For most folks, the Donovan story peaks with all that acid everybody was taking in 1966-67-68, and then sort of wanders off down a lost road. Which is rather what 1970’s Open Road sounds like in a very good way, with the aptly named Roots of Oak a folksy yet expansive musing on nature, the elements, time, everything. No flies on this hippie.
A comparatively un-heard Beatles track (found on Let it Be), and one that John Lennon (its composer) wrote off as ‘a piece of garbage’, and yet it still made it to that famous rooftop concert. “What it is, is kind of loose, kind of incomplete, kind of confusing. In other words, it’s the truth about the Beatles as things were all falling apart. I’ll take it over Long And Winding Road any day, or Yesterday for that matter.” (Philip Random)
By 1970 (and probably all along), the Mothers of Invention were whatever and whoever Frank Zappa said they were. In the case of Directly From My Heart To You, that meant that Sugarcane Harris‘s straight ahead blues and violin take on a Little Richard original belonged on 1970’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh, which was that kind of album anyway – odds and sods and outtakes from various live gigs and studio sessions all jammed together and, strangely (or perhaps not) making for a very much essential Mothers excursion, the only limits being Mr. Zappa’s abilities (staggering) and taste (expansive to say the least). And then there’s that album cover, which Philip Random admits is the reason he bought it in the first place.
Cool and soulful non-hit from Elton John‘s third album, 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection, which Philip Random maintains is his best “… mainly because it preceded the absurd levels of mega-hugeness that so devoured him by mid-decade. Apparently it’s a concept album concerning country themes, cowboys, dust, lust and, in the case of Where to Now St Peter? some heartfelt gospel yearning which truly sets the guy’s voice free. I mean, has any other white man, before or since, ever sung the word blue so thoroughly, completely, rhapsodically …?”
“Some bands flirt with the edge. Van Der Graaf Generator routinely operated as if it didn’t exist. Though routine is probably the wrong word, there being nothing remotely normal about anything they ever released. As for Killer (found on their second proper album), I tend to think of it as a white shark’s blues, concerning as it does the travails of just such a creature, loveless, having never known love, forever prowling, forever hungry, never sated, just keep moving, keep eating – oblivion either way.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 