Welcome to day two of our multi-day Canada Day music celebration. Today we will highlight a group called Lighthouse.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s bands with large horn sections were huge ( think Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Chicago, The Ides Of March, etc.) Canada had its own horn driven band named Lighthouse and they were actually my favorites for this genre of music.
Lighthouse was formed in Toronto in 1968 but I really didn’t get into them until their 1971 album named One Fine Morning. I absolutely feel in love with the title song from that album. Let’s listen……
What an amazing song.
Lighthouse followed up One Fine Morning with a 1972 double album live set recorded at Carnegie Hall. Here is a cut from that album called Old Man that really gives you a sense of of their musical chops.
Their next studio album, Sunny Days, was also released in 1972. This album features some really fine music, including my favorite track called Broken Guitar Blues. I think you will like it…..
Lighthouse and I drifted apart after Sunny Days. The group broke up in the mid-1970s after producing a couple more studio albums. I understand that a version of the band regrouped in the 1990s and still performs live.
Before we end this post, I want to leave you with one interesting footnote about Lighthouse. The band’s original alto sax player was Howard Shore and he went on to do great things after his time with Lighthouse. He was a long time musical director on the Saturday Night Live Show in the 70s and went on to became a composer of film scores. He is probably best know as the composer of the music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy for which he won three Academy awards.
Happy Canada Day! We kickoff our multi-day celebration of Canadian music with a group called April Wine!
April Wine formed in 1969 and initially caught my attention in in 1971 with a very catchy song called Could Have Been A Lady. Let’s listen…….
You have to love that guitar!
I kind of lost track of them for the rest of the 70’s but they once again caught my attention in 1981 with a song called Just Between You And Me. See what you think….
I completely lost track of April Wine after 1981 but based on a little recent research I am happy to report that they seem to still be a major concert draw in Canada. If you haven’t heard of April Wine before I highly recommend that you check them out, especially their early stuff. There are a number of greatest hits type collections that would be a good starting point. More great Canadian music tomorrow.
No…I am not a Canadian by birth but I absolutely love all things Canadian. Let me run down the list:
The country of Canada is absolutely breathtaking. I have spent time on the Pacific Coast (British Columbia), the Atlantic Coast (Newfoundland), the Canadian Rockies, and in Ottawa and and all of it was absolutely beautiful.
The people of Canada are the friendliest people that I have ever met. Everywhere I have travelled and worked in Canada the people are happy and helpful.
A huge number of my favorite musicians are Canadian. How about just a top three list for now: Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell.
Based on this love of all things Canadian, this blog will be celebrating Canada Day through July 4. Each day we will feature some lesser known (in comparison to the three superstars mentioned above) Canadian musicians and enjoy their music.
By the way, in case you don’t know, July 1 is a national holiday in Canada celebrating the anniversary of the 1867 unification of three separate colonies into a single country called Canada. To kickoff the celebration, I think you will enjoy the following videos (made by Molson) celebrating some of what it means to be a Canadian.
This is the first in a new series of posts about Tribute Songs. Featured songs might be tributes to a place, an artist, or a song or a combination of all three. I hope you enjoy the concept!
Our first tribute song manages to tie together our last two posts about Nick Drake/Elton John and The Stooges. I must say that finding a way to link these posts together is one my greatest achievements 🙂
To start things off we are going to listen to Nick Drake’s Northern Sky, an absolutely brilliant song that features John Cale on keyboards (yes…the very same John Cale that produced the Stooges first album). Here we go….
The brilliance of this song cannot be denied. It was recognized by New Music Express as the greatest English love song of the modern era and it inspired this incredible tribute by the The Dream Academy. Let me know what you think……
I am sure that everyone thought this was a good idea in 1968. Elton John clearly had an abundance of talent but had not proven himself yet as a songwriter (note: Elton had just recently teamed up with Bernie Taupin and their songwriting chops would be evident to the world in a couple of years) . Nick Drake was recording his first album and had some amazing new songs. Why not have Elton sing Nick….
So today I offer you Elton singing a cover of Nick’s Way To Blue. To be honest, I don’t care for Elton’s version. Maybe if would be different if I had never heard Nick’s original performance, I don’t know? Let me know what you think…
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…..
Zager and Evans were another duo from the late 60s and early 70s. They released In The Year 2525 in 1969 and it zoomed right to the top of the US charts and stayed there for six weeks. Number one with a bullet if you will.
The level of success achieved with In The Year 2525 makes Zager and Evans the superstars of underachievement. They made it all the way to number one and then never managed to break the top 100 again. As far as I know, they are the only group to ever accomplish this feat!
Brewer and Shipley, a folk rock duo from the late 60s and early 70s, released One Toke Over The Line as a single in 1970 and it quickly climbed to number 10 on the US singles chart. If you were around back then you know exactly what the song was about and if you weren’t around then it probably doesn’t matter so I don’t intend to explain the lyrics.
I will tell you that Spiro Agnew, Vice President to Richard Nixon labeled the song as subversive which was probably the best compliment that anyone could have every paid Brewer and Shipley. Let’s listen….
It was really a nice piece of music and I expected that more hits would follow but they never did. Cue the crickets……
On a humorous note, it is funny/sad how conservatives in the US grasp onto songs that they don’t understand and try to make them mean something that is completely different from their true meaning (Think about Ronald Reagan trying to use Born In The USA as a campaign song). This was the case with One Toke Over The Line as well. 1971 a cover of the song was performed on the Lawrence Welk show. Let’s watch…..
I don’t know about you but I am laughing my ass off. A “modern spiritual” indeed!
I am going to be super busy this weekend but i have prepared some posts in advance that I think you will really like. For Saturday and Sunday I have two new posts queued up in the Underachievers series. These are the earliest examples of underachievers that I remember from my high school days.
For next Tuesday we have another combination Long Song Tuesday/Album of the Week post coming your way. You are going to love this one…these guys were punk before there was punk, heavy metal before there was heavy metal, and, at times, they were just plain strange. Any guesses….
Speaking of guesses. Listen to this song and post a comment if you know who it is. I will have a post on them coming your way soon.
Back in the day, record reviews were magical things….works of art in their own right. They didn’t limit themselves to a format of a song by song tear down of the album. Instead, these reviews discussed an album in the context of a story and somehow managed to communicate everything you needed to know about the music. Today I attempt to recreate the magic of the record review in my first review of a classic albums. I should note that this may be my last review if this one ends up being a bomb.
Today’s review is my take on what very well might be the best album ever recorded….Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan. My review takes the form of a story about the night I first listened to the album. I might have taken a few artistic liberties in the telling of the story but it is very close to what really happened. Unfortunately, it is impossible to get real songs from the album onto YouTube (licensing issues) but I have cobbled together some early recordings of the album songs, and one live performance, to make my review somewhat of a participatory event. I hope you enjoy this post! Please let me know what you think even if your feedback is negative.
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I buy the album on the way home from class. I have that buzz of anticipation that I always get when I finally get my hands on an album I have been waiting for. I make it through the small talk with my parents and head to my room in the basement.
Headphones are finally on. Album is on the turntable. Raise the tone arm and lower the needle onto the album (gently). The fuzzy sound of the needle tracking before the first song. Quickly turn out the lights and head for my bed. Tangled Up In Blue is playing even before my head finds my pillow and I am transported to another place. Join me if you would like……
The opening jangle of the guitar is quickly followed by a torrent of words that flow over me. No, on second through, those words are flowing through me, painting not a static picture but a moving picture that is better than anything that I had ever seen at a theater. Some of the scenes are incredibly sharp and focused while others are slightly fuzzy making my brain race while trying to fill in the gaps between the words. The song is ending way to soon….don’t stop I need to know more.
Back to the sound of the needle tracking between the songs. I try to catch my breath while thinking that this is the best album lead off track that I have ever heard. I prepare myself to be disappointed with the remainder of the album…they always put the best song first. There is no way the rest of the album can ever live up to the promise shown by the first track. Wait…the jangling guitars are back again and before I know it I am in the middle of another story this one about about Fate. Listen with me…..
Another movie… but I am watching this movie from the inside. I am there, by the canal, walking behind the people in the song and somehow I even manage to follow them into that strange hotel without being seen. Just like before this movie ends way too soon. Three more songs and three more movies before I hear that distinctive sound of the tone arm reaching the end of record and returning the needle to its resting position on the turntable post. I think the needle must be as exhausted as I am.
I lay there for a while in the dark, initially unable to move. My need to know what is on the other side of this record eventually compels me to get up, flip the record. lower the tone arm and start the process all over again.
A part of me is hoping that the singer will have mercy and let up on the intensity of the first side of the album. Another part of me can’t wait for the assault on my senses to continue. No need to worry, the singer was just getting started on the first side! Just when I think I can’t take anymore, the second song on the second side conjures up not just a movie but an epic tale full of mysterious characters…all related somehow but I can’t seem to grasp how. Listen with me…..
I need to understand this song more than anything I am studying in school but any hope of that is always just out of reach. But… before I can fret too much, that song is over and we are on to the remainder of the album. The album finally ends and I know I should take off the headphones and go to sleep if I am going to have any hope of making my 8:00 class the tomorrow morning. Although these thoughts floating through my brain, I know in my heart that school can wait…I get up, turn over the album and start it all over again.
I am now nearing 60 and I have repeated the above process with this album more times than I care to admit. It has never failed to pull me in and make the rest of the world just disappear while I listen Maybe the most amazing thing about the album is that no matter how many times I listen to it, the level of understanding that I crave continues to elude me. I have theories about the meaning of some of the songs, but the real artistic intent of them is always just out of reach.
Genius is a word that is used too often but I have to use it to describe this album. Genius….absolute genius!
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 