Tag Archives: 1972

493. lazy

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“Memories of John Masterson, the older guy who lived next door, and definitely a wild one. He had a souped up Datsun 510 that he loved to bomb around in, so he’d give me rides places just to have an excuse to open it up, burn rubber, go FAST. And I swear he always had the same 8-Track playing, which was Deep Purple Made In Japan, and it always seemed to be the same song. Not the obvious one, Highway Star. Nah, John Masterson was hooked on Lazy, from its lazy indeed beginning onward through the riffing and rocking and erupting. The All Time Heavy, he called them, and I wasn’t going to argue, not at 90 mph down a back road near the docks.” (Philip Random)

DeepPurple-1972-live

 

523. Vitamin C

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“A nifty little almost pop song from the group known as Can about who knows what? Including the singer, I’m pretty sure, Damo Suzuki from Japan, hanging out in Germany, trying to work in English, ending up inventing his own dadaesque language. A song about whatever you want it to be about, I guess, although I’ll go with my friend Thomas’s interpretation. It’s about that dissipated feeling you get when you’ve wasted all your precious vril energy on rich, yet pointless pleasures. But the music’s there to revive you, like the potion it is, alchemical and true.” (Philip Random)

Can-1972-promo

527. wind up

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“It’s Christmas 1972, a party at family friends. I’m thirteen and barely old enough to be hanging with the big kids. Just shut up and sit in the corner. And then they all go outside to smoke a joint. They even invite me along, but no way, not with my parents barely fifty feet away. Which leaves me alone with the record that’s playing – Aqualung by Jethro Tull, getting to the end of Side Two, a song about all the religious bullshit they push on you when you’re a kid, which I had no problem agreeing with, particularly the part about God not being a simple toy. You didn’t just wind Him up once a week, say few stupid prayers and then get on with your everyday lying, cheating, stealing. Nah, if there was a God worth giving a shit about, He or She or It had to be magnitudes more complex and wise than that. I don’t believe you — you’ve got the whole damned thing all wrong.” (Philip Random)

JethroTull-AqualungINside

607. Telegram Sam

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xl32HEJ8DE

“I did hear Telegram Sam at least once way back when, and my immediate teeny bop take was, ‘this sounds exactly like that other T-Rex song‘. And I was right. But ultimately, wrong. Because what I was really referring to was T-Rex‘s groovy, funky, rockin’ one in a trillion sound. Which I didn’t really get for at least another decade, which is when Bauhaus’s rather raucous take on Telegram Sam nudged me into paying attention again. Pop for the ages, glamorous and forever cool.” (Philip Random)

T-Rex-crowd-1972

623. perfection

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“I’m twelve years old. It’s 1972 and there’s this band I keep hearing on the radio who can’t be the Beatles, because the Beatles broke up two years ago, but they sure sound like the Beatles. Bad-something. And then my friend Chris buys their latest single. It’s called Baby Blue, and it’s official. This band is called Badfinger.  Maybe three years later, I’m finally buying albums on a regular basis, and one that I’m always looking for is Badfinger’s Straight Up (the one with Baby Blue on it). ‘Good luck finding that,’ says a record store guy one day. ‘It’s impossible to find ever since Apple went under.’ Which was not entirely accurate. I found Straight Up a few times over the years, used and stupidly expensive. Then finally, early-90s sometime, there it was at a flea market, cover a bit hacked but the vinyl itself looked okay. The weird thing is, the song that immediately grabbed then thirty-something me wasn’t Baby Blue, but Perfection. Solid sort of mid-tempo rock, with lyrics on the topic of there being no real perfection, but love and truth regardless. A stoic’s tune, I guess, and all too sad given the tragedies that would tear Badfinger to pieces. All the more reason to keep playing the records.” (Philip Random)

630. that’s how I feel

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They were the Jazz Crusaders until 1971 at which point they became merely the Crusaders, and less of a straight up jazz outfit, more of a funk driven item. But one thing that didn’t change (and never would) was the rich and prodigious power of the music. That’s How I Feel showed up on their second album as the Crusaders, the perhaps confusingly titled double shot called 1. Nothing confusing at all about how it made things move.

Crusaders-1973