Tag Archives: 1972

951. celluoid heroes

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In which The Kinks, a little past their 1960s glory days, stretch out a bit and release one of the saddest songs known to man. “I remember hearing it on the radio as a kid and almost crying. And that was many years before I’d seen any number of friends (and friends of friends) throw everything they had into some kind of showbiz career, and not just for the art of it, but also the glory, the big dream of being loved by everyone everywhere forever. And none of them ever achieved it. Nobody ever does really. Because those famous folks you see everywhere all the time – they’re not even real, just hallucinations created by the hunger at the heart of the Spectacle.” (Philip Random)

977. family of man

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Because there had to be at least one Three Dog Night track on this list. Might as well go with a mostly forgotten, comparatively minor hit about how humanity just keeps destroying the planet, one city, one neighbourhood, one family at a time. Because much as the official hype might tell us that the early 1970s were all about your Led Zeppelins and Elton Johns and David Bowies, the airwaves would have been awfully bare without the hit machine who took their name from a pre-central heating turn of phrase for a very cold night.

ThreeDogNight

1003. take me clear from here

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Edwin Starr was the big voice behind War (what is it good for?), one of the great singles from 1970, or any other year for that matter.  Here he’s pulling back a bit, weary of it all just wanting some way out of the madhouse of modern life.

edwinStarr

1062. 18th Avenue (Kansas City Nightmare)

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Everybody (or their big sister) had a copy of Cat Stevens Greatest Hits back in the day, and it was a darned good collection in a heartfelt folkie-poppy sort of way. But if you really wanted to know the depth of the Cat, you had to go to track one, side two of the album Catch Bull At Four, the song called 18th Avenue (Kansas City Nightmare) which managed in its less than four and a half minutes to cover all manner of mood and intensity, all of it cloaked in doom and shadow and, despite the obliqueness of its lyrics, definitely going somewhere.

1076. truckin’ off across the sky

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We’ll give this one to Lester Bangs, because without his review, Philip Random would never have been on the lookout for a copy of Live at the Paramount, which he found at yard sale, 1980s sometime. Cost him at least a dollar. “The Guess Who have absolutely no taste at all, they don’t even mind embarrassing everybody in the audience, they’re real punks without ever working too hard at it […]  In case you wondered about the drug commercial, it’s in a song called Truckin Off Across The Sky, the main character of which is the Grim Reaper. There he is … grinning, outstretched arms holding bags of you-know-what. Positively the best drug song of 1972. And this may well be the best live album. F*** all them old dudes wearing their hip tastes on their sleeves: get this and play it loud and be first on your block to become a public nuisance.”

1078. mouldy old dough

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“I’m not clear on who Lieutenant Pigeon was or whether he (or they?) ever even released another record. Because Mouldy Old Dough was more than enough for posterity, proving a monster hit in Britain, and yes, it’s all the evidence one requires to posit that there really was once a time (call it 1972) when lead flute and a growling vocal were all anyone needed to achieve pop glory. If the song’s actually about anything, it may be that tendency in medieval times for folks to go mad after eating bread baked from moldy dough, research into which would eventually give us LSD. This is true.” (Philip Random)