40 Year Itch : Ooga Chaka

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On February 16, 1974 Blue Swede's future chart-topping single,  "Hooked On A Feeling", entered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time at #87, 18 spots behind another hot new single, Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets". Released in Sweden in May of 1973, Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" is not an original tune.




It's a cover of a 1969 Top 5 hit by B J "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"  Thomas.




Not  even the goofy chant is original. Jonathan King added a jungle chant first on a version that peaked at #23 on the UK Charts. ( King is credited with discovering Genesis, signing 10cc, producing the Bay City Rollers, and convicted of a committing a number of lewd acts with boys).



These Swedes like to chant. From the Blue Swede album Hooked On a Feeling, this is "Working in a Coalmine"



"Hooked on a Feeling" sales have recently skyrocketed thanks to the trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy".
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40 Year Itch : Cinderella Coverdale

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    Despite outselling every other act in the US in 1973 ( at nearly 15 million albums), tour-weary Deep Purple could not stay together. It's the typical story of a clash of personalities that came down to either bassist Roger Glover and vocalist Ian Gilliam ( and their prog pop sensibilities)  leave Deep Purple or founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore would go. The band chose Blackmore. 

Glenn Hughes, 1974

    Glover was replaced by Glenn Hughes of Trapeze ( despite rumors that Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott had the job). Hughes had one condition: that he become the lead vocalist of the band. It was an interesting idea but not one the other members of the band liked. They reached a compromise. Hughes would sing lead on some songs. 

   Finding the lead vocalist  was a tougher task. Blackmore tried to convince Paul Rodgers of Free to join the band but Rodgers was already recording demos with ex-Mott guitarist Mick Ralphs. Together, with Simon Kirke of Free and drummer Boz Burrell, they'd form Bad Company and hit the top of the charts with both their debut album and the single "Can't Get Enough".

David Coverdale, 1974

  On the verge of splitting up, Deep Purple ran an ad in the music trades. Cassettes began pouring in. Among them was one from future Whitesnake David Coverdale, whose band, The Government, had once opened for Deep Purple. He had the right feeling for Purple but when he walked into the studio to meet the band, he was an overweight, garishly dressed bundle of nerves. Still, the glass slipper fit and Coverdale went to Montreaux to work on the new album as a member of  Deep Purple Mark III .

 The result is Burn, only their second album aside from Machine Head to crack the US Top 10. Featuring the riff-heavy title track, Burn ventures into the hard rocking funky sounds of Led Zeppelin's "Trampled Underfoot", especially on Coverdale's "Sail Away". There are several moments on the album when Coverdale sounds just like Paul Rodgers. And many more moments when Deep Purple sounds like a boogie band.

  Of Burn, compared to previous Deep Purple albums, keyboardist  Jon Lord is quoted in Smoke On the Water: The Deep Purple Story as saying

    The basic difference is the use of the vocals. There is a different vocal approach. It's much freer and looser, a progression that's noticeable to us, though I don't know if it is for the audience. Also, no casino burned down during the recording.  

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40 Year Itch: Illusions and Movies

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My songs are my diary
-Roy Harper

   Now this is how you throw a record release party! On February 14, 1974 the English folk rocker Roy Harper was joined onstage by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, Ronnie Lane and Keith Moon. It happened at London's Roxy Theater to mark the release of Valentine on which  Page, Lane and Moon play.

  They'd only practiced the Valentine cut "Male Chauvinist Pig Blues"  that afternoon. They also played "Too Many Movies" and "Home" which would appear on the live album Flashes from the Archives. ( You will now get those cuts on an extended CD version of Valentine) At one point Roy presented his musician friends with  Harpic Awards 

  Like Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood, Roy Harper was best friends with a lot of English musicians. By 1974, he'd recorded with Bert Jansch, Keith Emerson, Ritchie Blackmore, Nicky Hopkins, Ian Anderson and the musicians who performed at the album release party. These friendships were sealed when Harper faced what appeared to be a life threatening illness a year earlier. And of course there's the Led Zeppelin III track  "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" and the future Pink Floyd track " Have A Cigar" which Roy would sing.




   Valentine is a collection of love songs, lust songs, admittedly chauvinistic songs and a Bob Dylan cover of  "North Country". Like Dylan, Harper was a poet who explored the possibilities of the art form. His last album, Lifemask,  had one epic 25-minute track , "The Lord's Prayer", that took up all of Side Two.

 Best of all the Valentine cuts  may be "Twelve Hours of Sunset", about a six thousand mile airplane flight:

Twelve hours of sunset, 
six thousand miles. 
Illusions and movies, far away smiles. 
Twelve hours of sunset, half a day in the skies,
 I'll see you tomorrow, 
as the steel crow flies........ .....oh...........how time flies..

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40 Year Itch : And So I'll Go

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   Upon the release of Jolene, the country music world was abuzz with Dolly Parton's decision to leave Porter Wagoner, and his syndicated country music show to go solo for good. Wagoner had helped Dolly secure a contract with RCA and, thanks to big hits like "Joshua" (#1), "Coat of Many Colors" (#4)  and "Jolene" (#1) she'd already become a huge country star in her own right. But Dolly didn't want to be tied down to a country traditionalist who was afraid of flying.

The split began amicably enough with Dolly 's heart felt goodbye, laid out in the lyrics of the song that must have earned her millions of dollars: "I Will Always Love You".

If I should stay
 Well, I would only be in your way
And so I'll go, and yet I know
That I'll think of you each step of my way
And I will always love you

Now Dolly was free to bring her country into the pop marketplace. The years that followed would see her record in LA and even earn an Oscar nomination in the movie 9 To 5.

And that's about the time Porter Wagoner sued Dolly for breach of contract. He had, in his hands, a  note Dolly had signed in the 70's:

 "To Porter Wagoner...because of my appreciation and respect for you...I agree to pay you 15% of my gross income on my RCA record royalties "

That signature was probably worth a million dollars to Wagoner although the settlement was never disclosed.

There were a few lean years for Dolly so she could make good on that payment but by the mid -80's she was back on top. With her own theme park to boot.

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40 Year Itch : Some Mythic Soul

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On Black Bach the legendary Motown songwriter and producer Lamont Dozier ( of Holland-Dozier-Holland fame) steps into the spotlight with plans to swing for the fences. With dozens of session players (including Ray Parker, Jr) making up a symphony and choirs featuring the likes of Darlene Love, Dozier --and his very plain voice--take on the subjects of life, love and death. Singled out as one of the greatest albums of all time by The Mojo Collection  Black Bach is a "classic soul folly" that "has receded into myth.

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New York soul brothers The Main Ingredient ( featuring Cuba Gooding Sr.)  released their high water mark, Euphrates River, featuring their million selling cover of  Ronnie Dyson's "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely" and a tight version of "Summer Breeze" that rivals the 3 +3 cut by The Isley Brothers.

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From the same high school as Marshawn "BeastMode" Lynch and Clint Eastwood comes The Pointer Sisters who followed up their debut album ( and hit single "Yes We Can Can") with more scatting jazz, pop, R and B and, most surprisingly, a country hit called "Fairytale". It would not only win a Grammy but be  covered by Elvis Presley.

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Philly soulsters Blue Magic scored a Top 10 hit with "Sideshow". Their debut album is full of lush, smooth Philly soul as well as yet another version of  "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely".

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40 Year Itch: Animal Lou

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Rock 'n'Roll Animal, what a degrading thing that was

-Lou Reed

Rock 'n'Roll Animal is Lou Reed making good on a promise. He promised RCA he'd made a commercial album after Berlin bombed. The public's disinterest in that 1973 concept album must have hurt. But by the same token, Lou had a hit record under his belt ( "Walk on the Wild Side") so what better time to show the world where he started. Four of the five songs on Rock n Roll Animal are Velvet Underground tunes --as played by a polished hard rock band led by two smokin' guitar gods : Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter who would soon be playing with Alice Cooper.

This live album  and 1975's Lou Reed Live were recorded on December 21, 1973 at Howard Stein's Academy of  Music in New York. Reed performed with swagger even though his singing remained as wooden as ever.

Reviews were mostly good but very, very strange.

Rolling Stone wrote 

Rock n Roll Animal is much less claustrophobic and oppressive than Berlin, but many people will probably loathe it anyway. Faggots, junkies and sadists are not very pleasant, but theirs are the sensibilities Reed draws upon. His songs offer little hope. Nothing changes, nothing gets better 

For NME future Pretender Chrissie Hynde wrote

 He looks like a monkey on a chain, court geek. Listen to him scramble to a corner, damaged and grotesque, huddled in rodent terror. Animal Lou. Lashing out in a way that could make the current S and M trend freeze in its shallow tracks. And the audience cheers after every song: we’re with you, yeah, we always loved those songs, ha ha. Well…he hates you.

But the review that probably hit Lou hardest was from his former Velvets band mate John Cale who was hardly impressed.

He thinks that by sticking to his guns, he'll succeed and he has. He's got the whole sickness market tied up. 

In tours that would soon follow, Reed would pretend to shoot up during "Heroin". The two disc, all-noise "fuck you'"onslaught of Metal Machine Music was just a year away.

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40 Year Itch: Music So Loud

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Big Star are the greatest thing to happen to American rock since The Buffalo Springfield

Jon Tiven, Circus

   At the Tulane University radio station, WTUL-FM, in the mid-80's,  the name Big Star kept coming up over and over again in interviews with all the jangle pop bands that came through town: R.E.M., The dB's, Let's Active and others talked about this Memphis band with reverence. I'd even run into Alex Chilton in New Orleans once and could only bring up The Bangles version of "September Gurls". Hard to believe but we didn't have a copy of any Big Star albums in the stacks. Even though the station had a budget to buy albums we'd never been sent, we couldn't find anything by Big Star. Not until I visited Recycled Records in Reno, NV where I was visiting my mom  in 1986. I don't recall what I paid for Radio City or whether anyone at the cash register had anything to say about my purchase. I just knew I had found the Lost Treasure of Powerpopotopia.

 On my Mom's cheap lo fi stereo system, I placed the needle on Side One. The rocking and chiming guitars, the hand claps and the drum fills of "O My Soul" converted me within seven seconds. Badfinger and the Raspberries got nothing on these boys! One perfect song followed the next.

   Writer Bruce Easton, who would get to play these songs onstage with Alex Chilton,  recalls a similar introduction:

Why did it take me so long to hear Big Star? Why wasn't AM Radio cranking "September Gurls" between "The Night Chicago Died" and "Takin' Care of Business"? Apparently that's the result of  label infighting between Ardent, Stax and Columbia.

Radio City is Big Star's second album but the first without singer/songwriter Chris Bell. Compared to #1 Record,  Radio City is more gritty and more of Chilton's show. Most striking to me on my latest listen is how his guitar so organically switches from jangly lead lines to meaty rock god hooks. 

For an album that had a decidedly "cult following " in the 1980's, Radio City was hardly ignored by the critics when it was released. Remember, the New York press had been dazzled by a Big Star show just months earlier. 

 Of the new album Rolling Stone's Ken Barnes wrote 

 Radio City features plenty of shimmering pop delights such as "Way Out West" and "Back of a Car." Sometimes they sound like the Byrds, sometimes like the early Who, but usually like their own indescribable selves. "September Gurls" is a virtually perfect pop number. They may not be as tight or as immediately mesmerizing this time out (the opening tune, "O My Soul," is a foreboding, sprawling funk affair), but Radio City is one of the most high-spirited, thoroughly enjoyable recent releases.

Robert Christgau gave the album an A rating, writing 

 This sounds completely unique if you don't count Beatles '65. Especially if you remember the Beatles as spare, skew, and sprung, which is hard, since they weren't. Can an album be catchy and twisted at the same time? Find out. 

The most ironic review belongs to the Billboard critic who wrote :

This set brings good news from a young Memphis band that nearly expired when their premiere set, a commercial gem, got missed in the rush. Don't expect the new disc to die so easily...

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