DAY 250.
Yes........................................Close To The Edge   (1972)







This remains the apotheosis of prog rock itself. First, one encounters Roger Dean's enigmatic jacket design, presented in gate fold format that is ideal for both contemplation and joint-rolling   (happy so far)


The track listing is the next hallmark, boasting only three titles (here we F'kn go) two in four movement, ersatz-symphonic structure (naturally)


Pull out the sleeve and Jon Anderson's delightfully obtuse  lyrics reveal themselves in all their florid glory (man! canny wait to listen to this the night)


Also got the second album, sides 3&4 of DP to listen to, too much for the one sitting, but more about that tonight.


 

DAY 249
Deep Purple...............................Made In Japan   (1972)









Gonna fess up straight away, if this had been a single album and, had the tracks been of an adequate length, instead of the wanky guitary, lets have a drum solo, ehm gonna batter the keyboards cause he's still f'kn playin' that guitar, and ehm as good as him, so we'll mak' it a double album shite, I would probably have bought it.


The tunes were good and bring back memories of fuckin' aboot in the toon a few decades ago, and, I'll have you know, often in double denim ffs, have toyed with the idea of downloading the various tracks that I like, and think this is the way to go for me.


Personally I love a live album, but the tracks on this one just went on longer than a Csaba team talk, and left me just as bewildered by need to overstretch things for no apparent gain.


This album wont be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


have written about this lot a few times already (if interested)


The album was recorded in 1972 at the Koseinenkin Hall in Osaka (August 15⁄16) and the Budokan, Tokyo (August 17). These were Purple’s first ever shows in Japan, but they weren’t the originally scheduled dates. The band were supposed to play in Osaka and Tokyo in May, but the shows were postponed due to American dates being rescheduled, and because Blackmore had been suffering from hepatitis.





The same venue in Osaka would be the location for the last show from the Mk 2 line-up. This was on June 29, 1973.



 While Child In Time was the second song on the original release, Smoke On The Water was the second track played on the Japanese dates.



 Engineer Martin Birch says that neither Ian Gillan nor Ritchie Blackmore had actually heard the album before it was released. Only Roger Glover and Ian Paice from the band were in the studio when it was mixed.



 The entire budget for the album was $3000, and there are no overdubs.



 The back cover for the album was actually a photo from the Brixton Sundown (now the Brixton O2 Academy). The gig was on September 30, 1972. And if you look closely, you’ll spot a young Phil Collen in the crowd. Yes, the Def Leppard guitarist!



  The best gig of the three was considered to be the Tokyo one. But the recording quality wasn’t as good as those from Osaka, so only The Mule and Lazy on the original album were taken from this date.



 In Japan, the album was titled Live In Japan, and had a different sleeve design to the one we know and love.



 While it was a double album in most countries, in Uruguay it was issued as a single record.



 This was the highest charting album the Mk II version of Deep Purple ever had in America. It got to number six.



"Chid In Time"


Running 10 minutes and 15 seconds, this is a protest song to the United States' war in Vietnam. The lyrics were written by lead singer Ian Gillan.


 
This features a keyboard/guitar solo by Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore respectively.


 
This album was released by the Mark II version of the group which is Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (Bass), Jon Lord (keyboard), and Ian Paice(drums). This song was played during the Deep Purple Mark II reunion tour "Come Hell or Highwater" in 1993. Ritchie Blackmore quit the tour after the European portion - he also ended the original Mark II by quitting because of Ian Gillan's "lack of work ethic."


 

Ian Gillan said in an interview in 2002: "There are two sides to that song - the musical side and the lyrical side. On the musical side, there used to be this song 'Bombay Calling' by a band called It's A Beautiful Day. It was fresh and original, when Jon was one day playing it on his keyboard. It sounded good, and we thought we'd play around with it, change it a bit and do something new keeping that as a base. But then, I had never heard the original 'Bombay Calling'. So we created this song using the Cold War as the theme, and wrote the lines 'Sweet child in time, you'll see the line.' That's how the lyrical side came in. Then, Jon had the keyboard parts ready and Ritchie had the guitar parts ready. The song basically reflected the mood of the moment, and that's why it became so popular."


 
Lars Ulrich of Metallica cites this as one of his favorite songs of all time. He says that when he was 9 years old, his father took him to a Deep Purple show, and it changed his life. "This is their most iconic moment," he told Rolling Stone regarding the song. "I've heard it 92,000 times, and it never sounds anything less than great."




"Smoke On The Water"



 The band was going to record their Machine Head album there right after a Frank Zappa concert, but someone fired a flare gun at the ceiling during Zappa's show, which set the place on fire.





Deep Purple was in the audience for the show, and lead singer Ian Gillan recalls two flares being shot by someone sitting behind him which landed in the top corner of the building and quickly set it ablaze. Zappa stopped the show and helped ensure an orderly exit. Deep Purple watched the blaze from a nearby restaurant, and when the fire died down, a layer of smoke had covered Lake Geneva, which the casino overlooked. This image gave bass player Roger Glover the idea for a song title: "Smoke On The Water," and Gillan wrote the lyric about their saga recording the Machine Head album.




The band was relocated to the Grand Hotel in Montreux, where they recorded the album using the Rolling Stones mobile studio. They needed one more song, so they put together "Smoke On The Water" using Gillan's lyric and riff the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore came up with. The result was a song telling the story of these strange events just days after they happened - the recording sessions took place from December 6-21.


 
Frank Zappa, who is mentioned in the lyrics, lost all his equipment in the fire. He then broke his leg a few days later when a fan pulled him into the crowd at a show in England. This prompted Ian Gillan to say "Break a leg, Frank," into the microphone after recording this for a BBC special in 1972.



 
Deep Purple bass player Roger Glover had some doubts about the title: he knew it was great but was reluctant to use it because it sounded like a drug song.


 
Ritchie Blackmore has an affinity for renaissance music, which he writes and performs in his duo Blackmore's Night. He says that he first took an interest in the form in 1971 when he saw a BBC program called Wives of Henry VIII, and that there is indeed a trace of Renaissance in "Smoke On The Water." "The riff is done in fourths and fifths - a medieval modal scale," he explained on MySpace Music. "It makes it appear more dark and foreboding. Not like today's pop music thirds."


 
The band did not think this would be a hit and rarely played it live. It took off when they released it as a US single over a year after the album came out. Talking about the song's merits as live material, Roger Glover said in Metal Hammer, "I think 'Smoke On The Water' is the biggest song that Purple will ever have and there's always a pressure to play it, and it's not the greatest live song, it's a good song but you sorta plod through it. The excitement comes from the audience. And there's always the apprehension that Ritchie (Blackmore) isn't gonna want to do it, 'cause he's probably fed up with doing it."



 Steve Morse who became Deep Purple's guitarist in 1994, talked about performing this song live. "On a tune that I didn't write like 'Smoke On The Water,' I try to tread a line between homage and respect and originality," he said. "So, say, on the solo, I take it a out a little bit and do it my way for a little bit, and then bring it back to more like the original, and wrap it up with a lick that everybody would recognize. That's about as much as I can suggest somebody do because there's ingrained memories of the song in peoples' minds."


 
"Funky Claude," as in the lyrics "Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground," is Claude Nobs, a man who helped rescue some people in the fire and found another hotel for the band to stay. He is the co-founder of the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival.




Nobs explained to Gibson.com how this song arose out of the ashes: "Deep Purple were watching the whole fire from their hotel window, and they said, 'Oh my God, look what happened. Poor Claude and there's no casino anymore!' They were supposed to do a live gig [at the casino] and record the new album there. Finally I found a place in a little abandoned hotel next to my house and we made a temporary studio for them. One day they were coming up for dinner at my house and they said, 'Claude we did a little surprise for you, but it's not going to be on the album. It's a tune called "Smoke On The Water.'" So I listened to it. I said, 'You're crazy. It's going to be a huge thing.' Now there's no guitar player in the world who doesn't know [he hums the riff]. They said, 'Oh if you believe so we'll put it on the album.' It's actually the very precise description of the fire in the casino, of Frank Zappa getting the kids out of the casino, and every detail in the song is true. It's what really happened. In the middle of the song, it says 'Funky Claude was getting people out of the building,' and actually when I meet a lot of rock musicians, they still say, 'Oh here comes Funky Claude.'"


 
The B-side of the single was another version of the song, recorded live in Japan.


 
In 1989, Former members Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan released a new version of this with Robert Plant, Brian May, and Bruce Dickinson. They called the project "Rock Aid Armenia," with proceeds going to victims of the Armenian earthquake.


 
Homer is heard crooning to this song in an a episode of The Simpsons in which he uses medicinal marijuana.


 

.The famous guitar riff is performed in the 2003 Jack Black film School Of Rock.


 
On June 3, 2007 in Kansas City, Kansas, 1,721 guitarists gathered to play this song  together and break the record for most guitarists playing at one time. The entire song was played, though only the one lead guitar played the solo. Guitarists from as far as Scotland came out for the event. The event was organized by radio station KYYS.




  
According to an interview with Ian Gillian on VH1's Classic Albums: Machine Head, the band did not have much money when recording this album and were renting a recording studio. They stayed past when they were supposed to get out. As they were recording this song, the police were knocking on the door of the studio to kick them out.


 
In a 2008 survey of students from music schools across London, this topped a poll to find the best ever guitar riff. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came second and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" third.


 
According to the London Times newspaper, Ritchie Blackmore was embarrassed to present this song to his fellow members of Deep Purple because it was such a Neanderthal tune for a guitarist of his caliber to come up with.


 
The lyrics, "Swiss time was running out" meant that their visas were going to expire soon. They wrote the songs and recorded them in a matter of weeks.


 
Many beginners try to play this when they pick up a guitar, and they usually play it wrong. Here's how: Use the open G and D strings as the starting point and you pluck the strings with a finger each, not a pick. Lots of people play this from the 5th fret of the A and D string, which is wrong.



 
"Strange Kind Of Woman"



This song is about one of Ian Gillan's friends, who went after an average-looking girl who didn't like him. He was able to woo her and they got married, but three days later she died.


 
The band wrote this song under pressure to produce a hit, as they were following up their #2 UK hit "Black Night." Roger Glover of Deep Purple explained in an interview with Metal Hammer: "We wrote the song down in Devon at a house called The Hermitage, it was a mad time... lots of hauntings going on and séances – a great period in Purple's history and 'Strange Kinda Woman' was written there, in fact I've still got tapes of the first ever jam from which that song came from, and it didn't really change from the jam."

DAY 251.
Lou Reed............................Transformer   (1972)










Lou Reed had the credibility and the songs, David Bowie the sound and the media appeal. The meeting of American master and British alumni gave the seventies one of it's most delicious icons, a record that exploited and at the same time defined glam-rock.

Bowie and Mick Ronson laboured to extract from the usually dry poet and musician an exhilerating mix of camp decadence and unforgettable tunes. Transformer is Lou Reeds most commercial effort, and its chart history in the U.K alone spans decades.


Just a quick heads up, this album is without fear of contradiction, the album I've played more than any other in my life,

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 251.
Lou Reed............................Transformer   (1972)










Lou Reed had the credibility and the songs, David Bowie the sound and the media appeal. The meeting of American master and British alumni gave the seventies one of it's most delicious icons, a record that exploited and at the same time defined glam-rock.

Bowie and Mick Ronson laboured to extract from the usually dry poet and musician an exhilerating mix of camp decadence and unforgettable tunes. Transformer is Lou Reeds most commercial effort, and its chart history in the U.K alone spans decades.


Just a quick heads up, this album is without fear of contradiction, the album I've played more than any other in my life,

Tremendous Album.

​'Satellite of Love' a particular favourite. And of course 'Perfect Day' is just utterly sublime.
 

 DAY 251.
Lou Reed............................Transformer   (1972)










"Transformer," this is just quite simply one of the best albums I have ever had the pleasure to listen to, every track instantly ingrained on my memory, this was never a grower, it was one of the few records that instantly knocked me for six, another that I will be livid if not included that had the same effect was released earlier in the year (this book seems to get the year chronologically, but not the months) was "Ziggy Stardust" these two are deffo in my top five albums, and always seemed to be intrinsically joined at the hip, in my mind.



I really hope there is someone that looks in on these ramblings, that hasn't heard "Transformer,"  and gives it a spin and gets that initial  rush I got from hearing this for the first time, I can't say this has ever got old or the rush faded ,as I feel this is as fresh as the first time I heard it forty odd years ago, Lou Reed certainly hasn't got a classically trained voice. but his voice is so perfect for his songs, not like that abomination with F'kn Bono and Tom Jones, brings a tear to a glass eye that shite.


Whoever picked the tracklisting needs to be thanked big style, this is one of the best paced albums I've ever heard, although Bowie got most of the plaudits, Lou Reed was never backwards in his praise for Mick Ronson's
contribution to the production of this album.



As you could probably gather this album if I didn't already have it, would without a shadow of a doubt would be going into my collection.



Just a wee personal story about this album,back in '72 I was just starting to get into music, I was also in second year at secondary school, so a lot of readjustments going on, trying to be cool without being showyaffy,

Anyways I'm in the playground ( Boys playground,Catholic School no mixing with the female species) I've got "Ziggy Stardust" and the just released "Transformer" i've got them in the side bit of my adidas bag which I've put down while I was playing futba, unfortunately the side that was showing was the picture of the transvestite, and along came a wee gang from my year who thought they were erchie, "wha's poofy record is this?" I obviously said "mine how" then I heard a shout  " have you tubes nae taste?" It was a guy who was in the year above me, I'd always had a bit of admiration for, a really good sportsman, and a boy that could look after himself, he really could shift, but the thing that for me stood out was he bounced around the school no givin' a fuck, and nobody gave him any shite, I'm sure most people couldn't work him out. Suffice to say the boys in my year didn't try and wind me up again, and the boy and me were never big friends, but used to keep on nodding terms and be comfortable enough to share thoughts on latest albums, the boys name was Billy MacKenzie.



Please, please if you haven't heard this album all the way through, give it a listen and I'm sure you'll have a soulmate /companion that will stay with you through good and bad, and never let you down.




Bits & Bobs;

 
Writing music is not a 9 to 5 job - at least, it wasn't for Lou Reed. Like most songwriters, Lou collected myriad items like matchbook covers and cocktail napkins with bits of spontaneous lyrics scrawled on them, but these inspirations came on a direct channel straight from his brain. He told The Guardian: "I have a radio in my head that's playing unrecorded things for me constantly, and I'm always listening to it for my own amusement. And by now I'm very familiar with the process of getting this stuff down and how to make things altogether easier for myself than I would even have guessed at in the past - when I really did not understand how this all works. But I don't come into an office and write - if I tried to do that it would be a real way of closing things down. I just leave it alone and as time gets shorter and shorter I ward off panic and the process starts..."



 
Throughout his career, Lou earned a notorious reputation for his hatred of journalists. When he was persuaded to give interviews, he often refused to answer questions or ignored the interviewer altogether. But by the '90s, trembling journalists felt more at ease with a kinder, gentler Lou. In fact, he insisted his legendary disdain was exaggerated by the press. He told The Guardian in 1996: "All this stuff about me not liking journalists is not really accurate. It's just that I don't like talking about myself. Why would I? I mean, that's really work. I don't listen to my own stuff. Why should I? I already know my stuff. I would much rather listen to someone else."




Lou often cited the poet Delmore Schwartz as a major influence for his writing, specifically the short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." He told Performing Songwriter: "Simple language, five pages, the most astonishing thing I have ever read to this day. It's just incredible. Imagine being able to do something like that with the simple language that is available to anybody. It's mind-bending. Now imagine putting it into a song. It's so simple, it's ridiculous."





Schwartz, who taught the singer at Syracuse University, actually hated music with lyrics, but that didn't stop Lou from dedicating songs to him like The Velvet Underground's "European Son" and his own "My House." He even wrote a prose piece for Poetry magazine in 2012 called "O Delmore How I Miss You."


 To get out of military duty, Lou held a gun to his ROTC commanding officer's head at Syracuse University. It wasn't loaded but it did the trick. He was expelled from the program but managed to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964.


 
Before striking it big in 1972 with "Walk On The Wild Side," Lou was a principal member of the now-famous rock band the Velvet Underground. At the time, only a handful of people had ever heard of the band but oh what a handful it was. Iconic artist Andy Warhol, a forerunner of pop art, served as manager and made a lasting impression on Lou. He told Performing Songwriter: "Compared to Warhol, I will always consider myself lazy. Because Andy said I was, and he was right. And look at what he did. It's endless. I mean, look at that body of work. I mean, that's incredible. But Andy, he would have said it wasn't incredible, he was just working. And he always said I was incredibly lazy. He thought I should be writing more."


 
If some of Lou Reed's fans are called dogs it's because they actually are. Lou and his wife, singer Laurie Anderson, entertained the canine crowd with a special concert at Australia's Vivid Live festival in 2010. They were inspired to create Music for Dogs after ten years of entertaining their rat terrier, Lolabelle, at home. Human attendees could only just barely pick up the high-frequency music formulated for their pets and were encouraged to let the dogs engage in typical concert shenanigans (though event organizers insisted the dogs remain on their leads). Laurie told The Guardian: "It's OK with me if they run in circles," she said. "They can [even] express themselves and make a little mosh pit if they feel like it."


 
Call him a sell-out if you want, but Lou didn't understand the fuss about his commercial for Honda scooters (most of his fans liked it, anyway). He told GQ in 1986: "If you really think about it, what does selling out mean? If you think of rock and roll as this antiestablishment rebellious-type thing, well, you wouldn't make a record. Look who's recording you – the same people who manufacture missiles. You could really start tearing it apart."


 
Under Lewis "Lou" Reed's 1959 yearbook photo from Freeport High School (in Long Island, NY) is the caption :"Tall, dark-haired Lou likes basketball, music, and naturally, girls. He was a valuable participant on the track team. He is one of Freeport's great contributors to the recording world. As for the immediate future, Lou has no plans, but will take life as it comes."




Just three years earlier, Lou suffered through electroconvulsive therapy (aka electroshock) in his parents' bid to eradicate his alleged bi-sexuality. The experience inspired his song "Kill Your Sons"


 
According to Clash, Lou Reed and David Bowie got into a brawl over dinner in 1979 after Bowie told the temperamental singer to clean up his act. Reed shouted: "Don't you EVER say that to me! Don't you EVER f---ing say that to ME!"


 
Although he's credited for guitar, keyboards and vocals on his eponymous debut album, Gadfly magazine claims Reed didn't play at all, but left the music to British session musicians, including Yes's Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman.


 
A genus of velvet spider that lives underground was named by an international group of biologists Loureedia in reference to Reed's time in the Velvet Underground. Other rock stars that have had spiders named after them include the late Frank Zappa and Neil Young


 
After quitting The Velvet Underground in August 1970, Lou Reed took a walk on the mild side, taking a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist. He returned to Rock 'n' Roll the following year when he signed a recording contract with RCA Records.


 
Lou Reed left a $30 million fortune in his will. The main beneficiary was his wife Laurie Anderson, to whom he left his $7m Manhattan apartment, as well as a $1.5m property in the exclusive Hamptons area of Long Island. She also received a cash sum of $15m. The fortune speaks of careful management by Reed, as with the exception of "Walk On The Wild Side," the singer never had a breakout US hit.



 
He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as both a solo artist and as a member of the Velvet Underground.




"Vicious"

Andy Warhol is best remembered as the iconic forerunner of pop art. He was also for a time Velvet Underground's manager and it was he who suggested the song's first line. "He said, 'Why don't you write a song called Vicious?'" Reed told Rolling Stone in 1989. "I said, Well, Andy, what kind of vicious? 'Oh, you know, vicious like I hit you with a flower.' And I wrote it down, literally - I kept a notebook in those days."


 
The song, like the rest of Transformer, was produced by David Bowie with his Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson. Bowie also supplied backing v



"Perfect Day"


This song was used in the movie Trainspotting after Renton (Ewan McGregor) had overdosed on heroin. Many people include this song in their "Smoking" mixes.


  
In 1997 this was utilized in a promotion by the BBC of its diverse music coverage. The track was released as a charity single for Children In Need and it topped the UK charts, earning over £2,100,000 for the charity. The song featured a host of well-known singers and performers, including Lou Reed opening and closing the song. Amongst the other musicians on the track are Bono, David Bowie, Suzanne Vega, Elton John, Boyzone, Tammy Wynette, Shane McGowan, Gabrielle, Evan Dando and jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine, who provides an instrumental break.


 
The recording, like the rest of the Transformer album, was produced by David Bowie, with guitarist Mick Ronson providing the arrangement.


 
According to Victor Bockri's Transformer: The Lou Reed Story, the song's lyrics are often considered to suggest simple, conventional romantic devotion, possibly alluding to Reed's relationship with Bettye Kronstadt (soon to become his first wife) and Reed's own conflicts with his sexuality, drug use, and ego.


 
The line "you're gonna reap just what you sow" alludes to St. Paul's letter to the Galatians 6:7 in the New Testament, which reads: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."




"Walk On The Wild Side"



This song is about cross-dressers who come to New York City and become prostitutes. "Take a walk on the wild side" is what they say to potential customers. Each verse introduces a new character. There is Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy, and Jackie. The characters are all cronies of the infamous Andy Warhol Factory, as was Lou.





Reed had an empathy for these characters that comes through in the song, as he struggled with his sexuality for most of his life. His parents even tried to "cure" his homosexuality when he was young. With this song, Reed presented a completely different view of gender roles in rock


 
"Little Joe" refers to Joe Dallesandero, who was also one of Andy's kids in the factory. He was in several films by Warhol. Sugar Plum Fairy is the nickname of actor Joe Campbell.


 
"Holly," "Candy," and "Jackie" are based on Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis. They are all real drag queens who appeared in Warhol's 1972 movie Women In Revolt. Woodlawn also appeared in Warhol's 1970 movie Trash, and Curtis was in Warhol's 1968 movie Flesh.




Said Reed: "I always thought it would be kind of fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or hadn't wanted to meet."


 
In an interview with The Guardian published December 13, 2008, Holly Woodlawn said: "My father got a job at a hotel, so we moved from New York to Miami Beach. I was going to school, getting stones thrown at me and being beaten up by homophobic rednecks. I felt I deserved better, and I hated football and baseball. So, aged 15, I decided to get the hell out of there and ran away from home. I had $27, so hitchhiked across the USA. I did pluck my eyebrows in Georgia. It hurt! My friend Georgette was plucking them and I was screaming, but all of a sudden I had these gorgeous eyebrows and she put mascara on my eyes. We ran into some marines in Lafayette in South Carolina. They tried to attack me. I was 15 and not used to this stuff. I was sitting in a car with this marine, terrified that he was going to rape me and kill me. I said, 'I've never done this before.' He said, 'You don't wanna have sex with me?' I said it wasn't that I didn't find him attractive, I just didn't want to do it. But he was wonderful. He protected me. While Georgette was in a motel screaming and yelling with 18 marines but having a good time, he said, 'When you're with me, nothing will happen to you.' And they drove us all the way to New Jersey.




In New York I was living on the street. Then I met Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, and they'd watch Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo movies at 1am. There was this club called Max's Kansas City. Jackie and Candy had just done this movie called Flesh, and they said, 'You have to meet Andy [Warhol]. He's gonna make you a superstar.'





I didn't want to be a superstar. My wig looked like yak hair. One day Jackie put on a show and I was in the chorus. I saw this bag of glitter and a jar of Vaseline, and smeared myself with it and got this boyfriend to throw the glitter on me. [Director] Paul Morrissey said, 'I don't know who she is but she's a star.' Next thing Paul's calling me up to star in a movie called Trash, and the rest is history.



One day a friend called me and said, 'Turn on the radio!' They were playing 'Walk On The Wild Side.' The funny thing is that, while I knew the Velvet Underground's music, I'd never met Lou Reed. I called him up and said, 'How do you know this stuff about me?' He said, 'Holly, you have the biggest mouth in town.' We met and we've been friends ever since."


 
In a 1972 interview with Disc and Music Echo, Reed described this as an "outright gay song," saying it was "from me to them, but they're carefully worded so the straights can miss out on the implications and enjoy them without being offended. I suppose though the album is going to offend some people."


 
This was not banned by the notoriously conservative BBC or by many US radio stations because censors did not understand phrases like "giving head." Depending on the regional US market, the song was, however, edited for what we now call political correctness. Reed leads into the female vocalists' "Doo, doo-doo" hook with the words, "And the colored girls say," but some stations played a version that replaced the phrase with, "And the girls all say."


 
Reed recorded this two years after leaving The Velvet Underground, a band that was very influential, but not commercially successful. Transformer was Reed's second solo album. His first album flopped, and for a while it looked like his music career was over.


David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced this track. They were big fans of Reed.


 
The sax solo at the end was played by Ronnie Ross, a Jazz musician who lived near Bowie in England. When Bowie was 12 years old, he wanted to learn the saxophone and begged Ross to give him lessons, which he eventually did. When they needed a sax player for this, Bowie made sure Ross was booked for the session, but didn't tell him he'd be there. Ross nailed the solo in one take and Bowie showed up to surprise his old friend.


 
The album version of this song runs 4:12. The single, which reached its US peak position of #16 on April 28, 1973, was edited down to 3:37 for radio play.


 This came out at a time when audiences were intrigued by cross-dressing and homosexuality in music. "Glam Rock," where the performers wore feminine clothes, was big, and artists like David Bowie and Elton John were attracting fans both gay and straight.


 
This was a rare venture to the pop charts for Reed, who was not known for hit singles. This song provided his biggest hit, and it was his only Top 40 in the US.


 
The famous bass line was played by a session musician named Herbie Flowers. He was paid £17 for his work. Flowers was modest about his contribution to this and other songs. He once told Mojo writer Phil Sutcliffe about his role as a session musician, "You do the job and get your arse away. You take a £12 fee, you can't play a load of bol--cks. Wouldn't it be awful if someone came up to me on the street and congratulated me for Transformer."


 
Three songs on Transformer were commissioned by Andy Warhol for a Broadway musical he was planning based on Nelson Algren's novel. A Walk On The Wild Side The show was never materialized, but Reed kept the title and applied it to characters he knew from Andy Warhol's Factory to create this song. .


 
The female vocalists singing backup on this track were Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou and Casey Synge. In 1974, they recorded as "Thunderthighs" and had a UK hit with "Central Park Arrest."


 
Rap and Hip-Hop artists frequently sample this track. The most famous appropriation is by A Tribe Called Quest on their 1990 song "Can I Kick IT"


 
Marky Mark's second single, after "Good Vibrations," was a remake of this called "Wildside." He is now known as Mark Wahlberg and famous for movies like Boogie Nights and Rock Star.



 
At Live Aid in 1985 at Wembley Stadium, while U2 was playing their song "Bad," Bono improvised 2 Rolling Stones' songs and then this song into the end, changing the lyrics of "Walk On The Wild Side" to: "Holly came from Miami F.L.A., hitchhiked all the way across the USA, she could feel the satellite coming down, pretty soon she was in London town... Wembley Stadium, and all the people went, Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo." He then had the audience sing this line while he walked offstage and the band finished playing.



"Satellite Of Love"


Though this song first saw the light of day on Transformer, it dates back to Reed's band The Velvet Underground, and a version of the song recorded by The Velvet Underground surfaced on the Peel Slowly And See box set. That version is a much harder rocker than the version on Transformer, with a faster tempo, and without the piano line that dominates the later version.




The lyrics are also different; "I've been told that you've been bold with Harry, Mark and John, " Reed sings in the bridge. In the Velvets' take, the three cads came from a 19th century children's poem: Wynken, Blynken and Nod.




"Best left forgotten," Reed explained of the original lyric in 1994. "I probably wanted to make sure I wasn't using a name that really meant something to me. I mean the song is about the worst kind of jealousy."


 
An updated version titled "Satellite of Love '04" was released in the United Kingdom in 2004, making it to #10 on the singles Chart.


 
Morrissey released a cover of the song following Lou Reed's death on October 27, 2013. The former Smiths frontman's version was recorded at the Chelsea Ballroom at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas in 2011. "He has been there all of my life," wrote Morrissey of the late Velvet Underground vocalist. "He will always be pressed to my heart. Thank God for those, like Lou, who move within their own laws, otherwise imagine how dull the world would be."


 
Beck performed this song at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony when Lou Reed was inducted in 2015.


 
Regular Bowie sideman Mick Ronson played both piano and recorder on this track.

 

 

Transformer: generally Mick Ronson doesn't get the credit he deserves for his contribution to rock and pop music. Although he was able to do the long technical (boring, eh, A?C?) stuff on the guitar, he was also a skilful arranger and knew that better effect was sometimes had by limiting the flashy output.

The album is a great one, I had it in my head that there were weak tracks in there outside of the well known songs, but having had another listen yesterday, tunes like 'Make Up' and 'Wagon Wheel' fit the line up perfectly............ although I still prefer side one!

Didnae know Reed was married, far less to Laurie Anderson, this is an education.

Back to the album, that was a great line up of musicians on it, with varied careers before and after 1972. The Thunderthighs hit you mention was written by Lynsey de Paul, who used a section of Walk on the Wild Side for her composition. And three great bass players in Voorman, Flowers and Bolder were involved on Transformer, one (Bolder) wasn't even playing the bass.

And you were 'acquainted' with Billy Mackenzie? I mind him getting trashed by Tek in one of our music competitions too   

DAY 252.
Hugh Masekela....................................Home Is Where The Music Is   (1972)









No' being funny, but there's only so much trumpet a man can take. I have to admit I did listen to every track but in a skip a bit, listen , then skip another bit kinda way, being honest I never really noticed an affy difference in any of them.


This for me would drive me crazy, even as background music, the trumpet is a good instrument when used sparingly, but 78 minutes of the fucker is just wrong.


This album wont be sullying my collection.



Bits & Bobs;



South African jazz maestro Hugh Masekela died on 23 January 2018, aged 78, following a nine-year battle against prostate cancer.

More than just an internationally acclaimed musician, “Bra Hugh” was a South African cultural iconoclast for more than 50 years, whose work was the soundtrack of a political movement and gave a voice to the people of South Africa.

 Hugh Ramopolo Masekela was born in 1939, in the Kwa-Guqa township of Witbank, Mpumalanga. Musically inclined from a young age, Masekela was inspired to find his calling in jazz music by Kirk Douglas in the film Man with the Horn; he was particularly fascinated by the trumpet.


 Early life and career


He received his first trumpet at the age of 14, a gift from anti-apartheid cleric Archbishop Trevor Huddleston; and it seemingly never left his hands since. He quickly became a master of the instrument, as well as of the flugelhorn and cornet. He played in a number of bands in high school and as a young adult, including Huddleston’s Jazz Band youth orchestra, the Manhattan Brothers and the legendary Jazz Epistles, alongside fellow future legends of South Africa music, Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand; Kippie Moeketsi; and Jonas Gwangwa.The Epistles were a regular house band for the Sophiatown cultural and political boom of the late 1950s.Masekela got his big break when he joined the cast of Todd Matshikiza’s jazz opera, King Kong, which toured the world in 1961. During a tumultuous political period in South Africa, which included the Sharpeville massacre and the injustices of institutionalised apartheid, Masekela chose to live in exile following the London run of King Kong.


 In exile


He spent the early 1960s mastering his musical craft at the London Guildhall School of Music and at the Manhattan School of Music. At the time, he met fellow African political exiles and anti-apartheid campaigners, including American actor Harry Belafonte, with whom he worked to bring the real story of apartheid and racial discrimination to the world’s attention. He was married to fellow King Kong cast member and exile Miriam Makeba from 1964 to 1966. Although they divorced, Masekela and Makeba had a lifelong personal and musical friendship until the latter’s death in 2008.

 His growing canon of recorded work increasingly took a political slant, particularly on the album, The Emancipation of Hugh Masekela, released in 1966. Masekela scored his first US top ten hit with an African-infused instrumental version of the Jimmy Webb pop hit, Up, Up and Away, in 1967.

 In 1967, Masekela and his band played their first breakout high-profile show, the Monterey Pop Festival, alongside the era’s biggest musical legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Booker T and the MGs, and Otis Redding. Masekela featured in the official film and soundtrack of the festival.

 His 1968 single, Grazing in the Grass, reached number one on the US pop charts. The song became his signature for much of the 1970s and was later featured in a number of film soundtracks, including The Last King of Scotland and The Lion King.



 A return to Africa


Masekela continued to record and tour prodigiously throughout the 1970s and 1980s, circling ever closer, both musically and physically, to Africa. He toured across Africa with the likes of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and Ghanaian jazz band Hedzoleh Soundz, as well as with fellow South African exiles Makeba and Gwangwa. In 1974, he was one of the organisers of the Zaire 74 festival, which brought together the best of African and American soul and jazz artists to compliment the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Forman in Kinshasa.

 During this time, he also featured on recordings with US rock band The Byrds and jazz pop trumpeter Herb Alpert, as well as on the early solo albums of Paul Simon, with whom he would later work on the 1987 Graceland album and tour.

 During the 1980s Masekela made his African home base Botswana, opening a music school and once again recording with big names in African music, as well as working with ANC cultural organisations in exile to formulate a cultural manifesto for a free South Africa sometime in the future.

 His 1987 hit, Bring Him Back Home, was adopted as the anthem calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and other South African political prisoners, as well as a call-to-arms for African exiles around the world to return to their motherland. Masekela finally got to play the song live for Mandela himself when he was released in 1990.


 Homecoming


The musician had returned to South Africa around the same time. He continued to record and mentor new generations of South African musicians. In 2004, he published his entertaining and candid autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, in which he highlighted not only his successes but also his struggles with homesickness and alcohol abuse. In the book, he vowed that his story was not yet over; he was determined to keep on creating new music that celebrated his country, the continent and its people until the day he died.

 A number of top music and academic awards were bestowed on Masekela throughout his life, among them the National Order of Ikhamanga in 2010, an honorary doctorate in music from the University of York and Rhodes University, and an African Music Legend Award.

 In one of his final performances, in 2016, Masekela reunited in Johannesburg with Ibrahim to perform as the Jazz Epistles again, to not only celebrate the history of South African music but also to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic 16 June 1976 youth demonstrations.

 Masekela is survived by his wife, Elinam Cofie, and children, Pula Twala and Selema “Sal” Masekela, from his previous relationship with Jessie Marie Lapierre.
 

shedboy wrote:

Tek wrote:

arabchanter wrote:

It's everybodys thread Tek, would love to here more comments, as said previously there no right or wrong opinion, it's just that, an opinion,it would be boring as hell if we all thought the same!


 

Fair and good comment Mr C. 

Can I just say that is so right from both of you.  I love opinion and taste.  Was a bit miffed at your comment about me not liking bowie pre ziggy the worst comment in the history of this board Tek.

Im proud of my tastes and tolerant of everyones - i just think some aspects of history and actual impact are over rated.    Thats just my fucked up mind.

I love music and love talking about it.  If my comments were the worst ever on here - you need a sense of perspective Tek.  I repeat Bowie was in general (in my opinion) quite pish.  Not in what he tried to do or achieved but in my enjoyment.

Hope that makes sense.

As for the fannies - umm that might be where my input comes in here guys - hehe BUT no way was nevermind trumped by us ;) xxx

My comment was only tongue n cheek mate.

Strongly strongly disagree that Bowie was anything other that a seminal and brilliant artist however.
 

Great album, but only my third favourite Rundgren release, behind 'Faithful' and 'A Wizard, A True Star'. 

Todd Rundgren is a hugely talented genius. A few years ago he released what I (maybe) thought was the finest ever blues album, 'Todd Rundgren's Johnston' covering some of Robert Johnston's great composition. Again, he played all the instruments on that, excepting bass, not because he couldn't, just so as his pal could collaborate. 

 

Last edited by PatReilly (20/4/2018 3:14 pm)

DAY 255.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band..........................................Will The Circle Be Unbroken   (1972)










This momentous album was concieved by NGDB manager Bill McEuen, who wanted the country-rockband to be taken more seriously by their label. Without asking for a budget, he booked a Nashville studio and invited legendary local luminaries like Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis and Doc Watson, as well as such revered pickers as Vasser Clements on violin and Norman Blake on dobro, to become part of this ambitious project. The plan worked, this became the bands first gold album.




No' content wi' hitting me wi' double albums, this ane is a triple ffs, I'm no' even finished Todd Rundgren's yet, have to say Pat sounds affy Steely Day to me so far.

Will finish both the night.

DAY 256.
Stevie Wonder.......................................Talking Book   (1972)









Robert Margouleff's iconic photo of Stevie Wonder, clad in an African Robe and crouched in clay, deep in thought, spoke of the solitary vision hie early 1970s trilogy of masterpieces pursued.But the sleeve (featuring sightless Stevie unusually sans sunglasses) also suggested that Talking Book was a confessional album about love, and the loss of it, as befits an artist who has just left his mate (singer Syreeta Wright, who wrote lyrics for two downbeat tracks here). Talking Book was Stevie's heart, and it was talking truthfully.


 

PatReilly wrote:

Funny how we view things differently, good as well of course..

Spot on Pat, but we still have that common denominator "a love of music"