DAY 299.
The Isley Brothers,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,3+3   (1973)









This was enjoyable, nice and easy listening no complications, and fir me smackin' o' summertime, could see myself in the backys crisping up a some "Sexton Blake" on the barbie, and washing down some burnt bangers and burgers, wi' macky up cocktails wi crushed ice (glace pilee, for you snobs) and listening to the Isley Brothers.


Loved "Summer Breeze" and "That Lady" but must confess much prefer The Doobie Brothers Version of "Listen To The Music" (considering some of the "two bob bit" I've listened to, I would have thought they would have got a mention, "Long Train Running" what a track)


Anyways the tracks that I particularly like my other half has on CD, she's got loads of them Summer Hits type of deals, which aren't too bad for a barbi, summing up good album, with great guitary stuff  from Ernie Isley, but this album wont be going into my collection as mentioned above other half has the ones I like on CD, and probably play the CD's more than the vinyl.



Bits & Bobs;


When their father, O'Kelly Sr., met their mother, Sallye, he told her he would marry her and she would bear 4 sons who would become a famous singing group. They ended up having 6 sons.


 
Their father, O'Kelly Sr., predicted that his sons would hit it big but he would not be around to see it. He fulfilled his prophesy by dying of a heart attack in 1956.


 
They developed their sound and stage presence by singing in church.


 
The 4th Isley son, Vernon, died at 11 when he lost control of his bicycle and slammed into an oncoming truck. The other brothers were devastated and did not work on their music for a year.


 
They formed their own record label, T-neck (named after Teaneck, New Jersey, where they lived), in 1964, but put it aside to sign with Motown a year later. They left Motown after only a year and reformed the T-neck label in 1969.


 
Younger brothers Ernie and Marvin joined in 1969 along with their cousin, Chris Jasper. They became the rhythm section for the older Isleys.


 
In 1984, Ernie, Marvin, and Chris Jasper left to form Isley, Jasper, Isley.


 
Kelly Isley died of heart failure in 1986.


 
Ronald, who sings in a tenor, is lead singer.


Everett Collins, Drums and Percussion joined the band after he met Ernie, Chris and Marvin in music composition and band classes at college. He had his own band Sunrize in 1981-1983 which was produced by the Isley Brothers.



 
21 year-old Jimi Hendrix, known then as Jimmy Hendricks, played on their stage shows in 1964.



 
Youngest brother Marvin lost his legs below the knees to diabetes in 1996.



 
They won a lawsuit from Michael Bolton in 1994 when his "Love Is A Wonderful Thing" was ruled too similar to the Isley's song of the same title. The Isley's were awarded all profits from the single and 28% of album profits.


 
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.


 
The Isleys became the first band to score a Top 50 hit in six consecutive decades on Billboard's Hot 100 when "Contagious" climbed to #19 in 2001. (so you could say it took the Contagious, ken sorry)




Jimi Hedrix lived with the Isleys in Englewood, NJ, from 1963 to 1965. They bought Jimi a white Stratocaster that he loved; he would pose with before a full-length mirror and practice flipping around for hours. (I suspect this fact was misconstrued as Jimi buying Ernie his first guitar.)




Everyone knows the Jimi Hendrix who reinvented the electric guitar with his screaming, howling, mind-bending solos. But only Ernie Isley knows the Jimi Hendrix who used to play the "Three Stooges" theme while everyone in their house in Englewood broke up. "Everybody would just start laughing," recalls Isley, then an 11-year-old youngster born into the famous Isley Brothers ("Twist & Shout," "Shout") musical dynasty.



Between 1963 and 1965, Hendrix was not only the Isley Brothers' guitarist, he also lived in the back room of the Bergen County house that Ernie shared with his mom, his older brother O'Kelly and younger brother Marvin (both now deceased). When 10-year-old brother Marvin wanted a new Pez dispenser for his collection, Jimi went to the store with him. When the family gathered at the TV to watch the Beatles on the historic Feb. 9, 1964, "Ed Sullivan Show," Jimi was in the living room with them. "Marvin was sitting on one side of him, and I was sitting on the opposite side," Isley recalls.


Isley says. "The thing about Jimi Hendrix is that the majority of people just automatically go to the icon. And he was not that. He became that. He was a person." Long before "Purple Haze," "All Along the Watchtower" and "The Wind Cries Mary," there was already a buzz about Jimi Hendrix.


In spring 1963, the Isley Brothers had gone to the Village to track down an amazing guitarist they'd heard about. According to Ernie Isley, the conversation went down something like this:


O'Kelly: You got this reputation. Play something for me.


Hendrix: I can't.


O'Kelly: Why not?


Hendrix: Because I pawned my guitar. It's in the pawn shop. (Later, after getting the guitar at the pawn shop.)


O'Kelly: Play something for me.


Hendrix: I can't.


O'Kelly: Why not?


Hendrix: I don't have any strings on my guitar. When Hendrix eventually did play a solo, the brothers hired him on the spot.


Then it was:


O'Kelly: We got rehearsals in New Jersey the day after tomorrow.


Hendrix: I can't make rehearsals in New Jersey.


O'Kelly: Why not?


Hendrix: I don't have a place to stay.


That's how Hendrix came to live with the Isleys during two formative years in which he honed a style that, a few years later, was to change the face of rock-and-roll. "Before he came to the house for the first time, Kelly got him a brand-new guitar," Isley says. "We went to Manny's [the New York music store] and got a brand-new white Strat [Stratocaster] at his request. His very first one." That guitar, Isley recalls, was never very far from Jimi. "It was always within arm's reach," Isley said. "He would drink orange juice and play guitar."


Hendrix, then about 21, became an older brother to the two young Isleys. They would watch TV together: "Super Chicken," "Beany and Cecil," "Bonanza," "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." But always, Hendrix was practicing, practicing. "We had a full-length mirror near the front door of the house, and he would be playing the guitar and looking at himself in the mirror to see how he looked," Isley says. "He would flip it behind his back, or under his leg. You never saw anybody interact with an instrument like that. Like it was a yo-yo."


By the time Hendrix left the Isleys in 1965, he was already a breakout star. And by the time he stopped back in Englewood for a visit, arriving from England and on his way to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, he had morphed into Jimi Hendrix, rock god. "Marvin looked at him and said, 'Is that Jimi?' " Isley recalls. "Cause he had this rainbow of colours on him. Hat, bracelets, rings on every finger, belt, sash, velvet bell-bottom pants. This was before Carnaby Street and psychedelia had hit the United States. When he walked down the hallway, he [was] like [movie gunslinger] Shane."


He transformed the electric guitar from a mere amplified instrument into a whole new medium of expression, Isley says, by producing sounds that no one had heard before. "If he was the president, he'd be George Washington," Isley says. "He'd always be first."



"Who's That Lady?"
This song went nowhere when it was released as a single in 1964, but when the Isley Brothers reworked the song in 1973 and released it as "That Lady," it became a huge hit for the band. The new version features younger brother Ernie on guitar.


 
A soul trio called The Impressions inspired this song. The Isleys were big fans.




"Summer Breeze"


Issued also on their 1973 album, 3 + 3, it reached number sixty on the pop singles chart, number ten on the R&B singles chart, and number sixteen on the UK singles chart. The Isleys' version is notable not only for the harmonies of the three vocal Isleys O'Kelly, Rudolph and lead singer Ronald but also for the guitar solo by younger brother Ernie. 

Day 301.
Eno............................Here Comes The Warm Jets   (1974)










After releasing No Pussyfooting with guitarist Robert Fripp, Eno realised his own vision with his solo debut.


Despite the cheeky title, Here Comes The Warm Jets was a masterwork of art-school ambitions and straightforward pop-rock, both echoing his Roxy work and hinting at what he would later accomplish with David Bowie.



Contain yourself Pat 



Not to sure about the title, is it about being "David Nished on?" 

The woman on the playing card on the front cover looks like she's "having a squat"


Strange Hobby   
 

PatReilly wrote:

Easy listening,non-intrusive stuff for visitors............ until you get pished at the bbq and put on Raw Power.

That's spot on, have you been to one o' meh pertys?

DAY 302.
Bad Company...............................................Bad Company   (1974)













Rodgers (ex Free, vocals) and Ralphs (the former Mott The Hoople guitarist) formed Bad Company, christened after a 1972  Western starring Jeff Bridges, after meeting on the road and jamming, they were joined by Simon Kirke (ex Free, drums) and erstwhile King Crimson man Boz Burrell (the sixteenth bassist who auditioned.)


"Bad Company" was engineered by Ron Nevison, later an in-demand producer. Kirke was recorded in a hallway, while the title track was taped at night, for atmosphere, in a field. As Rodgers reminisced, "alcohol and drugs" were the bands true lifeblood, yet "Bad Company" epitomises good time, blues rock. Steve Clarke of NME enthused, "Everything they touch turns to gold." He could have added platinum too.

DAY 303.
Genesis..............................The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway   (1974)









Although 1974 can be seen as the apogee of progressive rock excess, this album is dark and brittle with spare instrumentation, Recorded in rural Wales at a difficult time foe Genesis, with Peter Gabriel's vocals captured separately in London's Island Studios, the album actually displays the group at their most bite-sized.



Oot the toon till late the night or early tomorrow, so will have to catch up when I get back.




 

Day 301.
Eno............................Here Comes The Warm Jets   (1974)










Eventually got round to listening to this, have to say the good songs were bloody good but the the shit songs really were excruciating. Shades of Roxy Music in some of the tracks, but more than likely his contributions anyway.


The opening track "Needles in the Camel's Eye" did deliver a lot of hope for this album, I was really getting into with the next two tracks, then came "Driving Me Backwards" which only served to drive me F'kn nuts, absolutely no excuse for that fuckwittery in my humbles. "On Some Faraway Beach" can definitely stay faraway, the next three tracks "Blank Frank," "Dead Finks Don't Talk" and "Some of Them Are Old" were perfectly acceptable and enjoyable but the title track "Here Come the Warm Jets" didn't half drone on (maybe it was meant to ) but for me sounded like comb playing, but knowing or not knowing Eno's mind it could well have been the massed ranks of the Cumbrian comb-playng ensemble


Summing up, most of the tracks I wouldn't be offended if had to listen to again, but never want to hear  "Driving Me Backwards," "On Some Faraway Beach" or "Here Come the Warm Jets" ever again.


This album wont be getting addded to my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


His full name is Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.


 
His initial entrance to music performance was with his school bands, using a tape recorder as a musical instrument. He was with the band Roxy Music from 1971-1973.


 
He has historically been an advocate for pornography, and in a 1974 interview called it a "burning shame" that people hide it when "it's such a highly developed art form." The name for his 1973 album with Robert Fripp, (No Pussyfooting), came from a page of a pornographic film magazine, which was later stuck onto the recording console.


 
He feels uncomfortable in the spotlight, preferring to be behind the scenes where he feels more free.


 
Many of the lyrics in Eno's first two solo albums, Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), were generated randomly or pieced together from lines in his own notebooks.


 
The recording for his third solo album, Another Green World (1975), began without Eno having written any material. Instead, he hired musicians to improvise before editing the material into something coherent.


 
In 1976 Eno formed the experimental rock band, 801, with previous Roxy Music bandmate Phil Manzanera. The name came from the refrain of Eno's song "The True Wheel," which includes the lyric, "we are the 801, we are the central shaft."


 
Eno is very interested in smells, and in mixing perfumes. Since art college he has mixed concoctions of oils and liquids, and in his 1982 interview with Complete Music said that he would have happily made a career of it if he were no longer a musician.


 
Two of Eno's biggest influences were composers Erik Satie (thought to have composed the first ambient music, known as "furniture music") and John Cage. Cage's use of chance in composition was a precursor to Eno's "Oblique Strategies," a set of cards with printed suggestions to help rid creative block; some of the suggestions are cryptic (e.g. "Honour thy error as a hidden intention") and are so designed to encourage lateral thinking.


 
Eno coined the term "generative music," to describe music composed either partially or wholly by a system, meaning that each performance will rarely be the same twice. His first release using generative composition was Discreet Music, released in November, 1975. On its B-side are three variations on Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, in which each of the performers were given brief excerpts from the score to be repeated and altered.


 
He contributed to the 2008 video game, Spore, providing a largely generative soundtrack. One instance occurs when visiting a planet, where generative music plays dependent how able it is to support life. Eno has also developed generative music apps - Bloom (2008), Trope (2009) and Scape (2012) - with Peter Chilvers, whom he also worked with on Spore.


 
He won the award for best producer in both the 1994 and 1996 BRIT Awards. In 2012 he won the BAFTA award for Original Music for his contributions to the soundtrack of Channel 4 series, Top Boy.


 
He has seven Grammy Awards to his name as producer. Various U2 albums and singles on which he was the producer - The Joshua Tree (1988), "Beautiful Day" (2001), "Walk On" (2002), How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2006) — won awards for Record or Album of the Year, with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb also winning Best Rock Album. Coldplay's Viva la Vida won Best Rock Album in 2009, and Eno won for Producer of the Year in 1993 along with his partner Daniel Lanois.


 
Eno is not keen on performing live, as the music he composes is first and foremost a studio recording. He compares his music to a painting in that it is not a performance art, but more an installation that "you sometimes look at."


 
Eno cannot read sheet music, and claims to not use any knowledge of music theory (chords, keys, etc.) when composing music.


 
He was appointed youth affairs adviser in 2007 to the then-leader of the UK's Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg.


 
In 2013, Eno designed two light and sound installations for Montefiore Hospital in Sussex, UK. An installation in the reception area, entitled "77 Million Paintings for Montefiore," consists of generative music (i.e. that which is constantly changing) and a corresponding light show aimed at evoking a "serene atmosphere" for patients and staff. A space downstairs also holds an installation, but one that is designed more as an "escape," using a unique yet non-generative soundtrack.


 
During the run-up to the 2016 referendum on Britain leaving the EU, Eno was outspoken about staying in. In a Facebook post, he claimed to feel that it "could be doing a better job," but ultimately that the "net force for good" that it provides needs support in order to work properly.


 
Eno's favorite albums include Joni Mitchell's Court And Spark, Owen Pallett's Heartland, My Bloody Valentine's Glider, Steve Reich's Early Works, The Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground, and albums by international artists Farid El Atrache, Arif Sag, Me'Shell NdegéOcello and the Chœur Bulgare Svetoslav Obretenov.


 
Eno is a big fan of "YouTube ephemera," and one of his favorite internet distractions is the
"War!" sketch from Chris Morris' mock news program, The Day Today.


In the back cover of A Year with Swollen Appendices, Brian Eno's diary of 1995, he supplies a handy guide to some of the things that he is: "a mammal, an Anglo-Saxon, an uncle, a celebrity, a masturbator". Further insight into the mind of the enigmatic 47- year-old more often referred to as musician, record producer and artist is furnished by his diary entry for 26 August of last year. "Pissed into an empty bottle so I could continue watching Monty Python and suddenly thought 'I've never tasted my own piss', so I drank a little. It looked just like Orvieto Classico and tasted of nearly nothing."


Bodily functions have not previously loomed large in the public perception of Brian Eno, but that's all going to change with the publication of this heroically indiscreet volume, which could well establish him as the avant-garde Alan Clark. "The most attractive thing about the diary form for me" Eno explains, "is that it gets rid of the idea of separating thought off from the rest of what you do. I kept trying to write a book of [he says disdainfully] 'my ideas' and it looked so dull even I couldn't be bothered to read it. Then I realised that this was because I don't have a linear argument to offer, just a series of observations and a way of training yourself to notice things."



 The result of Eno's nightly endeavours is a compelling mishmash of random aphorisms ("cooking is a way of listening to the radio", "saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations''), impassioned meditations on the Bosnian situation, and whimsical musings on such intimate ephemera as the fact that he rarely gets erections while in Ireland. Not for nothing does his cyber-guru friend and e-mail correspondent Stewart Brand describe him as a ''drifting clarifier''.



 Given that Eno is most widely celebrated for his collaborative endeavours - much of the most socially acceptable work of Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2 bears his hallmark - it is probably for its insights into the people he works with that this diary will be most prized. Readers may like to guess which member of U2 might have inspired the following observation: "Singers are like Arabs. They abhor a vacuum. And a vacuum is defined as 'when I'm not singing' " (clue: his name rhymes with mono).


 Being a record producer, Eno insists, is "the best paid form of cowardice; producers often get praised but they have to do a really bad job for anyone to criticise them." If he chose to devote his time solely to record producing and gave up organising art exhibitions, making incendiary speeches at the Turner Prize and inventing new forms of computer-generated music, Eno reckons he could earn "five or eight million pounds a year". Had his accountants not persuaded him that, in this case, discretion was the better part of valour, he would have published a complete balance sheet of his income as one of his diary's swollen appendices. "You can talk about anything else," he says bemusedly, "your sex life, your medical history; but everyone is so circumspect about money".


 What Eno's diary lacks fiscally it more than makes up for in psycho-sexual candour. "On the beach," he notes on 15 August, "watching topless French ladies with huge wobbling sousaphones of bumfat, wishing I could hear them fart." Didn't his wife Anthea (she runs Eno's business affairs) take exception? "When I first got the idea of publishing the diary, she had never read it. I said 'I don't know if I should show you this - I do go on about ladies' bottoms,' and she said, 'I don't mind, I've got one too'."


 Eno's own bottom is seated as he speaks. It's a quiet Saturday morning at his studio in a quiet Notting Hill backwater, round the back of the Portobello Road. This beautiful airy room contains just about every possible means of amusing yourself - tools, musical instruments, computers, recording equipment, endless tapes and discs, a swing. Does Eno not find it hard to get down to work with all these different toys to play with? "You do have to be driven in some way to stop yourself from just frittering away your time and I suppose I'm driven by guilt. I've ended up in this quite privileged position, which so many people would love to be in, and I can't help wondering if I'm making the best of it."


 Day-to-day existence Eno-style seems to be about as far from what anyone would call a normal life - having a job and coming home - as it is possible to get. How does he feel about that? "One of the things I don't dwell on in the book, because it would sound a bit self-pitying, is that being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult: it can lead you to very depressive crises. If your time is structured you don't have this problem of 'what am I going to do today?' " Realising that this is quite a luxurious problem to have, Eno mocks himself for owning up to it: "I'm totally misunderstood [assumes whining artist tone] I've been waiting to tell someone about this for ages."


 Judging by his diary's touching accounts of the Eno family dancing to doowop records together, Eno derives a good deal of inspiration from his two young daughters, Irial and Darla (pretty names, which their dad proudly confesses to having made up). Does he see creativity as a child-like state? "Absolutely. The way children learn is by pretending, imagining what it would be like to be in another situation, which is the essence of culture. There's this crazy supposition that at the age of 16 or 18 you should suddenly switch all that off because you now know what you're doing, but the people I find interesting are the ones who carry on playing that game."


 What about his own background? You'd think Eno could only have been raised by a colony of free-thinking bohemian bee-keepers, but this was not the case. "My dad was a postman," Eno says fondly, "and my mother was a Belgian immigrant." How did they meet? "At the end of the war, when the Germans had left Belgium, they used to billet English soldiers with Flemish households, and while my dad was staying there he fell in love with this picture of a young girl, who turned out to be the family's daughter. She'd been in a German forced labour camp, building Heinkel bombers. When the war ended it took her ages to come back, she only weighed five stone and she had a one-year-old-daughter - the father had disappeared from the camp and was never seen again - but my dad was waiting for her. They got married a couple of years later, and she's lived in Woodbridge in Suffolk ever since."


 That's a lovely story. "It's very romantic isn't it?" Eno grins winsomely. And any last remaining pretensions he might have to cold fish status are finally dispelled when conversation turns to the "very peculiar and eccentric" uncle he credits with a key role in his creative development. Though the man died four years ago (four years after his own father) Eno's normally calm and measured demeanour gives way to obvious emotional agitation as soon he starts talking about him. "His life story would really be worth going into," he enthuses. "He went to India with the hussars in the 1930s, but fell off his horse shortly after he got there, and was discharged with concussion. Then he spent six years hanging out with yogis and came back to Woodbridge," Eno laughs, "a changed man".

  Eno's uncle worked as the town gardener, with a handy sideline in crockery repair, and used to slip his nephew tiny books (Eno demonstrates just how tiny with a simple hand gesture) from the Methuen World of Art series. It was while looking at two particular plates in one of these books, Piet Mondrian's two Boogie-Woogie paintings, "Broadway" and "Victory" that Eno realised he wanted to be an artist. "What knocked me out about them was something that I've been fascinated by ever since, which is how something so simple can produce such a strong effect. That economy has always been the thing with me. I want to do as little as possible for the maximum pay-off."


 Inquisitive eyes meandering along Eno's video rack come to a screeching halt at the box marked "Mud-Wrestling". "I think people are so sensitive to what is erotic for them," Eno insists "precisely how much an eyebrow is raised or what word is used: they're probably more specific about that than anything else, other than food." Isn't that what makes those things exciting, the fact that people don't think about them? "I don't think people think about most things," he replies quietly, "but I do. I think, in general, thinking is a bloody good idea" - Eno laughs, and a shaft of sunlight glints, halo-like, off the top of his head - "and we don't do enough of it."
 What about the song which incorporated 27 pianos? - the one that was inspired by a dream . . ."You mean 'On Some Faraway Beach'. It wasn't only inspired - all the words to that occurred in the dream. I quite often wake up and write down my dreams because I find them so completely mysterious. I can't see what it was in me that made me put together that particular combination of items. (beats me to)




He spies a copy of Search magazine. He leafs through it with obvious pleasure, but the gleam in his eyes softens, and sadly he shakes his head, "It's a burning shame that most people want to keep pornography under cover when it's such a highly developed art form - which is one of the reasons that I started collecting pornographic playing cards I've got about 50 packs which feature on all my record covers for the astute observer.


 "There's something about pornography which has a similarity to rock music. A pornographic photographer aims his camera absolutely directly, at the centre of sexual attention. He's not interested in the environment of the room.


 "I hate the sort of photography in Penthouse and Playboy which is such a compromise between something to give you a hard-on and something which pretends to be artistic. The straight pornographers aim right there where it's at.


 "Which is analogous to so many other situations where somebody thinks one thing is important, so they focus completely on that and don't realize they're unconsciously organizing everything else around it as well. I have such beautiful pornography - I'll show you my collection sometime.


 The last guy invited me up to see his etchings.


 "One theory is that black-and-white photography is always more sexy than colour photography. The reason for this is provided by Marshall McLuhan, who points out that if a thing is 'high definition,' which colour photography is, it provides more information and doesn't require participation as much as if it is 'low definition'." I.e. a horror play on the radio is always very, very frightening because the imagery is always your own. If youUre choosing your own imagery, you'll always choose the most frightening, or in the case of pornography, the most sexual.


 "The idea of things being low definition has always interested me a lot - of being unspecific - another thing which is a key-point of my lyrics. They must be 'low definition' so that they don't say anything at all direct. I think the masters of that were Lou Reed and Bob Dylan (on "Blonde on BIonde"). The lyrics are so inviting.


 "DO YOU KNOW WHAT 'burning shame' is by the way? It's a pornographic term for a deviation involving candles."Ouch!"

 "Very popular in Japanese pornography. They're always using lit candles because Japanese pornography is very sadistic, partly because of the Japanese view of women, which is a mixture of resentment and pure animal lust.


 "In the traditional view, a woman is still expected to be at the beck and call of her husband, so that manifests itself in that kind of pornography. Of which I have a few examples, of course.


 "Mexican pornography is an interesting island of thought because they seem to be heavily into excretory functions. The traditional American view is that anything issued from the body is dirty. It's incredibly puritanical and it resents bodily fluids, so if one is trying to debase a woman, you cover them with that and hence you get the fabulous term 'Golden Showers' - the term for pissing on someone, which some well- known rock musicians are said to be very involved in . .

 "Here come the warm jets?"
 "That's certainly a reference."


"Did you know there's a girls' school with 400 girls just round the corner? Very nice, I'll tell you, it really is lovely. I mean they're so beautiful those little girls are. My conscience won't let me tamper - feel I might damage their lives if I do anything."







Some boy, eh             

DAY 302.
Bad Company...............................................Bad Company   (1974)






  




That wasn't a bad wee half an hour, it certainly took me back in time, although for me it was quite dated, but coming from that era it didn't present any barriers to my enjoyment.


I thought the album had really good flow to it, Starting out with "Can't Get Enough" to get you going, and finishing with the simplistic but beguiling "Seagull" to ease you out. In between these were "Rock Steady," "Ready for Love" the Mott The Hoople cover (hopefully Pat can tell us which version was better?) "Don't Let Me Down" a mid point cooling down spot, then the classic title track "Bad Company" followed by, if I'm being picky the weakest track "The Way I Choose" but lifted up again by probably my favourite track on the album "Movin' On"


Anyways, I really enjoyed this trip back to '74, and this album will be going into my collection at some point.




Bits & Bobs;


Before forming Bad Company, Rodgers and Kirke were in Free, Burrell was in King Crimson, and Ralphs was in Mott The Hoople. It was a few months before Burrell came on board, during which time they wrote most of the songs for their first album.


 
They were the first band to record for Led Zeppelin's record label, Swan Song. They recorded their first album at Headley Grange, the mansion where Zeppelin recorded many of their tracks. They also shared a manager with Led Zeppelin: Peter Grant.


  
The group temporarily disbanded in 1982 when Rodgers left to form The Firm with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. The group reformed in 1986 without Rodgers, who later rejoined them in 1999.




While Rodgers was gone, former Ted Nugent vocalist Brian Howe filled in. He was introduced to Bad Company by Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones.


 
Their first two albums contained just eight songs each and ran about 35 minutes long. This was done, in part, for fidelity: on vinyl albums shorter run times allowed for larger grooves, which improved sound quality.


 
Kirke suggested to Don Henley and Glenn Frey that they bring Joe Walsh into the Eagles. They did.


 
While the band was disbanded in the 1980s, Ralphs toured with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.


 
Ex-King Crimson saxophonist Mel Collins played on their first album.


 
Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant had a boat named after the band. He was a huge Bad Company fan.


After a grueling 1977 tour, they took the next year off, which served two purposes:

1) To get the "thrill" back.
2) To flee England so they could avoid paying the very high taxes charged to high earners.


 
Kirke was the last guest musician to join Led Zeppelin on stage. He joined them for an extended rendition of "Whole Lotta Love" at their concert in Munich on July 5, 1980. This turned out to be Zeppelin's penultimate show, as drummer John Bonham died two months later.


The members of Bad Company were stars before their first concert in March 1974. Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke had been members of Free, Mick Ralphs had been Ian Hunter's main sidekick in Mott the Hoople, and Boz Burrell had played with King Crimson. Their self-titled debut album, recorded in only 10 days with a minimum of overdubs in Ronnie Lane's mobile studio, eclipsed all that by going Number One worldwide with the single "Can't Get Enough." The album from which it came also hit Number 1 and to date has sold more than 5 million copies.


 Playing sparse, elemental hard rock dominated by Rodgers' husky vocals and Ralphs' power chords, the original Bad Company sold more than 12 million records worldwide. Its 1975 release, Straight Shooter, yielded the Top 10 single "Feel Like Makin' Love" (Number 10, 1975) while Run With the Pack was the group's third consecutive album to go platinum.


 On Desolation Angels (which included the Rodgers-penned hit "Rock and Roll Fantasy," Number 13, 1979), Bad Company added synthesizers and strings. Indicative of its increasingly sporadic activities, three years elapsed between Angels and Rough Diamonds, which seemed an anachronism upon its 1982 release. The group disbanded that year, with Rodgers releasing a solo LP in 1983, then forming yet another supergroup, the Firm, with Jimmy Page, bassist/keyboardist Tony Franklin, and drummer Chris Slade.


 The Firm never came close to matching the level of success its two principals had enjoyed with their previous groups. After two LPs, the quartet broke up in 1986, just as Ralphs and Kirke were putting Bad Company back together. Former Ted Nugent vocalist Brian Howe stood in for Rodgers. The group stuck closely to the original lineup's riffy blues-rock formula, but its first album, Fame and Fortune, disappeared from the chart after just nine weeks. However, Dangerous Age eventually went gold, while Holy Water went platinum and produced a Top 20 power ballad, "If You Needed Somebody." Here Comes Trouble also sold in excess of 1 million copies and gave the group two more Top 40 hits. In 1993 Bad Company expanded into a quintet, adding journeyman bassist Rick Wills (Frampton's Camel, Roxy Music, Foreigner) and rhythm guitarist Dave Colwell, and celebrated its 20th anniversary with a live greatest-hits album. Rodgers, meanwhile, struggled to find musical direction. The Law, a hard-rock duo with drummer Kenney Jones, couldn't get arrested, and the singer returned to a solo career, first releasing two curious tribute albums, one interpreting the music of Muddy Waters, the other a live set of Jimi Hendrix tunes featuring Neal Schon on guitar.



 In the fall of 1998 Rodgers and Burrell joined Ralphs and Kirke for a reunion of the original lineup. The group contributed four new songs, including the single "Hey, Hey," to the 2-CD set The "Original" Bad Co. Anthology, then embarked on a farewell tour in 1999. Rodgers has announced that he would resume his solo career afterward, when he is not playing as part of the original Bad Company. Rodgers would go on to take over Freddie Mercury's role in Queen, and the newly-christened Queen + Paul Rodgers released The Cosmos Rocks in October 2008.

 Mick Ralphs Biography Mick Ralphs is one of British rock music’s most tasteful and understated guitarists, from the same ‘school’ as Joe Walsh and Mick Ronson where, thankfully, the mission statement is thought, feel and melody rather than speed. Ralphs’ attributes, and his ability to ‘play for the song’, are amply displayed on his recordings with Mott The Hoople and Bad Company
 Born and raised in Herefordshire, an English county that nurtured and brought together the musicians that would become Mott The Hoople, one of rock’s most inspirational bands, Mick was something of a late-comer to music, learning guitar when he was eighteen years of age. His musical influences included Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson (‘mainly for the guitar playing of James Burton’), Buffalo Springfield and Mountain guitarist Leslie West.
Ralphs’ early groups were The Mighty Atom Dance Band and The Melody Makers before he joined The Buddies, in 1964, who made one single featuring the Ralphs/Norman composition ‘It’s Goodbye’, Mick’s first recorded work. Future ‘Motts’ Stan Tippins (vocals) and Peter Overend Watts (bass) joined The Buddies and worked continuously with Ralphs until 1969 when Guy Stevens signed them to Island Records, thanks predominantly to Mick’s relentless determination.
The Buddies were a slick beat outfit who quickly obtained regular work in Germany and Italy and would travel to and from the continent, ultimately using other band names including The Doc Thomas Group and Problem as ‘flags of convenience’ – (please consult the sleeve notes to Angel Air’s stunning 2 on 1 CD – Doc Thomas Group The Italian Job and The Silence Shotgun Eyes – for an extensive history of Ralphs’ early years). After recording The Doc Thomas Group album in Milan in 1966 and making two subsequent appearances on RAI Television (by which time drummer Dale Griffin had also joined DTG), Mick worked with future Mott The Hoople organist Verden Allen in Jimmy Cliff’s backing band, The Shakedown Sound. Eventually Ralphs, Tippins, Watts, Griffin and Allen joined forces and became Silence, who auditioned for Guy Stevens.



 Mott The Hoople

 Between 1969 and 1974, Mott The Hoople created astounding music. Fired by the powerful, percipient writing of vocalist Ian Hunter and buoyed by Mick’s blistering guitar playing, they cemented their position as one of the most influential British rock acts of the decade and unquestionably THE precursors to punk. Ralphs contributed some of Mott’s best material including ‘Rock And Roll Queen’, ‘Half Moon Bay’, ‘Thunderbuck Ram’, ‘Whiskey Women’, ‘Midnight Lady’, ‘The Moon Upstairs’, ‘Moving On’, ‘Ready For Love’ and ‘One Of The Boys’. After four critically acclaimed but poor selling albums with Island Records, Mott The Hoople switched to Columbia and found increased commercial success with All The Young Dudes and Mott, the latter showcasing some of Mick’s most inspired guitar work. The future looked assured but suddenly, in August 1973, after the first stage of a major headlining American tour to promote Mott, Ralphs left to form Bad Company with Free vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke. Mott had toured the UK with Rodgers’ group Peace as their support act in 1971. Overend Watts, Mott’s bass player, would soon decline an offer to join Bad Company.


 Ian Hunter confesses that he did everything possible to convince Ralphs to remain in Mott The Hoople. ‘I didn’t want Mick to leave. I spent three hours with him trying to talk him out of it, but it was getting ridiculous. I even offered him half my royalties on a total co-writer basis and he was writing maybe an eighth of what I was writing. I believe in Mick Ralphs. His taste is impeccable, that’s why I say he’s one of the best guitar players there is.’

Various ‘public explanations’ were given for Ralphs’ departure including lack of recognition and his fear of flying, but Mick admits he really left Mott The Hoople because fundamentally he felt the group had changed. ‘We’d struggled all these years to have a hit and Ian was on a roll writing hit singles, but I’d started writing songs and didn’t think they would fit in the vehicle known as Mott The Hoople. Also, as much as we were having success, the success was because we were writing songs like ‘Honaloochie Boogie’ and we’d lost a bit of the wildness.


  ‘Mott survived on struggle, adversity and disappointment and that gave us the spirit to carry on. We’d always said, sod convention, sod the system, but there comes a point where you can’t be famous and be like that. We were always the underdog and that was part of the reason we were so spirited and so exciting. And then we got into this thing with David Bowie, which was a great success and helped everyone, but in a way we’d become part of the system we were always dead against. We’d had success, but there was a different feeling in the band and it was time for me to move on. I didn’t have the same commitment and interest because of the change. Mott was like my adolescence and I decided it was time to go off and do my own thing. I just wanted to play some different music. It was like leaving your parents; it’s not that you don’t love them, you just want to go and do something else.’


  Ralphs looks back on his fellow Mott members with affection. ‘Ian Hunter is a very strong character. I respect him enormously. He’s an excellent songwriter and has a great handle on the business. He’s also very good at dealing with the press, much better than I am. Pete Watts always had lots of great ideas and was always doing something interesting, like he’d have a guitar made in the shape of a bird, or a three dimensional chess set or would wear platform boots long before anybody else did. Buffin often underestimated his strength in the band, because he was a real driving force. He was also underestimated as a drummer I think, because a lot of people took something from his style. Verden Allen was a good, passionate man and very single minded. But he was extremely musical and had great ability. He wasn’t afraid to try something different for effect and would often play a wild style rather than adopt a conventional approach, which all contributed heavily to the Mott sound.’


  Bad Company


 ‘When Mott toured with Peace, I couldn’t believe that someone of Paul Rodgers calibre was supporting us, although his band weren’t that great,’ says Ralphs. ‘We all loved Paul and got him up to sing with us one night, and I said to him backstage that I’d got some songs we weren’t doing in Mott and would he like to do them. So I played him ‘Ready For Love’ and he liked that, and then I played ‘Moving On’ and he liked that too. Initially, I was just going to do some recording with Paul, but when I started working with him, it was obvious I was more interested in that.
‘We were doing the Mott album and Paul wanted to record and put a band together but I told him Mott The Hoople had a US tour coming up and I had to do that. I couldn’t just tell them I’m leaving, it wouldn’t be fair. So I said to Mott I’d do the American tour and that would give them time to get somebody else in to take my place.’

‘Ralphs quits Hoople’ announced the music press in August 1973 and Bad Company was born. Rodgers, Ralphs and Kirke recruited Boz Burrell, who had previously been with King Crimson where he learned bass under the tuition of lead guitarist Robert Fripp, and joined Island Records in Britain and Led Zeppelin’s US record label, Swan Song, managed by the late Peter Grant. ‘He was a lovely man,’ says Mick, ‘and another big influence, as Guy Stevens was, but in a different way. If it hadn’t been for Peter, Bad Company wouldn’t have been as big as they were, just like Guy with Mott.’

Playing their first gig at Newcastle City Hall in March 1974 and attracting instant popularity, Bad Company’s self-titled debut album was a huge hit that year reaching No.3 in the UK and No.1 platinum status in the US charts. Produced by the group, the record included Ralphs’ Mott The Hoople songs ‘Ready For Love’, ‘Moving On’ and the top 5 single ‘Can’t Get Enough’, plus two fine ballads co-written with Paul Rodgers, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ and the acoustic ‘Seagull’. Bad Company became the most successful new British band in the USA in 1974 achieving immediate recognition. They departed on their first American tour for six weeks as a support group, but were instantly promoted to headlining status and eventually returned to the UK three months later.
Their appeal increased on both sides of the Atlantic with the 1975 release of Straight Shooter, which reached the top three in the UK and spawned two hit singles, Ralphs’ ‘Good Lovin’ Gone Bad’ and ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ composed with Rodgers. Mick also co-wrote ‘Deal With The Preacher’ and ‘Wild Fire Woman’. ‘Once I got working with Paul I got into a roll,’ says Ralphs. ‘I unleashed a lot of songs because I had the perfect vehicle; I had the greatest singer in the world and the greatest drummer, and everybody was into the blues, so I was able to exploit my songwriting to the degree that I did.’


  By 1975 Bad Company decided to live in the USA and Ralphs temporarily abandoned his Oxfordshire home. ‘We lived in Malibu when the tax in England was ridiculously high and everybody was leaving the UK. We decided to cushion the financial burden and ended up living in California for six months in a rented house. We picked Malibu because it was about forty five minutes from LA, to try and get away from the madness, but of course we didn’t, it just followed us out there.’


"Can't Get Enough"


"Can't Get Enough" was both the first, and the highest-charting, single released by Bad Company. It still receives heavy airplay today on Classic Rock radio. Bad Company would go on to rack up nine Billboard Top 40 singles from 1974 until 1992.




The album Bad Company, their debut, hit #1 on Billboard's albums chart and sold five million copies.


 
This song is a good taste of the original lineup of Bad Company, one of the earliest and longest-lived supergroups. It combined singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke from the band Free, guitarist Mick Ralphs from the band Mott the Hoople, and bassist Boz Burrell from King Crimson (squeeee! go the progressive rock fans!). Not to mention sharing a manager, Peter Grant, with Led Zeppelin.




"Can't Get Enough" was written by Ralphs when he was still with Mott the Hoople, but the band (or their record label) rejected it. When he joined Bad Company, they were happy to record the song. Ralphs also brought "Movin' On" with him, which became the group's next single, as well as "Ready For Love," which he originally recorded with Mott, but re-did with Bad Co.


 
 As the first track on the first Bad Company album, and also the first single released by the group, this song introduced them with the sound of drummer Simon Kirke counting in and blasting two beats to start things off. This open came about for practical reasons. Kirke explained: "We were scattered all over this country house. Bad Company were doing their first album and I believe it was one of the first songs that we did. I was in the basement, Boz [Burrell] the bass player was in the boiler room, Mick Ralphs and Paul Rodgers were up in the main living room where the guitar amps were. So, in order to get their attention, because we couldn't see each other, I did the count: '1, 2... 1, 2, 3...' and then I did this 'guh-brah' to get everyone's attention. And that's how we kicked it off. It was born out of necessity."


 
The single was cut down to 3:28 to make it more radio friendly than the 4:16 album version. The edit excises the count-in and much of the outro.




"Bad Company"

According to just about every bio on the band, this song, and the band name, came from Bad Company, a critically acclaimed Western starring Jeff Bridges that was released in 1972. Lead singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke, both formerly of Free, formed the band with Mick Ralphs of Mott The Hoople. Ralphs brought in three songs from his days with Mott: "Ready For Love," "Movin' On" and "Can't Get Enough." Rodgers and Kirke wrote the song "Bad Company," and decided to use it as the band name. How did it happen?



According to Kirke, Rodgers saw a poster advertising the movie and suggested it as the band name. Rodgers told a different story in a 2010 interview with Spinner. "It came from my childhood days," he said. "I saw a book on Victorian morals. They showed this picture of this Victorian punk. He was dressed like a tough, with a top hat and the spats and vests and the watch in the pocket and the tails and all of that. But everything was raggy. The shoes were popped out of the soles, and the top of the hat was popped out. And the guy is leaning on the lamppost with a bottle in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, obviously a dodgy person. And you've got this little choirboy kind of guy - a little kid, actually - looking up to him. And underneath it said, 'Beware of bad company.'"



The singer added that he decided to go with a song with same name as the band as, "I think because it had never really been done, as far as I knew. I thought it was interesting to come out as a brand-new band with its own theme song."


 
There are times when you need to leave the studio to find the right atmosphere for a vocal. To get the hunting sound on this track, Paul Rogers recorded his vocals in the still of the night in the middle of a field under the moonlight. "It took about three hours to set it up, with wires and lends and everything, but when the time came there it was, and we just did it in the one take," he said.


 
Simon Kirke and Paul Rodgers are the credited writers on this song. According to Kirke, it was written in about 10 minutes. He told Goldmine, "When Bad Company was first formed, we had a period of time when there were only three solid members. It was five, six months before we got a bass player. So, we had Bad Company as a working title. It wasn't cast in stone that was going to be the name. Paul was playing around on the piano, came up with these three chords, and we took it away."


 
Rogers told Spinner: "I wrote the song with that Western feel - with an almost biblical, promise-land kind of lawless feel to it. The name backed it up in a lot of respects."




"Seagull"



Paul Rodgers (Classic Rock Revisited January 12, 2001): "Every song that we have done has it's own story. 'Seagull' was written sitting on the beach. Music is about atmosphere. The best way to create the atmosphere is to actually be there. You don't have to imagine it. It is right there. With Seagull, you could see the horizon. You can include that in the songs. That is what writing songs is all about; creating mood and atmosphere."

I think I liked the Eno album because one of my favourite guitarists was involved (Fripp), and of course I enjoy some stuff that's a bit different. Of the time, there were some great musicians involved in that album: Toyah's husband, obviously, Chris Spedding (his named stuff won't be in the 1001, but I'm sure he'll be on many of the lps), and a bloke Lloyd Watson stand out for me, but probably not for many other.

Bad Company were really 'Free lite' a tribute band before tribute bands, but I quite liked them. The songs were easy to play. And to answer which version of Ready for Love is best, it's clearly Mott the Hoople's!

For some reason I have The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and the stand out track is Carpet Crawlers, which is a song that's been stuck in my head for almost 44 years now........ which brings me to............... these albums aren't listed in sequence, just in a loose year framework.

Finally, I'd never heard of Shuggie Otis, which is odd as I'd been aware of his dad's musical contributions in a vague sense. Listened to that album earlier. Bbq music, but quite smooth and funky at the same time.


PS: it's quite hard to type this stuff when you are borderline befuddled.

Last edited by PatReilly (09/6/2018 11:09 pm)

DAY 305.
Stevie Wonder...........................................Fulfillingness'  First Finale   (1974)









"Fulfillinness' First Finale" marks the last , and most commercially successful of Stevie Wonder's remarkable quartet of albums with synth wizards Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, the engineers who had assisted his transition from child genius to adult superstar.


Most memorable of all was the militant "You Haven't Done Nothin', it revisited the stompin' funk-rock of "Superstition" and became Stevie's fourth U.S No1, aided by Motown label mates The Jackson Five on backing vocals, The album itself also made No1.

DAY 305.
Stevie Wonder...........................................Fulfillingness'  First Finale   (1974)









I know this is going to sound like sacrilege to some, but I'm no' to fond of Stevie Wonder, again maybe my ears aren't trained/tuned enough to pick up on the brilliance that most seem to believe he turns out, but to me there always seems to be a deja vu/groundhog day when I listen to him, and why does he have to finish each verse with "ay ya ya ya ya ya, yeaheh" there is only so much "ay ya ya ya ya ya, yeaheh" this listener can take.


Now remember this is just the way I hear it, so don't take offence if you do like him, summing up we all know he's a talented guy, but nothing on the album really stood out for me and as a consequence, this album will not be getting purchased.



Bits & Bos;


Have already posted previously about Mr Wonder  (if interested)



Stevie's first No. 1 album of the 1970s on the Billboard pop charts.



His second Grammy®-honoured Album of the Year.



Features two No. 1 singles, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” and “Boogie On Reggae Woman.”




Singing in back:The Jackson 5, Syreeta, Minnie Riperton, the Persuasions and Deniece Williams.




George Michael, Jamie Foxx, Josh Groban and Shawn Colvin are among those who have since covered the album’s songs.



Original release date: 22 July, 1974.




Spent 65 weeks on the Billboard pop album charts.




Stevie's fourth studio album since turning 21.




His first Top 5 album on the British charts.



Stevie's fourth studio album of his adult career – that is, after he turned 21 – was released during the height of Watergate, the worst political scandal of 20th century America, and featured one explicit song about promises not kept, and at least a couple of others about justice. “The best way to get an important and heavy message across,” said the musician at the time, “is to wrap it up nicely. With songs, I’ve found out, it’s better to try and level out the weight of the lyrics by making the melody lighter.”




Fulfillingness’ First Finale was originally intended to be a two-LP set. According to author James Haskins in The Stevie Wonder Scrapbook, it was to have drawn on material not used on his previous three albums – that is, songs written before the star’s near-fatal auto accident in the summer of ’73. Whatever the truth, the single LP which emerged from Motown on July 22, 1974, found Stevie in reflective mood. Even the cover art looked backwards, with retro images of his bow-tied younger self, and of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the Motortown Revue tour bus. The past was also apparent on the album’s third track, “Too Shy To Say.” Playing acoustic bass was James Jamerson, a former member of Motown’s revered house band, The Funk Brothers, who helped to musically educate a teenage Wonder at Hitsville U.S.A.




“You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” was the first single, the opening shot from an album released shortly before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. No lighter melody here to level out the weight of the lyrics. The track’s engines are synthesizer riffs and pumping brass, and  Stevie's indictment of politicians come complete with powerful background vocals from The Jackson 5. “Sing it loud for your people,” commands Wonder in the song. The album’s associate producer, Bob Margouleff, remembered that Michael Jackson arrived at the recording studio in Los Angeles with his tutor. “It was done in Studio B, and there was a party-like atmosphere,” he said. “Everyone was so blown away with the harmonies they did.”




After “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” was released, Stevie declared that he would have liked the Osmonds on the record as well as The Jackson's, as a symbol of integration. “I think they could really bring people together,” he said. By this stage in his musical growth, racial harmony was a recurring theme in  Wonder's work, explicitly or otherwise. On “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away,” the album’s second track, he sings. “Why must my color black make me a lesser man?/I thought this world was made for every man.” Reviewers noticed. In assessing the album for Rolling Stone, Ken Emerson opined that Stevie's appeal cut across social and ethnic barriers. “In this respect,” Emerson wrote, “he’s ideally suited to Motown, which has never been content with an exclusively black market. But unlike so many Detroit acts, whose wooing of white listeners leaves them pallid and gutless, Wonder’s music expands and its integrity is strengthened, not diminished.”



“Cinematic – that’s the way Stevie perceives the world,” said Bob Margouleff, the Moog synthesizer master who, with audio engineer Malcolm Cecil, enabled Wonder to focus and direct his creative energy in the early 1970s, virtually from their first meeting at New York’s Mediasound studios. The Motown star had heard the ground-breaking Moog on an album by Tonto’s Expanding Headband – who were Margouleff and Cecil – and wanted to know everything about its capabilities. So began a remarkable three-year union, as the pair programmed, engineered and recorded the new music Wonder was creating. “We never stopped working from that moment, night and day,” remembered Margouleff. “He’d do the playing, we’d do the programming, and we started to accumulate a huge library of songs.”




Those years together saw Cecil and Margouleff serve as associate producers to Wonder for four extraordinary albums – Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale – after he had redefined, contractually and creatively, his relationship with Motown in 1971. Wonder cut the fourth LP at Electric Lady and Mediasound in New York, and Record Plant and Westlake Audio in Los Angeles. “[Stevie] is very straight to the point, very clear on what he wants,” Cecil explained in The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits. “You can also tell him the truth [about] his work, you could tell him what you really thought. That’s what he wanted, and he would listen to us.”




Most instrumentation and the arrangements on Fulfillingness’ First Finale are Wonder's work, indeed, but several other musicians add magic and muscle: guitarist Michael Sembello on “Smile Please” and “Please Don’t Go,” bassist Reggie McBride also on “Smile Please,” as well as “You Haven’t Done Nothin’.” The latter features Stevie's percussionist Bobbye Hall, too. Meanwhile, Syreeta Wright and Minnie Riperton (whose Perfect Angel LP  was co-producing that year) sparkle with background vocals through the album, as do rotating members of his band, Wonderlove: Deniece Williams, Jim Gilstrap and Shirley Brewer. The Persuasions sing on “Please Don’t Go,” while onetime pop idol Paul Anka vocalizes with Wright, Brewer and Larry Latimer on “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away.”




As noted, James Jamerson plays bass on “Too Shy To Say,” which also features an atmospheric pedal steel guitar fingered by “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. Another celebrated musician who helps is Sergio Mendes, translator of the lyrics of “Bird of Beauty” into Portuguese to enable Stevie “to speak to my people of Mozambique and the beautiful people of Brazil,” as he reveals in the liner notes. All but one of the album’s songs are written by Wonder; the exception is “They Won’t Go When I Go,” which he created with Yvonne Wright. Previously, she had collaborated with him on “You’ve Got It Bad Girl” and “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” for Talking Book, and “Girl Blue” and “Evil” for Music Of My Mind.




Fulfillingness’ First Finale claimed the top of the Billboard pop charts on September 14, 1974, ending a four-week run by Eric Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard and giving Stevie his first No. 1 LP there since The 12 Year Old Genius Recorded Live in 1963. Over the next three decades, a variety of singers and musicians were drawn to the album’s material, from jazzmen like Herbie Mann and Marcus Miller to pop stars such as George Michael and Josh Groban. For his 1985 album, The Night I Fell In Love, Luther Vandross covered “Creepin’,” which led actor/singer Jamie Foxx to tackle the song for 2005’s all-star tribute album to Vandross. For Tales of Wonder, Nnenna Freelon’s homage to Stevie in 2002, she chose “Creepin’ ” and “Bird of Beauty.”
 
For its part, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” was an across-the-board smash, powering to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles ranking in September and to the top of the pop best-sellers in November. The album’s second single was “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” released in October 1974; it matched its predecessor’s success on the soul charts, and peaked at No. 3 on the pop listings. No further 45s were issued from Fulfillingness’ First Finale. The album spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Soul LPs chart, and two weeks at the top of the magazine’s 200-position Top LPs & Tapes countdown during a 65-week run there.




As Fulfillingness’ First Finale was the nation’s most popular album, Stevie embarked upon a coast-to-coast concert trek, his first since touring with the Rolling Stones in 1972. He opened with a show at Nassau Coliseum on New York’s Long Island (tickets, $6.50-$8.75), played in more than 30 cities through the fall, and returned to the Big Apple for a date at Madison Square Garden in December. Among the roadshow’s other highlights: a performance at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, where the opening act was Rufus, basking in the glory of their Stevie-penned breakthrough hit that summer, “Tell Me Something Good.”




While the fans voted with their wallets, the music industry hailed Stevie at the annual Grammy® awards on March 1, 1975. Just like Innervisions one year earlier, Fulfillingness’ First Finale was declared 1974’s Album of the Year. A blue-suited Stevie accepted the prize from Bette Midler, and performed “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” during the Grammy® telecast. The album was also honored in the best pop vocal performance (male) category, while “Boogie On Reggae Woman” gained a Grammy® for best R&B vocal performance (male). Stevie could also take pleasure from the Grammy® given for best R&B vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus: Rufus won that prize with “Tell Me Something Good.”




“After Stevie released his first concept album, Music Of My Mind, in early ’72, I could see him developing a writing and producing style all his own. His lyrics were emotional, poetic and visual; his chord patterns intricate and different. His music covered many spectrums – Blues, Pop, Reggae, Classical, Jazz and Stevie himself. For the first time, he began recording in studios other than ours, experimenting with synthesizers and other strange technological apparatus. That unique texture that was all his own broadened the base of the Motown Sound tremendously” – Berry Gordy, in his autobiography, To Be Loved.

shedboy wrote:

Did i respond to this before??? Classic,genius surrounded by Stevie Wonder and even David Bowie - guess who wins for me

wrong post this was for Iggy Pop but still sentiment remains!

'Genius' who's best album and track/s were produced and written by Bowie 🙈

Fairly sure now that you're 'at it'.

DAY 306.
Eric Clapton...............................................461 Ocean Boulevard   (1974)









If only for his dreadful version of "I Shot The Sheriff" this album wouldn't be going into my collection. Although that was awful, it wasn't all bad, "Please Be with Me" is one of my favourite Clapton tracks even though it was written by an American singer-songwriter and guitarist Charles Scott Boyer, "Let It Grow" is another good track as is "Willie and the Hand Jive" who we may recall was written by Johnny Otis, who was the father of the boy we had just a few days ago Shuggie Otis.


I was thinking there  (shouldn't do it too much, I know) but Shuggie Otis if you say it quick, does it no' sound like a disease?

"Eh, the doctor signed him aff work fir twa weeks, he's got thon Shuggie Otis"

"sorry lads em aff the drink, em on antibiotics, that slapper last week gave me a dose o' the Shuggie Otis"

Sorry off on a tangent, anyways this album for me was nothing special, fair play to him, he kept the tracks to healthy length for once, but there wasn't enough on the album to warrant me shelling out my hard earned, my other half has Unplugged, Crossroads and a greatest hits kinda CD so I'm covered in the doubtful chance that I may need a Clapton fix.


This wont be going in my collection.



Bits & Bobs;



Posted about Clapton previously (if interested)


Between laid-back and listless, between the tastefully restrained and the downright niggardly, the line can be perilously thin. Eric Clapton's new album teeters precariously on the very edge, flirting with, but in the nick of time always just skirting, dullness. It's a tribute to Clapton's charisma and talents that 461 Ocean Boulevard doesn't succumb to the danger Clapton courts by playing unobtrusively with an unimpressive band. Still, it's a close call, too close for comfort.


 461 shies away from the rich sonorities and lyrical, flowing lines that made Clapton an unhappy superstar. So determined is he to break from his past that frequently he plays dobro instead of guitar. 461 debuts a new, thin, circumscribed and circumspect style which will disappoint many — it has neither the beauty nor the power of the old sound. But rhythmically it constitutes an advance, lending itself more readily to syncopation. With its reggae and touches of Bo Diddley, 461 can swing as Clapton's earlier work did not.


 What's disturbing is not that Clapton plays differently, but that he plays so little. When he steps out a bit, he shines. His compelling slide guitar solo on Elmore James's "I Can't Hold Out," his embellishments on "Mainline Florida" and his two extended performances on dobro are excellent. But generally Clapton takes far too literally the old saw that the greatest art is that which conceals itself. Not content merely to hide his light under a bushel, at times Clapton snuffs it out altogether. On several tracks we glimpse him only occasionally behind George Terry's chicken-scratch rhythm guitar.


 Were Clapton deferring to a first-rate band his disappearing act would be less upsetting, but Dick Sims is a woefully trite organist and Carl Radle's bass lines are skimpy and perfunctory throughout the album. Only drummer Jamie Oldaker plays with some semblance of energy and imagination. The mediocrity of Clapton's accompanists (whom Clapton seems satisfied simply to accompany) accounts in part for 461's flaccidity. Clapton has always played best when challenged and encouraged by the presence of strong and gifted musicians such as Jack Bruce, Duane Allman and George Harrison. But there is no one here of comparable stature to prod and inspire Clapton, and the result is a comfortable and professional, but rarely a brilliant, performance. Clapton settles too easily for second best.



 Clapton's vocals, surprisingly enough, take up much of the slack. He has become a far more self-assured and less tentative singer. Like George Harrison he sometimes sounds too doleful — "Willy and the Hand Jive" is not a lament! — but he attacks much of the up-tempo material with hearty exuberance. His best efforts, however, are on the slower numbers, especially two he wrote himself, the brief "Give Me Strength" and the more ambitious and stately "Let It Grow." These he sings in hushed, confessional tones which are so intimate and convincing he seems to be sitting beside you.


 461 is also partially redeemed by the quality of some of the material. The folky "Please Be with Me," on which Yvonne Elliman sings as well, is a charming number reminiscent of Ralph McTell. Here Clapton's dobro is particularly lovely. Out of keeping with the rest of the album, and for this very reason outstanding, is "Let It Grow," a song whose grandeur and sweep date back to 1969, when Clapton and Harrison began collaborating. Clapton's new low-key approach softens and modulates the track, giving it a touching and delicate appeal. Other cuts are less successful, most notably when the songs and their treatments seem out of sync. "Motherless Children," for example, must mean a great deal to Clapton because of his illegitimacy, yet he tricks it up as a happy-go-lucky and rather trivial rocker. "Willy and the Hand Jive," on the other hand, is disconcertingly mournful. Such discrepancies between tenor and vehicle are indications of 461's aimlessness and uncertainty.


 461 suffers from timidity, yet Clapton's utter self-effacement, his refusal to show off and satisfy others' expectations, is courageous even if it is wrong-headed. His problem seems to be an inability to strike a proper balance. If he is fed up with his reputation as a mind-blowing guitarist, surely there are other alternatives besides hiding behind George Terry's rhythm guitar. If he feels that long solos are pointless, must he go to the opposite extreme and play no solos at all? Clapton's attempt to demystify himself is understandable but excessive, resulting in an album which is easier to appreciate than it is to enjoy.




"I Shot The Sheriff"


 
This was written and originally recorded by Bob Marley in 1973. A member of Clapton's band played the Bob Marley album for him and convinced him to record it.


 
This is Clapton's only #1 hit. He came close in 1992 with "Tears In Heaven," which reached #2 iin the US, and #5 in UK



 
Clapton didn't want to use this on the album because he thought it might seem disrespectful to Marley. Members of his band and management convinced him that it should not only go on the album, but also be released as a single.


 
Eric spoke with Bob Marley about the song, he said "I tried to ask him what the song was all about, but couldn't understand much of his reply. I was just relieved that he liked what we had done." (eh, of course he did, he was stoned no' daif)



"Let It Grow"
Clapton played the dobro on this track. A dobro is a type of acoustic guitar with a raised bridge and resonator cone which produces a moaning sound.


 
Yvonne Elliman sang backup. Before joining Clapton's band in 1974, she played Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ, Superstar. She had a disco hit in 1978 with "If I Can't Have You."


 
461 Ocean Boulevard is the address of the house in Miami where Clapton and his band lived while they were making the album.



 

DAY 308.
Van Morrison................................It's Too Late To Give Up Now   (1974)









Morrison toured with his ten piece Caledonia Soul Orchestra, shows were recorded in both California and London, resulting in this double album, one of the greatest live albums of all time (another one ) and one acknowledged by Morrison as a career peak.