Love for Sale is the second album by Boney M. The album includes the hits “Ma Baker” (#96 on the Billboard Hot 100, #31 on the Club Play Singles chart), and “Belfast”. It also includes covers: “Love for Sale” (by Cole Porter), “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” (by Creedence Clearwater Revival), and “Still I’m Sad” (by The Yardbirds).
Twilley’s first two albums were fascinating because of how obsessively he synthesized the Southern and British pop-rock traditions–like a cool Alex Chilton, or (only we didn’t know this yet) a Nick Lowe who worked too hard–and because so few bands were bothering with the kind of catchy ’60s-AM songs that Twilley turned out by the half dozen. Well, scratch the catchy part–both the Records and the Knack, to stick to the lightweights, have songs on the radio that cut anything on Sincerely, which is a lot catchier than this. And while you’re at it, scratch Phil Seymour, Twilley’s former rhythm section and harmony group. And add Jimmy Haskell doing Paul Buckmaster imitations. And think dark thoughts about the Raspberries and Eric Carmen. [Source]
Hearts of Stone has been called “the best album Bruce Springsteen never recorded”, which is not quite accurate. Springsteen did pen the title track and the radio-friendly “Talk To Me”, and is credited along with Southside Johnny Lyon and Steve Van Zandt on “Trapped Again”, but Van Zandt takes solo credit for the remaining six tracks. More to the point, this record pointed the way to the kind of music the reincarnated “Little Steven” would begin making in the early 1980s. Van Zandt tapped photographer Frank Stefanko to shoot the album cover art, after meeting Stefanko when they worked together with Springsteen on Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Southside Johnny Promo from 1976 Pt 1 from Four Decades on Vimeo.
Southside Johnny Promo from 1976 Pt 2 from Four Decades on Vimeo.
After the demise of the Dwight Twilley Band, Twilley continued as a solo act, keeping Bill Pitcock IV on lead guitar and adding Susan Cowsill on harmony vocals. This lineup released the album Twilley for Shelter/Arista in 1979, although the album’s most successful song, “Darlin’”, featured backing vocals by Phil Seymour. His next album, Blueprint, co-produced by Jack Nitzsche, was rejected by Arista after the failure of the 1979 single “Somebody to Love” although it was assigned an Arista release number. Blueprint ultimately was never released, keeping Twilley out of circulation until his Shelter contract expired at the end of 1981.
Sincerely is the debut album from the Dwight Twilley Band, released in 1976 on Shelter Records. The band consisted solely of Dwight Twilley (guitar, piano, lead and harmony vocals) and Phil Seymour (drums, bass, percussion, lead and harmony vocals), although touring band member Bill Pitcock IV played lead guitar on every song except for “Sincerely” itself. The album credited production to Oister, which was the original name of the Dwight Twilley Band; later reissues have credited production directly to Twilley and Seymour.
Chelsea are an English punk rock band, formed in London in 1976. Three of the four original band members went on to help found Generation X. More than two decades after its release, “Right to Work”, Chelsea’s debut single, was included in Mojo magazine’s list of the best punk rock singles of all time. The original line-up was frontman Gene October, William Broad (later and better known as Billy Idol) (guitar), Tony James (bass) and John Towe (drums, who had come from London SS along with James). After a few gigs, the other three left October to form Generation X. October then recruited Carey Fortune (drums), Martin Stacy (guitar) and Bob Jessie (bass), with the last two soon replaced by Henry Daze (Henry Badowski) and James Stevenson (who also later joined Generation X). This rapid turnover of band members (Simon Cade Williams, aka Simon Vitesse, joined the band as bassist in 1977 for UK tour and the single: “High Rise Living”) was characteristic throughout Chelsea’s existence, with October the only constant presence. Their first single, “Right to Work”, dealing with unemployment, was their most popular song. After spending 1977-78 touring in the UK and overseas, they released their first album, Chelsea, in 1979.
[via Mark Stewart]
“Love in Vain” has been covered by many musicians, most famously by The Rolling Stones on their 1969 album, Let It Bleed (although, in the album credits on the original vinyl LP label, the song is listed as written by “Woody Payne”, a pseudonym of Robert Johnson’s.) The Stones also recorded a live version of the song that appeared on their 1970 album, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out.
“For a time we thought the songs that were on that first album were the only recordings (Robert Johnson had) made, and then suddenly around ’67 or ’68 up comes this second (bootleg) collection that included Love in Vain. Love in Vain was such a beautiful song. Mick and I both loved it, and at the time I was working and playing around with Gram Parsons, and I started searching around for a different way to present it, because if we were going to record it there was no point in trying to copy the Robert Johnson style or ways and styles. We took it a little bit more country, a little bit more formalized, and Mick felt comfortable with that.” – Keith Richards, 1990
“We changed the arrangement quite a lot from Robert Johnson’s. We put in extra chords that aren’t there on the Robert Johnson version. Made it more country. And that’s another strange song, because it’s very poignant. Robert Johnson was a wonderful lyric writer, and his songs are quite often about love, but they’re desolate.” – Mick Jagger, 1995
“Sometimes I wonder… myself (about how we developed that arrangement). I don’t know! (laughs) We only knew the Robert Johnson version. At the time we were kicking it around, I was into country music – old white country music, ’20s and ’30s stuff, and white gospel. Somewhere I crossed over into this more classical mode. Sometimes things just happen. We were sitting in the studio, saying, Let’s do “Love in Vain” by Robert Johnson. Then I’m trying to figure out some nuances and chords, and I start to play it in a totally different fashion. Everybody joins in and goes, Yeah, and suddenly you’ve got your own stamp on it. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to top Robert Johnson’s guitar playing.” – Keith Richards, 1995
STARMAN 45 RELEASED 41 YEARS AGO TODAY. “So I picked on you-oo-oo…” Well, if life begins at forty, Starman is one year old today. Released this day in 1972, it still sounds as good now as it did way back then. The proof is here.
Cosmic Slop is the fifth studio album by Funkadelic, released in 1973 on Westbound Records. While it has been favorably reevaluated by critics long after its original release, the album was a commercial failure, producing no charting singles, and making only #112 on the Billboard albums chart. Cosmic Slop is the first Funkadelic album to feature artwork and liner notes by Pedro Bell, who assumed responsibility for the band’s gate-fold album covers and liner notes until the band’s collapse after 1981′s The Electric Spanking of War Babies. Bell’s liner notes to Cosmic Slop include small illustrations next to each song’s name, summarizing the song in a picture.
[In memory of Cordell "Boogie" Mosson]
“A Fifth of Beethoven” is a disco instrumental recorded by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. It was adapted by Murphy from the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The record was produced by noted production music and sound effects recording producer Thomas J. Valentino. It was one of the most popular and memorable pieces of music from the disco era. The “Fifth” in the song’s title is a pun, referencing a liquid measure approximately equal to one-fifth of a gallon, a popular size for bottles containing hard liquor, as well as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from which the song was adapted. The song when released entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 80 on May 29, 1976, and took 19 weeks to reach number 1, where it stayed for one week becoming Murphy’s best known work and his only Top 40 hit. Early in 1977, it was licensed to RSO Records for inclusion on the soundtrack to the movie Saturday Night Fever. Even though Murphy played nearly every instrument on the instrumental, his record company cautioned that the record would stand a better chance if credited to a group rather than an individual. To Murphy’s annoyance, they came up with the name Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band, only to discover two days after its release that there was already a Big Apple Band. The name on the label was changed to The Walter Murphy Band and then simply to Walter Murphy. In 1974, Murphy was in the process of writing a disco song for a commercial, when the producer gave him the idea of “updating classical music,” which “nobody had done lately.” He then mailed a demo tape to various record labels in New York. Although response was unimpressive, the rendition of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5 in ‘C’ Minor” generated interest from the owner of Private Stock Records, Larry Uttal. Murphy agreed to produce the song under contract and recorded it in 1976. An album under the same name was released later during the year; the album notably featured a rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” entitled “Flight ’76″, which reached number 44 on the Hot 100.
[via Lars Villemoes]
