“A Cat Stevens gem about being profoundly somewhere that managed to not overstay its welcome in my ear drums. Top 40 radio didn’t play it much. It wasn’t on the Greatest Hits album that everybody and his big sister owned. You had to actually play the album Tea For The Tillerman to hear it, or find a movie theatre that was cool enough to be showing Harold and Maude.” (Philip Random)
“Badfinger were supposed to be the next Beatles. Hell, some people thought they were the Beatles, signed as they were to Apple Records and showing a penchant for strong melodies and harmonies, and no fear of rocking out if required. In which case, Name of the Game would have been one of Paul McCartney’s songs, sad, beautiful, perhaps even meaningful. Maybe too meaningful in Badfinger’s case, as Pete Ham, the guy who wrote it, killed himself four years after its release (age twenty-seven) due, it seems, to deep despondence at the trajectory of the band’s career. Eight years later, fellow band member Tom Evans would do the same.” (Philip Random)
Part eleven of the Solid Time of Change aired Saturday July-30-2016 c/o CiTR.FM.101.9.
Podcast (Solid Time begins at around the 5 minute point). Youtube playlist (not completely accurate).
This continues to be Randophonic’s main focus, our 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 time indeed, musically speaking.
Part eleven 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.
In which New York based sonic warriors Vanilla Fudge (discovered and managed by a reputed associate of the Lucchese crime family) take on Lee Hazelwood’s Some Velvet Morning with equal parts subtlety and a sledgehammer lack thereof. Not as good as the original and yet a journey worth taking regardless, because sometimes you just need to go further.
“Nobody was paying much attention anymore to the Steve Miller Band come the 1980s, which means the spaced out analog synthetic bliss of 1981’s side long Macho City got mostly overlooked. Which is a pity. Because there has never been enough spaced out groove music, particularly during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s War On Drugs in full effect, the marijuana getting stronger and stronger. Something weird was going down. I’m still trying to figure out what.” (Philip Random)
In which Jim Carroll (former teenage heroin poet eventually made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio) forms a band and makes good on an album of raw urban angst best exemplified by this epic chunk of dark glory. Because we’ve all been there with the daylight fading, the shadows laying their claim. Let the strange times roll.
Randophonic 