Those We Missed: March, 1976

  On March 31, 1976 Led Zeppelin released Presence, the album the band recorded instead of going on tour thanks to the injuries Robert Plant suffered in a car accident. The word that best describes the album is "turgid". 

  Rather than waste a lot of space on this album, let's look at some other records we missed from March of 1976, including three live blockbusters.

Robin Trower : Daydream

[Purchase]

   March of 1976 saw the release of the year's best live album. Robin Trower leads a trio through a set recorded in Stockholm a year earlier. Trower fans rate this above all his studio efforts, even Bridge of Sighs. Magnificent! 

Joe Walsh : Walk Away

[Purchase]

Joe Walsh recorded this 34 -minute live career retrospective just months before joining the Eagles.

Johnny Winter : It's All Over Now

[Purchase]

   When our college radio station took requests for a fundraising three day marathon, the old timers would pledge $10 to hear classic numbers like this one. Winter changes at least one line in this Bobby Womack crisis to celebrate the joys of oral sex. You need to hear Captured, Johnny Winter's third live album, in one sitting for the full effect. Raucous! 

Eddie and the Hot Rods : Writing on the Wall

[Purchase]

  Among the hardest rocking of the UK pub scene-sters, Eddie and the Hot Rods would have a break out year in 1976, winning the NME poll for 1976's most promising band. It's all anticipated by this March 1976 single featuring the hard blowing harmonica sounds of Lew Lewis. The single would appear on the forthcoming Teenage Depression.

Michael McDonald's quest for world supremacy began here when he took over lead vocalist and some songwriting duties for Doobie Brother Tom Johnston.

  On Amigos, much to everyone's relief --and by everyone I mean primarily CBS Records executives, Carlos Santana finally seemed to tire of his jazz fusion adventures and returned to the latin influenced rock that made fans of millions. The result: Santana's first Top 10 album in four years. 

Doctors of Madness : Mainlines

[Purchase]

A sixteen minute Glam Rock epic may have been a year or two behind its time, and 14 minutes too long for the punk rock explosion to come. But people swear on the third or fourth hearing you'll come to realize it's a masterpiece.

40 Year Itch: Can't Get Enough of the Boogie Blues

[Purchase]

Humble Pie's follow-up to its big 1972 Top Ten hit Smokin' is Eat It, a jam packed double LP with the kind of bluesy boogie that record buyers were apparently craving in the early 70's. Eat It's sides are broken up into four distinctive acts. Side 1 is original rock n roll, relying heavily on The Blackberries, the female back up singers. Side 2 is all R and B covers. The short, mostly acoustic Side 3 is the most listenable 40 years later ( and includes "Say No More") Side 4 is more live tracks that pale in comparison to Humble Pie's Performance: Rockin' The Fillmore  album. You can hear Marriot's enormous talent and the tortured soul that was consumed by drugs and alcohol before dying in a house fire at the age of 44.

 

[Purchase]

Still Alive And Well marks a comeback for the talented blues guitarist Johnny Winter who lost his momentum in the years preceding to a heroin addiction. The album catches fire from the start with the blues cover "Rock Me Baby". There are two Rolling Stones covers, "Let It Bleed" and "Silver Train" which had yet to appear on the Stones '73 album Goats Head Soup. Even classic rock stations don't play this kind of music anymore but Still Alive and Well made a whole bunch of "Best of"  lists at the end of 1973.

 


{Out of Print}

Blues loving California rockers Canned Heat had survived the death of Alan Wilson ( who sang the band's two most famous songs "Going Up The Country" and "On The Road Again") and recorded The New Age, their seventh album. Lester Bangs got fired from Rolling Stone for his sarcastic review of the album:

Most of...the songs are just  some kind of nondescript clinkletybonk tibia-rattling in pursuit of yeehah countryisms so let 'em  dry rot in the grooves.Buy this album if you've gotta lotta money or don't care much what you blow your wad on, but don't pass up any of the really cosmic stuff like the Stooges for it or the shadow of Blind Lemon Jefferson will come and blow his nose on your brow every night.

 

[Purchase]

Made up of three former Savoy Browners and Rod Price, a graduate of Black Cat Bone, Foghat returns with a second album of blues-tinged boogie rock known by fans as Rock And Roll because of the cover art. ( Get it?) They spent most of '73 touring with Johnny Winter. The CD doesn't sound as though it has been remastered.