The Jimmy Castor Bunch are mostly known for their one-off mega-hit whose sexual politics were dubious even in 1972. The shock is just how good the rest of the album is — a blast of funk fused psychedelic soul that’s as serious as life, truth and death.
In which the Moody Blues go deep and wide and high, and remind us why they were once considered pretty darned cool. Philip Random recalls listening to Melancholy Man a lot while reading Lord of the Rings for the first time “… as a mostly uncool, pre-driver’s license teen with absolutely nothing better to do one long hot summer, stuck in somebody else’s cottage, there being only one even remotely decent album in the vicinity – This Is The Moody Blues (who knows how it got there?). I still think of Bilbo Baggins finally getting old whenever I hear Melancholy Man and I didn’t even know what melancholy meant at the time, just felt it anyway, all that deep sorrow and regret, particularly once the mellotron sweeps in for the kill.”
“A nifty bit of Bowie genius from 1979’s Lodger, the comparatively overlooked album that capped off his so-called Berlin Trilogy. So-called because Lodger was actually recorded in Switzerland and NYC in and around various tours. But Berlin was never far away from Bowie’s heart and brain in those days, the friction of its divided soul fueling mutant sounds and angles that couldn’t seem to help invent the future — the decade to be known as the 1980s.” (Philip Random)
On one level, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown was the definition of a one hit novelty act. Light your hair on fire, howl like a crazy person, give the kids something to scream about. But listen closely to that debut album and you’ll realize there’s depth beyond all the surface craziness – a singer who can work four octaves and a band that can cook for sure, but they can also play the changes, turn a mood on its head, tear your head off in the process.
Part eight of the Solid Time of Change aired Saturday July-2-2016 c/o CiTR.FM.101.9.
Podcast (Solid Time begins at around the 5 minute point). Youtube playlist (not necessarily complete or accurate).
The Solid Time of Change is Randophonic’s current countdown, our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era – 661 records from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to convey some sense of what was indeed a strange and ambitious time, musically speaking.
Part eight of our journey went as follows:
Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night starting at 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.
Bourbonese Qualk were early players in the so-called industrial scene, though Boggy Creek is mostly just odd. No doubt related to the movie Legend of Boggy Creek, which Philip Random never saw, but he does remember seeing the TV ad when he was a kid. “Creeped me right out.”
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