As promised, this week’s album of the week is the best live rock album ever recorded – At Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers band. The band formed in 1969 after the breakup of Hour Glass which had featured Duane and Greg Allman (use the search feature to find my earlier post that featured some Hour Glass songs). They released The Allman Brothers Band in 1969 and Idlewild South in 1970, both of which were great but it was their live shows with extended blues and jazz jams that really started to expand their fan base. In 1971 they recorded the live album featured in today’s post and it successfully captured the magic of their live performances. The Allman Brothers place in rock history was firmly established by this album.
Rolling Stone magazine named At Fillmore East the 49th greatest album of all time stating the following about the album:
“Rock’s greatest live double LP is an unbeatable testimony to the Allman Brothers’ improvisational skills, as well as evidence of how they connected with audiences to make jamming feel communal. “The audience would kind of play along with us,” singerorganist Gregg Allman said of the March 1971 shows documented here. “They were right on top of every single vibration coming from the stage.” The dazzling guitar team of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts was at its peak, seamlessly fusing blues and jazz in “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
Our long song Tuesday post this week featured Stormy Monday from this album but you really can’t appreciate its true greatness without listening to it end to end. So let’s listen to the whole album…..
This is a band that was at the peak of its power and we are incredibly lucky to have this live album masterpiece to remember how great they were were. Unfortunately this version of the band would never record again. Two members of the band were lost in motorcycle accidents in the eighteen months that followed the recording of At Fillmore East. We will save that sad story for another day.
On a personal note I am forever sad that I did not get to see the Allman Brothers in their original lineup. Having said that, in a strange way I was reminded of the band at every concert that I attended to in the 70s. No matter what show I was at, someone from the audience would call out a request for Whipping Post. Maybe it was just a southern thing but it made me smile each and every time it happened. If you haven’t listened to the album yet be sure to listen for the iconic original shouted request that triggered all of the copycat requests that I heard throughout the 70s.
Today we celebrate Tom Rush’s 1968 album, the Circle Game. Tom, although an accomplished songwriter himself, is maybe better know as an interpreter of songs by other 60’s singer/songwriters. In many cases he recorded these songs before they were released by their original authors. With the Circle Game, we highlight both Tom’s interpretive and writing skills. .
First up is the album (or at least most of it) with mostly covers and some originals!
Tin Angel (written by Joni Mitchell)
Urge For Going (written by Joni Mitchell)
Circle Game (written by Joni Mitchell)
Sunshine Sunshine (written by James Taylor)
Something In The Way She Moves (written by James Taylor)
No Regrets (written by Tom Rush)
Rockport Sunday (written by Tom Rush)
And Now……Some Of The Originals
Something In The Way She Moves (Apple Records Promo For James First Album)
Urge For Going (Joni Mitchell version)
STAY TUNED! I have a related post prepared for tomorrow…..my favorite cover version of the song Urge For Going which happens to have a really interesting back story.
One final note. The cover photograph of Tom and his girlfriend on the cover of the Circle Game album was taken by Linda Eastman who would go on to marry Paul McCartney and perform with him in Wings. Linda passed away in 1998. RIP
As promised, our album of the week is Badfinger’s last album, Wish You Were Here. I am featuring it, not because it is their best album but because it is their last album with Pete.
As you listen, I want to you think about the fact that this is the third album that they cranked out in less than a year. The boys were being driven to constantly work by their management and record company commitments. All during this time, they were living in near poverty while everyone else was getting rich based on their blood, sweat, and tears. By this time, it was finally becoming clear to the boys that they were being screwed and the band was starting to come apart at the seams.
With that in mind it is amazing that the album, although not their best is actually very good and certainly worth a listen. My favorite songs are Just A Chance, Got To Get Out Of Here, and Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke. Let me know what you think.
Just A Chance
You’re So Fine
Got To Get Out Of Here
No One Knows
Dennis
In The Meantime/Some Other Time
Love Time
King of the Load
Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke
So….the moral to this story, and so many others, is that greed destroys the deserving while rewarding the financial vampires of the world. In this case, it drove two of the most talented musicians of their generations to commit suicide and destroyed one of my favorite bands of all time. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but I hope that one day Badfinger will make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I can’t think of a better tribute to Pete and Tom.
So…while we are talking about greed, let me point out that it is alive and well here in the United States. Just take a look at the tax proposals being made by Mitt Romney and the Republicans in Congress which can be summarized is cut the taxes of the rich and pay for those cuts by milking those that work for a living. Checkout the video below for the details and vote.
Some call them glam, some call them the Godfathers of Punk (I think Iggy owns that title), some call them the fathers of the New York rock scene (The Ramones, Blondie, etc), some call them outrageous, and some thought they were a joke. I thought they rocked and I loved them. Come on, how could you not love these guys? They are the only group that I know of that was honored as both the best and worst new group in the same year….in the same magazine.
Let’s listen to Jet Boy from their self titled first album released in 1973.
I love the guitar (Johnny Thunder & Silvain Silvain), love the vocals (the awesome David Johannson) and love the song. Jet Boy closed the album, let’s balance that out by listening to the first song on the album, Personality Crisis.
The Dolls deserve more than a crummy two song post so here is their entire first album. You better listen….and you better crank up the volume!
Todd Rundgren did a great job on the production of this album. I thought he perfectly captured the Doll’s sound. The original band managed to hang on and produce one more great album, Too Much Too Soon, but they were gone by 1975. To paraphrase Neil Young, better to burn out than to rust away.
Yes…various incarnations of the surviving members of the Dolls have reformed, recorded, and toured during the last 10 years but to be honest I just don’t care. The Dolls left us in 1975.
RIP – Johnny Thunder, Arthur Kane, and Jerry Nolan
In our last post we discussed how sometimes in music 1+1 equals 3. In today’s post, the final one in The California Sound series, we talk about how sometimes 1+1+1 equals 1.
To start our story we need to travel back once more to 1973 and check in on some of the musicians we have been discussing during The Southern California Sound series.
Let’s start with Poco…you might remember that the band went through a lot of personnel changes over time. In 1973 Richie Furay, one of the founding members of Poco, was hanging on but he was frustrated with the band’s lack of success especially given the popularity of that upstart band named the Eagles. Richie was ready for some of the same.
Next up is Manassas, the amazing band that Stephen Stills put together. As we reported in an earlier post, Stephen abandoned the group in 1973 while chasing after another Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young reunion that was doomed to failure. In Stephen’s absence, everyone was scrambling to find their next gig. Chris Hillman took some time for a short Byrds reunion but was soon back on the street.
John David (J. D.) Souther spent a lot of time hanging out with his buddies the Eagles and writing with them. He supposedly was offered a chance to join the band but in his words, “I just wanted to stay home and write.”. J. D. released his first solo album on Asylum Records in 1972.
Around this same time David Geffen, the head of Asylum Records, was looking to score big and thought he had discovered a formula that guaranteed him a California Sound supergroup. Take one part Byrd, one part Buffalo Springfield, mix in another great songwriter, and success is guaranteed along with money….lots of money. OK, maybe he wasn’t the first to discover that formula but did I mention that there was money….lots of money.
Richie wanted success and Geffen was pretty convincing that success was a given. Chris just wanted to play and if Stephen was willing to sacrifice Manassas for CSNY they why not give Geffen’s idea a shot. By the way…Chris brought a hell of a band with him including Paul Harris, Joe Lala, and Al Perkins who were fellow refugees from Manassas. J. D. was a great songwriter and had claimed he just wanted to stay home and write but somehow Geffen convinced him. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that J. D. was already signed to Asylum records, maybe it was something else, but once he signed on the Souther Hillman Furay Band was formed. I bet Geffen thought of the idea of using the last names of the three guys as the band name. That guy was just full of fresh new ideas!
The group’s initial, self titled, album was not a bad piece of work by any measure but it wasn’t magic. What you basically got for your money was three EPs (one each for J. D., Chris, and Richie) each of them playing with the same excellent backing band. Each of the three was a great performer/songwriter in his own right but there was absolutely no group chemistry (Hey David Geffen….MAYBE great music is more complicated than you thought!). To borrow the title of their second, and last album, there was Trouble in Paradise from the start.
Chris Hillman might have summed it up best in a Commercial Appeal newspaper interview from April 25, 2008.
“SHF was an odd experience. I love Richie and J. D. dearly, but i really did find myself in the middle almost holding them apart. J. D. was a very introspective guy and a great songwriter — probably the best out of all of us — and I think secretly he had a desire to be in the Eagles, and they just didn’t have room for him, and so he was frustrated. And Richie was much more a professional person who’d always been in bands and J.D. hadn’t so there was a clash there. That band was never meant to be. That was a group that looked great on on paper. In theory it was good, but it never gelled.”
Richie had similar feelings as expressed in an online interview with John Cody in 2007 when he stated: “With us, we had the best musician’s going. And then Chris was playing bass, and J.D. and I are adding our parts. But what looks good on paper doesn’t always work out.”
J.D. admitted his contributions to the groups problems in a October 1998 interview in Goldmine Magazine, “I’m not a great team player under those circumstances.”
So…the group was doomed before it ever started but let’s talk about their first album.
Richie’s leadoff single “Fallin In Love” was the only real hit from the album but I have to say that Chris and J. D. had the best songs on the album. Chris’ “Heavenly Fire”, a song he wrote about Gram Parsons was incredible and “Safe at Home” and “Rise and Fall” were both great in their own right. J. D.’s “Border Town” was the catchiest song on the album and “Pretty Goodbyes” and “Deep, Dark, And Dreamless” are both classic J. D. songs.
Overall, as I said earlier, it was not a bad album but it didn’t have any amazing group moments. Let’s listen….. As always, let me know what you think.
Fallin In Love (Richie Furay)
Heavenly Fire (Chris Hillman, Len Fagan)
The Heartbreaker (J. D. Souther)
Believe Me (Richie Furay)
Border Town (J. D. Souther)
Safe At Home (Chris Hillman)
Pretty Goodbyes (J. D. Souther)
Rise and Fall (Chris Hillman, Len Fagan)
The Flight Of The Dove (Richie Furay)
Deep, Dark, and Dreamless (J. D. Souther)
So there you have it, the Rise and the Fall of The Southern California Sound told in fifteen parts (may apologies to Chris for adapting his song title for my own purposes). I hope you enjoyed the music and maybe learned something in the process. Here is the final complete picture or our Southern California Sound story.
I was making my weekly visit to my local record store in 1973 and a colorful album cover caught my attention. Here is what I saw….
The back of the album cover was a continuation of the same picture and did not offer up any details about the band or its music. Fortunately for me, the initial run of the albums that were released included a sheet of paper inside the album’s clear plastic wrap which provided some information. I preserved my copy of that paper and have scanned a copy of it so you can read what I did standing in the record store…..
What I read about the group convinced me to buy the album without ever having heard any of their music. Here were the things that got my attention:
The group was from Spartanburg, South Carolina and I was familiar with that part of the country having been born in the mountains of East Tennessee
The group had been signed by Capricorn Records. Capricorn was known as the home for southern rock bands having previously signed southern rock pioneers like the Allman Brothers, Wet Willie, and many others.
As soon as the record hit my turntable I knew I had made a great decision. Their sound was clearly southern but at the same time it had some unique features that made it stand out from the rest of the southern rock bands:
Jerry Eubanks’ flute played a integral role in a significant number of the band’s songs. The flute was not completely unique in rock music at the time, think Jethro Tull, but in my opinion Marshall Tucker did a better job of integrating it than anyone else.
The guitar sound was tasty without being overly showy (thanks to Toy Caldwell)
The songwriting was consistently great and effortlessly spanned country, rock, blues, and gospel genres with a touch of jazz thrown in for good measure (once again thanks to Toy who wrote all of the songs)
They had me with the first song, Take the Highway…….great lyrics about hitting the open road, a great vocal performance by Doug Gray, a nice little jam in the middle, and damn….where did that synth part come from. Absolutely awesome! See for yourself…..
If I was infatuated after the first song, I was in love after the second song, Can’t You See. I was going through some girlfriend issues at the time and this song really spoke to me….
By now I’m sure you’re tired of listening to me babble so I am going to shut up. I have provided each of the remaining songs from the album below and I truly hope you will give them a listen. You won’t be disappointed!
Losing You
Hillbilly Band
See You Later I’m Gone
Ramblin
My Jesus Told Me So
AB’s Song
I was lucky enough to see Marshall Tucker live a couple of times in the mid-1970s and they were great. I will give you a taste of their live sound in our Long Song Tuesday post this coming week.
It was 1968 and a there was a dynamic new live music scene forming in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The good news is that I lived only 80 miles away in Battle Creek, Michigan. The bad news is that I was too young to get to see any of the bands. I did get to hear about some of the shows from older kids in school and they sounded wonderful! These shows featured homemade pyschedelic light shows and a form of raw rock music that wasn’t getting played on the radio.
The biggest of the Ann Arbor bands was a group called The MC5 (MC stood for Mortor City) and they attracted the attention of Elektra Records (we will have a post about The MC5 later). Elektra sent a representative to Ann Arbor to sign The MC5 to a recording contract and while he was there he also signed a second band called The Stooges.
The Stooges were headed by a young former drummer named James Osterberg who would soon adopt the name Iggy Pop. The Stooges stage shows were already legendary when they were signed to Elektra. Iggy was willing to do anything to get the audiences attention including smearing food all over his body and cutting himself with glass shards. The remainder of the group were not accomplished musicians so it was probably a good thing that Iggy was such a showman.
The Elektra representative asked the Stooges if they had enough songs to fill an album and they lied and told him that they did. As a result, the group ended up having to pull an all night song writing session before going into the studio to record their first album. During this session they wrote three new songs to supplement the five that they normally played in their stage shows. The resulting eight songs would form the basis for The Stooges self titled first album. The album was produced by John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground.
As I promised in the coming attractions post from a few days ago The Stooges, as reflected in their first album, were punk before there was punk, heavy metal before there was heavy metal, and, at times, they were just plain strange. Although I am not a fan of rock critics in general, the Rolling Stone review of the album from October 18, 1969 made some excellent points.
The instrumentalist sound like they have been playing their axes for two months and playing together for one month at most…
The lyrics are sub-literate, as might be inferred by the titles: No Fun, Not Right, Little Doll, and Real Cool Time.
They suck and they know it, so they throw the fact back in your face and say, “So what? We are just having fun.”
Sounds like Punk to me:-) I am sure that as you listen to the album, starting with the first song 1969, you will agree that there are elements heavy metal in their sound as well.
That brings us to the plain strange aspect of The Stooges which just so happens to also be the subject of our Long Song Tuesday post for this week. Rolling Stone’s review might have captured it best in the following quote:
The only place where the album falls down, it falls with a resounding thud, “We Will Fail” is a ten minute exercise in boredom that ruins the first side of the record.
I have to admit that my initial feeling about We Will Fail were much the same as Rolling Stones’…..I have gotten up many times while listening to this album to skip this track. Over the years; however, the track has grown on me a little bit and I now tend to see it as a strange little ambient music interlude in a rocking album. Why don’t you listen and see what you think…..
Now on to the really good stuff. Here is the entire album, in all of it’s glory, featuring the following eight tracks: 1969, I Wanna Be Your Dog, We Will Fall, No Fun, Real Cool Time, Ann, Not Right, and Little Doll. Give it a listen and see what you think. I am betting that after listening to the first song you will be compelled to listen to the remainder of the album. As always let me know what you think….
Iggy and the Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 and continue to perform to this day. But it all started with: this wonderful little album; four kids that wanted to make noise; and simple songs about what was going on at that exact moment in time. And that my friends is what rock and roll is all about.
Its 1969 OK/War across the USA/Its another year for me and you/Another year with nothing to do
That pretty much sums 1969…I was there and I lived it…..
Today we have a combined Long Song Tuesday and Album of the Week post and it is a good one.
Travel with me, if you will, back to 1976. I am on my way to one of my graduate school classes, playing my radio at full volume with my windows down. Out of the blue, the best song that I have heard in years come on the radio and I am transfixed. I listen to the end of the song (even though it makes me late to my class) and find out that the group is named Boston. I am intrigued….the band has a incredibly clean sound, kick ass guitars, and a singer that rivals the Roger Daltrey’s and Robert Plant’s of the day. The song was More Than A Feeling and we will check it out in a minute but first let’s listen to today’s long song offering from that same band.
As it turns out, the band’s clean sound and kick ass guitars were the product of it’s founder, Tom Sholz. Tom was a genius graduate of MIT, working at Polaroid as an engineer, but completely obsessed with music. When Tom wasn’t at work he was investing all of his money in a home studio and working on demos. Even before he had a band he used his home studio to record demos for most of the songs that would appear on Boston’s debut album. The singer, Brad Delp, was just a natural talent (RIP Brad!). The results were amazing. Let’s listen to a live version of the song that originally caught my attention.
I was lucky enough to catch Boston on their first headlining tour and they were amazing. I actually had a bad seat on the right hand side of the stage pretty high up. It gave me a perfect view of Tom Sholz who had what was obviously a homemade box of effect pedals that he used throughout the show. I learned later that he was indeed a “mad genius” who had designed and built his own guitar effects. I finally understood where that awesome guitar sound came from!
Lucky for you, this is also an Album of the Week post because the Boston debut album was and still is an amazing record. Without further ado, I give you Boston…..
Fleetwood Mac was a great British blues band that was formed in 1967. While musically talented, the band was never able to translate that talent into any significant popular success. In the early 1970’s, with the addition of Bob Welch, the band moved from a blues focus to a more pop focus and it looked like they were on a path of achieving the success that it had been working on for years. Unfortunately Bob left in 1974 once again depriving the group from achieving the level of success that they deserved. (In case you missed it, Bob Welch died last week. RIP Bob!)
Between 1974 and 1974 Fleetwood Mac went through one of the most amazing transformations that has ever occurred in music history. In 1975 they released an album titled Fleetwood Mac which was a number one album in the US, produced a significant number of hit singles and sold over 5 million copies. Success was finally theirs but the story does not end there. In 1977 they released an album called Rumors which sold over 40 million albums world wide. Fleetwood Mac had become the biggest band in the world and they maintained this level of success for many years to follow, but we are going to talk about that because this post is not about Fleetwood Mac. What did he just say????
Once again, this post is not really about Fleetwood Mac……nope this post is about the group that enabled the transformation that allowed Fleetwood Mac to achieve this level of popularity. To be more specific, this post is about a duo called Buckingham Nicks.
To get you attention, here is a picture of the duo that was used on the cover of their one and only album which was cleverly titled Buckingham Nicks.
Now that I have your attention, let’s talk a little bit about the Buckingham Nicks. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in a late 60’s group called Fritz which had some limited success as an opening act for major acts including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Credence Clearwater Revival. When Fritz broke up in 1970, Lindsey and Stevie move to LA where they eventually signed a record deal with Polydor as a duo. The Buckingham Nicks album, this week’s album of the week, was released in 1973 and was a real stunner but somehow never managed to become the breakout hit that it deserved to be, in fact the album tanked. A strange part of this story is the fact that Buckingham Nicks was a huge hit in only one plaee……Birmingham, Alabama. Their album sold like hot cakes there and they were a major concert draw. I will come back to this later in the post.
Frustrated by their lack of success the duo was considering moving to Birmingham and using it as as a base for expanding their local popularity when Mick Fleetwood heard their album. Mick immediately saw what everyone else (other than the folks in Birmingham) had missed….an incredibly deep well of talent! He asked Lindsey to join Fleetwood Mac to replace Bob Welch but Lindsey told Mick that if they wanted him they would have to take Stevie as well. The deal was quickly sealed; Buckingham Nicks was history; and Fleetwood Mac, including Lindsey and Stevie, were on their way to being superstars. (Note: To emphasize the importance of Lindsey and Stevie to Fleetwood Mac’s break through it should be noted that they wrote over half the songs on the album, including the classics Rhiannon and Monday Morning.) Enough talking….let’s listen to the Buckingham Nicks album. I think you will be impressed.
The tracks on the album are as follows:
“Crying in the Night” (Nicks) – 2:48
“Stephanie” (Buckingham) – 2:12
“Without a Leg to Stand On” (Buckingham) – 2:09
“Crystal” (Nicks) – 3:41
“Long Distance Winner” (Nicks) – 4:50
“Don’t Let Me Down Again” (Buckingham) – 3:52
“Django” (Lewis) – 1:02
“Races Are Run” (Nicks) – 4:14
“Lola (My Love)” (Buckingham) – 3:44
“Frozen Love” (Nicks, Buckingham) – 7:16
In case you are thinking about going out and buying the album, I am sad to tell you that you will not find it unless you are lucky enough to stumble onto a used copy of the original vinyl albums from 1973. The album has never been released on CD!
Before we close this post, I have a personal note to add to the Buckingham Nicks story. In 1977, I had just gotten out of Graduate school at the end of May. I rewarded myself in early June by driving to Birmingham to see Fleetwood Mac on their Rumors tour. Fleetwood Mac was incredible but the real treat was that Lindsey and Stevie played a short set of Buckingham Nicks songs as a thank you to Birmingham for being the only place where Buckingham Nicks was a success. It was a touching, heartfelt, gesture on their part and it made the concert one that I will never forget.
The James Gang formed in Ohio in the late 1960s and went through a number of different musicians before eventually ending up as a trio (Joe Walsh -guitar/Dale Peters – bass/Jim Fox – drums) when they started their recording career. James Gang Rides Again, released in 1970, was their second album and demonstrated significant grown in terms of the groups song writing and musicianship. Unfortunately, the group remained a regional favorite and never really became widely popular. I became a fan in 1970 while living in southern Michigan just north of Ohio.
Funk #49, the lead off song on side 1 of the album was only a minor hit but proved to have legs. The song can still be heard today on some classic rock radio stations. Let’s listen…. (sorry about the ad!)
While the first side of the album showcased the James Gang rock capabilities, the second side provided some really nice acoustic music. Let’s listen to Ashes the Rain and I…. (once again, sorry about the ad!)
I hope you liked the above songs and if you did I am sure you will enjoy listening to the full album provided below.
Joe Walsh left after one more studio album. The band continued after Joe’s departure but it was never as good as the original lineup. After leaving the group Joe Walsh achieved solo fame and eventually joined the Eagles. Ironically Joe’s success away from the group made the original group’s music more popular than it had ever been when they were together. As always, let me know what you think.
One more thing….my favorite James Gang song, Walk Away, did not appear until the James Gang’s third album. Before we end this post, let’s watch the James Gang perform my favorite song in a 1971 show.
If you like Joe, his first solo album in 20 years, Analog Man, is scheduled to be released this Tuesday (June 5) so be sure to check it out.
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 