40 Year Itch : The Riddles of the Ages

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   Why are we so willing to shelf our intellect if it means we can jump on political --or even sports--bandwagons? That's the question Gil Scott-Heron asks on this groovy track from 1975's The First Minute of a New Day. Dig it!

40 Year Itch: Christmas Time is Here Again!

  To celebrate Christmas, here's a gift of ten of my favorite songs from 1974.

                           Happy Holidays!

                                     (zipped folder) download

40 Year Itch : Watergate Blues

   Popular culture does not exist in a vacuum. But the Top 40 of early August, 1974 was hardly a reflection of the turbulent week that saw both the release of  "The Smoking Gun Tape" which finally convinced even his most die-hard supporters that Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy to halt the FBI's investigation into Watergate, and three days later, the only resignation of a US President. 

  Maybe we were all just exhausted and need a break from reality. 

  So the Top 40 was filled with cheesy declarations of love and desire, a couple of  pop tunes that dabbled in sound effects... and Steely Dan.

1. John Denver "Annie's Song"

2  Elton John "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"

3  Roberta Flack "Feel Like Makin Love"

4 Steely Dan "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"

5 Paper Lace "The Night Chicago Died"

6 The Hollies "The Air That I Breathe"

7 The Righteous Brothers "Rock and Roll Heaven"

8 Dave Loggins "Please Come to Boston"

9 Chicago "Call On Me"

10  Blue Magic "Side Show"

In fact you have to go all the way down to #72 to hear the line "Watergate does not bother me" from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama". And then to #93 for a new entry from Stevie Wonder called " You Haven't Done Nothin'" in which Wonder sings directly to Nixon:

It's not too cool to be ridiculed
 But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else

As I said, you have to dig a little deeper. With that in mind here are a few more responses to Watergate:

                               

40 Year Itch: Winter is Coming...

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   Three years after "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and one year after The Intruders made his "Save the Children" the title track of a #12 R and B album, the "Godfather of rap" ,Gil Scott Heron, teamed up with jazz keyboardist Brian Jackson on Winter In America. Among the results: the R and B radio hit "The Bottle"--one of those classic feel good Summer grooves that is actually a despairing lament about the effects of alcoholism in the black community. "H20 Gate Blues" is the kind of rant today's talking heads of cable news can only wish they could come up with. Heron may not convince you he's a singer, but his message and his sense of purpose would lead the way for socio-political rappers to come.

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Curtis Mayfield had to dig into the back catalog to find enough songs to fill out Sweet Exorcist, his sixth solo album. "To Be Invisible" comes from the Claudine soundtrack while "Power to the People" and "Suffer" date back to his 1970 solo debut. Two of the originals reference two obvious 1973-74 trends : Kung Fu and The Exorcist. But even middling Mayfield is refreshing compared to what's coming over the radio these days.

#29 Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson "The Bottle" 1974

Often called "The Godfather of Rap", Gil Scott-Heron had a razor sharp eye always on the look out for injustices laid upon America's black community. Word came late today that he passed away at age 62. The man was" righteous" in every definition of the word.
He will be remembered by the masses for "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" but his catalog is worth digging into more deeply.

"The Bottle", from an album he did with keyboardist and flute player Brian Jackson, takes on the rampant alcoholism that has plagued black communities for generation after generation. Scott-Heron himself battled drug addiction. "The Bottle" is just one of the great numbers from the 1974 album Winter In America.