Lounge ENGLAND/MUSIC/1970-75

This is slightly off topic, but closely related so..

I had a very good win at the casino recently, so I bought one of these!






And here is the original played by George Harrison on the roof top.

 

Nice guitar.
I am a guitarist and guitar nut.
This is about £8k worth I think. Apparently weighs a ton compared to a Std tele.

300 produced? Not certain

 

After looking up the name James Ingram on Wiki...I am embarrased to say I dont recall him.....pretty big song writer.

The rock stations I used to listen to, (WNEW, WPLJ) from NYC....were not slick talking....more layed back. But they have been replaced by stations that have no DJ at all. All computerized selection of music and commercials inserted. Probably just a producer in the background. The stations out here in Ca that do have a live DJ,...they are just there to add nothing but read commercials.

The days of "sets" are gone. Where a DJ would give thought in presenting 3-4 songs with a common thread. The same artist , the same theme, simialar beats,. Some very clever presentations. I suspect the current generation has no clue what a "set" was in the context I am talking about.

 

John Peel (RIP) was the king of sets. He gifted many now famous bands their first airplay in "sessions"

 

He gave my very favorite solo artist....who I have seen live 2 dozen times.....Loudon Wainwright III,,,,alot of play in England.
In fact he was more popular there than here in the States.
Loudon has always given him due credit.

 

James Ingram just typified the sounds that was in vogue at the time. A vocalist for Quincy Jones, who was massive due to his involvement with Thriller and Off The Wall. A lot of radio nowadays sucks, music rotation I think they call it, the same songs played every hour. Back in the 70's and WBRL in the days before Rap, those Black Jocks were hip, semi rapping over records, talking right up to the intro, the American accent, all very exciting.

London pirate station DJ's did the same for a few years, but it is an era long gone. I used to do it myself being a DJ for close on 10 years presenting a specialist soul program. "Welcome on board the sooooulllll train on 89FM, coming to your ears in stereo on this tues nite, far left on the FM dial, keep the frequency locked as we are rolling for the next 2 hours, bringing you the very best in sooouuullll and jazz, it's yours truly mike-side *****. Then the vocals kick in of the song that had been playing in the background kick in, timed to perfection. Slick and tight. Oh the days, got my fair share of pussy presenting that show as well, girls calling me up to meet them after for a coffee. Used to play a fair amount of Isaac Hayes during the "Quiet Storm" to get them hot and streamy. Hence a lot of time spent in record shops in my youth.

 

I too grew up with at first AM radio jocks who talked up to the vocals.
However as I grew older and appreciated all of the record, and not just the vocals......I appreciated opening instrumentation.....and grew to dislike the talking over a song.
Who can mistake the opening of Supersition.......first the drums, then synthesizer.......I really didnt need someone talking over it. When FM rock stations took over....the talk over stopped.....especially when there were 3-4 song "sets"......one song after the other.

I guess the classic "talk over" was portrayed in American Graffitti ......wolfman jack.....doing his rap before each song.....people ate that up

But as I got more into music....I wanted to hear the beginning, middle and end.

But I am the type of person who wont walk into a movie if I missed the first 2 minutes......so maybe I am unusual

 

The Bat Out of Hell album sold over 50 million copies, is one of the top 10 selling albums of all time.
However the success is firmly in the hands of Jim Steinman(the songwriter/keyboardist) and Todd Rundgren(producer).

TR took a frontman with stage presence who cant carry a tune in real life on stage.....and surrounded him with great musicians, and backup vocals to hide his flaws.....and turned it into a masterpiece by working his sound board magic. Its an amazing piece of work by Steinman(who is a prolific songwriter for others as well) and TR.

I am not a Meatloaf "fan".....but I am a fan of that album.....because that album is less about Meatloaf...and more about all the creative people surrounding him.

 

Remember "Cousin Brucie," aka Bruce Morrow on a NYC AM station?

Setting the wayback machine ... summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school ... a hot summer's day, poolside with my first girl friend, transistor radio near my ear while I gaze lustfully and longingly at her beautiful tits and ass so splendidly on display.

 

I remember Brucie well. He was the king of AM top 40 in the NY metro area. He would go off script on commercials and crack me up
the antithesis of the FM jocks. But at my age and point of time...he was perfect

 

Good shout, The Wolfman sums up the scene, impossible to catch being in the UK. Have to disagree regarding the yapping over records, it was usually an up-tempo track, as they used to say in London, if they talked over the songs vocals. They would come out with "song sounds so nice, I'm gonna play it twice" and literally rewind the track live on air, so you hear the song going backwards, while they are going "rewind rewind". It added to the excitement of club dance tracks being played at the time, If you wanted to just hear the song without interruption, you had the opportunity to go and buy it, which is ultimately what air-play is all about.

 

If I hire a DJ for an event.....I would be disappointed if he didnt yap all over the place and generate live excitement.
However once I progressed from the wolfman Jack, or Cousin Brucie AM radio type personalities....I traded them in for people with less "look at me" attitude and more "look at the music" attitude.

THats what I was attracted to. So when they played a 3-4 song set you didnt hear a word of commentary over the music. It was all about the music and the personalities stepped back. Their personalities and professional input came when talking aboutthe set afterwards...telling us who the drummer was on a certain track or who produced it, or making me aware if an artist is coming to town...you know...something unusual or interesting about the set or a particular song in the set. Their value was their knowledge of the music, and what made up the music.....and not an ability to time a rap till vocals appeared. Their value was in crafting the set.

Once I left the Wolfman Jack,/Cousin Brucie DJ's behind......I felt more comfortable with the FM rock jocks that I described above.

Like I said..its a matter of taste. I am sure there are still Jocks like that still around and they have an audience.

 

I remember reading somewhere that Steinman fully intended to sing Bat out of Hell himself but had Laryngitis

 

he had a rocker's voice, and did put out his own album a few years after Bat out of Hell.
It was his material...he could have chosen to let anyone do his songs...

little known fact by most.....even though he did rocker albums with meatloaf.......he worte ballads like totla eclipse of the son.......and barry manilows Read em and Weep.
But he was a rocker at heart.
He had the look of a rocker too, loong full flowing hair, slim..he just had that "look"...but I guess he felt Meatloaf had the stage presence to pull off the songs. But it was Todd Rindgren that molded it into a classic. He doesnt get near enough credit for that.

 

Not that Im not enjoying the banter, back on topic, with English rock, Top of the Pops and The SWEET

After Chinn and Chapman, sweet showed they could write songs.....
first the superb "Love is like Oxygen" with classic drum riff at 2:44



And Six Teens. Just totally wonderful drumming from the late and great Mick Tucker.
Hes up there with Ian Paice and John Bonham for me.

 

As the resident whippersnapper, l can't even sit down to play. Just about all my music was disposable crap, almost all of it. Almost.

I went to "Up in Smoke" (Busta Rhymes headlined) and it was underwhelming. Hung out with BReal and Senn Dog, and that's about it. Music was pfft.

RHCP with Stone Temple Pilots opening. Huge RHCP fan, but STP blew them away. Still, was just "good". Certainly nothing the likes of what y'all saw.

But two stand out. The best was Beastie Boys. It's hard to explain, three white jews in Hip Hop, but it was an energy thing. 6hrs of 95* and sun, and you still just couldn't stop dancing and thrashing. And such a cool scene, too. You could chill, vibe, or freak the fuck out, and everyone was just into it. Meant to see them with RAtM, talk about a fucking romp. Alas, MikeD broke his collar bone and our concert got canceled, then RAtM broke up, and now MCA is dead =(

But Ween, man...

They kinda have a Dead / Phish-y vibe, definitely stoner rock. Definitely some songs are just odd aural experiments. But some just have it, that thing that resonates somewhere deep inside you. Something that takes you somewhere else.

Fans of Hendrix and/or Floyd, maybe even Stevie Ray Vaughn, will probably dig this number. This is truly the soundtrack to me dooming my life, just epic stuff. I know it's not EDM, but V in particular is invited to burn one and let this tune pour into you.




That's all I got. Modern music is sub-par, or should I say modern COMMERCIAL music. Good stuff to be found on the interwebs.

 

I have a question about The Sweet.....or Sweet not sure...how it goes.
But now that you mentioned them, I looked up their songs, and I was amazed how many I knew. But I dont remember seeing them on TV in the US.
Nor do I remember any big tours. For some reason they didnt catch fire here.

So in one of the first videos of them....on this thread....there was a real glam rock dress code....one of them looked for sure like a woman,,,,I mean he went out of his way to look that way. But in the 2 videos above they are just rockers. No feminine attire.

Did they go through phases of their career or change around like Bowie did.

Or was that video where they were more feminine, a one time thing.

From their name, I get the feeling they intended at least at first to feed into that transgender type deal......so whats the scoop....you lived it...

 

that is an example of how concerts were in the 70's. No laser show, no canned music, no smoke, no canned vocals, ..you just concentrate on the music.
How disappointed would kids be today if they went to a concert and just saw the above show? You are right,....The dead, zappa, santana....put on shows like that in the 70's.
I think it might have started changing with MTV...where it stopped being about how things sounded, and change to how things LOOKED.
I remember when David Lee Roth was the rage on MTV....he was interviewed and he gave the following quote.....well I dont know the exact quote but it went something like this......Its not how good you do something......It how good you look doing something.
That pretty much summed up rock going forward for the majority of acts that wanted to be signed to a label.

 

They were unknown and spotted by a song writing management team called Chinn and Chapman

They wrote the songs and choreographed the glam rock image.

They parted in 74 and Sweet wrote there own stuff, hence the rock look.

A tad like the Monkeeys. "we can write our own stuff" and faded away, albeit a more convincing effort

The Sweet had an underground following, but the lead singer Brian Connoly was a hopeless alchoholic by 1978 and they disbanded shortly after trying without him for a couple of years.

 

Memorable concert moments:

Pink Floyd, Charlotte NC: tripping on acid; first exposure to quadrophonic concert sound.

They'd been using the normal "front" gear / speakers, when suddenly the covers came off some massive speaker banks on the sides and rear and POW, what a full sound!

Jethro Tull in Greensboro:after the show, stopped at a greasy burger joint, and in walked in the band.

Multi-day rock festival in Long Pond, Pa.: about 3AM, foggy, speeding mightily, ELP is playing and suddenly Emerson points his hand held keyboard / moog at a security guard near him, a tremendous cacophony of noise spews out, and in reflex the guard pulls his revolver. Classic.

Most enjoyable: Nils Lofgren at a small Denver venue called Ebbets Field, a bar, really: front row table, Nils ten or so feet away. Cry Tough!