The Widow Of A Wild Cat

Metro : Criminal World

[Purchase]

Here's a real treat for you! On April 17, 1977 the UK band Metro made its television debut by performing one of the year's most memorable singles, "Criminal World",  on the German program Hits A GoGo. Metro was made up of Peter Godwin (who is very engaging on his Facebook page), Sean Lyons and Duncan Browne, whose "My Old Friends" was one of my favorite discoveries a few years back when I was immersed in the music of 1973.

The song has a dark mysterious sexual air around it and sounds at least five years ahead of its time. Godwin said the lyrics (the boys are like baby faced girls/ the girls are like baby faced boys) are a satire of David Bowie's gender bending songs. Bowie did an upbeat cover of the song on 1983's Nile Rodgers produced Let's Dance. As for the look, Godwin says it was inspired by the 1970 French movie "Borsalino" with Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

A still from Borsalino 

   Here's what I wrote a few years ago about Browne's album.

With gorgeous melodies from the classically trained guitarist, Duncan Browne features the 1972 UK #23 hit "Journey". Love Nick Drake but want something less dour for your Sunday mornings? Try this fetching collection. One of 1973's gems.

40 Year Itch: Cult Classics from 1973

[Purchase]

   With gorgeous melodies from the classically trained guitarist, Duncan Browne features the 1972 UK #23 hit "Journey". Love Nick Drake but want something less dour for your Sunday mornings? Try this fetching collection. One of 1973's gems.

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Recorded just days before serving a 13 month prison term for selling marijuana, the 3000 copies of Gary Higgins's Red Hash became a collectors item selling for hundred of dollars. Now Drag City has re-released the album. Mellow and trippy but never dopey.

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"My first four albums have been, for me, an apprenticeship. The new album.....is my thesis".- Al Stewart

    For his fifth album, recorded just three years before Year of the Cat made him a worldwide star, storytelling Al Stewart made this concept album in which each song is a portrait of a decade. There's a tune about President Harding and another about Hitler's rise to power. "Roads to Moscow" is sung from the point of view of a Russian soldier fighting in World War 2.

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On the double album Marjory Razorblade, former psychiatric nurse and drug counselor Kevin Coyne sings about - and from the point of view of - characters who exist beyond where the buses run. Not to be neglected!