The Top 20 "New York City" is a return to form for the ex-vegetarian Marc Bolan, whose steady diet of hamburgers and booze has had an alarming effect on his teen idol looks. Fans saw the new Bolan on a July 31, 1975 episode of Top of the Pops. Bolan's raunchy guitar is once again offset by the heavenly backing vocals of Flo and Eddie. Bolan would have just one more Top 20 hit, "I Love to Boogie", before he would be killed in a 1977 car crash two weeks shy of his 30th birthday.
The brothers Tavares would top both the R and B charts and the disco charts with "It Only Takes A Minute", one of the most memorable US hits of the Summer of '75. Fun fact: in an earlier incarnation as Chubby and the Turnpikes, the New Bedford, MA band had future Aerosmith member Joey Kramer playing drums.
One of the best things about Tavares was their stage act. That came courtesy of the legendary Motown choreographer Cholly Atkins who also taught The Temptations, The Supremes and The O'Jays their dance steps.
Nilsson/Cher : A Love Like Yours ( Don't Come Knocking Every Day)
Perhaps the highlight of this 1975 $2 Warner Brothers loss leaders is the obscure Harry Nilsson/Cher cover of Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" B-side "A Love Like Yours ( Don't Come Knocking Every Day)". The single was produced by Phil Spector at the same time he was recording John Lennon's Rock'n'Roll sessions. This is the only album you'll be able to find this song. Other highlights are the Faces last single, "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything", the title track from ex-Spooky Tooth Gary Wright's The Dream Weaver, and Elvin Bishop's "Juke Joint Jump" from the album of the same name.
The music is immediate yet technical. It threatens to throttle the ears and mind with its complexity of styles and expressions
-1975 Advertisement for Gentle Giant's Free Hand in Melody Maker
From their Chrysalis debut, Free Hand, their best selling album in the US, Gentle Giant's "Just the Same" swings. Someone who would know better than I points out the bass and drums are playing at 6/4 while the rest of the band plays 7/4. Why the complexity? Guitarist Gary Green sums up the answer: "We got bored easily."
1. "Tush" is Yiddish slang for "butt" derived from תחת (taḥath) or "underneath". None of the members of ZZ Top are Jewish but bass player Dusty Hill told Spin Magazine "Tush" had double meaning when he was growing up in The Lone Star State.
"It meant what it means in New York. Tush is also like plush, very lavish, very luxurious. So it depended on how you used it. If somebody said, "That's a tush car,' you knew they weren't talking about the rear End of the car. That's like saying, 'That's a cherry short.' But tush as in 'That's a nice tush on that girl,' that's definitely the same as the Yiddish word. I don't know how we got it in Dallas. All it could have took was one guy moving down from New York."
2. Guitarist Billy Gibbons, one of the great car and guitar collectors, says the name comes from "Tush Hog" by fellow Texan Roy"Treat Me Right" Head.
3. When the band played George W Bush's inauguration party in 2001, they considered changing the lyrics to "Bush". They didn't. After all they would have had to sing "I said, Lord, take me downtown/
I'm just lookin' for some Bush"
4. After debuting at #79 the week of July 19, "Tush" peaked at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of September 6 1975. This is the first Top 40 for ZZ Top and helped propel the album Fandango! into the Top 10
5. This hard rocking crowd pleaser has been covered by many artists including Joan Jett in 2009.
I probably bought 50 CDs a year in the 1990s, a decade I began in the Southeast and ended in the Northwest. If I allow myself to choose only one from each year, I'll go with the ones that I played the most ( with apologies to Yo La Tengo, The Lemonheads, Freedy Johnson, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, R.E.M. and many more). Obviously I have a soft spot for thoughtful three and a half minute songs about girls, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. And it's best if they blend acoustic guitars with blistering electric leads. That doesn't explain The P.M. Dawn album though. A cassette of Jesus Wept provided a welcome contrast to what I saw outside my windshield on a lot of long drives down lonely Colorado highways.
1990 (Mount Pleasant, SC)
Lloyd Cole Lloyd Cole
1991(Charleston, SC)
Matthew Sweet Girlfriend
1992 (Charleston, SC)
The Jayhawks Hollywood Town Hall
1993 (Asheville, NC)
Grant Lee Buffalo Fuzzy
1994 (Asheville, NC)
Grant McLennan Horsebreaker Star
1995 (Glenwood Springs, CO)
P.M. Dawn Jesus Wept
1996 (Glenwood Springs,CO)
Robert Forster Warm Nights
1997 (Glenwood Springs,CO)
Radiohead OK Computer
1998 (Glenwood Springs, CO)
Pernice Brothers Overcome By Happiness
On July 24, 1975 New York City's Television performed their first out of town gig, an oft bootlegged show at The Piccadilly Inn in Cleveland. It had been four months since bassist Richard Hell had departed the band. That leaping madman was replaced with Fred "Sonic" Smith, who gave the band a solid grounding for their twin guitar sonic explorations. Among the songs performed that night was "Little Johnny Jewel", which Tom Verlaine would select as the band's first single. Like Patti Smith's first single, "Hey Joe"/Piss Factory", it's more of a calling card than a shot at Top 40 radio. Guitarist Richard Lloyd thought it was an awful choice even as a calling card and nearly quit over the decision.
At the time I said "If that comes out, I'm going. Forget it." So I left, and laid around.
For three days Rocket From the Tombs guitarist Peter Laughner, whom the band met at the Cleveland gig, rehearsed with Television. Then Lloyd had a change of heart and rejoined the band. Disappointed, Laughner went back home to Cleveland where he became a member of another influential band, Pere Ubu.
Here's a rare opportunity to watch an entire episode of Top of the Pops forty years to the day it originally aired. 72 year old Bing Crosby performs. We meet a band we have yet to mention called Smokie. And Sparks gives us the first single off their forthcoming album Indiscreet. Here's a list of the songs played and where they stood in the charts that same week in July.
1. Sweet : Action (UK#17)
2. Typically Tropical : Barbados (UK#2)
3. The Wombles : Superwomble (eventual UK#20)
4. The Bee Gees : Jive Talkin' (UK#11)
5. Sparks : Get in the Swing (UK#46)
6. Linda Lewis It's in His Kiss (UK#13)
7. Smokie : If You Think You Know How to Love Me (UK#16)
8. Roger Whittaker : The Last Farewell (UK#47)
9 . Linda Carr and the Love Squad : Highwire (UK#50)
10. Bing Crosby : That's What Life Is All About ( eventual UK#41)
11. Pan's People : Hamilton Bohannon's Foot Stompin' Music (UK#15)
The original recording that introduced the world to the echoey, bottom heavy and percussive sounds of dub stylings invented by producer King Tubby. Augustus Pablo is playing the haunting mouth-blown keyboard melodica. Essential.
John Denver and Olivia Newton John may have been topping the country charts in the mid-70's, but there were still artists rooted in the authentic country and western tradition of Jimmie Rodgers, Western Swing and Bob Wills. Among them, Oklahoma's James Talley, whose debut Got No Bread, Got No Milk, But We Sure Got A Lot of Love became an immediate critical favorite.
Said Rolling Stone's Chet Flippo:
It's a welcome relief from the twin excesses of super-smooth Nashville pop and the overreachings of progressive country. James Talley is very much in the mainstream of American troubadours.
And from The Village Voice's effusive Robert Christgau :
The most attractive thing about this homespun Western-swing masterpiece--infusing both its sure, unassuming intelligence and its plain and lovely songs--is a mildness reminiscent of the first recorded string bands. Talley's careful conception and production both work to revive a playing-pretty-for-our-friends feel that most folkies would give up their rent-controlled apartments for. Despite its intense rootedness, it's neither defensive nor preachy--just lays down a way of life for all to hear.
The album failed to sell and went out of print until 2005, when Cimarron Records brought it back into circulation for its 30th Anniversary. Go To Talley's website to buy an autographed copy!
Thanks to an early 60's instrumental hit called "Scratchy", Travis Wammack got a lot of studio work playing guitar on records like Mac Davis' "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" and others by Aretha Franklin, Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett. In 1975 he stepped out with his second solo album featuring the infectious single "(Shu-Do-Pa-Poo-Poop) Love Being Your Fool" which peaked at #38 in August of 1975.
Bass players and drummers from New Orleans play it more together than players from anywhere else. In music from other places, there's more of a tendency for the bass player to play a note right after the kick drum. New Orleans bass players and drummers are more closely linked, so they're playing a note and the kick drum at the same time. The bass might venture away from the kick drum to play more notes, but at some point--maybe two and four--we always meet.
For their follow-up tothe masterpiece Rejuvination, The Meters recorded more funky numbers that seemed to have evolved from jams. There was also the novelty tune "They All Asked For You" which has become the theme song for the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. One of the highlights of Fire on the Bayou, released in July of 1975, is "Can You Do Without". George Porter starts the whole thing with his bass line...and the rest of the band cooks merrily along .
Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes provided this list to Spin Magazine for their 1995 Alternative Record Guide. Perhaps it's telling how many of the band featured had vocalists who considered themselves poets who weren't afraid to investigate their darker impulses.
1. Heartbreakers : Live at Max's Kansas City
2. Television : Marquee Moon
3. Velvet Underground ( all)
4. Richard Hell and the Voidoids : Blank Generation
According to a 1975 survey taken by Redbook Magazine, 40% of married women had an extramarital affair by the age of 40. In an analysis of divorces carried out in 1975, infidelity was cited as a factor in 54% of the cases. ( 29% of the time by men, 18% by women, 7% of the time because both had something going on the side). The mid-70's was the height of American promiscuity. Quite a few hit songs of the mid-70's reflected this kind of cheating: BJ Thomas's "(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song", Jessi Colter's "I'm Not Lisa", Gary Stewart's "She's Actin' Single ( I'm Drinkin' Doubles)" were all big country hits.
Shirley Brown's "Woman to Woman", Millie Jackson's "If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right " and her entire Caught Up album visited the same territory on the R and B charts. And then there's the funky "How Long ( Betcha Got a Chick on the Side)" from The Pointer Sisters which would hit #1 on the R and B charts in 1975. It may sounds like a New Orleans groove courtesy of The Meters but those are just top notch studio musicians, including Wah Wah Watson on guitar.
Infidelity still breaks up a fair share of marriages ( 41%) but the numbers aren't where they were in the 1970's. Most people have realized, in the words of William Bell, "trying to love two/ ain't easy to do".
From Morgan Studios, where The Kinks recorded "Lola", The Who recorded "Pinball Wizard" and Rod Stewart recorded Every Picture Tells a Story, comes this one hit wonder by two resident engineers, Jeffrey Calvert and Max West. They were able to call in guitarist Chris Spedding, Tornados' drummer Clem Cattini and Blue Mink keyboardist Roger Coulam to knock out this song about a Brixton bus driver heading off on a vacation to Barbados via Coconunt Airways. The tune hit #1 in the UK in August of 1975 and did well in other parts of Europe but never charted in the US.
Pub rock legend Ernie Graham's mid-70's band, Clancy, recorded nothing but tasteful pop that every Nick Lowe, Graham Parker and Brinsley Schwarz fan would desire. "Back On Love" comes from their first album, Seriously Speaking, which unfortunately escaped serious notice from almost everyone.
Every so often, as a teen in the early 80's, I'd purchase a 99-cent cut-out cassette at Woolworth's. It was always like pulling the handle on a slot machine because you never knew what was inside. You just knew that it came up short on expected sales. Which means nothing when it comes to quality.
The Jack Levy designed cover of Fantastic Four's Alvin Stone (The Birth and Death of a Gangster) made me gamble my money on what turned out to be a blaxploitation-inspired concept album from a Detroit soul group that had been around since the early 60's. While the title track probably sounds too much like the Temptations's "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", I actually loved the sound effects and dialogue that come in around the five minute mark.
From Zambia's psychedelic Zam-Rock scene comes Amanaz ( an acronym for "Ask Me About Nice Artists in Zambia"). Their 1975 album, Africa, has been rediscovered and redistributed in recent years. Listening to the release, sung in both Bemba and English, one wonders whether the lesser known strains of the Velvet Underground and Love made it to the mining city of Kitwe by the mid-70's or did the musicians get there on their own using Jimi Hendrix as a starting block?
Magic Show in Times Square, 1975. By Nick DeWolf Chocolate Milk : Action Speaks Louder Than Words [Purchase]
History hasn't been kind to Chocolate Milk, who scored a 1975 Top 20 R and B hit with the funky title track from their RCA debut Action Speaks Louder Than Words. The reason is simple. They came from New Orleans, home of one of the decade's funkiest bands, The Meters. And if you know The Meters, you know New Orleans funk. End of story.
Except it isn't.
In fact, the members of Chocolate Milk became Allen Toussaint's regular studio band, playing on Lee Dorsey's Night People album, Aaron Neville's "Hercules" and on Paul McCartney and Wings's Venus and Mars sessions. Chocolate Milk, along with The Meters, Ernie K-Doe, Lee Dorsey and Professor Longhair, performed at the Venus and Mars wrap party McCartney hosted in March of 1975 aboard the Queen Mary.
The band toured like mad and had a few other hits but eventually broke up, Eric B and Rakim were among the first to sample "Action" on their 1987 platinum album Paid in Full.
In 1974 Good Times actor Jimmie "JJ" Walker came up with the catch phrase "Dynomite!", but it was a show director John Rich who suggested he emphasize the O and make it "Dyn-O-Mite!" The audience howled but show creator Norman Lear thought the line was an "asinine" non sequiter that contributed nothing to the show. Rich held firm telling Walker "Say it with energy! A year from now, people are going to be yelling 'dyn-o-mite' out of cars, on the street, and wherever they see you". The phrase was so big, middle school students were getting magazines called Dynomite and a band called Bazuka eventually hit the Top 10 with a song named after the catch phrase.
1 LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER –•– The Captain and Tennille (4 weeks at #1)
2 THE HUSTLE –•– Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony
3 LISTEN TO WHAT THE MAN SAID –•– Paul McCartney and Wings
4 WILDFIRE –•– Michael Murphy
5 MAGIC –•– Pilot
6 PLEASE MR. PLEASE –•– Olivia Newton-John
7 ONE OF THESE NIGHTS –•– The Eagles
8 SWEARIN’ TO GOD –•– Frankie Valli
9 WHEN WILL I BE LOVED / IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE –•– Linda Ronstadt
10 I’M NOT IN LOVE –•– 10 c.c.
11 ROCKIN’ CHAIR –•– Gwen McCrae
12 LOVE WON’T LET ME WAIT –•– Major Harris
13 THE WAY WE WERE / TRY TO REMEMBER (Medley) –•– Gladys Knight and the Pips
14 MISTY –•– Ray Stevens
15 MIDNIGHT BLUE –•– Melissa Manchester
16 DYNOMITE (Part 1) –•– Bazuka (Tony Camillo’s)
17 WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS –•– War
18 I’M NOT LISA –•– Jessi Colter
19 I’M ON FIRE –•– The Dwight Twilley Band
20 RHINESTONE COWBOY –•– Glen Campbell
On July 11 1975, more than twelve years after he toured the UK with an opening act made up of four Liverpool lads who called themselves The Beatles, Roy Orbison appeared on the BBC for a no frills half hour's worth of his best known hits, "Only the Lonely", "Crying", "Penny Arcade" ( a 1969 #1 hit in Australia), "Blue Bayou", "Running Scared", "Candy Man", "In Dreams", "Mean Woman Blues", "It's Over" and of course "Oh Pretty Woman".
1. On full page ads that ran in both Billboard and Rolling Stone magazines, Warner/Reprise's marketing team misidentified the newcomers to Fleetwood Mac, assuming the woman must be Lindsey Buckingham and the man Stevie Nicks.
2. Perhaps not realizing what they on their hands, the label released Christine McVie's "Warm Ways" as the first single in the UK. It did not chart. While this would have been a potential single on any of the past five albums released by Fleetwood Mac, the new album also had McVie's eventual US#20 hit "Over My Head", Nicks' US#11 hit "Rhiannon", McVie's US#11 "Say You Love Me" and the timeless "Landslide", a live version of which was released in 1988 as a single.
3. After Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in 1974, Mick Fleetwood needed to find a new guitarist. Sound City Studios producer Keith Olsen played Fleetwood a new album he'd produced called Buckingham Nicks. Fleetwood offered Buckingham a role in the band but Buckingham refused unless his romantic and musical parter, Stevie Nicks, could also join. Fleetwood relented and three months later, with Keith Olsen co-producing, they gathered in a studio to record Fleetwood Mac.
4. The band constantly toured, winning over audiences that had come to hear "The Green Manalishi" and "Albatross". Fifteen months after its release, the eponymous Fleetwood Mac topped the Billboard album charts. An amazing accomplishment, considering no previous album had charted higher than #34 in the US and that just a year earlier, a fake Fleetwood Mac, made up of musicians hired by band manager Clifford Davis, had toured the US.
5. That same tour and success brought out tensions that resulted in the end of bassist John and Christine McVie's marriage as well as Buckingham and Nicks' relationship. Fleetwood's marriage had also broken apart. Drugs, money and alcohol added fuel to the fire. But rather than breaking up for good, Fleetwood Mac responded with Rumours, the 1977 album that would sell 40 million copies worldwide. That's eight times the sales figure of the eponymous 1975 album.
Brooke Shields. Photo by Theo Westenberger, 1975 Be Bop Deluxe : Maid in Heaven [Purchase]
Unsatisfied with Be Bop Deluxe's debut album, Axe Victim, guitar hero Bill Nelson completely exchanged his back up musicians with two members of Cockney Rebel and drummer Simon Fox. Roy Thomas Baker was brought on board to produce Futurama, released in July of 1975. Nelson's shimmering guitar and double tracked vocals are again the highlights of this art rock/ post glam work. Two songs stand out: the UK#36 single "Maid in Heaven" and the heavy-riffing "Sister Seagull" which ends with Nelson's guitar mimicking the cries of the sea bird.
Dig the Miami Sound inspired summertime groove from the artist who would, later in 1975, release the oft-sampled bedroom sizzler " I Want' A Do Something Freaky To You". In the meantime, enjoy the subtle steel drums and the not so subtle lyrics.
"As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless."
~Lester Bangs
Released in July of 1975, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music consists of four sides of ear-splitting guitar feedback. Was it a joke? A fuck you to everyone? The result of some kind of record company dispute? Or Lou Reed's response to getting caught up in the "star maker machinery behind the popular song"?
I think we'll go with the "fuck you".
Reed himself said:
It was a giant fuck you. I put out Metal Machine Music out to clear the air and get rid of all the fucking assholes who show up at the gigs and yell for "Vicious" and "Walk on the Wild Side".
Despite all the intellectual suggestions that the album anticipated industrial music, noise rock, and the punk attitude ( Creem Magazine readers voted Lou "Punk of theYear" in 1975) MMM is unlistenable. Still, thanks probably to its awesome cover and curiosity, it sold 100,000 copies. Reed was unapologetic.
I don't care of they paid $59.98 or $75 for it, they should be grateful I put the fucking thing out and, if they don't like it, they should go eat rat-shit.
The album nearly ended Lou Reed's career. But a year later, Coney Island Baby was climbing the charts and Metal Machine Music was becoming a collector's item. A quadrophonic copy of the album is currently on EBay priced at $129.98.
In a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, Reed said I shouldn't be here, man, not after Metal Machine Music. Nobody is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive.
Released on July 6, 1975, side one of the self titled, triple-platinum KC and the Sunshine Band album is a juggernaut, containing "Get Down Tonight" and "That's the Way ( I Like It)", two songs that, in succession, topped both the Pop and R and B charts. This is the only time, post Elvis, that any white led band has accomplished that feat. A deep cut, "Boogie Shoes", also on Side One, went to #35 in 1977 when it appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which sold more than 15 million copies .
Harry Wayne "KC" Casey and Richard Finch worked in the TK Records warehouse so they could have access to the studio. Neither could read or write music. But KC grew up singing in church and Finch was a self taught drummer and recording engineer. Together they would produce infectious, some say "bubble headed" pop for themselves and others, including "Rock Your Baby", a 1974 #1 hit for George McRae. Until The Bee Gees swiped the title, KC and the Sunshine Band would be the undisputed kings of disco. No, their lyrics didn't say a lot but their enthusiasm was infectious.
In December of 1981, Haircut One Hundred frontman Nick Heyward gave Smash Hits a fairly poppy list of his Top 10 fave songs ( which included the entire Talking Heads debut album). What's striking is that the UK#3/US Top 40 hit"Love Plus One" combines the ear worm catchiness of The Sixties best pop, with the quirkiness of early Talking Heads and the addition of vibes a la Gary Burton. ( Although, come to think of it, the Heads used vibes on "First Week/Last Week...Carefree") . This list comes via Brian at Like Punk Never Happened. His hair is immaculate.
