Who does the best version of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ the Bob Dylan song from the 1970s?
Watch for a post on that later this week but you can help by sending me suggestions. There’s of course Dylan’s version and Guns and Roses version which I would start at as reference points. There’s other good competition though.
Regular readers of this blog may miss stories that appeared in AL.com only. And vice versa.
Here’s two stories that didn’t get published here. I received good feedback from the one about Lennon and mixed response from ‘bloody fable.’
I’m coming up on some time off but keep looking a i will continue to post when needed or inspired.
NP (Now playing Pretenders and Tom Petty as I wade deeply into the P’s. I also have found a couple of stragglers from the N’s and O’s that i need to get up.
Post-punk they call it. Pere Ubu-like. I hear Lou Reed-like vocal word play. There’s a darkness about it that almost dips its toe into Goth, like the Cure did or maybe even as far as Sisters of Mercy.
This is a record I received a year ago for my birthday and since I’ve been listening to my 678 albums in alphabetical order, I haven’t had a chance to listen this more than a few times.
Despite all the references I give above, my first reaction was a relatively obscure Midwestern group called Eleventh Dream Day. Not so much lyrically but the driving jangly guitar which sits very close to the front, along with killer bass, constantly driving the angsty words which sometimes feature the same line over and over and sometimes veer into the Captain Beefheart experimental realm.
The persistent chord-a-matic guitar strums remind me a little of my high school buddy, Paul Hammond RIP, and his work in Time Toy and Little Tigers in the heydey of the Athens, Ga., music scene.
Good stuff. Go for it if you are interested in a punky Lou Reed — hey wait a minute that would be Velvet Underground. No? Yes.
The band reminds at times of Athens, Ga. band Time Toy
ALBUM: Best of New RIders of the Purple Sage ( 1976)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$
With my Southern roots I grew up with country, country rock, folk rock and blues rock. On the west coast there was an equally dedicated group of musicians who played roots music before they called it roots music. That means a song might have banjo, pedal guitar, dobro, mandolin or other acoustical instruments.
They formed groups out there like New Riders of the Purple Sage with members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead. I’ve written before that, probably due to my Southern roots, the Allman brothers were my pick for a jam band, not the Grateful Dead. But in the past couple years I’ve gone from dismissing the Dead to admiring and even enjoying some of their work.
The psychedelic bluegrass rock blend of the Dead can be seen in this Purple Sage record. (This ‘Best of’ culls from seven albums between 1971 and 1976) and includes a nice cover ‘Hello Mary Lou,” the song RIcky Nelson made popular.
There were also in the 1960s and 1970s some cool sounds from that genre by Kalaidoscope, featuring an young banjo prodigy David Lindley, later to play guitar (and other stringed instruments) with Jackson Brown’s band.
The West Coast also had the Byrds, Gram Parsons, Poco, and It’s a Beautiful Day working in the same territory.
Administrative note: I am doing this record now while I’m in the ‘O’s because I missed it in the ‘N’s. That’s going to happen as I go farther toward the end — which will be a thing. I started this with 678 albums and I am below 300 to go. But those 678 have likely grown by 100 over the past two years. Just guessing.
The group on another greatest hits featuring live music has this Stones’ cover:
This as many might know here was the theme song for the Linda Blair head spinning vehicle, The Exorcist, AKA ‘Get the Hell out of Me,” AKA as “Rotation, Rotation, Rotation.”
Sorry, I have to laugh to keep from recalling those horrific scenes when the Devil occupied the body of a young Hollywood actress. No wait, Blair was an actress playing a little girl who was definitely not an actress.
This movie was a cultural phenomenon. People actually had to be carried out of the theater or so the reports go.
If there was nothing else to take away from this movie — and it would be hard to take it away once it starts —and that would be that it brought to the national forefront two words.
Projectile vomiting.
Movie-goers learned from this movie that Linda Blair was fed way too much pea soup. I think if they investigate they may find the vomiting was connected to the head-spinning. You do a few 360s with your noggin and tell me you are not a little queasy.
Blair looked like a full-circle water sprinkler, only with gobs of goo instead of water.
Oh sorry. I made up some of that. But I did that to contrast what was an over-the-top extremely dramatic and tension building movie with the music, which is over-the-top, and extremely dramatic. So, perfect fit.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the movie or the music will be the bigger 1970s cultural touchstone. My bet is on the music.
The music fits the movie. It’s orchestral and symphonic in its sweep, not to mention psychedelic and dark.
Did I mention Oldfield, some kind of prodigy who could play dozens of instruments, created this at the age of 19? Wow. He apparently was in several bands as a young teen and due to family problems stayed in his room practicing guitar for hours on end, according to the well sourced Wikipedia page.
This album I bought used for $5 about a month or so ago after my man Willie Moseley, senior writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, suggested Oldfield as a top, if not the top, guitarist of all time. His suggestion was spurred by my posts about lists of greatest guitarists.
I listened. And Moseley had a point. Besides directing and other duties Oldfield spends a good time on his guitar, snapping, ripping through tubulur gongs of sound. Power chords, fuzzed tones and breakneck soloing are all there. And, what’s important it works with the music.
Good finding this record. True 1973 is a long time ago but I still remember the music played on the radio. That radio single was taken from the intro of the two-sided first album. There were many permutations and re-releases to come as the album sold an astonishing 15 million copies worldwide, including 2.6 million in the UK alone.
The music on head phones reveals repetitive riffs jumping on board one-by-one building to big and small crescendos. I flipped to Part. 2, the second side and ran into some parts that wordlessly disturbed me.
There was more tubulur bell dinging but there were unearthly sounds like phantom wolves howling — and snarls and growls of demons in the darkness as the music rose in volume and smothered the room.
I was having a flashback of Linda Blair squealing like a giant razorback. I pushed the off button, backed slowly, out of the room, and shut the door.
ALBUM: ‘Aerial Ballet’ (1980, reissue of 1968 album)
MVC Rating: 4.0/ $$
Harry Nilsson won a Grammy for Best Contemporary male vocalist for the song ‘Everybody Talking at Me.’ The song by Fred Neil is a strong Top 40 ballad used in the controversial (at that time) movie ‘Midnight Cowboy.’
The song feels a little like something Glenn Campbell or Joe South might have done. The other highlight, a song Nilsson wrote, is ‘One.’ I feel like I’m the only one who likes prefers the Three Dog Nights’ version.
Nilsson had a strong voice and was a good songwriter. One also might expect he would be a little more well known. After all this is the man who gave us that classic ‘Coconut’ remedy (Put the lime in the coconut drink it all up — Not on this album.)
I think Nilsson also did the definitive version of ‘Without You,’ the Bad finger song.
A few songs have Beatlesque overtones. Nilsson was a drinking buddy of John Lennon when Lennon temporarily broke up with Yoko Ono. They were wild then.
A live album from 1977 by power popsters The Nerves.
ALBUM: The Nerves Live! (Recorded 1977; Released 2009)
MVC Rating: 2.5/$$$$
It’s apropos that I throw this in after describing Northern PIkes, the Canadian band, as sounding like some of the power pop music coming out of So-Cal. Specifically I mentioned the Plimsouls, the Beat and The Nerves. All of whom had some shared members such as Paul Collins and Peter Case.
I rarely buy new vinyl, I’m a bargain hunting sort of collector and I have a hard time paying $25 for a a record. Especially after getting some amazing records in the $1-5 range. It’s a little more work, sure, but that’s part of the fun.
So I splurged when I saw this Nerves record, a record of lost live tapes on violet vinyl I had the Plimsouls; I had the Beat. I enjoyed that music.
So this seemed a natural Christmas gift to myself two years ago, I believe it was WUXTRY in Athens, Ga. I don’t regret the purchase but and there is a but. This record sounds like hell. Like they only had one microphone hanging from the ceiling in a loud juke joint. You know why it sounds like that? Because it was recorded with one microphone hanging from the ceiling in a loud juke joint.
This is for archivists and completists, which on this one I took one step closer to becoming. I know many of the songs on this record already so I could pick them out and it was fun to see them in a setting in the wild like this. But for those interested in this genre, should probably start with some other albums by Peter Case or the Plimsouls or Paul Collins.
However when the inclination is just right, and you turn this up to about 9, you will be transported to this noisy bar called the Pirate’s Cove in Cleveland Ohio, May 26, 1977 with a noisy and melodic band power pop band called The Nerves.
There’s a lot of good things going on north of us. Canada has consistently over the years produced some fine rock artists. Such as?
Well, Gordon Lightfoot, Alanis Morrisette, Bare Naked Ladies, Neil Young, Beat Rodeo, Jeff Healy, Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, kd lang, the Guess Who/Burton Cummings, Crash Test Dummies, Leonard Cohen, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, Bachman-Turner Overdrive — and I could go on. (In fact I would be interested in hearing who your favorite Canadian artist is. (And Anne Murray and Celine Dion — God bless them, they have their good points– aren’t really very near the Rock/Folk/Soul/ that I’m focusing on. But if those are your faves, that’s cool. We are inclusive here. Oh, forgot a good one: Most of The Band (Robbie Robertson).
I received this Northern Pikes album from a Canadian relative; it was their first studio album with a major label. Since its inception in 1984, the Northern Pikes have put out about 10 albums and charted many times in Canada. But as far as I can tell virtually unheard of in the states.
I have to admit I haven’t followed them and I don’t know my own album very well. One of those that gets overlooked when thumbing through hundreds of records to play something.
I was pleasantly surprised. It took me back to the jangly guitart sound of the REM-styled New Wave and the power pop trip of the Plimsouls, the Nerves and the Beat, which were California groups that shared members over time. But none, I think are still going at it like the Pikes who are still cranking albums and playing live.
Here’s a video of Teenland off their first album, followed by one of their highest charting songs called She Ain’t Pretty.
teenland sounds like plimsouls
80s sound but not the bad synth stuff good Cars-like guitar
Sorry, I couldn’t help that. Mitchell was one of the more literate pop stars in the 1970s and 80s. And the confidence in her word selection and playfulness in her jazzy delivery makes me think: She knows she is good.
She also is considered a top guitar player, usually playing on her acoustic.
“Free Man in Paris,’ and ” Help Me” were all over the radio in the mid-1970’s. Up until then she was known for ‘Big Yellow Taxi.” (They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.) It was a minor hit in the U.S. in 1970. (Counting Crows covered it not too many years ago.)
I was 14 or so and was discovering Queen, Aerosmith, Cream and Jimi Hendrix. Actually Elton John was a favorite as well. But to be honest the beauty of Court and Spark failed to hook me at that age. They were pleasant jazz/pop songs with intelligent lyrics. I must have absorbed it in the car. many years later before I found this album — her best I’m told — for about $4.
I’m not fond of the cover though. Mine is Tang-colored with art that is too small and too faded. Looks like a tattoo on a recipient with mottled yellow orange skin. Maybe QT accident.
The young man who was struck by lightning and died just short of the finish line of a 50K trail race in Kansas rekindles a longstanding debate I have had with myself.
How do I want to go out? Instantly doing something I love, like playing basketball — the way Pete Maravich went out; The way this 33-year-old Kansas runner, Thomas Stanley went out.
I have Lewy body dementia and my lifespan — based on averages — is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis or symptoms begin. I’m in my third year. So unless I get hit by a bus or struck by lightning, I have received plenty of advance warning about what will happen to me as these excess proteins continue to clog up and kill brain cells. Slowly, it seems, and that’s a good thing. I think.
I’ve written about lightning a lot. As I’ve explained here before. As you can see I’m almost metaphysical in my feelings surrounding lightning. What random bad luck messed up universe would strike down a person. Very rarely, the average is 27 a year and there have only been 19 this year.
Part of my interest in lightning was living in central Florida, lightning capital of the U.S., where there are daily thunder-boomers, as my kids used to call them.
Stanley was 33 years old and from Andover, Kansas. He was the Director of Business Initiatives at the Kansas Leadership Center where he has worked since 2008, according to the center’s website.
He was the third person this year who has been killed by lightning while running.
I am 59 years-old and have lived a lot more life than Stanley. I wonder if I would have taken Stanley’s place if I had been offered.
I think I might have. It would be slam dunk ‘yes’ if it was a friend or relative. But I’m not sure, (uh oh, here I go debating my brain again.) I know this disease will take hold but I am also working on living every moment. I do enjoy life.
Stanley probably didn’t know what hit him. I know what is hitting me. I think I’ll stick around — and hit back.
Oh, and though Stanley didn’t make the finish line, the race officials gave him a finish because he had run the distance.
ALBUMS: That’s the Way of the World, Earth Wind and Fire (1975); Ain’t No Doubt About it: Graham Central Station (1975). Light of the World, Kool and the Gang (1974); Born to Get Down (1976), Muscle Shoals Horns.
I started out to just do one review here on the Muscle Shoals Horns, an album I’ve had a long time and I was in the “M’s’ of my alphabetical countdown.
From Left: Graham Central Station; Earth Wind and Fire: Kool and the Gang; Muscle Shoals Horns.
Then I started finding albums I had forgotten even though some were recently purchased. Funk is a dance band music, often with horns and heavy bottom, drums and bass. When it works, it puts you up on the dance floor.
I’m going to give you a short assessment as I rank this small batch put together from my collection. I do have more. The Average White Band–which I have already done way back when I was in the ‘A’s’. I’m in the ‘M’s now. One notable funky music artist coming up is Sly and the Family Stone which I will hold on until I get to the S’s.
OK this is going to be thumbnail observations in alphabetical order and then I’ll declare a favorite:
Earth WInd and FIre: This album was a huge hit. Shining Star was a 1970’s staple. as was the title song ‘That’s the Way of the World.’ Definitely the most commercial/radio friendly of the group.
Graham Central Station: Certainly the hardest rocking of the group. You can hear the influence of his former band mate Sly Stone in creating a freewheeling musical extravaganza with distortion-enhanced electric guitars.
Kool and the Gang: Probably the old school funkiest, if that makes sense. They had ace musicians who snapped to sudden stops and turned to funk it up in another direction.
Muscle Shoals Horns: I came in without any expectations. Depending on your tastes this album may be the best of the group. They got my attention and not just because they are local here to the state of Alabama. But they can play. And the sound of the vinyl on my stereo system was the best of the others. As with all these groups, the musicianship was top-notch. I will definitely be keeping this one out in case I need more emergency dance music.
