Citizens beware ! This post is titanic.
Lately I've been listening to Wishbone Ash - Alice Cooper (original band)
To this day, many people are totally unaware that Alice Cooper was the name of the band and not the lead singer. He was plain old Vince Furnier, son of a preacher man, and according to guitarist Michael Bruce, was really straight and unexciting. Just drank beer and watched telly ! Glen Buxton was the wild one. And the bassist Dennis Dunaway was actually the groups' leader. It was a group decision to shift the name 'Alice' to Furnier, long after the band had been going as Alice Cooper. They were actually called the Spiders long before Bowie came up with the Spiders from Mars and they were also called the Nazz until Todd Rundgren's band brought out their debut album under the same name.
The Police. And yeah, Wishbone Ash are great.
Wishbone Ash's first three albums are hard to beat in my opinion. They were by no means the first band to feature two lead guitarists {Beck and Page did that in the Yardbirds and even the Beatles did it} but I think they took it to an as yet unexplored level. Twin solos {not harmony} were old hat in jazz but not in rock. They found a way to incorporate them so seemlessly into their songs that they're an integral part of those early numbers.
That's The Loving Spoonful. They've got many great songs. Probably a few you know but didn't know it was them.
A great and underrated band, in at the dawn of the folk rock era that was the great American contribution to the shaping of 60s rock. John Lennon may have become world famous for the round granny glasses from '67 onwards, but he copped that from John Sebastian !
Their song "Daydream" is one of the earliest pieces of music I remember as a child, I must've been 3 or 4 when that hit England.
Back in secondary school, I was pretty anti-social. So anything that most people said they liked, I instantly hated. No U2, Duran Duran, or other mainstream artists for me.
I saw U2 on TV one night in 1981. I remember thinking they were a load of shit, just jumping around making a row. But years later, I listened to 'Boy', I mean
really listened to it. What a great album. I have a few of their albums and a healthy respect for them because they've crafted some great songs and epitomized the art of making the most out of having the least. Nasally, whiny singer, one trick pony guitarist with
an echo box, root note bassist and primal drummer......not the most auspicious of tools. But time and time again, they've fashioned great stuff that's meaningful, melodic, raw and rocking.
As for Duran Duran, in my early 20s, because they were so loved by teenage girls, it was fashionable to not just knock them, but to totally despise the shit out of them. Whoever heard of a band with three Taylors that weren't related ! ? ! But I had a problem with them. I could never genuinely knock them because they kept on releasing these singles like "Say a prayer" and "The reflex" that I really liked ! I'd dig the song, then find out who it was by and my heart would sink !
Now I'm sort of approaching middle age and it no longer matters. I like them !
thats my new list of things to hear, Gravy train is some smokin' swampy rock, love it.
For about 20 years before I heard Gravy Train, I had two LPs by Norman Barratt's group Barratt Band. Both pretty decent slices of 'christian rock' {I hate that phrase, but for want of a better one at the minute} with damn good guitar playing. I had no idea it was the same Norman Barratt from Gravy Train. His voice takes getting used to but they were one of the early rock bands to have a flautist/saxophonist and they were every bit as gritty as Jethro Tull but with a difference ~ not every song had to have the flute.
Pretty Things are awesome, esp SF Sorrow and Parachutes (kinda their Abbey Road),
oh and do yourself a favor and listen to the 1st Captain Beyond (s/t 1972) album. it will fry your brain and rocks balls out
You know how often reviewers go on about such and such an album being the 'great lost gem of psychedelia', and much of the time, in my opinion, it's anything but. But "SF Sorrow" to my mind really is. It's a masterpiece and it was a large influence on Pete Townshend, providing the seeds to "Tommy" though Townshend admits and denies this. But I'm not surprized it neither sold well at the time or has been lauded as a psych great. It's a very hard album to access. I had to listen to it a dozen times or more before it broke through. But once through, oh my ! Sensational. The opening dual guitars set the tone for the hidden inventiveness that the album reeks of. Indeed, the singles and B sides {like 'Defecting grey' and 'Walking thru my dreams'}that they did in the same period should be spoken of in the same innovative sentences as "Strawberry Fields forever" and "I am the Walrus".
I still don't see the resemblence of "Parachute" to "Abbey Road" though both were recorded there during 1969. But half of "Parachute" remains among the greatest pieces of music I have. In every way democratic, this album was a good instance of group strength overcoming individual weaknesses to create some seminal rock. But it stiffed. One of the band members laughed that they were the only band to record an album voted as Rolling Stones' album of the year that didn't sell a million !
As a Deep Purple lover, I was naturally curious about bands that their various members had played in or went on to form like Whitesnake, Rainbow, the James Gang, Episode 6...and the best of the bunch, the ridiculously underrated Trapeze. So I checked out Warhorse (Nic Simper's band) who were disappointing {mainly due to the vocalist, Ashley Holt's voice} and Captain Beyond, who were not ! That first album is a streak of highly charged lightning. The band were so tight yet wild and melodic and exciting and inventive. They should have gone on to make a place for themselves in heavy rock's first division. Their drummer, Bobby Caldwell, was one of the most musical and inventive drummers I've ever heard. So nimble, so crisp, so octopian. Jon Lord may have thought Rod Evans had a voice like Tom Jones but I thought, both with Purple and in Beyond that he was a
great singer. If I was stranded on a desert island, I'd have to have "Mesmerization eclipse" with me. One of the top 20 of heavy rock riffs. Bobby Caldwell later turned up in a band with ex Yardbirds singer, Keith Relf, called Armageddon. He got them rocking the same way on their one and only album before Relf died.
In my opinion, the first great American pop writer, on a par with, if not better than, Dylan. Not in volume, but in quality. Then acid helped to unstitch him and long before Syd Barratt and Roki Ericcson unravelled, Gene showed them the way......
All this non essential information is required by someone, somewhere so if you're on a train or plane, I hope it was readable !
