Fifty Years of Music • February, 1972

 
February 1972 , I get down to the record shop to promptly purchase Neil Young's new album Harvest. It's got a great album graphic but I'll never forget the tactile textural feel of the recycled paper cover. Vinyl albums for me in the 1970's sometimes became a total sensory experience. Now in my opinion Harvest is a really good album, but not as great as his previous album in 1971, After The Gold Rush. Harvest would become the best selling album of 1972. 

The success of Harvest scares Neil, he's become too mainstream, too popular and promptly retreats into making non-commercial albums for many years thereafter.

Sometime in 1972, I visit my friend Paul Hobbs as he wants me to listen to Todd Rundgren's new double album, Something/Anything? We both love it! In 2003, the album was ranked number 173 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The success of Something / Anything? apparently scares Todd too. He's become too mainstream, too popular and promptly retreats into making non-commercial albums for many years thereafter.

What the f***?

Paul, I guess we were just two young and stupid consumer capitalists feeding the corporate record gods. Geez and 1972 was a good music year too... but not as great as 1971...

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1972 is a continuation from the late 60's of all these wonderful bands just falling apart and members making solo albums or forming new splinter bands. This past week, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Hot Tuna, the break-off project of Jefferson Airplane's members Jorma Kaukonen (guitarist/vocals) and Jack Casady (bassist). I also enjoyed Traffic's Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi's solo albums. But that lead me down the path of 'what if' these bands had just stayed together and made better albums together with their mothership bands. I guess it was just 'too soon' at the time with my break-up traumas of The Beatles and CSNY. Hell, I still haven't gotten over that, not to mention the late 60's break-ups of Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and The Mamas & The Papas.

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Speaking of  The Beatles and 1972, let's finish this installment with my recommendation to watch Good Ol' Freda. (Here is the link on Amazon Prime.) This is a 2013 documentary about The Beatles secretary, Freda Kelly hired by Brian Epstein when she was only 17 years old. She was also the The Beatles fan club president and worked for them from 1962-1972. I came upon it the other night and thought it was fantastic.

Enjoy the playlist my friends!

July 1969, 50 Years of Music

Photo source - The Year Men Walked on the Moon

I thought I couldn't let the month of July, 1969 go without a mention of the moon landing by Apollo 11. In a previous blog, I mentioned my father's Norelco reel to reel tape recorder which I used to record an audio tape of Walter Cronkite's broadcast of the moon landing. The tape and recorder have long disappeared, but sometime in my 20's I snagged the omnidirectional external microphone that I used to tape stuff off TV and albums. To this day, I keep the microphone in a glass cabinet of souvenirs, including my first 35mm Minolta camera Mary Kit gave me in 1974. 

This month, when I walked by the glass cabinet, I thought of the moon launch, landing and return to earth. That memory is very alive in my brain due in part to me knowing as a 14 year old how important this event was to mankind and the thought that I'd need to preserve an audio copy for history. Well, here's YouTube with "Uncle Walter" very much keeping what I had in my mind, back in the summer of '69.

As for the music of July of 1969, my outstanding memory is the song, Touch Me by The Doors. This song's got a bit of everything with the horns, the strings and Jim's vocals moving from gruff to smooth on the chorus, I loved this song!

Technically, the band's It's a Beautiful Day's by their self-titled first album was released in June, 1969 but wasn't on the Wikipedia list I was using and thus didn't make my June, 1969 playlist. Here I feature three songs from that album and didn't think you would mind...

I feature Delaney and Bonnie's second album The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. The great musicians who passed through this band in the late 60's and early 70's is truly astonishing and a huge influence on why Eric Clapton quit Blind Faith to move towards Bonnie & Delaney's sound, not to mention co-opt much of their band when he formed Derek and the Dominoes in 1970.

I also love the Byrd's Preflyte album which was released in July, 1969 from their 1964 demo sessions when they were a little known band called the Jet Set.

Lastly, I have to mention my 8th grade home teacher, Mr. Richard Ziegler who got me hooked on collecting antique bottles and loved the band Canned Heat. I remember our last day of school in June, 1969 and Mr. Ziegler bringing in his record collection to play us his tunes.

Enjoy the Playlist my friends!