Rare Earth being Motown’s best ever band of white guys, their 1971 double live album being one of the all-time greatest concert sets ever put to vinyl. You get pretty much all the big deal hits in pumped up, oft extended form, plus some lesser heard gems like this Ray Charles cover. A band that just loved to play and a rowdy audience that wouldn’t have it any other way.
Paul McCartney (and Wings) still seemed to matter in 1974. No, he wasn’t cranking out Hey Judes anymore, but the stuff was still sounding better than most of the other pop dreck on the radio. Picasso’s Last Words, the last song from Band on the Run, is a loose stumble through various angles and forms which is probably supposed to reflect the great painter’s cubist form. “As with pretty much any post-Beatles McCartney or Lennon track, I can’t help thinking it would be better if the other guy was still involved, calling bullshit, throwing in ideas and whatever. But it’s still fun in a sad sort of way. Feel free to playlist it at my funeral.” (Philip Random)
Part ten of the Solid Time of Change aired Saturday July-16-2016 c/o CiTR.FM.101.9.
Podcast (Solid Time begins at about five minutes in). Youtube playlist (not entirely accurate).
The Solid Time of Change continues to be Randophonic’s main focus, an overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era (presented in countdown form) – 661 records from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious and only occasionally absurd time, musically speaking.
Part ten of the journey went as follows:
Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook.
A much loved Rolling Stones nugget gets eviscerated by Eugene Chadbourne, one of those unique geniuses who started out with rock and roll but quickly grew bored, thus free jazz, bluegrass, country, noise – everything really. And a huge discography in which, if you dig deep enough (often through limited run cassette releases), you discover that he’s probably covered every song known to man (and woman) at some point or other, and in doing so, he’s singlehandedly kept the world from ending.
In which the (comparatively) early Roxy Music remind us that among other cool and artful tricks, they could kick out rock solid power pop that was years ahead of its time. From 1974’s Country Life. Brian Eno is already gone but this remains one cool and strong and innovative band.
“The Soft Boys are one of those outfits I managed to miss at the time, but rather stumbled across maybe fifteen years late via a cassette I found lying around of their 1980 album Underwater Moonlight. I Wanna Destroy You was the track that immediately grabbed me – not quite punk but full of bile regardless. Dedicated as always to everyone who ever f***ed me over, big or small, deliberately or otherwise.” (Philip Random)
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