So…..we talked about The Lovin Spoonful last week. As it turns out, John Sebastian was also quite successful after his time with the group achieving solo success and having memorable performances at many of the great rock festivals in the late 1960s. Here is a great interview with John where he talks about the influence that the great Richie Havens had on his early career and how he ended up on stage at Woodstock as an unscheduled performer.
After listening to John’s interview, I bet you are ready to hear some music. Here are a couple of great videes of John from the Celebration at Big Sur and Woodstock rock festivals.
Celebration at Big Sur (1968) – with Stephen Stills
Richie will always be known for his opening performance at Woodstock. He was not scheduled to be the opening performer but when the first four schedule performers had trouble reaching the festival he was asked to play in order to buy time. In an epic performance he played for almost three hours straight, eventually improvising the song Freedom on the spot having played every other song that he knew. It was a wonderful performance and one that made him famous.
Here is an interview with Richie from the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.
Here is Richie with his amazing performance of Freedom at Woodstock in 1969.
OK I admit it…….I am pandering to my prog rock readers for yet another week with this 1973 behind the scenes ELP TV special. This is great stuff on one of my favorite Prog Rock bands. Keith Emerson on keyboards and the angelic voice of Greg Lake always make me happy. I hope they make you happy this Monday as well……
Gordon Lightfoot is easily one of my top three favorite musicians of all time (the others are Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen….and yes the Canadians outnumber the American on this list). Let me elaborate how strong my feelings for Gordon’s music are……
If I had to give up all of my music except my Gordon Lightfoot library I could still lead a happy life.
I have planned Gordon Lightfoot themed vacations…a train trip through the Canadian Rockies inspired of course by Canadian Railroad Trilogy.
My pick for the most moving song ever written…..The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Did I mention he’s Canadian!
So it is with great pride that I bring you this great Gordon Lightfoot acoustic concert performance on BBC. If you aren’t a fan after listening to this concert…..I seriously have to question your musical taste. The set list includes:
I challenged my readers with a couple of questions yesterday and, as always, the faithful came through for me! Mr STAP stepped up and nailed the answer to the question about the origins of the name 10cc. His answer is summarized below:
There was a study that determined that the average output from a male ejaculation was 9 cc, so they called themselves 10 cc. Don’t remember the details about Lovin Spoonful, but the connection is obvious
Yes indeed….the members of 10cc wanted the world to know that they were real men! If the average man only produced 9cc they produced more….10cc. The similarity with the Lovin Spoonful name is that it is another slang term for the average amount of male ejaculation. The things you can learn on this website!
Thanks to Mr STAP for being the first to answer the question. I encourage you all to visit his great music blog standthereandplay (http://standthereandplay.wordpress.com). While you are there, be sure to checkout his amazing collection of concert posters!
My good friend Gerard was also nice enough to chime in with another interesting point regarding the above topic….while the story behind the name was based on a supposed average of 9cc, a lot of sources seem to indicate that a more realistic average is somewhere between 3 and 5 cc. Thanks Gerard for always being there for this blog!
One last thing…..the origins of the name 10cc makes me think about the movie This Is Spinal Tap. if you haven’t seen it, the movie is a mockumentary about a heavy metal band named Spinal Tap. The bands amps go up to 11 unlike every other band’s amps that only go up to 10. You can watch that scene below…….
If you are a rock fan and haven’t seen the movie I highly recommend that you find it and watch. The first time I saw it Iaughed until I cried!
So……back on March 18th I did a Two’Fer Tuesday post about 10cc and challenged the readers to post a comment explaining the origin of the groups name. No one…..let me repeat….No one responded 😦
Undaunted, I am throwing down the Pop Quiz gauntlet again!
Yesterday i posted about The Lovin Spoonful and, as it turns out, the origin of their name is closely related to the origin of the name for 10cc. Your challenge is to be the first to post a comment explaining how the two names are related.
Ready….set….comment…. Come on, I know you can do it!
The Lovin Spoonful, a group that grew out of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s, was one of the true musical treasures of the 1960s. In 1964, John Sebastian spent a lot of time sitting in with a group called The Mugwumps. During this time, he became friends with Zal Yanovsky who was in the group. When the Mugwumps broke up after only eight months, John and Zal joined with Joe Butler and Steve Boone to create the Spoonful. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today’s interview is a short, but very rare, 1966 interview with the original Spoonful in Toronto. As you will see, there was a lot of interest in the group in Toronto because Zal was from there. I hope you enjoy this little slice of music history.
With that interview as a lead-in, let’s continue our walk down memory lane with some great music and TV performances by The Lovin Spoonful.
You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice (1965)
Do You Believe In Magic (1065)
Summer In The City (1966)
Daydream (1967)
If you were wondering why The Lovin Spoonful was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000…..now you know!
Now…..here is the bonus part of today’s post. I mentioned above that Zal, and John unofficially, had been in a group called The Mugwumps before forming the Lovin Spooonful. As it turns out, The Mugwumps were one of the most talent filled groups of all time and I am willing to bet that most of you never heard of them before reading this post! Who else was in the The Mugwumps……none other than Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty who went on to become founding members of The Mamas and The Papas (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 1998). Absolutely frigging amazing. That my friends, is your bonus nugget of Rock History.
Today’s Two’Fer Tuesday post celebrates the music of Johnny Rivers. I was introduced to Johnny Rivers music by an older cousin when I was around fifteen years old and I have been a fan every since. The thing that I find most amazing about his music is that he managed to make the leap from early 60’s rocker (Secret Agent Man, Maybellene, Memphis, Midnight Special, etc.) to late 1960s hippy ballad singer (Poor Side of Town, Summer Rain, Look to Your Soul, Going Back to Big Sur, etc.). I can’t think of any singer that made that transition as successfully. Let’s listen to a cut from each of these phases of Johnny’s career.
First up is a great 1966 performance by Johnny on the Hollywood Palace Tv variety show. Yes…..that is Judy Garland introducing Johnny’s performance.
Our second song is Summer Rain, which is a cut off of Johnny’s 1968 album Realization. On this album Johnny started to move his sound to a more contemporary, let’s say introspective, ballad sound that was just right for the late 1960s. The album made it into the top five and Summer Rain made it up to #14 on the singles chart. This is really good stuff that I still listen to today……
There is a lot more to Johnny’s career, so be looking for another post on him soon. Let me know if you appreciate Johnny’s music as much as I do.
Today’s Monday Music Matinee post, Prog Rock Britannia, goes out to Sara, the biggest prog rock fan of all of this blog’s readers. Here is how this well done documentary is described on the BBC website….
Documentary about progressive music and the generation of bands that were involved, from the international success stories of Yes, Genesis, ELP, King Crimson and Jethro Tull to the trials and tribulations of lesser-known bands such as Caravan and Egg.
The film is structured in three parts, charting the birth, rise and decline of a movement famed for complex musical structures, weird time signatures, technical virtuosity and strange, and quintessentially English, literary influences.
It looks at the psychedelic pop scene that gave birth to progressive rock in the late 1960s, the golden age of progressive music in the early 1970s, complete with drum solos and gatefold record sleeves, and the over-ambition, commercialisation and eventual fall from grace of this rarefied musical experiment at the hands of punk in 1977.
Contributors include Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Pete Sinfield, Rick Wakeman, Phil Collins, Arthur Brown, Carl Palmer and Ian Anderson.
Our Sunday session for today is a great 1975 set from America that was broadcast on a West German TV program called Musikladen. This concert captures America at the height of the career and is well worth a listen.
Watching this brought back a lot of memories for me. I can remember hearing A Horse With No Name driving to school in 1972 and being totally captivated. At the end of the song, the DJ indicated that it was “America A Horse With No Name.” which I thought was the coolest name ever for a song. It wasn’t until later, in a record shop, that I discovered that the song was named “A Horse With No Name” and the group was named America. Life before internet was a bitch 🙂
As always, let me know what you think…….
Setlist
1. Ventura Highway
2. I Need You
3. Don’t Cross the River
4. A Horse with No Name
5. Moon Song
6. Lonely People
7. Wind Wave
8. Rainbow Song
9. Tin Man
10. California Revisited
11. Green Monkey
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 