This Crosby, Stills & Nash’s The Acoustic Concert was taped at a 1991 show in San Francisco that was done as a memorial for Bill Graham. The boys were still in good voice……I think you will enjoy this one!
If you like CSN, you need to come back often this week. We will feature the group, collectively and individually, throughout the week.
September of 1973 had some amazing album releases including Bruce Springsteen’s sophomore release; releases from Poco and Uriah Heep when they were at the top of their game; a release from Linda Ronstadt who was on the verge of becoming a superstar; and the first solo album from Art Garfunkel after he and Paul Simon went their separate ways. I bought each of the albums back in 1973 and I love them as much today as I did when I purchased them.
In today’s post I feature a favorite song from each of the above albums plus a bonus song/interview/concert that is related to the album in some way. So……step into my musical time machine while we travel back to September 1973 and enjoy some great music…….
Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent, & The E-Street Shuffle
My featured song from Bruce’s second release is New York City Serenade which I think is Bruce’s most beautiful song ever. It was an amazing accomplishment for such a young songwriter/musician/composer.
The bonus I have picked out for The Wild, The Innocent, and The E-Street Shuffle is a Bruce concert from 2012 where Bruce and the band play the entire album. This is a real treasure….I hope you enjoy it.
Poco – Crazy Eyes
Crazy Eyes was Poco’s most ambitious album of their career. The title song is an absolutely amazing song (written about Gram Parsons) and I have selected to feature it today.
The bonus I have picked out for the Crazy Eyes album s an interview with Richie Furay about the title song.
Uriah Heep – Sweet Freedom
Sweet Freedom is the one and only Uriah Heep album that I purchased but it was a good one. My favorite song was called Stealin and I have chosen to feature it today.
The bonus post for Sweet Freedom is the entire album. If you haven’t heard the album, you really need to take advantage of this and listen today. It’s good stuff!
Linda Ronstadt – Don’t Cry Now
Don’t Cry Now was Linda’s release that preceded her break through album, Heart Like A Wheel. It featured songs from some of the hottest young songwriters and musicians from the Southern California sound school of music. Today I have chosen to feature what I think is Linda’s greatest vocal performance ever, Love Has No Pride.
The bonus post for Don’t Cry Now is a version Love Has No Pride that was recorded by American Flyer, a band that featured Eric Kaz who wrote the song. Although I think Linda’s version is the best ever recording of the song, the American Flyer version is great in it’s own way. It features Craig Fuller on lead vocals…. you might remember his voice from Pure Prairie League.
Art Garfunkel – Angel Clare
Angel Clare was Art Garfunkel’s first solo album. Art could sing the New York city phone book and I would buy it but fortunately for us his first album featured some really great songwriters, including Jimmy Webb. Jimmy wrote All I Know, my favorite song from the album, and I have chosen to feature that song for you today.
For his third album release, Watermark, Art chose to release an entire album of Jimmy Webb songs. The first song on that album was called Crying In My Sleep. I personally think it is the best thing that Art has ever recorded and I have chosen to feature that song as a bonus post. Sadly, Crying In My Sleep was released as the first single from album and was not a hit. The album was immediately pulled and rereleased with an additional song called (What A) Wonderful World (not composed by Jimmy Webb) which produced a hit single.
I offer up this Raspberries classic and dedicate it to the Tea Party who truly doesn’t know what they want…..(reference my post from earlier today)…….but they want it NOW!
In my continuing effort to make up for all of the political posts I have made you read over the last two weeks, tonight I’m offering up a double shot of REM unplugged. One from 1991, one from 2001, and both absolutely wonderful. Enjoy…..
REM Unplugged (MTV 4/10/1991)
REM Unplugged #2 (2001) – Sorry about the advertisement at the beginning of the show!
If you listened to the 1991 unplugged show you might have noticed the band playing the official theme song of tonight’s Government Shutdown drama……It’s The End Of The World As We Know It.
Elvis recorded his second gospel album, How Great Thou Art, at RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 25, 26, 27, and 28, 1966. The album won a Grammy in 1967 for Best Sacred Performance. During this time period Elvis was having difficulty getting radio airplay and Elvis’ manager, Col Tom Parker (see picture above), was convinced that Elvis could get some radio airplay with more religious music. This album proved that Col Parker was right. Some insight from the recording sessions for this album are provided below (thanks to Wikipedia for this info)…..
As the sessions progressed, Elvis rejected many of the planned songs for which Freddy Bienstock had obtained publishing deals, and began picking favorites of his own and those of the musicians. The five songs in the public domain were credited as “arranged by Elvis Presley” and published by Elvis Presley Music allowing Bienstock to secure the royalties for those selections. In fact, it is likely that an engaged and enthusiastic Presley indeed did the arrangements, as he certainly did with the title song, his months of practice at home on his beloved gospel songs paying off.
One of those public domain songs was called By and By and I have chosen it as the featured song for my first Time Machine Tunes (TMT) post. By and By was recorded on May 26, 1966 and I have a portion of that recording session for you. It is great to hear the song progress through early rough takes to what sounds like a final polished cut. Even better, it is amazing to hear Elvis relaxed and having a good time in the studio. You might not be able to travel back in time to be in the studio for this recording but I am giving you the next best thing. Enjoy………
To give you the complete picture, here is the final version of By and By as released on How Great Thou Art……
I hope you enjoyed this first TMT post. Please let me know your thoughts…..
James dueted with Mark on Sailing to Philadelphia singing the part of Charlie Mason while Mark sang the part of Jerimiah Dixon. As described on Wikipedia, Charlie and Jerimiah are…..
…the two English surveyors who established the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia in the 1760s. The border later became known as the Mason-Dixon Line and has been used since the 1820s to denote the border between the Southern United States and the Northern United States.
I truly love the song and the voices of James and Mark sound great together. As always……let me know what you think.
As it turns out there was another great duet on the Sailing to Philadelphia album. This one between Mark and Van Morrison on a great song called The Last Laugh. Let’s listen…..I think you will really like it!
I would love to be able to travel back in time…..unfortunately i read an article on Huffington Post yesterday where Brian Cox, a particle physicist, states that time travel is possible but only to the future…..
We may be able to book our ticket to the future someday — it’ll just be a one-way trip.
In a presentation at the British Science Festival, particle physicist Brian Cox said that time travel is possible but only in one direction.
“The central question is, can you build a time machine? The answer is yes, you can go into the future,” the University of Manchester professor told the audience during his hour-long speech on Tuesday, according to The Telegraph. “You’ve got almost total freedom of movement in the future.”
You might be asking yourself why would I like to travel to the past? The answer is simple….that is where most of the music that I like was recorded and I would like to be back there to observe and participate in realtime. Who wouldn’t want to travel back in time and go to Woodstock? Even better….who wouldn’t want to go back in time and be in the recording studio when some of the great music of all time was being recorded?
All of this brings us to a new series of posts that I call Time Machine Tunes, or TMT for short. This is not just old music….I am talking about rare bootleg recordings from studio sessions or concerts. I have spent years gathering such recordings and have not chosen to share them on the blog until now. The songs in these posts will only be available on this site and I hope that you will enjoy them. As always let me know what you think.
Be looking for the first post in this series sometime next week.
I can still remember the first time I heard this song. It was 1970 and I was on my way home from school. All of a sudden this great song was blasting out of the car radio and I was immediately smitten. The guitar sound was amazing. Here is what Russell DaShiell, the lead guitarist during the recording session has to say about how that sound was achieved (thanks to Wikipedia for this information)…..
I actually played the lead guitar parts on Spirit, using a 61-62 SG Les Paul, a 68 Marshall Plexi 100w half stack and a home-made overdrive box in front of the Marshall. Regarding the ‘beep beeps’ as I call them, when the producer asked me to play some fills in between the verses, as a joke I said how about something spacey like this and I did the pickup switch/string bending thing. I saw him stand up in the control booth and he said “that’s it! let’s record that!” so we did. (There was no slide involved, just my fingers, and I used the bridge humbucker and the pickup switch). The fuzz part is Norman with a built-in overdrive circuit built into his Tele pickguard. I’ve been asked a lot over the years how I did the ‘beep beep’ guitar parts on Spirit, so for any guitar players out there who would like to learn how, try the following: Using a 2-pickup Gibson, set the neck pickup volume to zero, bridge pickup volume to max, with the pickup switch in the middle position (with Gibson wiring this gives you silence in the middle position). Do a string bend, picking the B & E strings together with one hit, just ahead of the beat, then use the pickup switch to kick in the bridge pickup in triplets (6 per bar) as you let the B string bend down two frets. I mainly used two positions on Spirit, which is in the key of A. For the low position, fret a stationary C note (8th fret) on the E string while bending the B string up to an A note for your starting-position, then pick the two strings together once while the guitar is silent and work the pickup switch as you let the A note bend downwards to a G. For the high position, do the same thing at the 15th fret holding a stationary high G note on the E string while bending down from E to D on the B string.””I must give credit to Jimi Hendrix as my inspiration for this technique (as well as for the double-string riffs I did at the beginning of the Spirit solo tail section). I saw him perform live in a small club in Madison, Wisconsin and loved the way he used his Strat pickup switch to create staccato feedback on songs like Voodoo Child. The difference is, on a Gibson you can start from silence and create the on/off effect, which worked well with the downward string bending thing I did on Spirit.
Let’s listen to the whole song so you can enjoy the great opening Riff in context…….
I am sad to say that Norman was a “one hit wonder” but if you are only going to produce one hit it might as well be something as great as Spirt In The Sky.
Oh……one more thing. You would never know if from the song’s lyrics but Norman Greenbaum is Jewish 🙂
Today, while reading my morning newspaper, I discovered a band called The Serenes from a nearby place called Joure in Friesland in the northern part of Holland (where I live). The band existed from 1988 to 1994 but I had never heard of them before reading the article from Gijsbert Kamer, a Dutch journalist (provided below with a rough translation into English).
Rough Translation (With Help From Mike)
So many classic rock albums have been made in the Netherlands. Albums that stand for a certain time in the rock ‘n’ roll history and always sound special. Revolution of Q 65 (1966), Ivy Green of Ivy Green (1978), Mental Floss For the Globe by Urban Dance Squad (1989) and Palomine by Bertie Serveert (1992) all have that status.
The album Barefoot And Pregnant by The Serenes is another such album. During the autumn of 1990, when the American bands Pixies, Sonic Youth, REM and the British band Stone Roses were making their leading guitar music (before the grunge craze), this beautiful record by the Serenes appeared from Joure.
The Serenes had two great singers/guitarists with Paul Dokter and Theo de Jong and a sound data matched the heady understated guitar pop of The Feelies but still sounded very original.
The guitarists created a wonderful guitar sound which is highlighted in the beautiful closing track Trip Down Memory Street. The sound differed from other Dutch rock bands at that time from the so-called Amsterdam School (Claw Boys Claw, Fatal Flowers).
Barefoot and Pregnant was critically acclaimed and did not go unnoticed abroad. But Dokter and de Jong parted, and worse, the album was not available for years.
The later problem has now been resolved with a wonderful reissue on Re, a sub-label of Excelsior. The reissued CD includes unreleased material from Dokter and De Jong as bonus tracks but the album itself still has much to offer even after all these years.
In addition to the Barefoot and Pregnant album mentioned in the article, the band released Back to Wonder in 1993 (by this time Paul Dokter had left the band). Having now listened to both albums by The Serenes all I can say is …..what a great find and what beautiful music. They sound a bit like early R.E.M. and I like them very much. Let’s listen to some music by The Serenes and so you can see what I am talking about…….
Rebecca (You’re Gonna Be Alright) – from Barefoot and Pregnant
Sprit (Let Me Walk With You) – from Back to Wonder
Special thanks to Tony Pas for his great videos for the two songs above!
If you like what you have heard, I have a gift for you all the way from Holland. You can listen to both albums below. Mike tells me that these albums are not easily available in the United States so this may be your best opportunity to listen to them.
Barefoot and Pregnant (Full Album)
Back to Wonder (Full Album)
Albums released in July and August of 1973 featured a number of new bands, a notable comeback, a notable follow-up to an earlier classic, and an amazing collaboration. Let’s dive right in to some of the highlights
July
Queen – Queen
Before becoming the band that we all know and love as Queen, the band was known as Smile and featured Brian May and Roger Taylor. When Farrokh Bulsara, joined Smile things began to change: Farrokh Bulsara became Freddy Mercury, Smile became Queen, and the band became more experimental. With the creation of Queen, the music world would never be the same. The band released their self titled first album in July of 1973 and the lead off song on the album was called Keep Yourself Alive. Let’s listen……..
New Your Dolls – New York Dolls
Here is what I had to say about the New York Dolls in an earlier post:
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.
The Dolls released their first album in July of 1973 and it was amazing. Here is one of its best songs….let’s listen………..
10cc – 10cc
Here is what I had to say about 10cc in an earlier post:
10cc were one of the true pop treasures of the early 1970s but they were a band with a split personality. The band’s four members included two songwriting teams. Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman were pop songwriters and accounted for the groups hit songs. Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were the more experimental half of 10cc and produced the more arty portion of the group’s material.
My favorite song from their, self named, debut album is called The Dean and I and was written by Godley and Creme. As reported in Wikipedia:
The song is written from the perspective of an American father telling his children about how he met and fell in love with their mother, with the first real line of the song being “Hey, kids, let me tell you how I met your mom. We were dancing and romancing at the senior prom”. The epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton is mentioned in the lyrics. The later part of the lyric tackles the grim realities of middle-aged married life “…when the paint is peeling, and all the chips are down…”
Did I mention those two guys were artsy? Let’s listen……..
Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin – Love Devotion and Surrender
Along with the new bands discussed above, July 1973 was also notable for the release of an amazing collaboration between two of the best guitarists of their time: Carlos Santana, leader of the rock band Santana, and John McLaughlin, a jazz fusion guitarist and leader of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The two men were both followers of Sri Chinmoy and huge fans of John Coltrane and these common interests provided the inspiration for their 1973 collaboration, named Love Devotion and Surrender. The lead off song was their take on A Love Supreme, one of Coltrane’s most amazing compositions. Let’s listen…..
August
Lynyrd Skynyrd – (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd)
Here is what I had to say about Lynyrd Skynyrd in an earlier post:
Lynyrd Skynyrd emerged from Jacksonville, Florida as a fully formed southern rock band that was ready to kick ass. They named themselves after their high school gym teacher and produced an amazing first album in 1973, Pronounced Leh’-nerd Skin-nerd.
When I featured this album as an album of the week I mentioned that Gimme Three Steps was my favorite song from their debut and that hasn’t changed. Let’s listen…..
Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
Marvin Gaye had release his classic album What’s Going On in 1971. Producing a follow-up to one of the best albums of all time was not a easy task but Marvin was up for the job. He released Let’s Get it On in August of 1973, and while it never reached the heights of What’s Going On, it was still an absolute vocal masterpiece in my opinion. Let’s listen to my favorite song from the album………
Allman Brothers Band – Brothers and Sisters
As we have previously discussed in this blog, the Allman Brothers Band had dealt with some unimaginable losses in the early 1970. Both Duane Allman, defacto leader of the band, and Berry Oakley, the band’s bass player, were killed in separate motorcycle accidents in Macon, Georgia. With these losses, the band’s future was anything but guaranteed. Any ideas about the demise of the band were put to rest by the release of Brothers and Sisters in August of 1973. The band’s sound had changed, out of necessity. The dual lead guitars were gone and Dicky Betts stepped up as a major songwriter. Amazingly enough, the album represented the biggest commercial success of the group. Although Greg only wrote two of the album’s songs they were my favorites. Let’s listen to one of them……
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 