40 Year Itch: Fist Strike

On January 29, 1974 Can recorded a 14 and a half minute instrumental version of  "Tony Wanna Go" in a session for BBC 1 Radio DJ John Peel. The experimental German rock band was still reeling from the loss of vocalist Damo Suzuki who had recently married a German girl , become a Jehovah's Witness and quit music until 1983.

Can bassist Holger Czukay summarizes the band's reaction to its new line-up:

   For the rest of the group it was the feeling of a powerful fist strike into one's stomach. We tried out many other singers,but nobody suited to us anymore. So guitarist Michael Karoli and space organist Irmin Schmidt and sometimes me filled the gap. SOON OVER BABALUMA(Released in November, 1974) was the last album which was recorded straight onto stereo without a multi-tracking machine. An era came to an end..

40 Year Itch : Spot the Starman

[Purchase]


On January 22,1974  Cockney Rebel previewed songs from the forthcoming album , The Psychomondo, in a Peel Session recorded for BBC Radio 1 which was broadcast later in June. The band had not broken though on their superb 1973 debut, The Human Menagerie, but rather than get more accessible, Steve Harley and his band just got stranger. The result: a Top Ten album in the UK.

The tracks below are:
1. Bed in the Corner/ Sling It at ( :07)
2. Mr Soft ( at 6:15)
3. Sweet Dreams/ Psychomondo ( at 9:30)

40 Year Itch: Happy Xmas from the Pudgy Pop Star

    It has become one of the most legendary of the Peel Sessions. On December 18, 1973  Elton John, a serious artist reaching his peak of popularity, performs some rinky tinky pub style piano medleys surrounded by producers and managers drinking ales. He knocks out a Christmas medley first. Then a Dylan medley which is followed by one of classic pub tunes. Before the hour is up, Elton is impersonating the queen and launching boozy assaults on his own hits "Daniel" ( UK#4, 1973) and "Your Song" (UK#7,1971) while the small but clearly inebriated crowd sings along. 

If the whole thing seems rather out of the Christmas spirit well that may be because Peel didn't actually give a toss about Christmas, as he disclosed on his show in 1987:

 "I've been feeling sort of mildly fed up this evening, what with one thing and another. It's that kind of pre-Christmas 'triste'. Shopping was the main reason for it. I spent about five hours shopping this afternoon, achieved nothing, and you go round thinking, "Why am I doing this? Why am I feeling kind of social pressure to go round looking for stuff that people don't want, to give them on this particular day? Why not wait until they do want something and give it to them then?" Of course, quite clearly, this is not the way things go."