As we sometimes do here, we’re going random today, but only in the 1970s. We’re going to let the RealPlayer bounce around the nearly 20,000 mp3s available from that decade, and – assuming it’s a tune that’s available and not an aesthetic...
As we sometimes do here, we’re going random today, but only in the 1970s. We’re going to let the RealPlayer bounce around the nearly 20,000 mp3s available from that decade, and – assuming it’s a tune that’s available and not an aesthetic crime – the sixth selection will be today’s featured record. So here we go.
Mama Lion was a blues rock band that released two albums during the early years of the decade although the band is more likely remembered today for the identity of its lead singer. She was one Lynn Carey, Penthouse magazine’s Pet of the Month in December 1972, and she was depicted suckling a lion cub on the inside cover of the group first album, 1972’s Preserve Wildlife. The track we land on to start this morning’s trek is “Griffins” from the group’s second album, 1973’s Give It Everything I’ve Got. “With griffins as my saviors,” sings Carey over a Zepp-like backing, “I fly through burning skies. I need your love no longer . . .” Carey’s bio at Wikipedia suggests that there was more to her than physical beauty and that greater exploration of her later solo career could be rewarding, but that’s something for another day. This morning, we’ll leave Carey and the other members of Mama Lion to their griffins and move on.
Despite my respect for her and her music, Ellen McIlwaine has been mentioned only a few times in this space during the past six years. A talented slide guitarist and an expressive singer, she’s recorded regularly but not frequently over the years, starting in 1972, when she formed Fear Itself, a psychedelic blues rock band that released a self-titled album. Her solo career also began that year with Honky Tonk Angel, which is where we find her haunting take on Traffic’s “Can’t Find My Way Home,” our second stop this morning. McIlwaine’s most recently listed credit is Mystic Bridge from 2006, on which she steps into Eastern-tinged jazz. Marking that for more exploration as well, we head on.
About five years and maybe a thousand posts ago, I wrote about the New York Rock Ensemble and its 1970 album, Roll On. It was, I noted, the first album of straight-ahead rock recorded by the group that had started business as New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, which on its first two albums had played “rock music on classical instruments and classical music on rock instruments.” Roll On, I noted, got wildly mixed reviews, with the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide offering the best, calling it a “tremendous rock & roll album,” and adding that “the band plays with good taste and fire.” We land on “Running Down the Highway,” which Rolling Stone said was one of the “top-notch” songs on the album. I have to concur this morning, but we can’t stay.
Valdy is a Canadian folk rock musician who came to my attention in the mid-1990s through a flea market find of his Family Gathering album, a 1974 effort. According to Wikipedia, he’s a well-regarded and honored Canadian institution, and I have to respect that. But his work – and I have a few of his numerous albums on the mp3 shelves – leaves me unimpressed. It’s probably me and not him. In any case, our wanderings today bring us to “Mm-Mm-Mm-Mm” from Valdy’s 1972 album Country Man: “And I’ll say Mm-Mm-Mm-Mm, that’s not the way things oughta be. And I’ll say Mm-Mm-Mm-Mm excuse me, I’m on the outside being free.” Underwhelmed again, we head to the next tune.
When A&M Records was beginning to promote Joe Cocker’s live Mad Dogs & Englishmen, studio versions of “The Letter” and of “Space Captain” were recorded in Los Angeles for a single release. In short order, the single was revised to offer the live versions of both tunes from the Mad Dogs album. The original single, with the studio versions of the tunes, was credited to Joe Cocker with Leon Russell and the Shelter People, with “the Shelter People” being the name Russell gave to the backing musicians he brought together for his second solo album, some of whom were part of the Mad Dogs tour. I wonder this morning if members