40 Year Itch Long Live Rock 1972 ( Part 1 )

In this era of 140 character Twitter messages, on-demand television and internet porn, it may be hard to believe people used to sit back in chairs, pop a beer can and listen to an entire albums filled with nothing but long-haired musicians jamming live to appreciative crowds. The live "Head Album", so called because in addition to beer you'd probably be feeding your head, probably peaked in 1972.

Here are few notable examples.

                            COSMIC TRAVELERS LIVE AT THE SPRING CRATER FESTIVAL

 Recorded by former Paul Revere and the Raiders guitarist Drake Levin ( who also played on Ananka Shankar's trippy 1970 eponymous album and with Emitt Rhodes)and LA session musicians before a crowd of 55,000, this acid rock ult fave was limited to 1000 copies in 1972. The Gear Fab label is releasing the album on CD in February of 2013. Listen to the entire album below. Turn on the lava lamp and listen to the entire album below.

 

                                     CARLOS SANTANA AND BUDDY MILES!LIVE!


[Purchase]

 Clearly Carlos Santana is doing Buddy Miles a "solid" by appearing on this one time live album recorded in Hawaii. It sold a million copies and even went Top Ten. the album starts off promisingly enough with a cover of John Mclaughlin's "Marbles" and Buddy's "Lava". Then comes a version of "Evil Ways" that starts off groovy before jazz saxophonist Hadley Caliman begins blowing weird atonal notes halfway in. There's also a sidelong jam called "Free Form Funkafide Filth" that goes nowhere and then , 17 minutes in, has the musical balls to pull of a "false ending" before going for seven minutes more. Can't imagine listening to this one all the way through more than once.

 

FRUMPY LIVE

[Purchase a used copy for $389]

Popular German prog rockers Frumpy, led by the mesmerizing vocalist Inga Rumpf, recorded a double live album of soulful hard rock with some of the best organ playing this side of Deep Purple. Unfortunately Frumpy Live came out after the band had broken up. After the break-up three members of the band, including Inga,  formed Atlantis which eventually supported both Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd on tour. Despite limited US success, Inga is still gigging around German. Heil Inga!

 

                                            JOHN MAYALL JAZZ BLUES FUSION


[Purchase for $5.99]

Well, Dean of all Rock Critics Robert Christgau wasn't impressed. "Old blues guys plus old jazz guys? I always though fusion was something new" he wrote in his C- review. No, it's not really something new. But Brit John Mayall cooks on his harmonica and interweaves solos with Stanley Turrentine's favorite trumpeter Blue Mitchell and sax player Clifford Solomon while Freddy Robinson lays clean jazz-blues lines. No wonder for some Mayall fans, this one stands out as the favorite.


 

TOMORROW: Live albums from rock and soul acts like Donny Hathaway, Slade, The Band  and Shocking Blue

40 Year Itch : The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival

Is this the rock fest that killed the Woodstock nation?

 The Erie Canal Soda Pop fest on Indiana's Bull Island certainly drew a huge crowd -- an estimated 200,00 hippies who came from all over the country Labor Day Weekend of 1972 to see Santana, Foghat, Canned Heat , Black Sabbath, the Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Cocker and Nazareth.

 That's not who showed up though.

 Black Sabbath was a no show. So were the Allman Brothers. Nobody saw Fleetwood Mac. When Joe Cocker saw the crowd he reportedly asked for more money and left when organizers turned him down.

 The traffic was a nightmare.

So were the drugs. Somebody was selling bleach. Two people died. And it rained.

 One very entertaining blogger who claims to have been there writes:

 If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would swear that the festival was a set-up, a sort of psyops to put an end to the ideal of the Woodstock nation. If it wasn't, then it was the biggest f**k up in the history of rock festival promotions.