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…..
Gerard, this Blog’s most loyal reader and commenter, posted a comment regarding Buckingham Nicks. He suggested that we checkout the Coffee House Demos which are available on CD so we all need to be on the look out for that. If you track a copy down, please let me know your thoughts about it.
I also wanted to let everyone know that there is a lot of good Buckingham Nicks music and pictures available from the following site:
To get to the good stuff click the Buckingham Nicks picture at the top of the page. Maybe the most interesting thing on the site are live tracks from the Buckingham Nicks last two concerts before they joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975. Check them out. You can’t beat the price….its free!
Stephen Stills had been a man on a mission since the mid-1960. He wanted a band! Not just any band but a band that was his and his alone. He wanted to be in control.
Buffalo Springfield held promise but it could never really be his band with that pesky Neil Young competing with him and refusing to take his direction, or anyone else’s direction for that matter. He thought he had it made with Crosby, Stills, and Nash but they were more of a vocal group than a band. Hell, he had to play almost all of the damn instruments himself on their first album. In his desperation for a real band he somehow allowed Neil Young to re-enter the picture with CSNY. It was great having Neil as a foil, and someone that was his equal for extended guitar solos, but just like with Buffalo Springfield, Neil refused to cooperate with Stephen’s ambitions. In the end, Neil treated CSN like an alternative backup band to Crazy Horse which was not to Stephen’s liking at all!
In 1971, Stephen took matters into his own hand and formed Manassas, the band of his dreams. Stephen was in charge and the band could really kick ass. This was a group that could comfortably play the country flavored rock that the California sound was famous for as well as the latin flavored music that was Stephen’s secret passion. Although Stephen was in charge, he had a pretty impressive right hand man in Chris Hillman who we have discussed at length as an original member of the Bryds and of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The other musicians were equally impressive in their own right and included Al Perkins (steel guitar), Fuzzy Samuels (bass), Paul Harris (keyboards), Dallas Taylor (drums), and Joe Lala (percussion – the foundation of the latin sound that I mentioned). It was a real band, a big band, and it would be the source of some of the best music of Stephen’s career (and Chris’ career as well). On most days I actually prefer listening to Manassas over CSN or CSNY and that says a lot. So today we are going to celebrate Manassas’ two studio albums with a lot of music….no I mean a whole lot of music. I hope you enjoy it, I am not going to bore you with a lot of my feelings. Quick introductions and then on to the music.
Manassas (double album release in 1972 – an absolute masterpiece)
First up is a song written by Stephen and Chris called Both of Us (Bound to Lose). Chris and Stephen trade of lead vocals and the harmonies are amazing. My favorite Manassas song….
Next up is my second favorite Manassas song, It Doesn’t Matter, which was also written by Stephen and Chris.
Finally, we have a beautiful song written by Stephen called Move Around. In addition to a great vocal by Stephen, this song has an extremely tasty synthesizer backing track.
So far we have highlighted some of my favorite tracks from the Manassas double album but you only have half the story. I mentioned early on that this band could kick ass and now it is time to prove it. We are lucky enough to have a full 35 minute Manassas performance from a German TV show in 1972. The set list from this show includes a number of songs from their double album: Bound to Fall, It Doesn’t Matter, Hide It So Deep, Song of Love, Rock ‘n Roll Crazies, Cuban Bluegrass, Jet Set, Jam, The Treasure. Let’s listen……
If you aren’t sold on Manassas I seriously have to question your musical taste but I am going to give you one more chance. Let’s sample some Manassas’s second (and last) studio album titled Down the Road. This album was pretty much panned by the critics but hopefully you have learned by now that I trust myself over any critic and I feel today like I did in 1973. Down the Road was a great album. Maybe not as good as their first but great in its own right.
So Many Times was easily the best song on Down the Road. Once again it was cowritten by Stephen and Chris. Chris takes the lead vocal with Stephen singing harmony and the result is amazing.
For a change of pace, let’s listen to Down the Road, the title song from the second album. Some wonderful slide guitar from Stephen on this one.
Can you tell I like Manassas??? I hope you enjoyed this extended post of their music.
To wrap things up I am sad to report that Manassas met it demise in 1973 soon after the release of their second album. The cause….Stephen was lured back to CSNY for one of their many short lived reunions. In my opinion Stephen had it all and threw it away. Maybe it was the money, maybe it was the fame, but whatever it was Stephen would never again have a band as good as Manassas or music with the same level of consistent quality. On the other hand, some of the other members of Manassas still had a role to play in the story of The Southern California Sound. We will hear about them in the final post in this long running series.
Let’s change things up a little bit today and start with the song. See what you think….
So what did you think? I love this song….whenever I hear it it screams Summer to me. So many good memories of being a kid with three months of sun, play and no school. But let’s leave memory lane behind for now and talk about Alive and Kicking.
Alive and Kicking is a New York band that originally formed in the late 60s. From everything that I have read, they were a very tight band but as we all know it takes more than being a good musician to be successful. In the case of Alive and Kicking, they were lucky enough to get signed to Roulette records which was also the home to Tommy James. Tommy, who created some of the best pop hits in the 60s with his band the Shondells, took the group under his wing; gave them the song Tighter and Tighter; and produced their album. The rest is history….talent and a little luck and you have a huge hit on your hands. Tighter and Tighter spent 16 weeks on the charts in the summer of 1970 and was a gold record for the group. Surely there was more great stuff to come from this group. Well maybe not…it’s not like Tommy James was going to abandon his career and keep writing hit songs for you!
Cue the crickets………..
Speaking of Tommy let’s leave this post on a high note and listen to one of Tommy’s greatest hits.
It’s funny how the first time you hear a song can stick in your mind forever. I first heard this song when I was at camp the summer between 10th and 11th grade. It was way past lights out and I was listening to WLS from Chicago on my little transistor radio in my upper bunk. (I had managed to sneak the radio and the original mono earphone into camp) This song came on the radio and I thought I had died and gone to heaven…I had never heard anything like it and I don’t know if I have ever heard anything as original since then. Good memories….
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.
We are getting close to the end of The Souther California Sound series with only three posts left. I think all of the remaining ones will be interesting. Up next is lucky number 13 in the series titled The Southern California Sound #13 – Leader Of The Band…..At Last. I hope to have that post finished and posted by this time next week. Keep an eye out for it. Here is the updated series graphic that will go with the post.
In the meantime, I have some other good stuff for you including the next Album of the Week post and another Underachiever post.
Thanks for reading and listening to this blog! If you have friends that you think would be interested in what we are doing here please let them know about it!
The Outlaws, like Lynryd Skynrd who we discussed in an earlier post, came out of Florida in the late 1960s. There were lots of personnel changes, and aborted recording efforts, before the group was “discovered” by Clive Davis at a 1974 concert where they were the opening act for Lynyrd Skynrd. Clive subsequently signed them as the first act for his new Arista record label and the Outlaws were finally on their way.
Yesterday we talked about the classic dual lead guitar sound from the Outlaws but I didn’t mention that the Outlaws actually had three guitarist. This set them apart from a lot of other southern rock bands, like the Allman Brothers, that only had two. i have to say that seeing the three guitarist lined up across the stage at one of their concerts was quite a sight!
We sampled the Outlaw’s first album yesterday, today we will sample their second (Lady in Waiting) and third albums (Hurry Sundown). These first three albums represent the best that the group had to offer. First up is a change of pace from their second album called Girl From Ohio. This song highlights the group’s country side and their nice vocal harmonies. These harmonies were yet another element of their sound that made it unique.
My favorite Outlaws song is Hurry Sundown which is from their third album. This song includes great harmonies and the wonderful Outlaw guitar sound making it the perfect song…. in my opinion! Let’s listen……
If you enjoyed the Outlaw songs featured over the past two days I highly recommend that you pick up their first three albums. You will not regret it.
A band called the Outlaws continues to perform today but this band, for the most part, is not made up of the musicians that formed the classic Outlaw lineup. Unfortunately many of the original members, like lead singer and guitarist Hughie Tomasson, have died.
Today’s Long Song Tuesday offering was inspired by the positive response that I received to my Lynyrd Skynrd post a couple of weeks ago. The Outlaws were contemporaries of Lynyrd Skynrd and played a similar brand of guitar driven southern rock. Green Grass and High Tides was from their self titled first album and I think you will really enjoy it. Crank up your volume and give it a listen….
For you guitar buff out there here is some interesting detail on the Outlaws guitar sound from Wikipedia:
Hughie Thomasson’s signature guitar playing style and voice were defining characteristics of the band’s sound. Thomasson’s guitar sound was underpinned by the use of the Fender Stratocaster (and sometimes a Fender Telecaster) played in a quasi-country style mixed with fluid, quick blues runs. Hughie was nicknamed “The Flame” for his flaming fast guitar work. He is a member of the Fender Hall of Fame. The other lead guitarist, Billy Jones, played mainly a Gibson Les Paul and switched between a clean and distorted sound. A good example of this can be heard on “Green Grass and High Tides” on the right stereo channel. Hughie Thomasson’s smooth Stratocaster sound can be heard on the left channel. Thomasson opens the first solo at the intro and plays the first half of the two succeeding longer solos all on the right channel.
Because I am somewhat time constrained today so I am going to defer providing more details about the Outlaws until tomorrow’s post but before we go here is a live performance from July 23, 1975 when the band was in it’s prime. I only got to see them once in the 70s but they were something to behold.
More tomorrow…talk to you then.
By the way, let me know if you like the Outlaws as much as I do.
Linda Ronstadt was a founding member of a folk trio called the Stone Poney’s that formed in the mid-1960s. The group was composed of Linda, Bobby Kimmel, and Kenny Edwards and produced three albums with the last one coming out in 1968. Early on in their career it was clear to everyone that Linda was the star, so much so that Capitol Records wanted sign her to a solo contract rather than sign the band. As you can imagine, this was the source of more than a little tension in the band. Their biggest hit was a song called Different Drum that was written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkeys. Let’s listen……
I hope you were watching as well as listening so you can understand why me, and most of the other teenage boys back in 1967, were madly in love with Linda. To be that cute and to have that voice was truly too good to be true.
Linda finally went solo in 1969 signing with Capitol Records but she did not entirely abandon the Stone Poneys. Kenny Edwards became a long term collaborator. (Kenny passed away in 2010 and the music world lost a significant talent. RIP Kenny! If you are interested checkout a band called Bryndle. I will feature them in a future post.).
As a solo artist, Linda started to move toward the country rock sound that was beginning to take shape in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Let’s watch and listen to a couple of TV show appearances from that time so we can see her as we listen to her 🙂 First up is a 1969 appearance on the Johnny Cash show. This video is followed by a 1970 appearance on the Glen Campbell show.
I Will Never Marry (1969) with Johnny Cash
Long Long Time and Carolina In My Mind (1970 Glen Campbell show)
Linda’s first two solo albums on Capitol were named Hand Sown……Home Grown and Silk Purse. The first of these albums did not chart at all while the second album failed to break the top 100 in album sales. Silk Purse was redeemed, somewhat, when the single Long Long Time (one of the songs performed on the Glen Campbell clip above) broke into the the top 20.
While her albums were suffering from a sales perspective, her live performances were much more successful. Trying to build on this success, Linda hired Glenn Frey (from Longbranch Pennywhistle) to put together a new band for touring and for her third album. The band that Glenn put together included Glenn, Don Henley (a drummer from a group called Shiloh) and Randy Meisner (Poco/Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band). While this band would not stay with Linda for long (more about this in a later post in The Southern California Sound Series) they were indeed a kick ass band and their later success would give Linda’s career a boost.
Linda’s third album was self titled and not only included her new band discussed above but other musicians we have discussed in earlier posts in the series: Bernie Leadon (Flying Burrito Brothers), Sneaky Pete Kleinow (Flying Burrito Brothers), and J.D. Souther (Longbranch Pennywhistle). It also included a song from a young songwriter named Jackson Browne, who lived in the apartment below Glen Frey and J. D. Souther when they formed Longbranch Pennywhistle. Let’s listen to Linda’s performance of Jackson Browne’s Rock Me On The Water.
Trying to further capitalize on her live performance reputation, three of the songs on her third solo album were live numbers recorded at Troubadour. Let’s listen to Linda’s live performance of Neil Young’s Birds that was included on the album.
Alas, with her third album Linda was still two albums away from her commercial break through album, Heart Like A Wheel, that would result in her being called the Queen Of Rock and/or the First Lady Of Rock in the mid-1970s. It is a strange twist of fate that her biggest contribution to the world of music, early in her solo career, would end up being her role in the formation of a yet to come supergroup that would come to symbolize the Souther California Sound. Much more about his later.
Before we leave Linda behind lets take a look ahead in her career and watch/listen to her sing a J.D Souther song called Faithless Love that was included on Heart Like A Wheel.
It is worth noting that J.D sang harmony with Linda on the album version of this song. The singer providing the harmony on this live version from 1975 is the late, great Andrew Gold (RIP Andrew). Andrew was another of Linda’s long time collaborators, a solo artists, and yet another member of Bryndle, the group I mentioned above when discussing Kenny Edwards.
In my The Southern California Sound #11 – And Then There Were Two post last weekend I mentioned that you needed to remind me to post some of David’s demos. So….here we go!
First up today is an early acoustic demo with David doing his own harmony.
I never get tired of this!
Next up is an electric demo, this one is from the famous 1971 PERRO sessions and features Jerry Garcia playing with David.
They just don’t make music like this anymore and the world is a lesser place because of that. As always, let me know what you think.
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 