Funny I see this thread as in my Facebook feed I just saw Flip City featuring a young Elvis Costello. Amongst other things, it has a lot of early versions of what would become songs on This Years Model but played more in the style of My Aim is True.
Well, there goes my Saturday evening - I shall be self-isolating with this. I know some of the songs - Imagination isn’t just an early gem, it’s one of his best songs. Thank you, Ludovic.
Here’s another that he used to play back in the day - there’s a studio version somewhere, but I can’t find it just now. Decades ago I knew this as “I Wrote This Song” - it was only in the last months that a chance listening to a Kilburn And The Highroads album (now there’s another potential gem mine) wised me up: it’s an Ian Dury song called The Roadette Song.
j
I’ve always enjoyed the 16 minute version of this clip. You can watch as Steve Allen, an intelligent and accomplished musician himself, gradually realizes that Frank was a serious musician behind the comedy/novelty facade.
Nick Cave pre-Birthday Party.
Shivers
Robert Vaughn introduces the Goldberg [Steve] Miller Blues Band in 1965: The Mother Song
Nowadays, Sweeney Todd is a mostly-forgotten Canadian band, but they did have a 1975 Canadian hit with Roxy Roller. That’s Nick Gilder on lead vocal, by the way, before he left the band and went on to a solo career, where he became best known for “Hot Child in the City,” and “Here Comes the Night.”
But Sweeney Todd didn’t stop there. Gilder’s replacement was a 16-year-old named Bryan Adams, who sang lead on the band’s second album, released in 1977. Here he is doing lead vocal on If Wishes Were Horses, which was a single from that album (the music actually starts at 0:20). But the album (and the single) were unsuccessful, and Adams left the band. The band tried to keep going, but couldn’t, and eventually broke up by 1978 or 1979.
Adams, of course, went on to have an extremely successful solo career, with hits such as “Summer of '69,” “Cuts Like a Knife,” and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” among many others.
Fleetwood Mac went through two incarnations before Buckingham and Nicks joined and they became world-devouring superstars.
The Peter Green years included dreamy instrumentals like “Albatross” and the slammin’ pop single “Oh Well, part 1.” (Part 2 was a slow, near-orchestral soundscape which is worth listening to.) Green also wrote “Black Magic Woman,” later a huge hit for Santana.
Christine Perfect joined and then Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch while Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer went bonkers and version 2.0 started with Kiln House. Welch wrote some fantastic songs like “Future Games” and Hypnotized" and the classic “Sentimental Lady.” Kirwan did “Bare Trees” and one of my all-time favorite instrumentals, “Sunny Side of Heaven.”
For most groups, this would be a legacy of greatness, but it’s next to forgotten because of their later success. I’ve been to a couple of their recent tours and they play virtually nothing from this period.
Well, this is all true, but leaves out the fact that the Green/Kirwan/Spencer/Fleetwood/McVie outfit was one of the very finest British blues bands of the time.
I guess this isn’t the time to mention Y Kant Tori Read, huh.
Great song, and one if Stewart’s best. But he had already become a star with the Jeff Beck Group, which hit #15 on the US charts.
Yeah, I stuck to individual songs that got played in America and you still hear on oldies channels. Their whole history requires a book. Heck, I left out that Christine Perfect was named "top female vocalist of the year’’ for a song she did with Chicken Shack before she joined the Mac. Or that Kirwan and McVie played on her first solo album. Or that McVie and Fleetwood were one of Britain’s top rhythm sections for years prior to Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. The group and its history is underrated and ignored because of its huge 70s pop success, IMO, when they were seized upon as if brand new and the older cool kidz barfed on them.
Thanks for that, Chuck - you took me by surprise because Rod as part of the Jeff Beck Group had precious little success in the UK up to that time. It was a surprise to me that they had had considerable success in the US. And this does explain something that had been puzzling me. Until I put some background together for the post, I had never looked at the wiki for In A Broken Dream, which says:
I had been idly wondering why, seemingly, it was released in the US before the UK - perhaps we now have the explanation.
j
Try this, don’t read the comments and see if you can work out who the bearded hippie soulfully playing the recorder is.
Bon Scott