drove past that climbing site. Pex Hill. It’s now a nature reserve and the climbers are less wild. Festival goers are less weird as well, those days won’t be back easily as we’ve commercialized everything and speeded it all up.
The doctor got involved in my life this year. You have to lose weight he said gravely and he is of course correct. Suddenly I am inundated with studies. Join a weight loss program to avoid diabetes, sure why not? Here’s a sleep study as there is a connection between sleep and diabetes, sure why not? And you’ll pay me? Aren’t we all actually pre-diabetic, until we become diabetic. Anyway taking it seriously would be important to miss the drugs. Wear your watch so it can communicate with big brother tracking blood pressure, heart rate, steps taken. Beeps and notifications sometimes seem to dominate the day.
That skinny young thing in cut off Levi’s drinking scrumpy next to the road would laugh at older me balding, overweight and avoiding the sugary things including alcohol, not that alcohol has been important since my eldest rolled his car and nearly died. So this has become the days of tracking things. How many vegetables eaten, steps taken etc. should’ve kept running. Now I have to build strength and stamina to get back to the running/jogging let’s be realistic. Some say sign up for a 5/10k but I’ve never run to compete. Or competed about much, even though apparently as my friend Greg said I am the most competitive least competitive person.
Back to 74, I’ve missed a couple of weeks, I have been listening though.
Bad Company’s self titled release from 74 on the SwanSong label is everything rock music should be. Anthemic, strutting and singalong good. Rodger’s and pals are on fine form creating an album so great it’s become a trope.
The album I have is pristine, the sound is amazing and the vinyl is quiet but the sleeve looks as if it’s been rolled around on at every party it’s been to since 1974.
Probably Bad Co. is the archetype of every successful blues based hard rockin album around. It seems to me Bon Jovi made an entire career based on this album. It just does it better, the guitars have more swagger the bass has more thump and the drums are groovy man. Then there’s the secret weapon of the album Paul Rodgers voice.
Yes you probably know every song on the album, you probably claim to be burned out on the tracks, however once the album starts, your singing along, driving faster and getting all testosteroned out.
So back to 74 and there’s more prog ahead I’m sure.
I’ve been thinking about aging. Well I’ve been aging as we all do and not actually thinking about it. This last two weeks thought I spent with my mum in Liverpool and she is getting older and frailer and well less gracious. I always considered her a fairly gracious person but this last two weeks have been a struggle as she seems to have become quite embittered. Maybe it’s me living 6000 miles away or maybe it’s just she’s been sick for 8 months with shingles, it’s hard to know.
Things were such that I was not able to leave her for the two weeks. Only one night away to see Hawkwind and then I had to promise to be back as early as possible.
All I’ve been able to do is try and stay calm and be present for her. This has put many things on hold for two weeks.
Now I’m home and I have a certain sense of guilt at leaving her. This is the burden of the wayward son I suppose.
In the last few days I’ve made all sorts of silent promises to my children. That I will not burden them in this way. I will be considerate of their time and of their own needs. I will appreciate them and all they do. The reality is I’ll probably be a grumpy old fart just like my mum.
Hawkwind was great by the way. A lot of that was due to Thighpaulsandra who channeled DikMik and Del Dettmar brought the evening. Poor Dave needed the occasional sit down though.
I promise that I’ll get back to ‘74 when my brain is less polluted.
How can you say that when you have Feats Don’t Fail Me Now on the player. Enough real boogie woogie piano to make Jools Holland blush and it makes sense with the song. Slide guitar aplenty and some swinging drums.
I was on a plane and then jet lagged for a day or so and forgot to throw this out there and I’m not organized enough to do that pre planning of posts.
So 1974 and The Strawbs with their strange folkprogpsychpop sensibilities and the fey voice of Dave Cousins. Hero and Heroine is definitely more on the prog side of things, very mellotron forward acoustic guitars and dramatic semi classical things going on. Not that any of that is necessarily bad it’s just that Cousins vocals don’t always manage the drama of the lyrics.
Shitty picture stolen from Amazon as they can afford it.
As an album it’s least successful when the band tries to rock out. This may be true of all Strawbs albums I fear and for some reason I seem to own a lot of them. I think this may have been part of my prog research for my still planned book, Pimples Sideburns and National Health Glasses, the true sad story of prog.
They sound most successful when the twelve strings are strumming and mellotrons are thrumming and the lyrics are addressing issues that are more cosmic man. Shine On Silver Sun as Dave Cousins vocals are always on the edge of breaking. It’s a higher song than the band and they have a great time hamming it up for all who will listen.
Songs of magicians shipwrecked sailors and a search, suffering and reckless love defended souls and death all to a mix of massive mellotrons and some sort of faux jigging folk music. It’s all a lot of fun kind of a mix of y England Hymnal and hippy trippy flower children.
It’s a blast in other words if you don’t take things too seriously.
1974 still and it seems I have acquired some sort of significant prog rock fixation.
So here we are with one of the most egregious art decisions perpetrated on any rock band with the awful choice to replace the camel on Mirage with Charizard.
Camel embody the idea of symphonic prog. There are enough organs, mellotrons, flutes and 12 string guitars, tempo changes along with some truly deep lyrics man, to make an army of denim clad pubescent lads with wispy and hopeful side burns to gyrate in an ecstatic trance on a Saturday night or a Tuesday afternoon.
It’s actually a pretty great album as Latimer and pals romp through all the sounds they can collectively make, the guitars are epic and the keyboards throb the way only 70’s keyboards can. There’s a joy in the pomp and not an ounce of self consciousness on display. And why should there be when the collective noise is this good?
And there we have it the run on sentence competition truly integrated into life.
Recorded in Sussex and California. It’s a classic Jansch album. Masterful guitar work, however this time we have some sweet Red Rhodes pedal steel guitar and Mike Nesmith playing along.
It’s the first album Jansch recorded after Pentangle split. It’s simpler the focus on shorter folkier songs and Jansch’s playing. It leans towards country rock at times and Jansch fits it well.
It’s also a really good album to lay in the grass in the backyard and stare at the contrails.
I always struggle to express how important Jansch was over the years. He influenced almost everyone in rock and roll, Page and Young stole from him liberally. He influenced the folk rock world and jazz. His laid back humility was inspirational and even Paul Weller got humble around him.
LA Turnaround has it all, heartfelt songs, great instrumentals and that voice.
Christmas 1980 and a record from 1974, hard to imagine it was six years old then and now it’s fifty. I’d waited all through the interminable gift opening and oohing and aahing over very useful but not interesting gifts such as socks and shoes and other well meant things. I was waiting for the moment my dad and grandad would take off for the pub and my mum and nan and aunts would start preparing the feast. This was my chance to head upstairs and finally play the records that had been bought for me. Well to be honest I’d gone the record store bought them myself and dutifully handed them over to my mum for wrapping once I’d got home.
I had however on the bus on the way home devoured every sleeve note and lyric I could find.
This time I’d dared to ask for a double record. I’d been looking at it for a long time in Penny Lane Records, this was my chance though to spend the money and finally buy it.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway had some sort of mythical status among my friends. It was a concept album that had an almost impenetrable story about Puerto Rican gang members and then some Greek I mythology and then the dude gets his nuts cut off. To this day I still don’t know what is going on. How does a middle class white boy from the south of England write a meaningful album about anyone from New York never mind Puerto Rican gangsters in New York.
And still from the first sound of the piano on Christmas Day 1980 I knew that this was an album that I would listen to for the rest of my life.
It’s 1974, Peter Gabriel is plotting his exit from the machine that Genesis had become, he was distracted by a new child, a possible film score and life in general. He and the band had a concept. They traded the drummers time for some Eno moments put a lot of work into the first two sides of the album and then winged it for the last half of the album.
And still they produced something unique, a tougher sound than previous albums, more contemporary, most of the songs are shorter and punchier, the lyrics more immediate although definitely confusing. It’s more urban, even the cover is less pastoral, black and white and yes still confusing. I’ve never managed to read the whole story on the inside cover in one sitting.
Yes it all loses focus a bit on the last two sides but you’d not notice really if you hadn’t heard Tony Banks complaining about the singer disappearing and the rest of them having to dig deep to finish.
They followed it all up with a tour playing the whole album before the album was released. Had to be confusing. At least it was a fairly entertaining stage show although some of the costumes apparently made the lyrics hard to hear.
The same Christmas I got Quark Strangeness and Charm. What a monumental day.
Carpet Crawlers may be the best Genesis song ever written.
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