40 Year Itch : Those We Missed December '73

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Big ass riffs and stadium-quality power chords made Bachman Turner Overdrive's second album one of the biggest of 1974. It ain't anywhere near as sophisticated as what Bachman had pulled off with The Guess Who, but with hits "Let It Ride" and  "Takin' Care of Business", BTO found the formula to success.

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Producer Andrew Loog Oldham told reporters "If you hated Cosmic Wheels, you'll love this one." Whereas the former was Donovan's entry into the Glam Rock fashion styles, Essence to Essence is a quiter more spiritual album with Donovan whispering cosmic lyrics over acoustic guitars.

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By most accounts recorded on acid in a French castle, Gong's follow up to Flying Teapot

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Live Dates is a double live album featuring the double lead guitar attack of Andy Powell and Ted Turner. It should make fans of Wishbone Ash's masterpiece, Argus, happy. Turner would leave after this album and many fans would follwo his example.

40 Year Itch : Those We Missed from March 1973

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"The Kiss" may the most beautiful song released in 1973. It's from singer/songwriter Judee Sill's second album Heart Food, one of Sufjan Stevens's picks for a 2006 Spin Magazine article asking musicians about the music that changed their lives:

                The more you listen to her songs, the more you realize all the weird stuff going on.
                 She was really into baroque music, or at least had those sensibilities. When I started
                 writing songs, I started looking into people like her, trying to figure out what kind
                 of an environment they were writing in.



  Sill's life was full of tragedy. Everyone she loved died young. She got hooked on heroin and died in 1979.
                                         

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  After a two year hiatus, Scottish troubadour Donovan returned with Cosmic Wheels,  a very mixed batch of songs. You could always hear just a trace of Donovan in the music of T.Rex. Now it's the other way around. Especially on the worthy title track. But there's crap here too. The worst of it is "Intergalactic Laxative":


If shitting is your problem
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative
 Will get you from here to Mars.




While recording Cosmic Wheels, Donovan popped in on Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies session and sang on the title track. While Billion Dollar Babies hit #1 in the US, Cosmic Wheels would be the last Donovan album to reach the top 20.

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Former Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent and his band followed up their massive hit "Hold Your Head Up" with an album full of dull prog rock. The exception is the nearly seven minute opening track , which Kiss covered in 1991 for the soundtrack to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.




The reissued In Deep comes with "Hold Your Head Up" so there's that in its favor.

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Jeff Beck teams up with former Vanilla Fudge/Cactus members Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice for a power trio album.  You can argue that on 1968's Truth, Jeff Beck created the hard rock sound that made Led Zeppelin so famous. Maybe this was his effort at reclaiming the glory. But even the best stuff ( "Sweet Sweet Surrender", "Black Cat Moan") now sounds like some kind of 70's rock cliche.



  Stevie Wonder gave Beck "Superstition"( also featured on this album) and only decided later that he would record his own version. Which one do you know?

40 Year Itch: Donovan's Intimate Performance

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On November 2, 1972, the BBC2 aired Donovan: An Intimate Performance featuring the singer. Sitting on a carpeted platform with two guitars and a harmonica, Donovan intimately performed:
01. Jennifer Juniper
02. There Is A Mountain
03. Catch The Wind
04. The Ordinary Family
05. Lovely Princess
06. People Call Me The Pied Piper
07. A Well Known Has-Been
08. Happiness Runs
09. Colours
10. Sailing Homeward
11. Cosmic Wheels/Maria Magenta
12. The Pee Song
13. Mellow Yellow

"The Pee Song", heard above, came from 1971's H.M.S. Donovan, his second album for children.
By the time the show aired this August 1972 performance, it had been nearly four years since Donovan had a Top 20 hit single in the UK.

Six Degrees of Separation: Nick Drake to Donovan

1. In 1970, for his album Bryter Layter, Nick Drake records "Poor Boy" which features backing vocals by UK hitmaker P.P.Arnold.

2. P.P. Arnold also provides the backing vocals on the Small Faces 1967 hit "Tin Soldier", written and sung by Steve Marriott. (Marriott originally wrote it for P.P. Arnold to record but changed his mind.)





3.A 16 year old Steve Marriott--who played the Artful Dodger in the 1960 London stage production of "Oliver!"-- plays the drummer in the 1963 film "Live It Up!". The singer is Heinz Burt. The guitar player is David Hemmings.



4. In the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film "Blow Up" Hemmings sees a Yardbirds gig. While Jeff Beck is having all kinds of problems with his guitar, Jimmy Page is chilling on stage. (There's a cleaner version of this scene here .)

5. In his session musician days Page plays guitar on this rockin 1967 cut by singer Dana Gillespie.The song is written by Donovan.

6. There is no evidence Dana Gillespie inspired Donovan's song "Superlungs (My Supergirl) " for his 1969 album, Barabajagal. But one can see how one might make the mistake