Tekel Towers » 1001 albums you must hear before you die

arabchanter · 16/7/2018 10:30 am

DAY 341.
Neil Young....................................Tonight's The Night (1975)

In a rush will complete later.

Sorry forgot to do this last night.

Although recorded in 1973, Reprise held Tonights The Night back in the vain hope that Young would record a more commercial album. Finally released in 1975, the album was praised by critics, but failed to match the sales of previous albums. It's true influence would not become apparent until more than a decade later, when grunge and alt.country acts alike would mimic it's raw and emotionally apocalyptic sound.

Last edited by arabchanter (17/7/2018 10:16 am)

16/7/2018 8:02 pm

arabchanter wrote:
LocheeFleet wrote:
in all the pish that seems to be this section - Joni Mitchell seems like a collosus amongst the tom waits and bowie crap ;)
Are you related to shedboy?
Anyways good to see you joining in

sorry i just looking through the threads. This is amazing! it will take me months to look through. Ooooo Neil Young

you do this yourself?

arabchanter · 16/7/2018 10:13 pm

shedboy wrote:
lol! tell you though chanter i still stand by my statement that bowies over rated. Even backstreet boys said he was an influence! Bauhaus did bowie covers and they were shed loads better than the originals Anyway good stuff this is still going done a couple of gigs recently as a support group (helping out) check the bands - Idles and Pip Blom. Great stuff. i am officially retired but love good bands SRYB

Will do

arabchanter · 16/7/2018 10:24 pm

LocheeFleet wrote:
you do this yourself?

Between me, the book from post 1, and the tinternet (copy and paste,) and ably assisted by Pat,shedboy and Tek with their views and nuggets of information that they post, It would be good if more people got involved , as I've said countless times before there's no right answer or view, it's all about yer opinion, and that will always be treated with respect whether we agree or not,but it would be good to hear others views along with the appreciated regular/s you know who you are and thanks.

arabchanter · 16/7/2018 11:17 pm

DAY 339.
Tom Waits..................................Nighthawks At The Diner   (1975)

Fuck me! Tom Waits eh? The boy's got a voice that wid strip the pent aff yer doors, nae need fir the acid bath treatment when he's aboot, but ken what? I would just stand in awe listening to him and daein the opposite of watchin' pent dreh.

Have never listened to anything of Tom Waits before to my knowledge, but must've because I had a feeling his voice was that of a 4 packs-a-day-man, have to fess up when I seen it was a double album I thought "fuckin' here we go" but very surprisingly I enjoyed it, I found him to be a very clever lyricist, with impeccable timing and having a great sense of humour, which shines through in his monologues/songs/ramblings. Can't say I had any favourite as it all seemed to meld into one session.

This album on the one hand, I probably would only play once in a blue moon, but on the other hand, I think I would love listening to it even sporadically, this is going to be another cop out, I'm gonna download it and give it a few more plays,so it's going on the subbies bench for now, and I'll let you know later if it's going in my vinyl collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Tom Waits was born in Pomona, California to two schoolteachers. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old, and Waits began learning to play piano with the help of a teacher who was sympathetic to Tom's non-classical interests. By the time he was 16, Tom had joined an R&B band and begun to write songs.

1968: At about age 18 Tom developed a fascination with the Beat writers. Wore dark shades. Subscribed to Downbeat.

In 1971, manager Herb Cohen stumbled upon Waits in a venue called the Troubadour and suggested that the two work together. Later that year, Herb Cohen helped Tom negotiate a contract with Bizarre/Straight records in 1971 and started recording demos, then switched to Asylum Records the following year. Throughout the '70s, he released six albums, toured extensively, and became something of an alcoholic. He appeared in a movie with Sylvester Stallone, and later wrote music for other films.

He married screenwriter Kathleen Brennan in 1980 and began collaborating with her: first as co-producer, but soon as co-writer. He moved to Island Records to release 1983's Swordfishtrombones, which marked an artistic shift toward unusual instrumentation and non-mainstream song forms. Swordfishtrombones was also Tom's first self-produced work.

Tom describes his wife Kathleen as "An incandescent presence in everything I do." He credits her with co-writing songs, steering him away from alcohol, and ultimately saving his life.

In 1993 Tom Waits won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Rock Album for his album Bone Machine. This was followed by a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2000 for Mule Variations.

On March 14, 2011, Tom was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Neil Young.

Waits has released at least 28 albums and contributed to at least 50 films. His newest album, Bad As Me, is scheduled for release on October 25, 2011.

Waits has fought vigilantly to keep his songs from being used in commercials. ""It has always been my belief that anything that degrades the value of the work degrades the artist," he said. "The artist has the right to have his work presented as intended and not ruthlessly cannibalized."

TOM WAITS – Nighthawks At The Diner

The title was inspired by Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks. The album's working title had been "Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street," but was shortened to Nighthawks at the Diner, which is the opening line to "Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)". The cover, designed by Cal Schenkel, is also inspired by the painting.

Nighthawks at the Diner is the first live album by Tom Waits and his third overall. It was released on Asylum Records in October 1975. It was recorded live in the Los Angeles Record Plant Studios on July 30 and 31, 1975, in front of a small invited audience. Waits opens the album by calling the venue Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge...

Bones Howe, the album's producer, on the recording of the album:

We did it as a live recording, which was unusual for an artist so new. Herb Cohen and I both had a sense that we needed to bring out the jazz in Waits more clearly. Tom was a great performer on stage, so we started talking about where we could do an album that would have a live feel to it. We thought about clubs, but the well-known ones like The Troubadour were toilets in those days. Then I remembered that Barbra Streisand had made a record at the old Record Plant Studios, when they were on 3rd Street near Cahuenga Boulevard. There was a room there that she got an entire orchestra into. Back in those days they would just roll the consoles around to where they needed them. So Herb and I said let's see if we can put tables and chairs in there and get an audience in and record a show.

  Howe was mostly responsible for organizing the band for the "live show", and creating the right atmosphere for the record:

I got Michael Melvoin on piano, and he was one of the greatest jazz arrangers ever; I had Jim Hughart on bass, Bill Goodwin on drums and Pete Christlieb on sax. It was a totally jazz rhythm section. Herb gave out tickets to all his friends, we set up a bar, put potato chips on the tables and we had a sell-out, two nights, two shows a night, July 30 and 31, 1975. I remember that the opening act was a stripper. Her name was Dewana and her husband was a taxi driver. So for her the band played bump-and-grind music - and there's no jazz player who has never played a strip joint, so they knew exactly what to do. But it put the room in exactly the right mood. Then Waits came out and sang "Emotional Weather Report." Then he turned around to face the band and read the classified section of the paper while they played. It was like Allen Ginsberg with a really, really good band.

  Dewana was an old-time burlesque queen whom Tom had met on one of his jaunts to the Hollywood underworld.

  Jim Hughart, who played upright bass on the recordings recalled the experience of preparing for and recording the album:

Preparing for this thing, we had to memorize all this stuff, 'cause Waits had nothing on paper. So ultimately, we spent four or five days in a rehearsal studio going over this stuff. And that was drudgery. But when we did actually get it all prepared and go and record, that was the fastest two days of recording I've ever spent in my life. It was so fun. Some of the tunes were not what you'd call jazz tunes, but for the most part that was like a jazz record. This was a jazz band. Bill Goodwin was a drummer who was associated with Phil Woods for years. Pete Christlieb is one of the best jazz tenor players who ever lived. And my old friend, Mike Melvoin, played piano. There's a good reason why it was accepted as a jazz record.

For his third album, Nighthawks at the Diner, Tom Waits set up a nightclub in the studio, invited an audience, and cut a 70-minute, two-LP set of new songs. It's an appropriate format for compositions that deal even more graphically and, for the first time, humorously with Waits' late-night world of bars and diners. The love lyrics of his debut album had long since given way to a comic lonely-guy stance glimpsed in "Emotional Weather Report" and "Better Off Without a Wife." But what really matters is the elaborate scene-setting of songs like the six-and-a-half-minute "Spare Parts," the seven-and-a-half-minute "Putnam County," and especially the 11-and-a-half-minute "Nighthawk Postcards" that are essentially poetry recitations with jazz backing. Waits is a colorful tour guide of midnight L.A., raving over a swinging rhythm section of Jim Hughart (bass) and Bill Goodwin (drums), with Pete Christlieb wailing away on tenor sax between paragraphs and Mike Melvoin trading off with Waits on piano runs. You could call it overdone, but then, this kind of material made its impact through an accumulation of miscellaneous detail, and who's to say how much is too much?

In 1975 Tom Waits was still fairly unknown, and there was a mutual feeling that a live album would capture the personality of the beatnik stageman. This plan was executed in the best way – a concert was recorded in a New York studio. A large room in the back of Record Plant Studios was set up with a stage and tables, drinks on the house. The best of four performances are mixed together on Nighthawks at the Diner, and create a world of smoky nightclubs on late foggy nights.

This kind of control allows for fantastic sound. Engineers could manipulate the environment to their liking, and the natural balance of audience to band is perfect. Tom's voice permeates the mix just enough to ensure his words are heard clearly.

  Nighthawks At The Diner finds Waits backed by a quartet of seasoned jazz cats.The band is spot-on, playing tight, dynamic, and smooth jazz. Tenor sax, piano, upright bass, and a kit create a combo well equipped for the job. These guys were on Heart of Saturday Night too, and their chops hold true on this live effort.

  Tom greets the crowd:Well, an inebriated good evening to you all.Welcome to Rapheal's Silver Cloud Lounge.Slip me a little crimson Jimson, give me the low down Brown,I want some scoop Betty Boop. I'm on my way into town...

  Playing the role of the Hollywood hobo to the hilt, Waits performs every song elegantly, daubing each sepia-toned number with canny one-liners and well-paced asides. Throughout, a jive-talking Waits works blue ("I'm so goddamn horny the crack of dawn better be careful around me"), banters of "coffee not strong enough to defend itself" and uses bebop jargon to construct some memorable and deeply profound poetry, with discussions of "pincushion skies" and "Velveeta-yellow cabs" and "the impending squint of first light" and such. Theatrical piano bar signifiers abound: Waits introduces the band and drops names of familiar Los Angeles locales and eating establishments, to the delight of the game and agreeable crowd, perhaps laying the tracks for some of Todd Snider's endless, stoned preambles. Waits occasionally gets serious, as on the saccharine "Nobody" and the uncharacteristically grave reading of Red Sovine's trucker ghost story "Big Joe and Phantom 309," as well the fantastic "Putnam County," a number that blends Waits' post-Beat patter ("And the Stratocasters slung over the burgermeister beer guts / swizzle stick legs jackknifed over Naugahyde stools") with a piano melody worthy of Bill Evans...

   The atmosphere maintained on this album is witty, dark, and a little absurd – really the best qualities of Tom Waits. At around seventy minutes it's a lengthy listen, especially since paying attention to Wait's words is half the point, but well worth it. Maybe not the best place to start for new listeners, but this record gives an intimate picture of one of the most unique American songwriters of the century's live personality.

In 1974, The Eagles covered Wait’s song 'Ol' 55' and made it into a hit.
He described the version as 'antiseptic.'

Five different versions of Tom Waits' song ‘Way Down The Whole’ have been used in the opening credits of each of The Wire US TV show seasons.

Versions, in series order, were recorded by The Blind Boys of Alabama, Tom Waits, The Neville Brothers, DoMaJe, and Steve Earle.

His first record 'Closing Time' was released on Asylum Records in 1973.

The album was produced and arranged by former Lovin' Spoonful member Jerry Yester. It received positive reviews, but Waits didn't gain widespread attention until more prominent artists covered a number of the album's tracks.During the Asylum years Waits toured hard as a support act for various bands including Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Martha and the Vandellas. Waits was not taken well by the crowd and was frequently jeered and spat at.



He Lived at the Tropicana Motel

The famous motel has housed a whole bunch of rock and roll royalty, from Iggy Pop to Bob Marley. But Tom Waits may have been the only long-term resident – he even moved his piano in without asking.

His Favorite Album is Mostly Silence

It is a recording of a Marcel Marceau performance simply titled The Best of Marcel Marceau. Apparently Tom Waits has been known to put it on during parties (and then become upset if anyone attempted to talk while it played).
(I never said he was sane)

Scarlett Johansson is a Crazy Fan of HisShe has described herself as a stalker fan of the musician. Scarlett even released an album comprised of nothing but Tom Waits cover songs.

He Was Nominated for an Oscar

Most people would probably guess that he’s won some Grammy Awards (and they’d be right). But it’s less known that he was nominated for an Academy Award for the soundtrack to the 1980 film One From the Heart.

He Used to Have a Stripper Come Out On Stage With Him in the 1970s

She would come out during the song “Pasties and a G-String.” When the song was over, Tom Waits would say “I haven’t seen my mom in years.”

He Is a Member of a Secret Society

It’s called Sons of Lee Marvin. It can’t be too secret, though, because it has members like Jim Jarmusch, Iggy Pop and John Lurie. The only way to qualify for the so-called society is to somewhat resemble a hypothetical son of Lee Marvin.

He Suggested the Name “The Viper Room” to Johnny Depp

It’s the name of a Los Angeles club that was famously owned by Depp in the early 1990’s. River Phoenix died tragically outside of the club.

Some of His Songs Have Been Made Famous as Covers

Maybe the most prominent example of this is “Jersey Girl.” The Bruce Springsteen version is much more well-known than Waits’, even though Waits wrote it.

PatReilly · 17/7/2018 8:16 am

arabchanter wrote:

Waits was not taken well by the crowd and was frequently jeered and spat at.

I'm guessing some of Paul McGowan's family were in these audiences.

17/7/2018 8:55 am

I've been told he once sacked one of his backing bands members for wearing white socks

arabchanter · 17/7/2018 9:33 am

PatReilly wrote:
arabchanter wrote:

Waits was not taken well by the crowd and was frequently jeered and spat at.

I'm guessing some of Paul McGowan's family were in these audiences.

Was going to be called "Live At The McGowans, The Speshul Version (with the bonus tracks covered in Phlegmish)"

arabchanter · 17/7/2018 9:35 am

scarpia wrote:
I've been told he once sacked one of his backing bands members for wearing white socks

Good to hear from you Scarpia

arabchanter · 17/7/2018 9:49 am

DAY 340.
R.D. Burman/Bappi Lahiri...............................Shalimar/College Girl (1975)

I'll just leave this here, only a brave man can listen to it, till the end;

This album no' coming anywhere near meh hoose.

Bits & Bobs;

'College Girl' was scored by Bappi Lahiri, and it opens with moody vocal 'Pyar Manag Hai Tumhi se'. It has some cool vibes and guitar in it, but to be honest, at five minutes, it goes on a bit for me. 'College Girl I love you' is entertaining, opening with some weird electronic noises and kicking in with a fierce tabla beat. The vocals are chaotic and echoey. 'Every Body Dance with me' is a pretty groovy vocal 'You you you come on...dance with me...', with a female vocal replying 'I love you/ hold me tight/ oh my darling/ you are so sweet'. The sound quality is not so great though, and the vocals are so echoey that it's hard to hear. 'Please dear Please' is another interesting one - a frantic tabla/wah wah guitar opening is followed by a chaotic vocal with a lot of percussion. Again, for my rather conventional tastes, the track really lasts too long, and the instrumental packages are not long enough. I don't know much about this kind of music though (you guessed that, right?)

'Shalimar' is a much more accessible, westernized soundtrack. It's also helped by the fact that on this CD at least, the sound quality is far better. The 'Title Music' is a very cool, jazzy and funky track, which sounds like it was influenced by the work of Lalo Schifrin. This is followed by the infectiously brilliant (or annoying, depending on what day it is) 'One Two cha cha cha' by Usha Uthup & Chorus. Made famous by its inclusion on the 'Further Inflight Entertainment' compilation a few years ago, this is a super-catchy electro-cha-cha with indian instrumentation - (e.g. sitar, rasping horns). The vocal is rather charming, mostly in English, with some cool wordless scat moments (at one point reprising the disco classic 'That's the way I like it'). The whole soundtrack is really pretty nice, but I'll talk about the other more accessible fusion tracks, since I find it easier to talk about them. 'Baby, Let's dance together' is a really charming and rather funky vocal with some nice flute and a futuristic sounding electric guitar effect. 'Romantic Theme' is a haunting moody piece with guitar, strings and brass (and probably lots of other instruments I don't know the name of as well). The famous and ubiquitous Asha Bosle sings 'Mera Pyar Shalimar', which is a delicate and beautiful theme.

arabchanter · 17/7/2018 10:07 am

DAY 342.
Bob Dylan...........................Blood On The Tracks (1975)

The wordy whining, the wheezing harmonica....we wont lie to you they're all here. But so are some of the brightest songs in a career not short on sparklers. The music touches on blues, folk, and proto Dire Straitisms without dwelling on any style long enough for it's appeal to ebb.

arabchanter · 18/7/2018 10:42 am

DAY 341.
Neil Young....................................Tonight's The Night (1975)

I'm sorry but I just can't take that whiney voice of Youngs, I quite liked the previous offering in the book, "On The Beach" so had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately it was back to the dreary dirge like numbers with the "cat getting fucked" vocals.

They say you should always write about what you know and what's happening in your life, and he did have a lot of dark stuff going on, but FFS you've got to dra a line somewhere, fir me it's no' what I want to hear constantly, which seems to be the case with Young in my humbles.

This album wont be getting added to my collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Have posted plenty previously about Young (if interested)

Here's an interview from 1975;

Nearing 30 Neil Young, is the most enigmatic of all the superstars to emerge from Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. His often cryptic studies of lonely desperation and shaky-voiced antiheroics have led many to brand him a loner and a recluse. Harvest was the last time that he struck the delicate balance between critical and commercial acceptance, and his subsequent albums have grown increasingly inaccessible to a mass audience.
Young’s first comprehensive interview comes at a seeming turning point in his life and career. After an amicable breakup with actress Carrie Snodgrass, he’s moved from his Northern California ranch to the relative hustle and bustle of Malibu. In the words of a close friend, he seems “frisky…in an incredible mood.” Young has unwound to the point where he can approach a story about his career as potentially “a lot of fun.”

The interview was held while cruising down Sunset Boulevard in a rented red Mercedes and on the back porch of his Malibu beach house. Cooperative throughout, Young only made a single request: “Just keep one thing in mind,” he said as soon as the tape recorder had been turned off for the last time. “I may remember it all differently tomorrow.”

Why is it that you’ve finally decided to talk now? For the past five years journalists requesting Neil Young interviews were told you had nothing to say.

There’s a lot I have to say. I never did interviews because they always got me in trouble. Always. They never came out right. I just don’t like them. As a matter of fact, the more I didn’t do them the more they wanted them; the more I said by not saying anything. But things change, you know. I feel very free now. I don’t have an old lady anymore. I relate it a lot to that. I’m back living in Southern California. I feel more open than I have in a long while. I’m coming out and speaking to a lot of people. I feel like something new is happening in my life.

I’m really turned on by the new music I’m making now, back with Crazy Horse. Today, even as I’m talking, the songs are running through my head. I’m excited. I think everything I’ve done is valid or else I wouldn’t have released it, but I do realize the last three albums have been a certain way. I know I’ve gotten a lot of bad publicity for them. Somehow I feel like I’ve surfaced out of some kind of murk. And the proof will be in my next album. Tonights The Night, I would say, is the final chapter of a period I went through.

Why the murky period?

Oh, I don’t know. Danny’s death probably tripped it off. Danny Whitten [leader of Crazy Horse and Young’s rhythm guitarist/second vocalist]. It happened right before the Time Fades Away tour. He was supposed to be in the group. We [Ben Keith, steel guitar; Jack Nitzche, piano; Tim Drummond, bass; Kenny Buttrey, drums; and Young] were rehearsing with him and he just couldn’t cut it. He couldn’t remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. “It’s not happening, man. You’re not together enough.” He just said, “I’ve got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?” And he split. That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he’d ODed. That blew my mind. Fucking blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and…insecure.

Why, then, did you release a live album?

I thought it was valid. Time Fades Away was a very nervous album. And that’s exactly where I was at on the tour. If you ever sat down and listened to all my records, there’d be a place for it in there. Not that you’d go there every time you wanted to enjoy some music, but if you’re on the trip it’s important. Every one of my records, to me, is like an ongoing autobiography. I can’t write the same book every time. There are artists that can. They put out three or four albums every year and everything fucking sounds the same. That’s great. Somebody’s trying to communicate to a lot of people and give them the kind of music that they know they want to hear. That isn’t my trip. My trip is to express what’s on my mind. I don’t expect people to listen to my music all the time. Sometimes it’s too intense. If you’re gonna put a record on at 11:00 in the morning, don’t put on Tonight’s the Night. Put on the Doobie Brothers.

Time Fades Away, as the followup to Harvest, could have been a huge album . . .

If it had been commercial.

As it is, it’s one of your least selling solo albums. Did you realize what you were sacrificing at the time?

I probably did. I imagine I could have come up with the perfect followup album. A real winner. But it would have been something that everybody was expecting. And when it got there they would have thought that they understood what I was all about and that would have been it for me. I would have painted myself in the corner. The fact is I’m not that lone, laid-back figure with a guitar. I’m just not that way anymore. I don’t want to feel like people expect me to be a certain way. Nobody expected Time Fades Away and I’m not sorry I put it out. I didn’t need the money, I didn’t need the fame. You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever. I’d rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that’s the price, I’ll pay it. I don’t give a shit if my audience is a hundred or a hundred million. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it’s coincidence. I just appreciate the freedom to put out an album like Tonight’s the Night if I want to.

You sound pretty drunk on that album.

I would have to say that’s the most liquid album I’ve ever made. [Laughs] You almost need a life preserver to get through that one. We were all leaning on the ol’ cactus…and, again, I think that it’s something people should hear. They should hear what the artist sounds like under all circumstances if they want to get a complete portrait. Everybody gets fucked up, man. Everybody gets fucked up sooner or later. You’re just pretending if you don’t let your music get just as liquid as you are when you’re really high.

Is that the point of the album?

No. No. That’s the means to an end. Tonight’s the Night is like an OD letter. The whole thing is about life, dope and death. When we [Nils Lofgren, guitars and piano, Talbot, Molina and Young] played that music we were all thinking of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, two close members of our unit lost to junk overdoses. The Tonight’s the Night sessions were the first time what was left of Crazy Horse had gotten together since Danny died. It was up to us to get the strength together among us to fill the hole he left. The other OD, Bruce Berry, was CSNY’s roadie for a long time. His brother Ken runs Studio Instrument Rentals, where we recorded the album. So we had a lot of vibes going for us. There was a lot of spirit in the music we made. It’s funny, I remember the whole experience in black and white. We’d go down to S.I.R. about 5:00 in the afternoon and start getting high, drinking tequila and playing pool. About midnight, we’d start playing. And we played Bruce and Danny on their way all through the night. I’m not a junkie and I won’t even try it out to check out what it’s like…but we all got high enough, right out there on the edge where we felt wide-open to the whole mood. It was spooky. I probably feel this album more than anything else I’ve ever done.

Why did you wait until now to release ‘Tonight’s the Night’? Isn’t it almost two years old?

I never finished it. I only had nine songs, so I set the whole thing aside and did On the Beach instead. It took Elliot [manager Elliot Roberts] to finish Tonight’s the Night. You see, awhile back there were some people who were gonna make a Broadway show out of the story of Bruce Berry and everything. They even had a script written. We were putting together a tape for them and in the process of listening back on the old tracks, Elliot found three even older songs that related to the trip, “Lookout Joe,” “Borrowed Tune” and “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” a live track from when I played the Fillmore East with Crazy Horse. Danny even sings lead on that one. Elliot added those songs to the original nine and sequenced them all into a cohesive story. But I still had no plans whatsoever to release it. I already had another new album called Homegrown in the can. The cover was finished and everything, [laughs] Ah, but they’ll never hear that one.

Okay. Why not?

I’ll tell you the whole story. I had a playback party for Homegrown for me and about ten friends. We were out of our minds. We all listened to the album and Tonight’s the Night happened to be on the same reel. So we listened to that too, just for laughs. No comparison.

So you released ‘Tonight’s the Night.’ Just like that?

Not because Homegrown wasn’t as good. A lot of people would probably say that it’s better. I know the first time I listened back on Tonight’s the Night it was the most out-of-tune thing I’d ever heard. Everyone’s off-key. I couldn’t hack it. But by listening to those two albums back to back at the party, I started to see the weaknesses in Homegrown. I took Tonight’s the Night because of its overall strength in performance and feeling. The theme may be a little depressing, but the general feeling is much more elevating than Homegrown. Putting this album out is almost an experiment. I fully expect some of the most determinedly worst reviews I’ve ever had. I mean if anybody really wanted to let go, they could do it on this one. And undoubtedly a few people will. That’s good for them, though. I like to see people make giant breakthroughs for themselves. It’s good for their psyche to get it all off their chests, [laughs] I’ve seen Tonight’s the Night draw a line everywhere it’s been played. People who thought they would never dislike anything I did fall on the other side of the line. Others who thought “I can’t listen to that cat. He’s just too sad,”or whatever…”His voice is funny.” They listen another way now. I’m sure parts of Homegrown will surface on other albums of mine. There’s some beautiful stuff that Emmylou Harris sings harmony on. I don’t know. That record might be more what people would rather hear from me now, but it was just a very down album. It was the darker side to Harvest. A lot of the songs had to do with me breaking up with my old lady. It was a little too personal…it scared me. Plus, I had just released On the Beach, probably one of the most depressing records I’ve ever made. I don’t want to get down to the point where I can’t even get up. I mean there’s something to going down there and looking around, but I don’t know about sticking around.

"Tonight's The Night"

This song was written as a tribute to Bruce Berry, a Neil Young roadie who died of a heroin overdose. Berry was the second noteworthy person in Young's life to die of a heroin overdose, the first being Danny Whitten, Crazy Horse's original guitar player. The song is unusually detailed for a requiem. It takes a series of candid snapshots from Berry's life, describing how he drove the van, slept late, and clowned around with Young's guitar after gigs.

"Tonight's the Night is like an OD letter. The whole thing is about life, dope, and death. When we played that music we were all thinking of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, two close members of our unit lost to junk overdoses. We played Bruce and Danny on their way all through the night."

Speaking of "Tonight's the Night," Young declares what might as well be his M.O. for all of his art: "All of these things happen to people, so I figured it happened to me so I'll write about this, and I'll just write from my heart, and if other people have this happen to them they'll relate to this."

Neil and Crazy Horse recorded this song without playing it back until after they finished it, which added to the raw sound that the song would be recognized for. Musicians on this track were:

Young - piano
Billy Talbot - bass
Ralph Molina - drums
Nils Lofgren - guitar
Ben Keith - steel guitar

This song opens the album, and the closing track is "Tonight's the Night—Part II," a more spare version of the song. Using two different versions of a song as the opener and closer is a trick Neil used several times in his career, including on his album Rust Never Sleeps ("My My, Hey Hey Out Of The Blue,") and Freedom ("Rockin' In The Free World").

arabchanter · 18/7/2018 10:56 am

DAY 343.
Patti Smith............................................Horses (1975)

Horses re-wrote the rules for female pop stars and provided a new road map for everyone from Chrissie Hynde and Johnette Napolitano to Courtney Love and Liz Phair. Yet the effect of Patti Smith's debut album was not limited to one gender, the vocalist combined the power of the burgeoning NYC punk scene with the adventurous narratives of the San Francisco Beat poets to create a truly unique sound that influenced such artsy acts as the Talking Heads and R.E.M.

Horses established Smith as rock's premier punk poet, a title she has yet to lose.

A crackin' album if memory serves?

arabchanter · 18/7/2018 9:01 pm

DAY 342.
Bob Dylan...........................Blood On The Tracks (1975)

I fair enjoyed listening to this one, always liked a bit of Dylan and for me this was him as I like to hear him, I much prefer him as he was in the early days of his career.

I find his lyrics the best part of listening to Mr D, musicianship and arrangement comes a distant second place to his wordcraft, if you don't particularly like listening to Dylan try read the lyrics while listening to his songs, and maybe something might click, it did for me at least.

Anyways back to the album, I really liked the opening two tracks "Twisted Up In Blue" one of my favourite Dylan numbers (although he could have shaved a couple of minutes off of it) and "Simple Twist Of Fate" another Dylan song I love listening to. Of the other tracks no fillers in my opinion all solid in their own right, but not a patch on the two aforementioned tracks, in my humbles.

This is a good album, but having already bought albums of his from the earlier period of this book (which I prefer, if being put on the spot,) and not being made of money, this album wont be going into my collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Have posted loads about Dylan previously (if interested)

Here's a brilliant review I read;

After spending six years simply not trying, Dylan came back strong here. Not only is this his first all-around solid album since Nashville Skyline, and the first album he actually worked at since John Wesley Harding (you can’t tell me any effort was honestly put into Nashville Skyline. That record was an absolute toss-off! But a very, very enjoyable one!), this is my favorite Dylan album, period, without any hesitations. Like most great works of art, it was recorded during a time of great personal turmoil. In this case, it was a divorce with his wife, Sarah Lowndes. So this is, in essence, Bob’s breakup album. Every song involves a ruined relationship somehow. That’s part of the reason why so many people love this record, even people who otherwise aren’t big on Dylan. Anyone who’s ever experienced a breakup can relate to what he’s saying here. And it doesn’t even have to be a romantic breakup. If you and a very good friend of yours who you thought you would be close to for the rest of your life had an irreconcilable fallout, you can still feel everything that Dylan communicates on this record: the depression that someone close to you walked out of your life, the anger you feel at them for abandoning you, the terrifying feeling that you’ll never have this friend to run to again, the crushing realization that at least part of what happened was your fault. All of those feelings and more are communicated in this record. Even if the songs were bad (but they are not), this would still be a classic.

Musically speaking, Dylan’s getting back to his roots here, swapping the country and rock stylings he had been experimenting with for a while in favor of folk, mostly with a rhythm section (though Bob plays a few of these songs solo), occasionally with a piano or an organ and just once with an electric guitar. Dylan’s melodies are always at their best when he’s working acoustically, and this record’s no exception to that. Many of these songs are downright beautiful, especially “You’re a Big Girl Now” (which defines the term “wrenching”) and “If You See Her, Say Hello.” But the melodies aren’t the emphasis are. They never are in Dylan songs. The primary focus is on the lyrics, which convey the feelings of lost and spurned love perfectly well, whether it’s the melancholy forbidden love tale “A Simple Twist of Fate,” the cutting paranoia of the classic “Idiot Wind,” one of the top songs of Dylan’s career (all about the vocals! He can’t hit any notes, but he’s got plenty of emotion in what he sings), or the “hate-that-I-love-you” sentiments on the surprisingly warm closer “Buckets of Rain.”

And this is pretty far from one of those archetypical “oh, woe is me” albums. There’s a lot of diversity in emotion here, which is surprising for a breakup album. Whether he intended to or not, he takes on just about every angle to the breakup you can imagine. So “A Simple Twist of Fate” is the relationship slowly falling apart, “You’re a Big Girl Now” is the narrator trying desperately to save it, “Idiot Wind” is the rage and hatred felt just after the fallout, which eventually turns inward; “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” is the hero accepting the event; “If You See Her, Say Hello” is him looking back on the events years later, and “Buckets of Rain” is him thinking the end might be for the best. In fact, the one thing you don’t get is the standard-issue “come back, I still love you” song. That angle had been done to death already, and Bob was smart enough to avoid it and focus on the other angles instead, often adding some fine acoustic guitar playing to the process, as on “Buckets of Rain.”

And Bob’s skills as a storyteller haven’t left him, either. “Tangled Up in Blue” sums up all of the emotions found on this record in six minutes. And as much as I love the lyrics, I love the melody even more. It’s the best of Dylan’s career, and it’s worthy of Paul McCartney or Smokey Robinson or whoever. It’s a rare thing when we speak of Bob Dylan in terms of “amazing melodies,” but that’s exactly what’s found here. “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” plays like a nine-minute novella, or perhaps even a short film, portraying the downfall of three greedy, self-motivated characters and the escape of the fourth. For some, that’s the album’s weak spot, but I think it’s pretty strong myself. The closest thing to a weak spot I see here is the electric blues “Meet Me in the Morning,” and I definitely like that song. It’s just that it’s weak compared to “Shelter from the Storm.”

If I’ve ever said another song was my favorite Bob Dylan song, or had my favorite of all Bob Dylan’s lyrics, or anything of the kind, forget it. My choice would be “Shelter from the Storm.” The lyrics are the finest Dylan has ever written – he conjures up haunting imagery (my favorite is “…and the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn”) and communicates powerful emotions – and the melody, propelled by a simple bass line and a bit of acoustic guitar strumming, is wonderful. But the real reason I love it as much as I do is because its ability to get at my emotional center and slowly, subtly tear it down. The protagonist finds love, loses it, and gets dragged through hell in the process. That’s strong enough as it is, but the last verse just kills me. How he finds enough good in life despite all he’s been through to sing “I’m livin’ in a foreign country, but I’m bound to cross the line. Beauty walks the razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine. If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born/’Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ll give ya shelter from the storm’” is inconceivable to me, and it’s enough to give me hope when I think things are getting too hard.

I could probably write another five paragraphs on this record and how much I love it. I myself have felt most, if not all, of the feelings Dylan discusses here, and I’m sure everyone reading this review has, too. I have a very strong bond with it, to the point where I feel that it’s my personal Dylan album and nobody else can really understand it, although I know that’s not true. Because a lot of Dylan fans have the same feelings towards this record. It’s the kind that can reach anyone, no matter who they are, even if they don’t think they like Bob Dylan. After all, this isn’t just any Bob Dylan album. It’s required listening for Dylan fans, folk fans, people who like a good lyric, people who like a good melody, people with a broken heart, people recovering from a broken heart, people bracing themselves for a broken heart, and, well… everyone.

"Tangled Up In Blue"

Dylan wrote this in the summer of 1974 at a farm he had just bought in Minnesota. He had been touring with The Band earlier that year.

Blood On The Tracks was Dylan's first album under his new contract with Columbia Records. He left the label a year earlier to record for David Geffen's label, Asylum Records.

This was influenced by the art classes Dylan was taking with Norman Raeben, a popular teacher in New York. Dylan credits Raeben for making him look at things from a nonlinear perspective, which was reflected in his songs.

This is a very personal song for Dylan. It deals with the changes he was going through, including his marriage falling apart.

Dylan sometimes introduced this on stage by saying it took "Ten years to live and two years to write."

First recorded in New York with producer Phil Ramone, Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded it in Minnesota while visiting his brother, David, for the holidays. David organized the sessions and helped produce the version that went on the album.

At the Minnesota sessions, the key was changed from G to A at the suggestion of Kevin Odegard, a local singer and guitarist who was brought in to play with Dylan.

Odegard told Artful Living about his contribution to "Tangled Up in Blue."

"The second night, December 30," Odegard said, "we started with 'Tangled Up In Blue.' It was an OK song in G. After we recorded it, we sat there for a minute. Bob lit a cigarette, turned to me and asked, 'What'd you think?' I could tell he felt like something was missing.

By this time, I was comfortable, just like the guys on the steps of the armory. So I turned to him and said, 'It's passable.' He said, 'Passable? What do you mean passable?' And I said, 'Well, I think it would great if we all pitched up a key, from G to A. I think it would have more power, more urgency, more tension.' He looked down for a minute, and my heart kind of stopped. Finally he said, 'Let's try it.'"

From there, the rest is history. Odegard was not credited on Blood On The Tracks, but he credits the experience with launching his successful career in music.

Among the musicians who recorded this in Minnesota were Billy Peterson, who became the bass player for Steve Miller, and Bill Berg, who became an animator for Disney. Some of the films Berg has worked on include Beauty And The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Hercules.

Dylan's brother, David, came up with the idea for the hi-hat cymbals at the beginning.

This was the basis for the 1995 Hootie & the Blowfish song "Only Want To Be With You." It is a tribute to Dylan, but he still sued the band for stealing his song.

Dylan and his first wife, Sara Lowndes, divorced in 1977. As part of the settlement, she got half the royalties from the songs Dylan wrote while they were married, including this one.

The session musicians in Minnesota were not credited on the album because the packaging had already been printed.

Regarding the lyrics, "I lived with them on Montague Street, In a basement down the stairs," Montague Street is in a nice area in Brooklyn, where there was a music venue called Capulet's, where Dylan would sometimes hang out. Montague is also Romeo's last name in Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet.

When Dylan performs this song in concert he uses the third person perspective (He and She) that is on the version found on The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3 album instead of the first person perspective that is on Blood On The Tracks. He also alters some of the lyrics, for instance: "One day the axe just fell" is changed to "One day it all went to hell."

The book Simple Twist Of Fate by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, documents the recording of Blood On The Tracks (in particular the genesis of this song). It explains how two different sets of musicians were used in New York and Minnesota but the Minnesota musicians not only did not receive credit, but also have never received royalties. Obviously, they are not happy about this since the album has sold millions of copies.

Dylan on Blood on the Tracks: "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying the type of pain, you know?"

Polyphonic observes that the music is made to mirror the lyrical content. "The nature of these lyrics are reflected in the rolling chord progression that drives the song. Behind the first half of the verse, we have two chords repeating, the second of which retains the root of the first. In this way the music is symbolizing the play with time, too. Just as the past is even there when we're looking into the present, so is the root of the first chord when we're playing the second. At the end of the verse, when we find ourselves in a more certain present day with a determined course, the music shifts into a more definitive chord progression."

"Simple Twist Of Fate"
This song is from Blood on the Tracks, the 15th studio album by Bob Dylan, which made the album charts at #1 in the US and #4 in the UK. Blood on the Tracks is also legendary amongst Bob Dylan fans and critics, regarded as one of the high points of his career and standard against which future Bob Dylan albums were compared.

Dylan's son Jakob Dylan has stated that the songs from Blood on the Tracks are "his parents talking." Although Dylan denies that the album content is autobiographical, most of the lyrics have a confessional nature.

Covers of "Simple Twist of Fate" include Joan Baez (1975), The Jerry Garcia Band (1991), Concrete Blonde (1994), Sean Costello (2005), The Format (2005), Bryan Ferry (2007), Jeff Tweedy (2007), and Stephen Fretwell (2007). The Jeff Tweedy cover was also used on the soundtrack for the film I'm Not There .

arabchanter · 19/7/2018 10:11 am

DAY 344.
Pink Floyd...........................................Wish You Were Here (1975)

Faced with the enormous task of following up "Dark Side Of The Moon," Pink Floyd momentarily embraced their old experimental spirit and began to make "Household Objects". an opus to be recorded entirely with, um, household objects. Touring refocused the group and also began to harden Roger Walter's hatred of the music business as Pink Floyd became a number-crunching stadium sized commodity.

Released in September 1975, to indifferent reviews, the album shot to No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic, and turned the group into an even bigger number-crunching, stadium-sized commodity.

The cover image shows 2 men shaking hands, with one of them on fire. This represents a common slang term at the time “being burned”, meaning to be undercut in some way, usually by the system or oppressive industry. In the music business, it was used often by artists denied royalty payments. Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell of Hipgnosis did the image because they thought people tend to conceal their true feelings, for fear of “getting burned”.

Taken at the Warner Bros. studios in Los Angeles, the people there are two stuntmen, Ronnie Rondell and Danny Rogers, with the former wearing a fire-retardant suit beneath the business suit, as well as a hood, underneath a wig. Still, the wind was going the wrong way and the flames went into his face, burning Rondell’s mustache.

As was the case with The Dark Side of the Moon, the album packaging was (and remains) a sensory experience, including a black shrink-wrap, stunning front-and-back covers, mysterious inner sleeve, sticker, and a postcard. The theme of absence unified most of the elements. For instance, the woman in the inner sleeve is absent from first viewing. You must strain to find her form in the image of a red veil.

The diver in the postcard insert is mostly absent from view, and ripples are absent from the lake where his body
breaks the water

.

PatReilly · 19/7/2018 11:33 am

For me, very uninspiring stuff in the last wee while, really nothing at all that I was/am a fan of. It isn't entirely that music was pish around that era, simply the stuff I must have been in to wasn't deemed influential by the book compilers.

Dr Feelgood's Down by the Jetty or Malpractice won't be in the list, will they?

arabchanter · 20/7/2018 5:56 am

PatReilly wrote:
For me, very uninspiring stuff in the last wee while, really nothing at all that I was/am a fan of. It isn't entirely that music was pish around that era, simply the stuff I must have been in to wasn't deemed influential by the book compilers.

Dr Feelgood's Down by the Jetty or Malpractice won't be in the list, will they?

I hear ye Pat, been pretty grim of late, would like to think there would be some "Feelgood" but wont hold my breath.

I thought you might have liked Patti Smith?

arabchanter · 20/7/2018 7:01 am

DAY 343.
Patti Smith............................................Horses   (1975)

At last something decent, I found this a really good listen, although to be honest I didn't get the same wow feeling I got when I first heard and bought this album, it's obviously not so novel and leftfield today as it was then, but still a bloody good album.

Apart from "Birdland" not just because it's over 9 minutes but I just never liked it for some reason, my personal favourites were "Gloria," "Redondo Beach," "Kimberley" and my favourite believe it or not, was the 9 minute classic "Land" but with it being made up of three parts I found it more than acceptable.

As stated before, someone listening to this for the first time will probably not feel the same impact or get the buzz that was felt back in '75, mainly because they will have heard the sound of many people influenced by Smith over the years, and they wont hear the unique and groundbreaking sound that Patti Smith brought to us back in '75.

This album will definitely be going into my vinyl collection.

Bits& Bobs;

Born on December 30, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois, Patti Smith is a singer, writer and artist who became a highly influential figure in the New York City punk rock scene. After working on a factory assembly line, she began performing spoken word and later formed the Patti Smith Group (1974-79). Her most famous album is Horses. Her relationship with Fred "Sonic" Smith caused a hiatus in her singing career, but she returned to music after his untimely death. She went on to release more than 10 albums.
Singer, songwriter and poet Patricia Lee Smith was born on December 30, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the eldest of four children born to Beverly Smith, a jazz singer turned waitress, and Grant Smith, a machinist at a Honeywell plant. After spending the first four years of her life on the south side of Chicago, Smith's family moved to Philadelphia in 1950 and then to Woodbury, New Jersey, in 1956, when she was 9 years old.

A tall, gangly and sickly child with a lazy left eye, Smith's outward appearance and shy demeanor gave no hint of the groundbreaking rock star she would become. However, Smith says she always knew that she was destined for greatness. "When I was a little kid, I always knew that I had some special kind of thing inside me," she remembered. "I mean, I wasn't attractive, I wasn't very verbal, I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going... I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical... I just knew it.
As a child, Smith also experienced gender confusion. Described as a tomboy, she shunned "girly" activities and instead preferred roughhousing with her predominantly male friends. Her tall, lean and somewhat masculine body defied the images of femininity she saw around her. It was not until a high school art teacher showed her depictions of women by some of the world's great artists that she came to terms with her own body.

"Art totally freed me," Smith recalled. "I found Modigliani, I discovered Picasso's blue period, and I thought, 'Look at this, these are great masters, and the women are all built like I am.' I started ripping pictures out of the books and taking them home to pose in front of the mirror."

Smith attended Deptford High School, a racially integrated high school, where she recalls both befriending and dating her black classmates. While in high school, Smith also developed an intense interest in music and performance. She fell in love with the music of John Coltrane, Little Richard and the Rolling Stones and performed in many of the school's plays and musicals.

Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Smith took a job working at a toy factory—a short-lived but terrible experience that Smith described in her first single, "Piss Factory." Later that fall, she enrolled at Glassboro State College—now known as Rowan University—with the intention of becoming a high school art teacher, but she didn't fare well academically and her insistence on discarding traditional curricula to focus exclusively on experimental and obscure artists did not sit well with school administrators. So in 1967, with vague aspirations of becoming an artist, Smith moved to New York City and took a job working at a Manhattan bookstore.

Smith took up with a young artist named Robert Mapplethorpe, and although their romantic involvement ended when he discovered his homosexuality, Smith and Mapplethorpe maintained a close friendship and artistic partnership for many years to come.

Choosing performance poetry as her favored artistic medium, Smith gave her first public reading on February 10, 1971, at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. The now legendary reading, with guitar accompaniment from Lenny Kaye, introduced Smith as an up-and-coming figure in the New York arts circle. Later the same year, she further raised her profile by co-authoring and co-starring with Sam Shepard in his semiautobiographical play Cowboy Mouth.

Over the next several years, Smith dedicated herself to writing. In 1972, she published her first book of poetry, Seventh Heaven, earning flattering reviews but selling few copies. Two further collections, Early Morning Dream (1972) and Witt (1973), received similarly high praise. At the same time, Smith also wrote music journalism for magazines such as Creem and Rolling Stone.

Smith, who had experimented earlier with setting her poetry to music, began to more fully explore rock 'n' roll as an outlet for her lyric poetry. In 1974, she formed a band and recorded the single "Piss Factory," now widely considered the first true "punk" song, which garnered her a sizable and fanatical grassroots following. The next year, after Bob Dylan leant her mainstream credibility by attending one of her concerts, Smith landed a record deal with Arista Records.

Smith's 1975 debut album, Horses, featuring the iconic singles "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances," was a huge commercial and critical success for its manic energy, heartfelt lyrics and skillful wordplay. The definitive early punk rock album, Horses is a near-ubiquitous inclusion on lists of the best albums of all time.

  Re-billing her act as the Patti Smith Group to give due credit to her band—Lenny Kaye (guitar), Ivan Kral (bass), Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Richard Sohl (piano)—Smith released her second album, Radio Ethiopia, in 1976. The Patti Smith Group then achieved a commercial breakthrough with its third album, Easter (1978), propelled by the hit single "Because the Night," co-written by Smith and Bruce Springsteen

.Smith's fourth album, 1979's Wave, received only lukewarm reviews and modest sales. By the time she released Wave, Smith had fallen deeply in love with MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and the pair married in 1980. For the next 17 years, Smith largely disappeared from the public scene, devoting herself to domestic life and raising the couple's two children. She released only one album during this time, 1988's Dream of Life, a collaboration with her husband. The album was a commercial disappointment despite including one of Smith's most iconic singles, "People Have the Power."

  When Fred "Sonic" Smith died of a heart attack in 1994—the last in a series of many close friends and collaborators of Smith's who passed away in quick succession—it finally provided Patti Smith the impetus to revive her music career. She achieved a triumphant return with her 1996 comeback album Gone Again, featuring the singles "Summer Cannibals" and "Wicked Messenger."

Since then, Smith has remained a prominent fixture of the rock music scene with her albums Peace and Noise (1997), Gung Ho (2000) and Trampin' (2004), all of which were highly praised by music critics, proving Smith's ability to reshape her music to speak to a new generation of rock fans. Her 2007 album Twelve featured Smith's take on a dozen rock classics, including "Gimme Shelter," "Changing of the Guards" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Smith followed with the critically acclaimed Banga (2012), proving that after 35 years of music and 11 albums, she is ever evolving.

One of the pioneers of punk rock music, a trailblazer who redefined the role of female rock stars, a poet who unleashed her lyrical talent over powerful guitars, Patti Smith stands out as one of the greatest figures in the history of rock 'n' roll. After four decades, Smith finds her continued motivation to write and make music in the unfairly shortened lives of her loved ones and the needs of her children.

"The people I lost all believed in me and my children needed me, so that's a lot of reasons to continue, let alone that life is great," she says. "It's difficult but it's great and every day some new, wonderful thing is revealed. Whether it's a new book, or the sky is beautiful, or another full moon, or you meet a new friend—life is interesting."

In 2010, Patti Smith published her acclaimed memoir Just Kids, which gives readers a personal glimpse into her prototypical "starving artist" youth and her close relationship with Mapplethorpe during the late 1960s and '70s in New York City. The work became a New York Times bestseller and received a National Book Award. In 2015, Showtime Networks announced it would be developing a limited series based on Kids. Smith also released another book that year, M Train, a memoir that blends philosophies around art and connection with world travel.

Patti Smith’s first gig was supporting Gerard Malanga, one of Andy Warhol’s Factory disciples, who invited her to share a poetry reading at St. Mark’s in the Bowery with him on February 10th 1971. She asked rock critic Lenny Kaye to back her on guitar. It was the first time an electric guitar had ever been played in the church and she later described the set as having “thundering moments”.

John Cale produced Patti Smith’s seminal debut album ‘Horses’. She chose him not just because of the Velvet Underground link, but because of the raw sound of his solo records. The pair soon realised they couldn’t work together. “I hired the wrong guy,” she said. “All I was really looking for was a technical person. Instead, I got a total maniac artist. It was really like A Season In Hell, for both of us.” Cale himself described the relationship as “a lot like an immutable force meeting an immovable object”.

Name-checked as an influence by generations of artists that followed her, Morrissey in particular has said he grew his hair long in the 1970s to emulate her: “It was the voice of somebody who perhaps had felt unattractive all their lives, in every way. Yet here they were, singing about it, and seemed to know a way to make the misfortune of their lives become attractive. And I felt that, well, I could therefore simply sing about my life and how I really feel, and perhaps it could transform itself into something acceptable,” he said.

She first met her great friend and mentor, the poet Allen Ginsberg, in a café close to the Chelsea Hotel, after he mistook her for a “very pretty boy”. Short of money for her lunch, he shouted her the extra dime, and bought her a coffee before realising she was a girl. “Look at the tits, Allen. Notice the tits!” she told him.

She found love for the French poet Rimbaud after seeing his face on the cover for one of his books, Illuminations, outside a shop in Philadelphia. She loved him so much, it was almost a relief when she later discovered Bob Dylan: “Rimbaud was like my boyfriend. If you’re fifteen or sixteen and you can’t get the boy you want, and you have to daydream about him all the time, what’s the difference if he’s a dead poet or a senior? At least Bob Dylan... it was a relief to daydream about somebody who was alive,” she said.

"Gloria"

Hang on, this will get confusing. Van Morrison originally wrote a song called "Gloria," released in 1964 by Morrison's band Them, on their album The Angry Young Them. The Catholic church also has a hymn called "Gloria in Excelsis Deo," also known as the Greater Doxology - it's part of both Byzantine and Roman rites and has been since the 2nd or 3rd century. So we come to this song, where Patti Smith is covering Van Morrison's "Gloria" but giving it the Catholic hymn name. Because that's the way they do it in New York!

Patti Smith was clearly aiming for deliberate sacrilege and shock value with the title - the opening lines "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" are one of the seminal protopunk lyrics.

Did we say "protopunk"? In New York? In 1975? Why, yes, in fact, John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) did produce Patti Smith's Horses album! How did you guess? Cale, after leaving Velvet Underground and swinging into the beginnings of his solo career, worked as a producer and A&R man. Amongst other credits, he also produced for Jennifer Warnes, The Modern Lovers, Squeeze, Iggy and The Stooges, and Sham 69. Patti Smith, by the way, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Of Van Morrison's original composition, Dave Barry said that the three-chord song is so easy to play that "If you drop a guitar down a flight of stairs, it'll play 'Gloria' on its way to the bottom."

As you might expect with a "three chords and the truth" song, it's been covered by a virtual who's-who of rock 'n' roll: Grateful Dead, Rick Springfield, R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty, John Cougar Mellencamp, David Bowie, U2, The Doors, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and AC/DC. To name the top-tier acts, and only the English versions at that. Bill Murray, too, at the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival.

The origin of the Horses album lies in the inception of a poem Patti Smith wrote called "Oath" when she was around 20. It began, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine." She explained to Mojo magazine: "It was my statement of independence from being fettered by any particular religious institution, not any statement against Jesus Christ. That's the start of my evolution as a young person that got me to Horses."

Guitarist Lenny Kaye recalled: "'Gloria' started as a jam. We'd do chordal riffs over which Patti would chant, poeticize, and tell stories. We never thought about it becoming as big as it did. We were satisfied playing for local art audiences, We just liked doing what we were doing. It didn't have a category. It was an attitude."

"Redondo Beach"

Patti Smith wrote the lyrics for this song in the early 1970s following an argument with her sister Linda.

The New Yorker recalled in her lyric collection Complete: "The words for 'Redondo Beach' were written in 1971. I was sharing a space near the Chelsea Hotel with Robert [Mapplethorpe] and my sister Linda. One afternoon I had a rare argument with my sister and she left. She didn't return and by nightfall I was worried. Needing time to think, I took an F train to Coney Island and sat on the littered beach until the sun rose. I came back, wrote the draft and fell asleep. When I awoke, she had returned. I showed her what I had written and we never quarreled again."

The verses languished in a drawer. Several years Smith pulled them out for the Horses album adding with the help of her guitarist Lenny Kaye and keyboard player Richard Sohl a reggae arrangement.

Smith used to introduce the song on-stage by announcing, "Redondo Beach is a beach where women love other women." Many have interpreted the lyrics as being the lament of a lesbian whose girlfriend had committed suicide and was washed up on a Los Angeles beach. (The titular place is a Los Angeles beach popular with lesbians and gays).

"Land"

This three-part song cycle comprises "Horses," "Land of a 1000 Dances," and "La Mer (de)." The track started out as a poem about the relationship between a murderer and victim. Once Patti Smith recruited her backing group, it became a rambling epic journey incorporating the first verse of Chris Kenner's 1960s soul anthem "Land of a 1,000 Dances"

Patti Smith recalled to Penthouse: "At first it was just me and Lenny Kaye on electric guitar farting around at poetry readings. Then it started to gather force. We advertised for a piano player. We were really just bluffing, y'know? And all these guys would come in and say, 'Hey, wanna boogie?' Me and Lenny were stoned, trying to talk all this cosmic bulls--t to them like, 'Well, what we want to do is go over the edge.' And finally Richard Sohl came in wearing a sailor suit, and he was totally stoned and totally pompous. We said, 'This guy's f--ked up.' Lenny gave him the big cosmic spiel and Sohl said, 'Look, buddy, just play.' So we just brought him in.

And then we started looking for another guitarist. We had days and days of guitar players, all sort of maniac baby geniuses from Long Island, kids with $900 guitars who couldn't play anything. Mother had sent them – in a cab! We'd make them do forty minutes of 'Gloria.' I'd go off on this long poem about a blue T-bird smashing into a wall of sound or some s--t like that and Lenny would keep the same three chords going, louder and louder. And we'd see who dropped out first. If the guy auditioning dropped out first, that meant he wasn't any good. These kids couldn't believe it, they thought we were nuts. So finally Ivan Kral came in. This little Czechoslovakian would-be rock star. So we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and it went on so long I thought I was gonna puke. But Ivan was so nervous he wouldn't stop, and we figured that was really cool. He ain't no genius, but he's got a lotta heart, Ivan does.

Now it's at the point where I really love the group. I did a solo reading the other week in Philadelphia. I went great, but I was so lonely. I read 'Land Without Music,' and right away I'm thinking, Here's the part where Lenny always f--ks up; Here's where I'd look at Sohl and tell him to stop sleeping on the keyboard. I missed them so much I didn't want to ever again perform without them. They give me tremendous energy. I get like a little kid, and it's beautiful."

Smith told an interviewer that Johnny, the boy personified in "Land," is a "pre-punk rock kid." She added: "He's entering the world, ready to take it on. It's a metaphor for the birth of rock 'n' roll."

The lyric "In the sheets… there was a man" is about Jimi Hendrix's death in Notting Hill in 1970. Smith explained to The Observer: "That's Jimi, 'cos sadly he died in his sleep."

The song contains a tribute to Patti Smith's idol, French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891, when she promises to fill her "nose with snow. And go Rimbaud."

Rimbaud is a recurring reference in Smith's work. 1973's "Dream of Rimbaud," for instance, describes her dreams of journeying to Abyssinia with the doomed poet to make love and smoke cigarettes. Speaking in 1996 Smith recalled her teenage years when she, "devoted so much of my girlish daydreams to Rimbaud. Rimbaud was like my boyfriend."

PatReilly · 20/7/2018 8:22 am

arabchanter wrote:
I hear ye Pat, been pretty grim of late, would like to think there would be some "Feelgood" but wont hold my breath.

I thought you might have liked Patti Smith?

Didn't really think much of her at the time, probably because she was a Yankee . And that 'Because the Night' was written with Springsteen, enough said.

To be fair, there are some Americans I like.

arabchanter · 20/7/2018 11:38 am

Day 345.
Queen....................................A Night At The Opera (1975)

Since their 1973 debut (and still their best in my humbles,) Queen's ambitious template had included bombastic classical references, falsetto freak outs, and pagan mysticism. But it was on album number four that they melded all these into the epic "Bohemian Rhapsody." The six minute single was the U.K. No.1 for nine weeks and made the U.S, top ten.

"A Night At The Opera featured every sound from a tuba to a comb" declared Mercury, "Nothing is out of bounds"

arabchanter · 21/7/2018 10:28 am

DAY 346.
Willie Nelson................................................Red Headed Stranger (1975)

By 1975, Willie Nelson had released some very fine albums, and had penned great country songs for other artists, including Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and Farron Youngs "Hello Walls". But it was Red Headed Stranger that made Nelson a country superstar.

PatReilly · 21/7/2018 9:19 pm

I was at school with Willie Nelson, at primary he sent off a sample of his piss to the pregnancy test folk who advertised in the papers.

In later life he was jailed for rape, but the last I saw him, he was driving a float at a kids gala day.

Different Willie Nelson, obviously.

arabchanter · 22/7/2018 10:52 am

PatReilly wrote:
I was at school with Willie Nelson, at primary he sent off a sample of his piss to the pregnancy test folk who advertised in the papers.

In later life he was jailed for rape, but the last I saw him, he was driving a float at a kids gala day.

Different Willie Nelson, obviously.

arabchanter · 22/7/2018 11:02 am

DAY 347.
Earth, Wind, And Fire...............................That's The Way Of The World (1975)

Few remember the movie "That's The Way Of The World" as the movie tanked, but the soundtrack was a blockbuster, singlehandedly lifting Earth, Wind and Fire from relative obscurity to the top of both the U.S. singles and album charts.

Between United and this book's choices of late, I canny really get into it, will try going on the lash and see what inspiration that gives me,

arabchanter · 23/7/2018 8:05 am

DAY 344.
Pink Floyd...........................................Wish You Were Here (1975)

Apologies, but gonna try and quickly get through these and catch up, so will be short and probably no' so sweet!

Another album I've never heard all the way through, on first playing I found it ok but the usual "tracks too fuckin' long," without a doubt the stand out track is the poignant and quite emotional title track "Wish You Were Here" I think most of us have that person who we think about when this song is played, a song I've always loved and which gets me every time.

As I mentioned all the tracks were longer than I would have wished for, especially the opening and closing tracks, but here's the funny thing on second play, and after reading about the tracks, I kinda mellowed on the longevity angle and found myself rather enjoying it.

This album won't be going into my collection at this time, but will be getting downloaded, and who knows in the future?

Bits & Bobs;

Have written loads about this band in previous posts (if interested)

Wish You Were Here is the ninth studio album from English rock band Pink Floyd.

The follow-up to their legendary album The Dark Side Of The Moon, its genesis was marked by the band’s disorientation following their rise to planetary exposure.

Finding it difficult to figure out what to do with their creative future and physically worn out by extensive touring, the band members entered a state where they would reflect on the past, and most notably Pink Floyd founder-gone-mad Syd Barrett.

This resulted in powerful lyrics from Roger Waters about failure to find one’s place in society and difficulty to find oneself at some point in life (especially in the title track); it also brought to existence the lengthy and unforgettable “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, a homage to Syd Barrett that opens and closes the record, making up half of its duration.Wish You Were Here has an overall melancholy feel, yet its melodic density, powerful guitar solos by David Gilmour and heavy use of Richard Wright’s keyboards provide a very colourful listening experience.

Although they had approached it with quite a bit of a writer’s block, the band members have often voiced their satisfaction with the final result. Keyboardist Richard Wright and guitarist David Gilmour have stated that Wish You Were Here is their favourite Pink Floyd album.

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond"

This is a tribute to Syd Barrett, an original member of Pink Floyd - notice the title, Shine On You Crazy Diamond. He was their lead guitarist and wrote most of their early hits, but he gradually went nuts and was kicked out of the band in 1968, three years after the group started. Drugs played a big role in his mental illness.

During the final mixing sessions of this song in June of 1975, Barrett wandered into the studios, ready to help out. He was fat, bald, and as crazy as they remembered, but they let him stay for a while. Barrett wanted to rejoin the group, but they learned in 1967 and 1968 that having an insane member was not good for a band. Before he was kicked out, Barrett would get on stage and either refuse to play or play the same note over and over.

According to the Pink Floyd autobiography A Saucerful of Secrets by Nicholas Schaffner, when Barrett came into the control room, the remaining members of Pink Floyd were listening to the finished recording of the album. This was the eve before Pink Floyd were going on a US tour. David Gilmour didn't recognize him at first - they hadn't seen him in years. Syd was fat, bald, had shaved eyebrows and was wearing a white trenchcoat with white shoes. When someone tried to break the ice by asking Syd how he had put on so much weight, he maniacally replied, "I've got a very large fridge in the kitchen, and I've been eating a lot of pork chops!" That was the last time any of the Pink Floyd members have seen him. .

Gilmour came up with four notes that became the basis for this. Roger Waters thought they conveyed emotions Barrett must have been feeling, and wrote lyrics about him.

Waters sang lead. He recorded the vocal line by line over and over again, and killed his voice in the process. That's why English folk singer Roy Harper was brought in to sing "Have A Cigar." He was close friend of the band's, as well as Led Zeppelin.

On the album Wish You Were Here, this is split into two parts, with "Have A Cigar," "Welcome To The Machine," and "Wish You Were Here" in between. It was going to be continuous, but Waters decided it should be split.

This was very difficult to record. They redid it a few times before getting a version they liked.

Dick Parry was brought in to play sax on this. He also played on "Us And Them" and "Money" from Dark Side of the Moon.

Pink Floyd started playing this live over a year before the album came out. The band thought they could improve on songs if they played them at concerts before recording them. At the time, it was known as "Shine On."

This was the last song Richard Wright got a writing credit for before Roger Waters kicked him out of the band during The Wall sessions 4 years later. A combination of Waters' increasing control over the group and Wright's mounting personal problems are what led to his departure. He would not rejoin the band until 1987, after Waters himself had left.

In 1986, Waters left the band and became enraged when they continued on without him. At subsequent Pink Floyd shows, they played this with Gilmour on vocals.

"Welcome To The Machine"

This is about the money-grubbing record producers and managers controlling the band, which contributed to Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett's mental collapse. The world around him was like a machine: the fans, the group, the record industry. They told him what to do and when to do it so they would become successful. The Wish You Were Here album revolves around Syd Barrett and what contributed to his collapse.

This song features a very rare music video only played during concerts. It features a particularly visceral depiction featuring corpses, rats, death, and waves of blood. The video was drawn by hand by Floyd's old friend, Gerald Scarfe.

Metal band Shadows Fall covered this in 2003 on their Art Of Balance album. Aside from replacing most of the synthesizers with guitars, the cover is rather close to the original version, with clean vocals and acoustic guitar.

This features prominently in the Season 4 finale of the TV series Person of Interest, when an artificial intelligence known as The Machine is under threat from a more powerful AI.

"Have A Cigar"

Much like "Welcome To The Machine," this song is about corporations and how they control their musicians. The line, "We call it riding the gravy train" is held for such a long time to emphasize the fact that these companies will go as long as possible to squeeze every last cent out of their clients.

The lead vocal is by folk singer Roy Harper. Roger Waters' voice was shot from recording "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," and David Gilmour did not want to sing this, so they asked their friend Harper, who was recording down the hall, to help them out. Gilmour recalled to Mojo magazine October 2011: "Roger had a go at singing it and one or two people were unkind about his singing. One or two people then asked me to have a go at it. I did, but I wasn't comfortable. I had nothing against the lyrics. Maybe the range and intensity wasn't right for my voice. I can distinctly remember Roy leaning on the wall outside Abbey Riad, while we were nattering away and (growls) 'Go on, lemme have a go, lemme have a go.' We all went, 'Shut up Roy.' But eventually we said, 'Go on then, Roy, have your bloody go.' Most of us enjoyed his version, though I don't think Roger ever liked it."

Harper is the subject of the 1970 Led Zeppelin song "Hats Of To (Roy) Harper" He was good friends with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

This is a parody of a record company executive. Pink Floyd hated to record industry and was especially peeved when their label kept bugging them for a huge follow-up to their Dark Side of the Moon album.

Roger Waters wrote the lyrics, which contain every cliché he could think of that record company executives use on new bands: "You're gonna go far," "I'll tell you the name of the game," "You're going to make it," etc.

One of the lyrics is "By the way, which one's Pink?" This is a question many people in the music industry asked the band over the years.

This was one of the last songs added to the album. The song is represented on the back cover in the image of a salesman standing in a desert offering Pink Floyd albums. The salesman had no body or soul, which is how they felt about their record company.

There is a faceless man on the back cover of the album. This is probably Pink Floyd's way of telling us they would "lose face" with a followup to the highly successful Dark Side of the Moon. Wish You Were Here didn't sell nearly as many copies.

In the US, this was released as a single but it did not chart.

In 2000, Queen guitarist Brian May teamed up with The Foo Fighters to record a new version of this for the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack. Dave Grohl said he picked this song to cover because, "It's the most punk rock thing Pink Floyd ever did." Foo drummer Taylor Hawkins sang lead vocals and Grohl played drums. Taylor sang because Dave kept forgetting the lyrics during the recording session.

"Wish You Were Here"

This song is about the detached feeling most people go through life with. It is a commentary on how people cope with the world by withdrawing physically, mentally, or emotionally. In the commentary of The Wall, Roger Waters states that the inspiration was Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett and his ordeal with schizophrenia.

Roger Waters has said this song was based on a poem he wrote about Syd Barrett's fall from reality. It was said that Syd's friends would lace his coffee with LSD, which eventually lead to his mental breakdown.

This was a rare case of the Pink Floyd primary songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour mutually collaborating on a song - they rarely wrote together. Gilmour had the opening riff written and was playing it in the studio at a fast pace when Roger Waters heard it and asked him to play it slower. The song built from there, with the pair writing the music for the chorus and verses together, and Waters adding the lyrics.

The song reflected the feeling of the band while they were recording the album. Waters felt they were not putting a full effort into the recording sessions.

When this song starts, it sounds like it is coming from an AM radio somewhere in the distance. It represents the distance between the listener and the music.

At the end, when the wind is blowing, you can hear the sound of a violin that was played by Stephane Grappelli, a Jazz musician who was recording in nearby studios. Pink Floyd asked him to guest on this when they found out he was there.

The theme of the album is absence. They chose this as the title track because it summed up the message. The man who did their cover art, Storm Thorgerson, was the first to suggest this as the album title.

The album contains images relating to the theme of detachment. The most prominent image shows 2 businessmen shaking hands, with one of them on fire. This represents an insincere business deal, with one of the men about to get burned. In all of the images, there is something missing, like the diver who does not make a splash.

Like many Pink Floyd albums, this does not translate nearly as well to CD. A lot of work went into choosing which songs were on the front and back sides of the album, which is eliminated on the CD, and there is also a lot less room for the artwork, which goes along with the music.

When Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, they played this at the induction ceremony. Nick Mason accepted the award but didn't join the performance, while Roger Waters and Syd Barrett didn't attend.

In the 26th second of the song you can hear a small cough. This was to create the effect of a man listening to the radio and playing along with his guitar. In the 31st second you can hear a sniff. Rumors say that it symbolizes Gilmour quitting smoking, but it could just be the radio and the man.

This is one of the few songs Roger Waters continued to play at his shows after leaving Pink Floyd that David Gilmour helped him write.

Fred Durst and Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit andJohnny Rzeznik of The Goo Goo Dolls performed this at the 2001 "Tribute To Heroes" telethon to benefit victims of the terrorist attacks on America. Durst, Rzeznik, and Borland appealed to a younger audience, but this song was familiar to the older viewers as well. Almost 60 million people watched the telethon.

Last edited by arabchanter (23/7/2018 8:44 am)