Showing posts with label 70s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 70s. Show all posts

Tuesday 29 July 2014

David Bowie Glam One Two



The best final track of an album then the first track of the follow up LP. I'm tryin to think of others but this is a great double! Of course The Bewlay Brothers ends Hunky Dory and Five Years opens The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars.  Does it get any better than this for this combo?Anyone got any others?

Wednesday 4 June 2014

RIP Alexander Shulgin

Simon Reynolds tribute to Alexander Shulgin here. Well I didn't know much about him until today. He rescued MDMA from historical obscurity in 1976 and is now a legend. Somewhere along the way MDMA became known as Ecstasy. I'd like to thank him for the hits and the memories. In my teens I remember first reading about Ecstasy in The Age (Melbourne equivalent to The Guardian/New York Times) in an article that featured S'Express and 70s fashion. I recall being fascinated by this drug and the subculture surrounding it. I'd probably only ever been pissed previously and never even been stoned. I think I cut this article out. Then a few months later there was an entire expose on Ecstasy and it's effects on its users in like The Age's weekend magazine (probably sourced from The Guardian actually). It had all these great modern fried psychedelic graphics of people being wasted on E. I cut that one out as well. You'd think I was well on the way to being a total E head but I reckon it would have been five years at least until I tried it. Maybe Shaun Ryder and Bez, from The Happy Mondays, put me off trying it any earlier. I was a very infrequent user of the substance but I gotta say I enjoyed it every time.

Then there's the music it helped create. Wow, Shulgin couldn't have foreseen such a flourishing musical movement being created for and by this drug. Ecstasy has been the catalyst for some of the greatest genres of the modern music era of the last 30 years and still continues it's influence today. MDMA was revolutionary and that's an understatement. I've possibly listened to more music created for and by Ecstasy than anything else. It's a testament to the drug that you don't even have to be on it to enjoy this music. Rest in Ecstasy Mr Shulgin.





I could go on probably forever posting E related tunes. Oh hang on this captures something about E-ing. That moment when you think you've been ripped off and bought a dud. Then minutes later it kicks in big style.


Thursday 6 March 2014

It's Glam Party Time II....With Suzi Quatro




To be quite honest I don't recall this one from childhood. Maybe it wasn't a hit in Australia however I was only a toddler at the time. Actually it got to no. 4 here but the other 3 here were number ones. I think she was bigger in Australia than anywhere else, having hits long after this little run of gold.


To me these are the 4 classics that were released in succession. The next couple I didn't like so much (but others rate them). That's 4 classics though. The Buggles only managed one.

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Gene Clark's No Other

The Best LA LP of The 70s?


What I've been tryin to get to for a while now is this: Gene Clark's No Other. Here's another record I don't really need to talk about as some of the greats have written about it here and here. Anyway this is a record that is still building its cult. It'll probably be 5 to 10 years before he gets to that stage that, I dunno, someone like Nick Drake ended up in 10 years ago. A sort of saturation point where you've gone from cult figure to everyone who's ever gonna know about you knowing about you. I guess Rodriguez is reaching this position now, sure a doco helps! As does an Academy Award for said doco. Anyway David Geffen apparently pumped a hundred grand into Clark's magnificent 1974 opus and upon receiving it in the flesh promptly chucked it in the bin in a hissy fit because it only had 8 songs. Geffen refused to promote the LP and it came and went in a flash. Clark's career never recovered and he allegedly became a tragic figure until he died in 1991 before the No Other cult had gained much momentum. This LP is up there with the best 70s West Coast records by Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Sly Stone and Dennis Wilson and could possibly be the best of the lot. I reckon we definitely get our $100,000 worth. It's lush. It's sublime. This album is the perfect amalgamation of songs, performance and production. It does not get much better than this if indeed it does at all! There's something intangibly magic about this LP and framing it in Gram Parson's term 'Cosmic Americana' doesn't do it justice. This ain't no hippy hillbilly record. However there is a dichotomy at work here. Clark wrote this album during a deep spiritual time but then recorded it in the grips of out of control cocaine use/abuse. An interesting footnote to Australian readers is that Venetta Fields, yes she of John Farnham's band, sings backing vocals on the trax Life's Greatest Fool Some Misunderstanding.

I is diggin those 1974 threads man.



Saturday 11 May 2013

Tommy Ugh!!!!


Tommy's gotta be the worst fucking shite I've ever seen (I'd never watched it till tonight)! Academy Award nominations?? Ken fuckin Russell! I know with his name attached I should have seen it coming. It makes me hate The Who. It makes me hate the 70s. It makes me wish Video/DVD had never been invented. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gives it 3 stars out of a possible 4, That's 7.5 out of ten, 75 %! More like minus 75% and that's being generous. It's so bad it's just fucking bad. More fuel for my argument that film is ultimately a failed art form. Ugh!!!

Thursday 19 January 2012

I'm So Agitated!...................


Who would have thought? Here's my theme tune of recent times. Shrinks! What the fuck do they do again? Oh yeah they make a shit load of money off vulnerable people while pretending that they are somehow helping them. The word scum comes to mind. Is there any lower human form than a psychiatrist/psychologist? Thanks to Derrick in the 90s for getting me into The Electric Eels!