723. three more days

“Speaking of the Brave Generation (ie: those of us who were still little kids as the 1960s flipped over into the 1970s), pretty much everybody had a half-cool older brother or sister or cousin that had a copy of the Guess Who‘s Share The Land lying around – the one with the wise Indian on the cover. Which was rather the hippie teenage dream at the time. Smoke a little maryjane and get some mystical magical guidance from somebody/anybody who wasn’t your dad or your grand dad or your hockey coach, or anyone even remotely connected with your suburban whitebread, soulless culture. Or as the lyrics go in Three More Days (Burton Cummings channeling his inner Jim Morrison) ‘Freedom – paint me a picture – show it to me right now’. And then the band got busy stretching things out and tearing them up. Epic indeed.” (Philip Random)

GuessWho-1970

724. For Michael Collins, Jeffrey + Me

In which Jethro Tull remind us that July 20, 1969 may well have been the best day humanity’s ever known. Because even if there were brutal wars going on all over, children starving, good people going down – a man was walking on the f***ing moon (two of them actually), and if you were any older than three, you were watching it on TV. Including astronaut Michael Collins, who was the guy stuck back in the command module orbiting around while his two buddies got all the glory. Which is what the song’s really about. To be that close, yet so far away.

moonwalkApollo11

 

765. Atom Heart Mother [the groovy part]

“The title’s cool. Atom Heart Mother. Doesn’t get much heavier than that. But it’s the cow that grabbed me, which I first saw as a poster in a record store when I was maybe twelve. No group or album name. Just this cow gazing cowlike from its green field.  I didn’t get it, but I guess it got me. Later, a friend told me it was Pink Floyd, who I’d heard of but never actually heard (this being a two or three years before Dark Side of the Moon would become as common as allergies in springtime). ‘They’re acid rock,’ said my friend, which instantly meant extreme. Because acid could eat metal, right?  But then I actually heard Atom Heart Mother and it was more weird than anything, like a symphony, except it was a rock band, with space ships in the distance, and then choirs and things. No metal being eaten anywhere, unless that’s what the cow was doing, calm, significant, like a Hindu god. I particularly liked the groovy part in the middle.” (Philip Random)

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773. sickle clowns

“As the story goes, The Pretty Things never got around to Invading America properly and thus they stand as the one essential Brit band of the swinging 60s that never really made it into the so-called Classic Rock canon – the upside being that I never got remotely sick of them. Sickle Clowns comes from 1970, and as with many of the better records from that year, you can feel the change that must’ve been in the air, the flower power well on the wane, the shadows growing, the sparkle fading as the drugs wore off.” (Philip Random)

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775. psychedelic shack

No Motown act embraced the psychedelic stuff quite so thoroughly as the Temptations, with 1970’s Psychedelic Shack (song and album) their most obvious offering in that regard. “Fact is, there were psychedelic shacks in all three of the suburbs where I served my pre and early teen years (late 60s, tipping into the early 70s). Absolute no-go zones where long-haired freaky people set snares for small children, to be sacrificed unto Satan in acid drenched rituals come the next full moon. Later, I realized they were mostly just teenagers hanging out, and my parents were full of sh**.” (Philip Random)

798. see my way

“Blame it on the name. Blodwyn Pig. It made it a little too easy to just look the other way. In fact, it was decades after the fact that I even realized it was the band Mick Abrahams formed when he split from Jethro Tull (after only one album). And it’s all there really, the same smart sort of jazz, blues, rock (but mostly blues) that the early Tull was delivering. And it was good. Hell, See My Way’s a genuine treasure. How did we all miss that one? Must’ve been the name. Blodwyn Pig is not a good name for a great band.” (Philip Random)

BlodwynPig