Monthly Archives: October 2017

636. go up Moses

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Roberta Flack had a huge hit in 1972 with First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, a soft, slow mover that was so good even twelve year old white bread suburban me couldn’t help but pay attention. Which is how I eventually ended up with Quiet Fire. Spotted maybe fifteen years later at a yard sale (hard to miss that hair on the cover). How could it not be worth a buck (or whatever)? But it wasn’t a slow mover that hooked me, it was lead-off track Go Up Moses, biblical, revolutionary and groovy, and co-written by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Pharaoh Must Go!” (Philip Random)

637. A Passion Play

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“It seems insane to even think about it now, but in 1972 Jethro Tull conquered the world with a 43-minute-44-second song called Thick as a Brick that comprised the entire album of the same name. Adventurous, dense, continuous, it even half made sense, both musically and lyrically. So what did Ian Anderson (Tull main man) and his talented crew do for a follow-up? Another album long song, this one called A Passion Play, which proved even more dense and adventurous than Thick As A Brick. And I’m still trying to figure it out. Actually, that’s a lie. I gave up a long time ago, because as a friend concluded, ‘Man, you’ve gotta be Ian Anderson’s f***ing brain to know what any of that’s supposed to mean.’ Which doesn’t mean I ever stopped listening to it. I guess I just pretend I’m Ian Anderson’s brain for a while.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

638. musicione

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By 1973, The Guess Who were mostly on the wane, certainly as a commercial force. Randy Bachman was long gone, and what had been a outfit that couldn’t seem to help cranking out the hits now seemed more interested in just being an improper rock ‘n’ roll band, drinking and drugging and whoring around. Which doesn’t mean the music was dead – you just weren’t hearing it that much on the radio anymore. Musicione for instance. A smart rocker with a loose jammed-out feel that ends up feeling like a hymn toward something or other. Who makes the music when you die?  Somebody else, obviously.

639. the golden age of rock and roll

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“I hated the golden age of rock and roll when I was a young teen. Not the song, the era.  The Buddy Hollys, Chubby Checkers, Bill Haleys, Big Boppers, Elvis – the whole big deal 1950s-early-60s retro thing that was suddenly going down everywhere in the wake of American Graffiti (the movie). Which wasn’t bad at all. I just didn’t need the f***ing revival. I had Bowie, T-Rex, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, The Stones, Mott The Hoople, who, of course, wrote this song about it all, with the crucial line that the golden age of rock and roll wasn’t then, it was now. And it still is. It has to be. Believe otherwise and you might as well be dead.” (Philip Random)

Mott-1974

640. Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nANIzuIvW5o

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark being one of those outfits that would be very easy to ridicule (hate even) for their name alone, except they rather lived it up to it. For the first few albums anyway. Architecture & Morality (their third) hit big in the UK, and deserved it, working a cool mix of pop and noise and ambient options, with Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans) managing to do it all in four minutes and change.