40 Year Itch: Monkey on a Silver String

[Purchase]

Before producing Gene Clark's legendary No Other, and after producing Loudon Wainwright III's "Dead Skunk", the eccentric Thomas Jefferson Kaye gathered his best musical friends to make an album that falls in that all so Californian intersection between Eagles twang and Steely Dan finesse. That album is First Grade.

  The Steely Dan force is big on this album, released just months after Pretzel Logic. Dan Producer Gary Katz helms the producer's seat while Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter play on some cuts. Most significantly all these years later: Becker and Fagen gave Kaye two of their unrecorded songs, "Jones" and "American Lovers". Dusty Springfield sings on the album. So does Richie Furay and future Eagle Timothy B. Schmit. All star albums were one of the great trends of 1974. Ringo and Ron Wood also made albums with  a surprising collection of  rock stars.

  The Becker Fagen tunes are the easy ones to find on YouTube but the album also contains some Kaye originals. It begins with the lines "My name is Thomas Jefferson Kaye and I was born in North Dakota" on a 1:11 tune called "Northern California" and ends with "One Man Band", a Kaye-penned tune that was a Top 20 hit for Three Dog Night. His choice is covers is impeccable. Listen to "All Cried Out" from Buddy Kaye and Philip Springer:

    First Grade is a grower. It ranked #10 on Robert "The Dean" Christgau's end of year list. Kaye lived the rock n roll lifestyle and died in 1994, two years after gathering another group of stars ( including Eric Clapton, Steve Miller and Joe Walsh) for a final album.

Read More

40 Year Itch: Sad Amps and Smashed Guitars

[Purchase]

There's no point being ahead of your time if you're not communicating

Bill Nelson, 1976

  I know everyone says the problem with the Be Bop Deluxe debut, Axe Victim, is that it sounds exactly like the album David Bowie might have recorded as a follow-up to Ziggy Stardust. Well, so what? I love Ziggy Stardust. And I don't really mind hearing "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" replaced two years later by "Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus". But when you do that, Bill Nelson, you can't complain when people call you out on that.

For a band that would seem ahead of their time for much of the 70's, Be Bop Deluxe might have begun one step behind. They come across as a Glam Rock band at exactly the time when when silver painted boots and face mask up was going out of style. Maybe they didn't really know who they were. Well we know now. They were Bill Nelson.  In fact, right after a tour with Cockney Rebel , Nelson disbanded Be Bop and replenished the band with entirely new members for the next album Futurama.

There's a sheen to Be Bop Deluxe albums that you can't find anywhere else. It's in Nelson's vocals : polite if not entirely human ...and his guitar mastery. Every blistering note in the solos hits the mark. Nelson also played keyboards and would soon have a hand in production. It would eventually pay off with the 1976 UK #23 single "Ships in the Night" and swooning fans watching Nelson play flaming guitars.

Read More

40 Year Itch: Sleazy Skirt Lifters

[Purchase]

  Ignore the misogynistic cover ( if you can) and just spin the black circle for some of 1974's hardest rocking heavy metal. Had this album come out of Seattle in 1991-- instead of Australia in the mid-70's--  it would have sold half a million copies in the US. I'm serious. Dave Tice sounds like Chris Cornell and , like Kim Thayil, John Baxter is a riffing madman on guitar. Buffalo even recorded a song inspired by Tacoma author Frank Herbert 's Dune sequel Dune Messiah. Less sludgy than Volcanic Rock, Only Want You For Your Body is the kind of high octane metal that can only be played at 11.

  For me, here's where the Buffalo story ends. You don't want to know what happened to the band as it pursued commercial viability without badass Baxter. You really do not.  But if curiosity has the best of you play the clip below.

Read More

40 Year Itch : Somewhere South of New York City

   For six weeks in June and July of 1974, Paul and Linda McCartney and the rest of Wings lived, rehearsed and recorded in Nashville, TN. The McCartneys rented  "Junior's  Farm" , a nice stretch of land  belonging to songwriter Curley "Green Green Grass of Home" Putnam, Jr.

Paul's in disguise

 Why Nashville?

"I rather fancy the place. It’s a musical center. I’ve just heard so much about it, that I wanted to see for myself." McCartney told reporters.

  It was a productive time for Wings. They broke in their new drummer Jeffery Brittain and new guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and recorded both the hard rocking "Junior's Farm" and "Sally G", the highest charting Country song McCartney's ever recorded. (It peaked at #51).

   

  It wasn't all business. The McCartneys brought their three daughters, 11-year-old Heather (Linda’s child by a previous marriage), 5-year-old Mary and 3-year-old Stella.

 "They’re always running around naked streaking,’ Linda laughed. Her husband interrupted, "Remember that night they went over to Johnny Cash’s house? Heather (their 11 year old daughter) was playing with Johnny’s son and some animals in the barn."

   McCartney said they hadn't come to Nashville to hide out and even invited reporters to swing by the house sometime. They did of course. And wrote of a man who seemed comfortable with farm life...though not enough to make a permanent move here.

"No, thank you," said McCartney. "I’m British to the core."

  "We’re always being advised to move out of England because the taxes take 90% of everything you earn. But I’m British and Linda’s kind of honorary British. She makes a good cup o’ tea."

McCartney was also asked about his guitarist Jimmy McCulloch whose very first recording with Wings was "Junior's Farm". Apparently Jimmy got into some trouble with the law and had to leave town. "I'd rather not bring that up here" McCartney said.

 He was, however, more than willing to show the reporters his skills on a small motorcycle.

A security guard remarked: "The next headlines he (McCartney) makes will be about a motorcycle wreck. He doesn’t know how to drive that thing."

One more recording of note is "Walking in the Park With Eloise", a tune Paul's father had written. McCartney recorded it with "The Country Hams", Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer. As a B side they also recorded a jazzy demo called "Bridge Over the River Suite".




  He'd met the country stars at the Grand Old Opry where the McCartney attended a Grand Masters Fiddling Contest. Among the contestants was Sam Bush. The McCartneys also met Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner.

As they were leaving Nashville, Linda McCartney summed up the stay:

"We love it," said Mrs. McCartney. "The girls got suntans; I did some shopping at the Nashville stores and we enjoyed visiting places and meeting nice people."

For more memories, photos and mp3s visit this website devoted to Paul's Nashville visit.

Read More

40 Year Itch : Walkin' Down This Rocky Road

[Purchase]

This is just like your first group, everything you do excites you

-Mick Ralphs, Rolling Stone 

Walking out of a screening of Casablanca a few decades ago, a friend of mine told me he didn't like the movie. Why? Because, he said, it was wall-to-wall cliches. He felt like he'd seen it before. Well, of course they weren't cliches when Casablanca first came out. The movie has just become so big and influential, you almost never have to see it ...to feel like you've seen it.

The same with the Bad Company debut. Every riff, every solo, every soulful Paul Rodgers wail will sound familiar even if you've never sat down with the album. Bad Company had distilled every great blues-inspired hard rock element into one classic 34 and a half minute album. The result:  at least five of the 8 songs are still getting played on Classic Rock radio. In fact this album would probably sound too straightforward if it wasn't for Rodgers's voice.

\

   Bad Company is made up of two former Free men : Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke. Mick Ralphs of Mott the Hoople plays guitar and contributes to the songwriting. The bass player is a former member of King Crimson,  Boz Burrell, who had to beat at least 15 others who auditioned.

   Signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label, Bad Company took advantage of a lull during Led Zep's recording schedule and knocked out this album in eight days. Mott fans will recognize "Ready For Love" from All the Young Dudes. The "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love" riff comes from the same album's"One of the Boys". Even "Don't Let Me Down" has more than just the title in common with The Beatles tune.





  Still, the album would top the Billboard album charts in late September ( knocking Stevie Wonder's Fullfillingness' First Finale from #1). Bad Company would rule the rest of the 70's and provide a blueprint for many bands to follow.

Read More

40 Year Itch: Nobody's Million Dollar Baby

[Purchase]

On June 5, 1974 Patti Smith recorded her first single--also often called the first "punk" single, "Hey Joe" b/w "Piss Factory", at Electric Ladyland Studios in New York City. "Piss Factory" is a spoke word piece that recalls an incident at a South Jersey toy factory where fellow workers shoved her head in a toilet bowl full of piss because she was working too fast. On the A side Patti addresses the other famous Patricia of the 1970's: Patty Hearst, the kidnap victim turned bank robber.

Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering were you gettin' it every night from a black revolutionary man?

Patti recorded the single with her band, which included guitarist Lenny Kaye ( who produced the single "for Robert Mapplethorpe") , bass player Ivan Kral, drummer  and pianist Richard Sohl. Her performance is breath taking. She's part shaman, part beatnik poet, part rock and roll idol. A born natural. 

   Before Patti Smith ever entered Electric Ladyland she had already made a mark on rock history, contributing songwriting to several Blue Oyster Cult songs ( and vocals on "The Revenge of Vera Gemini" ) as well as a spoken word piece on Ray Manzarek's "If I Wake Up Dreaming".

   The first time her name pops up in the Rolling Stone archives it's for a review she wrote for Todd Rundgren's The Ballad of Todd Rundgren.

  About a hundred years ago the runt of the Sioux tribe breathed his vision on his tribe. They dropped that runt crap and crowned him Crazy Horse. I think it's time 'runt' be dropped from Todd Rundgren

Read More

40 Year Itch: The Striking Beauty of Mary McCaslin

[Purchase]

In 1974 Rolling Stone wrote a short blurb about an"exceptional album which virtually no one will hear". The album is Mary McCaslin's Way Out West, which remains an obscure record beloved by lovers of contemporary folk. She's the real deal: beautiful compositions, alternate guitar tunings and a lovely voice that reminds me of Iris Dement without the edge. The album is linked by a similar theme: a young woman seeking love in the West and running into misadventures that would make Liz Phair blush. 

(If you only have a minute and need a more obvious introduction to Mary, listen to her Beatles cover "Things We Said Today" from a later album). 

    McCaslin made three albums for Philo and still performs near her Santa Cruz home. She even maintains a website. To give Rolling Stone's Ken Barnes the final word: Way Out West is far superior to most of its genre and is well worth the effort of seeking it out.

Read More