40 Year Itch: And Running Like A Blue Streak

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With Saint Dominic's Preview, recorded in San Francisco with a band that included former Beau Brummel Ron Elliot, , Van Morrison sounds like he's celebrating the past five years of his solo career. How else to explain the diversity? You have songs that will remind listeners of the jazz explorations and stream of conscious lyrics of Astral Weeks ("Listen To The Lion" and "Almost Independence Day"), the pop hit styling of  Moondance and His Band and Street Choir ("Redwood Tree", "Gypsy") and the kind of jazzy club sounds Van would explore in his middle age (with "I Will Be There"). It was both critically acclaimed and his highest charting album in the US (#15) until 2008's Keep It Simple broke into the Top Ten.

It remains among my favorite Van Morrison albums.

                     Montgomery Chapel, San Francisco Theological Seminary where the cover was shot.

                                  

                                                           outtake shot by Michael Maggid

The lead track "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" shares the exuberance of joyful love like "Brown Eyed Girl", Van's Top Ten hit from 1967. This is a song I recently played for my nine year old daughter after shutting off the Top 40 radio. Here, I explained, everybody is in the same room and they're experiencing this moment of creativity all together and that's something you just won't hear in 90% of the songs you hear on the radio because the producer is in LA and the singer is in NYC and the music track was recorded in England and just as I was about to say they don't make music like this anymore I stopped. Not only because that's what dad's always say when they get old but because Van was scatting "Chop Chop Chop She bop". 

 Anyway, how "Jackie Wilson Said" stalled in the charts somewhere in the 60's is crazy to me. 

The epic 11-minute "Listen To The Lion", actually recorded during the Tupelo Honey sessions, begins like one of the more thoughtful songs from Moondance before it takes its listeners on a meditative musical journey not unlike something on Astral Weeks. Plus, you can always look forward to the moment Van starts growling like a lion. In that way it's almost like the "here comes the Iron Butterfly screeching" moment in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".

 "Redwood Tree", my pick for deep cut, could have come off Moondance. It's just classic Van. As a single this only charted at #98 in the US. Stunning. Here's the demo followed by the track.

40 Year Itch: The Spaceball Richochet

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Released in the UK on the same July day as Rod Stewart's Never A Dull Moment, T. Rex's The Slider would be the band's highest charting album in the US. It came out at the height of "T. Rex-tacy" as Rolling Stone put it.

In the UK the band had four straight #1 singles. Everybody loved Marc Bolan, the pint sized glam rocker with the curly hair. Both boys and girls. Bowie wrote "Lady Stardust" about him . Ringo Starr was following him around with a camera.  Produced by Tony Visconti, Marc Bolan  recorded most of The Slider at the honky chateau, Château d'Hérouville, on the advice of Elton John.

Bolan called "Metal Guru", one of two UK#1 singles from the album,  a festival of life song:

"I relate 'Metal Guru' to all Gods around. I believe in a God, but I have no religion. With 'Metal Guru', it's like someone special, it must be a Godhead. I thought how God would be, he'd be all alone without a telephone. I don't answer the phone any more. I have codes where people ring me at certain times."



 
The other #1 song from The Slider, "Telegram Sam" recycles the "Get It On ( Bang a Gong)" arrangement and introduces the world to the phrase "main man". In the UK it sold 200,000 copies in four days. Neither single did much in the US but The Slider outsold its predecessor Electric Warrior. It's a tighter album. Full of rowdy riffs.

Rolling Stone called the album "a true phenomenon". Even when you dig deep, you're getting catchy tunes.
Here's Bolan and the boys playing "Buick Mackane"




 Ringo Starr ( who is credited with shooting the album cover) shot the following moment for his T Rex documentary "Born to Boogie" when Marc and Elton jammed at Apple Studios on "Children of the Revolution".

Although that single was released in 1972 it was not on the album.

 

 Bolan has just five more years to live before an auto accident. How did he feel in the middle of the T Rex hurricane in the Summer of '72? Perhaps the following lyrics from "Spaceball Richochet" offer a clue:

 How can I lay/
When all I do is play/
The Spaceball Ricochet.

40 Year Itch: Madame Onassis Got Nothing On You

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                         Never gonna own a race horse 
                       Or a fast-back mid-engine Porsche

It may have been the most magical record release day of 1972. Both The Slider, T. Rex's seventh album, and Never a Dull Moment, Rod Stewart's fourth solo album, came out July 21, 1972. Rod Stewart won the week. His album went to #1 in the UK. The Slider (which I will write about tomorrow) only hit #4. Never a Dull Moment also won the NME Pop poll for best album of 1972.

Never a Dull Moment does have some great tunes but I can't help thinking Stewart is trying to recreate his classic #1 album Every Picture Tells A Story. For both albums he had The Faces back him up so the arrangements and even the songs sound familiar. Really familiar. Every Picture Tells A Story has a Temptations cover "(I Know) I'm Losing You". Never A Dull Moment has a Sam Cooke cover ("Twisting The Night Away"). Every Picture Tells A Story's Bob Dylan cover is "Tomorrow Is A Long Time". Dull Moment's is "Mama You Been On My Mind"."Italian Girls" has the same drum fills as the title cut of "Every Picture Tells A Story" and relates another MILF done him wrong story.

 The "Maggie May" of Never a Dull Moment, the  UK#1 "You Wear It Well",  shares the same arrangement and most of the same chords. It also has a short acoustic preamble: "Interludings" (not unlike "Henry's Tune" from EPTAS). By the way there's a live 1977 Rod Stewart show featuring "You Wear It Well" on the terrific ROIO blog. 

Our deep cut is "Los Paraguayos". Rod Stewart needs some of that South American sun but he can't take his teenage lover because he might get thrown in a Mexican jail.

Both Bob Christgau and Rolling Stone's Stephen Davis said Never A Dull Moment was the best of Stewart's albums so far :

 Rod Stewart and his merrie men rock on, with the image of a happy-go-lucky tippler-musician managing to spread cheer, style and common sense through miserable times. Never A Dull Moment -- I guess the title is its own best review. 

 The good reviews would not last. After a best of collection, Sing It Again Rod, Stewart released Smiler in 1974. By then critics had caught on to his "MILF adventure, Interlude, Bob Dylan cover, Sam Cooke cover" formula and called him on it.

40 Year Itch: Jefferson Airplane Grounded

What? No mp3?

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By 1972 all the flowers the hippies wore in the hair or handed out to passersby had faded and gone to rot and the band that symbolized for many the flower power of the Haight-Asbury scene had also changed. Marty Balin left Jefferson Airplane after Janis Joplin's death to pursue yoga and healthier living. Drummer Spencer Dryden had been dismissed from the band. Grace Slick had nearly killed herself by crashing her car into the side of a tunnel near the Golden Gate Bridge. Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen had found new life as Hot Tuna. Drug use and alcoholism ran rampant. It was time to "ground" Jefferson Airplane for good.

In April of 1972 Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Joey Covington, and Papa John Creach all returned to the studio for one last album. Drummer Covington would leave during the session and be replaced by former Turtle John Barbata.




It's a better album than you might think. Rolling Stone's Lester Bangs called it "one churning vat of fury after another".He goes on to say "Some essential spark is gone, and what remains is a rote scream. But it is the most furious muzak available, and if you're really stoned it might even seem as good as the old days."

 The most remarkable thing about the album may have been its cover.which featured a "stash box" promoting "9 Fine Blends of Fragrant Weed".The inner sleeve was made up of cigars.

Jefferson Airplane performed their last concert in September of 1972 at the Winterland in San Francisco. Jefferson Starship would launch in 1974 but would never receive the same kind of acclaim.

This Man Wants To Kill Your Music Blog

            “This could put the genie back in the bottle.”
                                                          -Vance Ikezoye, CEO Audible Magic


     Vance Ikezoye is a very smart man and he's well on his way to being a very rich man -- at the expense of people who illegally put entire movies, television shows and albums online for free download as well as those of us who briefly share single songs with the hope of giving recognition to new and old recordings that would otherwise never see the light of day.

   There's no grey area. There's no "fair use" clause. No more excuses.

    We're all pirates now. And we're about to walk the plank.

   The CEO of Audible Magic has come up with a new weapon, content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material by both its audio and visual fingerprint.

  This week Audible Magic teamed up with MediaFire to prevent unauthorized sharing of video and music clips.

   In a press release released Tuesday July 17th, MediaFire co-founder Tom Langridge said in a statement that reads like it's been vetted by a dozen attorneys.

  "We have a commitment to providing secure, simple, cloud storage, backup, and collaboration services to our customers. Employing Audible Magic's best-of-class content identification technology allows us to continue to innovate while ensuring that we are going above and beyond the requirements of the law in order to better assist copyright holders in enforcing their copyright."

    Winter is coming for those who write mp3 music blogs and post songs without permission. MediaFire is most likely just the first major file sharing company to join hands with Ikezoye. 

   Well, we still have YouTube.

    Maybe.

    Actually there's been a great deal of pressure on YouTube to use some kind of filtering system to eliminate copyrighted material as well. That could mean deleting not just clips of TV shows posted without permission but clips featuring songs. The technology to automatically delete copyrighted YouTube files isn't quite ready yet but it will be soon.

And when the day comes when you can't hear the songs we're so excited about what is the point of a music blog? And how long before there's software that will make it impossible to post pictures or quote passages from articles, books or poetry?

   The genie may be going back into the bottle but so will a lot of the magic of the Internet Age.

   photo and Ikezoye quote are from The New York Times

Dreamin' Wild : The Emerson Brothers

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Big dreams can begin anywhere. Even in small farm towns like Fruitland, Washington. It was here in the 70's that two brothers, Donnie and Joe Emerson, would daydream through their after school chores in the fields. They'd hurry each other up so they could get into a 16 track recording studio their father Don Emerson Sr built for them.

" I'm dreaming basically of thousands of people hearing what we were creating. My mind was open to all kinds of things." Donnie remembers.

"I could see they had talent. " Don tells me. We're sitting in lawn chairs outside the log wood studio not far from a two-lane highway that leads through an indian reservation, over a lake and eventually to an interstate exit about 60 miles from Spokane. Don relives a conversation he had with his teenage sons 35 years ago.

I said "Well, what do you want to do?"
I says "Do you want to milk cows or something?
That's the only thing you can make money at today"
They said "We don't want to milk cows. We want to play music."
"Ok" I says.

Donnie and Joe walk into the studio with their dad. There's olive green carpet on the floor and ketchup red carpeting on the walls. In the corner sits a pile of instruments including an old moog synthesizer.

"Oh gosh Joe, " Donnie says. " I see us right now playing together in here."

"And you correcting me on my drumming." Joe adds.

Don Sr had purchased his sons the best instruments for the studio. In all, it was about a $100-thousand investment. And this was the 1970's. Then he took out a second mortgage to turn the old dairy barn into a concert venue.

"It's a vision that my dad saw --that it would be cool for all of us to enjoy together and share with other people," Donnie says.

I tell Don Sr. I didn't know of a lot of parents who would go to such lengths to support their kids's dreams.

"Oh no." Don laughs. " I don't think they would either. Personally, they probably thought I was crazy. Honestly. "





When the self-pressed album Dreamin' Wild came out in 1979,  Donnie talked Spokane's PM Magazine into coming out to the farm. There in front of the cameras, the boys showed off their skills on tractors and hauling pipes.  Joe said of his dad:"He's been supporting us you know. He's been putting his money out for us and someday it will pay off and we'll be providing for him."

It didn't work out that way. Not even the brothers' classmates bought copies of the album. Thousands wound up in cardboard boxes sitting in a closet. Don Senior doesn't like to talk about how much money he lost on the dream but the Emerson farm, once 1600 acres of fields and timber stretching far off into the distance is today just 65 acres.

"It's just the way life goes," Don says.

His son Donnie feels like he had a role in losing in the farm.

"To say I don't miss the farm and I don't mind losing it, I would be lying to you. Cuz it was a gift to be on this farm."

In most cases this is where the story would end. As a cautionary tale about reality's way of destroying a million dreams for every one that comes true. Except this story --like an album--has a Side Two. And it's all thanks to that cheesy album cover.

"I wish I still looked like that." Donnie says holding the record.

"What are you talking about?" says balding Joe. "I wish I looked like THAT!"

In 2008 an amused record collector named Jack Fleischer bought a sealed copy of Dreamin' Wild in a Spokane antique store for $5. He uploaded the song "Baby' on his music blog and word began to spread. Within years Dreamin' Wild had become a cult classic.

Today when Joe listens to the album he says he gets a sense of amazement.

"It's like wow I see it now as little genius. He's a little genius. Not just because he's my little brother but there is a sense of genius happening."

Donnie doesn't take all the credit.

"I think I was definitely a conduit in a sense. Cuz I never worked at it .They just kinda came to me . I mean songs just came like it was nuthin' to me."

Donnie stills play some of the songs in a band with his wife. They perform regular gigs at the Red Lion in Spokane. The brothers jammed on an upbeat version of "Baby" in front of me.



Light In The Attic records has now re-released Dreamin' Wild and Joe hopes the record is well received and sells. Maybe the boys can take care of their old man like they promised more than 30 years ago. Not that Donnie Sr expects to ever get paid back for what he sees as a father's duty.

"You can have all the money you want but if you don't help your kids out, it's all in vain. You have nothing to pass on." He says.

Any regrets at all I ask?

 "None whatsoever." Don Senior says. " I would do it again. It's been a lovely life."

The Birth Of 10cc

L to R: Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, Graham Gouldman, Lol Creme

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In July of 1972 British entrepreneur and recording artist Jonathan King signed songwriter extraordinaire Graham Gouldman and his friends former Mindbender Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley to a long sought after record deal. The four mates had been recording together for three years,  playing mostly bubblegum tunes for Kasentz-Katz under a variety of assumed names. As the Ohio Express ( yes, impersonating the same "band" that recorded "Yummy, Yummy,Yummy"), they recorded the Billboard charting "Sausalito" in 1969 with Graham singing lead.

 

As Hotlegs, they had a #2 UK hit in 1970 called "Neaderthal Man" and released an album called Hotlegs Thinks School Stinks.

The album contains moments of stunning beauty like "All God's Children".

 

 In 1970 they recorded "Umbopo" as Doctor Father. Among other names they recorded as : Crazy Elephant, Silver Fleet, Fighter Squadron and Festival.

Obviously the band knew they could write hit songs. Gouldman had written "For Your Love" (The Yardbirds) "Bus Stop", "Look Through Any Window" (both by The Hollies) and "No Milk Today" (Herman's Hermits). And yet they found themselves backing other musicians. They played on two Neil Sedaka albums including The Tra La La Days Are Over which featured a little song called "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Little Brother".

According to Eric Stewart a momentous decision was made where all momentous decisions are made--at a chinese restaurant:

 "We asked ourselves whether we shouldn't pool our creative talents and try to do something with the songs that each of us was working on at the time."

 In early '72, the band cut "Waterfall" and presented it to Apple Records who turned it down. Not commercial enough. Determined, the band followed it up with the doo-wop inspired "Donna", it's "Oh, Donna" a nod to The Beatles "Oh, Darling".

  "We knew it had something. We only knew of one person who was mad enough to release it, and that was Jonathan King." Stewart recalled. At the time King was a hit making entrepreneur who sold three million copies of "Hooked On a Feeling" before Blue Swede copied the ooga-chakka arrangements for their hit in 1974. King drove over to the studio and heard a hit. He signed the band and dubbed them 10cc. Why 10cc? Though some band members disagree, Gouldman and Creme say 10cc is the average about of semen ejaculated by men.

10cc would go on to great success ( and become one of my favorite bands) especially in the UK where their 1975 single "I'm Not In Love" went #1 (#2 in the US blocked from #1 in three successive weeks by Van McCoy's "The Hustle", The Eagles's "One of These Nights" and Bee Gees's "Jive Talkin'".)