The great rock bands of the late 60’s and early 70’s, roughly starting with the Beatles’ invasion through the “mirror ball” era of disco, a long list of great albums by stellar groups have become cultural institutions still getting substantial airplay in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and plenty of non-English speaking countries on classic rock radio stations, mainstays in virtually every radio market from coast to coast. What constitutes classic rock and who decides is up for debate as there are groups from beyond this time period that comfortably fit in too such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers who were just gaining an audience as the classic period was fading away. For most, the true classic rock period could be bookended by Bob Dylan’s album, “Highway 61” and ends with Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” For the huge catalog of albums by legacy performers like the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan, almost all their significant works were recorded during this period hitting a peak during this time period. Consider the Stones for instance, even while original member Brian Jones floated off this cosmic plain in a drug induced stupor, Mick, Keith and the lads issued in rapid succession: “Beggar’s Banquet,” “Let it Bleed,” “Sticky Fingers,” and “Exile on Main Street” arguably the best succession of honest-to-God rock albums ever.
We needn’t go into a lot of specifics as most listeners from that time period forward, even high school kids today, know who the key players are and surely have a hardy sample of key works in their CD library or on their little handheld devices.
Baby boomers who lived through it all, kids, have very romantic visions of what the music scene was like and if you go snooping if they’ve kept all their vinyl there are some artists that they went bonkers over at the time that are…. We’d challenge to let you listen and decide…but aside from subjecting Islamic extremists, we’re not in favor of torture.
During this time period, though much is made of the sounds from England and the West Coast particularly San Francisco, few places had a more active music scene than Detroit, Michigan. There could never be a better argument to refute White Supremacy than comparing the music from black artists compared to their white counterparts in Motown.
While Motown evolved from the early work of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, just known as the Miracles at first, through the Temptations, Supremes, Four Tops and many others to the highly sophisticated and poetic music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder entering the 1970’s, there were tons of white bands rocking the charts too. Bob Segar emerged as a prototype for Bruce Springsteen in many ways. A suburban band, the Amboy Dukes had a flashy lead guitarist who is still active today not just in rock music but all kinds of other pursuits from game hunting to conservative talk radio, Ted Nugent. Alice Cooper first caught fire (or lit them) playing to the campus scene at Ann Arbor, but there were also bands like Rare Earth and Grand Funk Railroad, hugely popular at the time, who were really hard to explain. Motown had some element seeking racial diversity by signing a white act or two. Could that be the excuse for Rare Earth? From up the road a piece in General Motors assembly line town, Flint, came this assault on the airwaves. Their material consisted of mostly covers of Motown hits rearranged for the psychedelia craving white audiences. This was nothing like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s excellent rendition of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Their first hit was a single edit of a twenty plus minute blowout of the Temptation’s classic, “Get Ready.” They’d also cover “I Just Want to Celebrate” and “(I Know) I’m Losing You” – same formula, same results. Also from the great Detroit suburban sprawl came Grand Funk Railroad, a bunch of lightweights whose massive time on the road helped spawn the most mindless forms of arena rock bands to follow later with all the prerequisite gimmicks. Among their hits were the narcissistic self-inflating anthem, “We’re an American Band” and later in their time in the spotlight a “clap your hands, stomp your feet” cover of Little Eva’s “Locomation” a tune that isn’t all that bad for backyard parties. Their epic was a long big production number, “Closer to Home,” complete with orchestration, extended solos, and gimmicks galore. Listeners might remember this tune as “I’m your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah…” Is it any wonder so many songs titled “Ship of Fools” would emerge?
Another band that deserves note in this hall of shame is Vanilla Fudge, backed by the talented rhythm section of Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice. Most of their energy and success was packed into their first eponymous effort revealing their formula of slow, plodding, heavy organ driven, psychedelic covers of well-known hits of the time from “Bang Bang” by Sonny and Cher, “People Get Ready,” and “She’s Not There.” The epic from the album was an extended version of the Supremes hit, “You Keep Me Hanging On” which on its own isn’t so bad, but that is as far as they go and they went pretty fast. After the blockbuster success of their first album, their fortunes faded fast. Something that heavy was bound to land with a thud.
The most notorious giant of the period winning the dubious honor by acclamation is Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” supposedly a slurring of “In the Garden of Eden” if that really matters. The arrangement consists of a proto-metal loud lead guitar, an amped up Farfisa organ gadgetted to sound like a Hammond B-3 on steroids or the Royal Albert Hall pipe organ captured on an old 78 rpm record, a mundane and predictable bass, and the usual flashy drum kit. The lead singer had all the charm and charisma in his voice of the Frankenstein monster. Iron Butterfly first caught attention with a flashy instrumental, “Iron Butterfly Theme” featuring in the line-up Daryl Draggon, yep, the Captain from Captain and Tennille. However, with all the classic greats that came out in 1968, nothing would get the airplay that the extended version, one whole album side, 17 minutes plus, of “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” setting the stage for rock radio to play certain songs to death as they would in the 1970’s where no listener could escape “Stairway to Heaven” or ‘Freebird.” In 1968, however, the emerging “underground” radio stations and rock oriented top 40 stations would play this albatross to death on every shift outside of drive time to where the drum solo became etched in everyone’s psyche. One could not escape the abuse of every 10-15 year old hyper active kid who’d be doped up on Ritalin today banging out that horribly cliché, predictable drum solo on anything the little twerp could use for drums, his desk in school, his little sister’s noggin, mom’s fine china, whatever. Led by vocalist Doug Ingle, Iron Butterfly lasted primarily through three albums. Their third album, “Ball,” chalked up enormous sales largely on a giant advance first pressing but by then listeners were losing interest fast and Iron Butterfly lp’s were rapidly being plucked from record libraries to be tossed Frisbee style into brick walls, used for skeet shooting practice, or just discarded. By 1970, the fans who had made the album such a huge success had all but disavowed any knowledge of its existence.
No serious discussion of the abuses of the 60’s could be complete without mentioning the bombastic critique on the downfall of American society by Earth Opera, “American Eagle Tragedy.” Serious underground stations would play that tune in their evening rotation, what a downer.
There were plenty of sick solo performers sort of in the mold of folkies who could drive any listener mad like Melanie who gathered some notoriety for being on stage at Woodstock. Top 40 had plenty of dreadful music that one wouldn’t associate with the rock music scene, schmaltzy garbage, bubblegum, and unbelievably commercial bands that were supposed to look like rockers.
Though we’re not about to trash the early efforts of the Grateful Dead until they proved there was more to their music than a bad acid trip, Jefferson Airplane, and a lot of the rest of the “summer of love” music, as good as it was then, much of it sounds queerly dated today but can someone who has been there and done that ever get sick of hearing Grace Slick belting out “Somebody to Love?”
In a world where great success is possible, the potential for shocking failure is its inevitable dark side. As record labels merged and big corporations like CBS and ClearChannel gathered up almost all locally owned radio stations, the big corporation take over of the music industry was more interested in demographics and marketing ability over any kind of artistic quality. The McDonalds’ ethos of bland, consistent, tasteless but easily marketable took over the music industry that despite all kinds of creative movements through the 80’s to Grunge in the early 90’s, McMusic was taking over to lead to the sorry state of affairs from the mid 90’s forward where the American Idol sound, crap like Britney Spears, and gangsta rap rules. While there might not be anything as god awful as Earth Opera or Melanie, when was the last great masterpiece recorded?
Lots of today’s listeners weren’t even born yet.
We needn’t go into a lot of specifics as most listeners from that time period forward, even high school kids today, know who the key players are and surely have a hardy sample of key works in their CD library or on their little handheld devices.
Baby boomers who lived through it all, kids, have very romantic visions of what the music scene was like and if you go snooping if they’ve kept all their vinyl there are some artists that they went bonkers over at the time that are…. We’d challenge to let you listen and decide…but aside from subjecting Islamic extremists, we’re not in favor of torture.
During this time period, though much is made of the sounds from England and the West Coast particularly San Francisco, few places had a more active music scene than Detroit, Michigan. There could never be a better argument to refute White Supremacy than comparing the music from black artists compared to their white counterparts in Motown.
While Motown evolved from the early work of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, just known as the Miracles at first, through the Temptations, Supremes, Four Tops and many others to the highly sophisticated and poetic music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder entering the 1970’s, there were tons of white bands rocking the charts too. Bob Segar emerged as a prototype for Bruce Springsteen in many ways. A suburban band, the Amboy Dukes had a flashy lead guitarist who is still active today not just in rock music but all kinds of other pursuits from game hunting to conservative talk radio, Ted Nugent. Alice Cooper first caught fire (or lit them) playing to the campus scene at Ann Arbor, but there were also bands like Rare Earth and Grand Funk Railroad, hugely popular at the time, who were really hard to explain. Motown had some element seeking racial diversity by signing a white act or two. Could that be the excuse for Rare Earth? From up the road a piece in General Motors assembly line town, Flint, came this assault on the airwaves. Their material consisted of mostly covers of Motown hits rearranged for the psychedelia craving white audiences. This was nothing like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s excellent rendition of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Their first hit was a single edit of a twenty plus minute blowout of the Temptation’s classic, “Get Ready.” They’d also cover “I Just Want to Celebrate” and “(I Know) I’m Losing You” – same formula, same results. Also from the great Detroit suburban sprawl came Grand Funk Railroad, a bunch of lightweights whose massive time on the road helped spawn the most mindless forms of arena rock bands to follow later with all the prerequisite gimmicks. Among their hits were the narcissistic self-inflating anthem, “We’re an American Band” and later in their time in the spotlight a “clap your hands, stomp your feet” cover of Little Eva’s “Locomation” a tune that isn’t all that bad for backyard parties. Their epic was a long big production number, “Closer to Home,” complete with orchestration, extended solos, and gimmicks galore. Listeners might remember this tune as “I’m your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah…” Is it any wonder so many songs titled “Ship of Fools” would emerge?
Another band that deserves note in this hall of shame is Vanilla Fudge, backed by the talented rhythm section of Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice. Most of their energy and success was packed into their first eponymous effort revealing their formula of slow, plodding, heavy organ driven, psychedelic covers of well-known hits of the time from “Bang Bang” by Sonny and Cher, “People Get Ready,” and “She’s Not There.” The epic from the album was an extended version of the Supremes hit, “You Keep Me Hanging On” which on its own isn’t so bad, but that is as far as they go and they went pretty fast. After the blockbuster success of their first album, their fortunes faded fast. Something that heavy was bound to land with a thud.
The most notorious giant of the period winning the dubious honor by acclamation is Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” supposedly a slurring of “In the Garden of Eden” if that really matters. The arrangement consists of a proto-metal loud lead guitar, an amped up Farfisa organ gadgetted to sound like a Hammond B-3 on steroids or the Royal Albert Hall pipe organ captured on an old 78 rpm record, a mundane and predictable bass, and the usual flashy drum kit. The lead singer had all the charm and charisma in his voice of the Frankenstein monster. Iron Butterfly first caught attention with a flashy instrumental, “Iron Butterfly Theme” featuring in the line-up Daryl Draggon, yep, the Captain from Captain and Tennille. However, with all the classic greats that came out in 1968, nothing would get the airplay that the extended version, one whole album side, 17 minutes plus, of “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” setting the stage for rock radio to play certain songs to death as they would in the 1970’s where no listener could escape “Stairway to Heaven” or ‘Freebird.” In 1968, however, the emerging “underground” radio stations and rock oriented top 40 stations would play this albatross to death on every shift outside of drive time to where the drum solo became etched in everyone’s psyche. One could not escape the abuse of every 10-15 year old hyper active kid who’d be doped up on Ritalin today banging out that horribly cliché, predictable drum solo on anything the little twerp could use for drums, his desk in school, his little sister’s noggin, mom’s fine china, whatever. Led by vocalist Doug Ingle, Iron Butterfly lasted primarily through three albums. Their third album, “Ball,” chalked up enormous sales largely on a giant advance first pressing but by then listeners were losing interest fast and Iron Butterfly lp’s were rapidly being plucked from record libraries to be tossed Frisbee style into brick walls, used for skeet shooting practice, or just discarded. By 1970, the fans who had made the album such a huge success had all but disavowed any knowledge of its existence.
No serious discussion of the abuses of the 60’s could be complete without mentioning the bombastic critique on the downfall of American society by Earth Opera, “American Eagle Tragedy.” Serious underground stations would play that tune in their evening rotation, what a downer.
There were plenty of sick solo performers sort of in the mold of folkies who could drive any listener mad like Melanie who gathered some notoriety for being on stage at Woodstock. Top 40 had plenty of dreadful music that one wouldn’t associate with the rock music scene, schmaltzy garbage, bubblegum, and unbelievably commercial bands that were supposed to look like rockers.
Though we’re not about to trash the early efforts of the Grateful Dead until they proved there was more to their music than a bad acid trip, Jefferson Airplane, and a lot of the rest of the “summer of love” music, as good as it was then, much of it sounds queerly dated today but can someone who has been there and done that ever get sick of hearing Grace Slick belting out “Somebody to Love?”
In a world where great success is possible, the potential for shocking failure is its inevitable dark side. As record labels merged and big corporations like CBS and ClearChannel gathered up almost all locally owned radio stations, the big corporation take over of the music industry was more interested in demographics and marketing ability over any kind of artistic quality. The McDonalds’ ethos of bland, consistent, tasteless but easily marketable took over the music industry that despite all kinds of creative movements through the 80’s to Grunge in the early 90’s, McMusic was taking over to lead to the sorry state of affairs from the mid 90’s forward where the American Idol sound, crap like Britney Spears, and gangsta rap rules. While there might not be anything as god awful as Earth Opera or Melanie, when was the last great masterpiece recorded?
Lots of today’s listeners weren’t even born yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment