Monthly Archives: January 2017

854. the life auction

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The Strawbs started out as a folk band in the 1960s, but somewhere along the line, things started getting so-called progressive, which Rick Wakeman‘s stint on keyboards only accentuated. But even after Yes scooped him up, the Strawbs continued with the progressing and expanding, and nowhere so seriously, intensely, psychedelically as The Life Auction, found on 1975’s Ghosts. It’s tea time, the middle of England somewhere (or maybe just some drab Canadian suburb) and the acid you dropped an hour or so back is finally kicking in hard, the truth about everything revealed in the polluted haze of another diluted day.

(photo: Steve Jepson)

855. we can be more than we are

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Nifty jam from April Wine, one of those Canadian rock outfits that didn’t get heard much around the world, but got piles of national radio airplay through the 1970s, only some of it bureaucratically mandated. But they never played We Can Be More Than We Are. You had to actually had to own the Canadian pressing of the album for that one (or find a copy of the Gimmie Love 7-inch and flip it to the b-side). Cool groove, hot licks and then a phone call, some stoner on the line, looking for an easy break into the record biz, but all he gets is some free advice. “You can be more than you are.”

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856. boogie woogie dance

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“A Thin Lizzy rocker that neither boogies nor woogies. It’s just heavy and strong and full of threat, though of what I’m not quite sure, maybe something lurking in the deep Irish night. Found on 1976’s Johnny The Fox, which is one of those albums that nails its place in time. Not punk, not metal, just rock, good and hard.” (Philip Random)

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26. The Solid Time Of Change

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After a few weeks off for seasonal festivities and concerns, the Solid Time of Change returned on Saturday January-14-2016 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Podcast (Solid Time begins a few minutes in). Youtube playlist (incomplete and not entirely accurate).

Presented in countdown form, the Solid Time of Change is our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era – 661 selections from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.

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Part Twenty-Six of the journey went as follows:

  1. Queen – liar
  2. King Crimson – easy money
  3. Utopia – Hiroshima
  4. Roxy Music – end of the line
  5. Roxy Music – sentimental fool
  6. Roxy Music – mother of pearl
  7. John Martyn – I’d rather be the devil
  8. Led Zeppelin – Achilles last stand
  9. Neil Diamond – Soolaimon + Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show
  10. Allman Brothers – of Elizabeth Reed’s Mountain Jam

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 page.

857. kill for peace

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“Motron was right. I was wrong. It turns out the Fugs were the first genuinely Underground American outfit, certainly of psychedelic 60s. I was arguing hard for the Mothers of Invention, but no, it turns out the Fugs beat them to it. They weren’t as good as the Mothers, but that’s a different argument. Kill For Peace (from the Fugs’ Second Album by which point the Mothers were in the game) certainly set things straight about what was going down over in Vietnam: if you don’t like foreigners and their strange habits and customs, then kill them, for peace, because if we don’t, the Chinese will. It stands to reason.” (Philip Random)

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858. no killing

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“The first two Violent Femmes albums were so strong that The Blind Leading the Naked was always going to disappoint. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t give us a few cool nuggets, most notably No Killing, a charged number that felt infused with all the evil sh** we were hearing out of various lost zones in Central America (or perhaps Milwaukee) – CIA trained death squads on the roam, doing their worst so tinpot el prezidentes could maintain power, and the good ole Yankee dollar forever flourish. Same as it ever was.” (Philip Random)

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