It was 50 years ago today ...

[Willets Point]

Gerald Casale of Devo fame was friends with two of the victims murdered by the Ohio National Guard. The incident actually shaped his odd philosophy of "devolution."

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Beatles’ ‘Worst’ Album Is Actually Pretty Damned Great



It was 50 years ago today, on May 8, 1970, that the Beatles released their “last” album, “Let It Be.” Many consider it their worst. Here’s why they’re missing the point.

Fifty years ago, on May 8, 1970, the Beatles, creators of the rock and roll LP as art form, released their final record, one whose title served as reminder, admonishment, and plain good advice to let the past be the past.

In a catalogue with a solid half-dozen albums that can make a case for the best the medium has produced—with some fun dark horses to stump for—Let It Be is almost universally cited as the group’s worst long-player. Having said as much once, I received death threats from assorted baby boomers whose Facebook profiles were littered with peace signs, but so it goes, one supposes, when the Beatles are on the dissecting table.

The irony is that I have always loved Let It Be, from the first time a friend played it for me when I was 15. I had been digging the early stuff hard—“She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Please Please Me” and its winsome raucousness. He cued up the lo-fi urban folk of “Two of Us,” with that singular blend of Everly Brother harmonies and Nick Drake languor, prompting me to ask who this was. I wasn’t even sure at first. “Never mind who it is,” he said. “Just listen.”

That was a perfect way to get around the usual critical brickbats that dog Let It Be. Romanticists who prefer the Beatles’ run to end with a flourish of grandeur rather than the nuts-and-bolts realities of life—and artistic life—take comfort that Abbey Road, released in the autumn of 1969, was really the Beatles’ last album, given that Let It Be had been cut earlier that year and shelved. The band didn’t take a sanguine view of their potential product in Let It Be, with Lennon terming the results of the sessions “the shittiest piece of shit” his kickass beat combo had ever recorded.

Not that they were his band so much at that point. Paul McCartney had been funneled—though naysayers would say he usurped the position—into the unenviable role of musical director, chief cheerleader, leading energy source, old salt taskmaster.

It may well have been time for the Beatles to die—at least for a little while—and take up their second life as a band whose music would never really know past, present, and future again, matriculating to a place in the world’s storehouse of art that might as well have the word “timeless” carved into the door. I would argue, though, that Let It Be the record and Let It Be the film—as honest a rock ’n’ roll movie that has ever been made—were invaluable with that incising. One should sleep on neither, and spend time with both.

Let It Be is the lone Beatles album without a linear identity, which makes for freshness, if you can abide disjointedness in your art. Every other record, no matter how diversified, has an overarching theme. Beatles for Sale is autumnal, copper-sunned. Please Please Me is the studio version of a stage show. The White Album, which contains a solid two-dozen styles, is what we’d today call a flex, asserting, “Look at all that we can do.” Help! is the forced ebullience of the road. Revolver is Edwardian electro-futurism. Sgt. Pepper translates to Make Believe Day.

With Let It Be, we have the musical analogue of King Solomon deploying his blade, cleaving the Beatles-baby into two thematic halves—one would veer toward garage-rock primal, the other Wagnerian production thanks to producer Phil Spector, who was brought in, as Lennon said, to clean those shitty tapes. Regular producer George Martin hit the road for a spell, cheesed off by what George Harrison had previously called the rot that had set in. There was rot, yes—but attempts to freshen the house had not been entirely forsaken. They just hadn’t been worked out yet.

Spector, sophisticated as he may have been with his Wall of Sound, was also an early rock ’n’ roll guy. While the Stones and the Who were busy feasting on the blackest rhythm and blues they could find—which the Beatles also loved—the quartet from Liverpool had a major thing for pop and symphonic pop. Their tastes were as Catholic as tastes got for a rock ’n’ roll band in a time of overladen machismo, when you could be termed a sissy for adoring the Shirelles or the Ronettes, with whom Spector worked so memorably. Sometimes, Spector is straight up in your face, as with “The Long and Winding Road,” but that’s because he’s the post-production guru, not the man in the room. To be honest, most of the time I don’t really notice him. I notice the Beatles.

Opener “Two of Us” documents what for me is the finest sound there is, the one I wish to hear the most in this world, which I hope I will still be able to hear in the one after it: Lennon and McCartney singing in duet. They never did it as much as you’d think—you hear it on “If I Fell,” a portion of “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” the final verse of “Hey Jude.” Normally when they sang together it was with one doing the lead vocal, the other the harmony, but in a manner that it was hard to tell who handled the latter. That’s pretty damn rare, but that’s how well they interwove and how suited they were for each other as vocalists while working in completely different timbres.

I didn’t know they were singing about themselves when I first heard this song, with it’s lines of “You and me chasing paper / Getting nowhere”—a reference to their ongoing contractual and management squabbles—but what I heard while I listened with my friend was the sound of friendship. In one outtake, mid-verse, McCartney jokes, “Take it, Phil,” to his partner, referencing the two-part harmonies of the Everly Brothers, real-life brothers, as these men were Beatles’ brothers.

I’m not sure that is very different, especially if the tightness of the sound is any indication. The song is new, the song is old. It’s like what Dylan did on The Basement Tapes in that manner. Time laps time. Past, present, future pull up in a dead heat, three aside. No wonder, for a moment, I didn’t know exactly who this band was when I heard the first notes of the album, even if I’d been listening to them probably six hours a day at that point.

Even in their originals on Let It Be, there’s a lot of old-school rock.

The title cut, for instance, isn’t very far removed from something we could easily imagine Sam Cooke having written had he lived. The partial reason for the reach into the past is because of what was a lousy—or desperate, anyway—plan on McCartney’s part: setting up shop on a soundstage in Twickenham Studios and having a camera crew film the group early in the morning—despite the Beatles always being a late-night working band. Michael Lindsay-Hogg directs, but we might better say he allows us to witness. This is not what the Beatles did or were meant to do, so they turned to a musical palliative; meaning, going through scads and scads of covers, trying to “get it together,” in the parlance of the time.

In the unduly neglected Let It Be film of these proceedings, McCartney tries to rally Lennon by saying, starkly, that what they’re now dealing with is fear. This may be the most honest comment by a group member on film. The Beatles, he says, are terrified. To get his argument across, he references an early club residency circa 1961. On the first night, the band was awful, couldn’t overcome their nerves. On the second night, they were a little better, though there was still nobody there, which was almost irrelevant. But each evening they progressed, and soon enough, in Beatles Toppermost of the Poppermost fashion, they had the audience—a big one—by the balls, and the audience loved it. Lennon looks distant as McCartney does his memory lane bit, a man who has all but left already, save in bodily form.

The Beatles are indeed frightened, at a loss for next moves. Anyone who has ever been in a band, either at the level of downing some beers and blasting away in a basement on a Friday night or if you’ve conquered the world, understands band spats, band-based anxiety. Being in a band is a series of incongruities the collective works to pave over, to make congruous.

For the Beatles, that required a calming of nerves and a reacquisition of swagger. So they turned to 1950s rock. They went so far as to encode it in new songs they were writing (“I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Dig It”) and in the old songs they’d already written which they ripped from their dusty songwriting notebooks with volcanic intensity. To wit: the churning, scorching, rip-snortin’ guitar fest that is “One After 909.” If you go back to the March 5, 1963, session when the band tried again and again to cut a master take of the tune—which didn’t happen—with Lennon making fun of George Harrison for a guitar solo that sounded like it was played with an elastic band, then consider the Let It Be version. You’ll struggle to process the gulf. That was Gerry and the Pacemakers stuff—pleasing, but twee—in 1963; Cream in their full-bore guitar glory might be intimidated with the sonic pasting the 1969 Beatles give “One After 909.”

Let It Be the film, which joined its album counterpart with a release on May 13, 1970, has long been stashed behind a Kafkaesque veil of intrigue, as if state-suppressed by the official Beatles brand. If you read about it in reference books, it’s treated like the Star Club recordings of 1962—a curio at best, or maybe just crap. The upcoming Peter Jackson film is going to put the smiley face on these sessions, but I’d argue they were never about highs or lows, nor ennui or ambivalence; they were a search for direction, which is perhaps the common denominator of any band that has ever been, for however long it has existed.

Lennon ducked into a theater after the Beatles were no more to see Let It Be for the first time, weeping as he watched. This was not a sentimental man. If you cite “Imagine,” I will respond by saying that that was more a business move—and a trite one—than anything this person truly carried with them in life. Let It Be, though, is a wallop of honesty. It’s a great film, the purest film about making music with your mates.

There is flab at times on the musicianship. The band attempt to play themselves into shape, tighten the grooves. When they smoke, they could burn down a forest in mere seconds, as when we see them up on the Apple roof in late January. They hadn’t a clue how to end these sessions, so once more they went to what they knew, where they could discover something new: the gig. The Beatles were the ultimate giggers.

Malcolm Gladwell will try to tell you this is what made them, but it wasn’t. The songwriting gifts Lennon and McCartney entered this world with is what carries the Beatles’ day, then and now, and forever, I should think. You can try all you want, but you’re not going to be able to learn what they knew, what was even more a part of who they were than their DNA. You work to hone what you have—but if you’re not born with it, you’re not writing “Let It Be.”

Usually when we hear “Let It Be,” it’s the single version. McCartney could have sung in the Baptist Church, which may seem an odd quality for a white northern English lad, but he excelled at working up to a spiritual froth, one reason Cavern compere Bob Wooler heard “The Hippy Hippy Shake” and thought it’d be perfect for McCartney—it’s the Soul Stirrers with overt secularism. The guitar solo on the single version of “Let It Be” is downright anodyne, though. It’s not very far off from the clumsy soloing back in spring 1963 with the shelved “One After 909.” But listen to the album version—the solo will rip your head off.

This was a unit that was not going to be able to sustain itself because John Lennon, for a variety of reasons, was now a passenger. Part of that was his own diminished drive, so far as Beatles matters went. But this was not a person equipped to be a passenger in the band he started, any more than, say, Aaron Rodgers would be a willing backup in the NFL. There were always times when one of the two chief Beatles drove the bus and the other sat a few seats back. Lennon dominated A Hard Day’s Night and Rubber Soul; McCartney could claim Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Lennon will have his moments in these sessions and on the Let It Be album—he plays some of the best lead guitar work of his life on “Get Back,” for instance. But he’s like that employee who’s given two weeks’ notice.

I think the people who vet these historical matters are lazy when they say that Let It Be isn’t much of a record, because what they want to do is maintain this narrative of: here is a band fizzling out, which will rally one last time—as if they were duty-bound to do so—with Abbey Road. I don’t hear fizzle, though. Nor do I see it in Let It Be the film. There’s not necessarily happiness so much as spiritedness; the solidarity to a shared love of rock and roll remains, but that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t see the door and feel a tug to walk through it.

I love the stories of the early days, the band trying to make it, cutting Please Please Me in 585 minutes, veins bursting out of necks in a mad hunt for fame and recognition, but I don’t think the Beatles were more alive then than they were when they were trying to quell their anxiety as film cameras rolled.

It’s really not that different from being on that concert stage, in that empty hall, back in 1961, when the directive was to make something be, rather than let it have its space. Both are central to life. Which is why Let It Be will always be central to the Beatles. You can dig it if you want, and you don’t even have to ask nicely.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-let-i ... t?ref=home

[Edgy MD]

Let It Be is almost universally cited as the group’s worst long-player.

What an absurd statement. Who are these strange people in this bizarre universe?

[Willets Point]

I don't recall ever hearing people consider LET IT BE the worst Beatles' album. Now, I do know that many people think the album could've been a lot better if their internal strife hadn't sidetracked their original vision, or if Spector hadn't overproduced it, but I think most people still like what we got regardless.

[Frayed Knot]

Even if there are some people who consider LiB the Far Four's worst album (they only made so many meaning that there would almost certainly have to be some) claiming that there's essentially
a known mandate that it is so makes it sound like the author of that piece is simply setting up an argument so he can go about deconstructing it.


Also released on 5/8/70 (same day as Let it Be): SELF PORTRAIT / Bob Dylan

Certainly an oddly-named album seeing as how it contained more cover versions -- everything from covers of contemporaries (Paul Simon’s THE BOXER; EARLY MORNING RAIN - Gordon Lightfoot)
to six different ones listed as 'Traditional' -- than it did Dylan originals and live recordings of previously written Bob tunes (QUINN THE ESKIMO; LIKE A ROLLING STONE).
Coming on the heels of his more country-fied NASHVILLE SKYLINE album, it left many Dylan fans and Dylan-ologists wondering where their chameleon of a hero was headed next.



oe: I just realized that I mis-read my own chart. SELF PORTRAIT was released on JUNE 8th, 1970, not May 8th.
Oh well, just consider me early on this one.

[Edgy MD]

There was a great crack from George Martin, when he was told by EMI that Phil Spector would be getting the production credit on Let It Be, and he responded, "I produced the original, and what you should do is have a credit saying 'Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector'."

Here, his run with the Beats had come to its end, and their cheekiness had finally rubbed off on the father figure.

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

Let It Be is almost universally cited as the group’s worst long-player.

What an absurd statement. Who are these strange people in this bizarre universe?

Perhaps the most proper way to say it would be to call it "Least best," because there is no bad Beatles album.

[Willets Point]

50 years ago yesterday, Bobby Orr flew.

[Frayed Knot]

WORKINGMAN’S DEAD - The Grateful Dead, Released June 14, 1970

This 4th studio album by the SF-based group represented an attempt to separate from their earlier psychedelic sound and turn towards a more ‘Americana’ style approach
partially modeled on the ‘Bakersfield Sound’ popularized by country artist Buck Owens and others.
Other than that, someone who owns a lot more bandanas than I is going to have to chime in on where and how this record fits in among the Dead’s pantheon.

All songs written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter except where noted:
Uncle John’s Band
High Time
Dire Wolf
New Speedway Boogie
Cumberland Blues (Garcia, Phil Lesh, Hunter)
Black Peter
Easy Wind (Hunter)
Casey Jones

[Fman99]

Yeah, man, it's a great record. I'm particularly partial to Easy Wind, myself. RIP Pigpen. Never really was a fan of 20-30 minute live meandering improvisation, but there are tracks every one of their 1970s studio albums that I still find very listenable.

[Frayed Knot]

FUN HOUSE - The Stooges, released July 7, 1970


So all our Rock & Rollers seem to have taken the summer of 1970 off, or at least were taking massive amounts of drugs still hard at work on music that would be released later in the year.
So even after a month with no new entries, that still just leaves us with the anniversary (on Tuesday) of FUN HOUSE, the second effort from ‘The Stooges’ which, if someone wants to
comment on this one be my guest because I was never really up on the primitive rock slice of the music scene.
There would really only be one more album after this for the Stooges and even that wasn’t until three years later and on a different label and with a revamped lineup now titled as
‘Iggy Pop and the Stooges’. There would also be two 21st century releases but, y’know, really?

James Newell Osterberg Jr. — aka Mr. Pop (as the NY Times style standards would require him to be called) — is somehow still alive today at age 73 and somehow still appears to have
no visible body fat.

[Edgy MD]

Fun House is a good record to have coming out your windows on Halloween.

It's a terrific soup of long traxx, with the Stooges' signature attack on the high end. Really bends the needle and puts your equipment and ears at risk if you set the level before the guitars come in.

I always thought that the Stooges were a weak pick for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as their rhythm section was really sloppy, Iggy's solo legacy is much larger, and they only had three albums, but man, I dig all three albums, back to front.

The way "Dirt" plods along like a creepy Doors track, it makes you think of how young Iggy was terrified he'd get called out by critics as having a voice so simultaneously derivative of Jim Morrison (on the low end) and Mick Jagger (on the high) that they'd name him Jim Jagger or Mick Morrison. But Ron Asheton's guitar part and solo are better than anything Robby Krieger ever laid down.

[Frayed Knot]

After a thin summer so far (we’ve had just three entries in the last 2-1/2 months) July 25th of a half century ago brings us a two-fer.


JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE — TRAFFIC, Released July 25, 1970

What originally started out as a Steve Winwood solo project turned into a comeback album for TRAFFIC as he brought former members Chris Wood (woodwinds) & Jim Capaldi (drums & lyrics) back to make
it a group project, the first since the band had parted ways in late 1968 after just two albums (a third consisting of leftover material and live recordings was released in the interim). Only itinerant guitarist
Dave Mason from the original TRAFFIC’ers (he had already left the band after both their first and second albums) failed to make the return.
Only six cuts on the album although four of the six topped six minutes, a fact which led to critical comments about the absence of Mason’s songwriting giving license to Winwood’s tendencies towards excess.

All songs written by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi except where noted

GLAD (S. Winwood)
FREEDOM RIDER
EMPTY PAGES
STRANGER TO HIMSELF
JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE (Traditional, arr by Winwood)
EVERY MOTHER’S SON




COSMO’S FACTORY — CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL, Released July 25, 1970

This, the fifth album overall by CCR (all five in just over two years time so these boys were really cranking 'em out) was talked about in advance of its release date back on Page 4 of this thread,
although that certainly doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed further if anyone has stuff they want to add.

All songs by John Fogerty except where noted
RAMBLE TAMBLE
BEFORE YOU ACCUSE ME (Elias McDaniel)
TRAVELIN’ BAND
OOBY DOOBY (Wade Moore, Dick Penner)
LOOKIN’ OUT MY BACK DOOR
RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE

UP AROUND THE BEND
MY BABY LEFT ME (Arthur Crudup)
WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE (Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
LONG AS I CAN SEE THE LIGHT

Travellin’, Up Around, Lookin’, and Grapevine were released as singles form the album

John Fogerty — lead guitars, lead vocals, piano, electric piano, keyboards, saxophone, harmonica, producer, arranger
Tom Fogerty — rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Stu Cook — bass guitar, backing vocals
Doug Clifford — drums, cowbell
and cover art, design and photography by Bob Fogerty ... just in case you were wondering what the third brother was doing with his time that summer

[Edgy MD]

"TRAVELIN' BAND": Four distinct verses, four refrains, a guitar solo, and an outro in 2:07.

[Frayed Knot]

"TRAVELIN' BAND": Four distinct verses, four refrains, a guitar solo, and an outro in 2:07.

It's the 1960 Game 7 of songs: 19 runs on 24 hits and it finished in 2:36 -- a combined 5 walks and Zero strikeouts helped keep things moving along




Couple entries for this coming week:

SIGNED, SEALED & DELIVERED — Stevie Wonder, Released August 7, 1970

By this point Stevie, with eight years in the business under his belt yet still just 20 y/o, is starting to take more charge of his work. He’s credited as a cowriter on seven of the twelve songs and is listed as
the producer of record on this album although reportedly produced just a few of the tracks. And yet, as prolific and as accomplished as he already is, he’s still about two years away from really hitting the
stride that would sever him from the Motown formula and vault him to a level well beyond being just a freakishly talented teenager with his 1972-76 run of Talking Book, Innervisions, Fullfillingness First
Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life

NEVER HAD A DREAM COME TRUE
WE CAN WORK IT OUT (Lennon/McCartney)
SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED (I’M YOURS)
HEAVEN HELP US ALL (Ron Miller)
YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
SUGAR
DON’T WONDER WHY (Leonard Caston)
ANYTHING YOU WANT ME TO DO
I CAN’T LET MY HEAVER WALK AWAY (Joe Hinton, Pam Sawyer)
JOY (TAKES OVER ME) (Duke Browner)
I GOTTA HAVE A SONG
SOMETHING TO SAY





A QUESTION OF BALANCE — Moody Blues, Released August 7, 1970

The sixth album by the Moody Blues and their fifth in a stretch of seven albums released between 1968 thru ’72 which represented their most productive and successful period.
Their attempt here was to make songs stripped down from their earlier psychedelic sound so to have the songs work better when performed live.

Justin Hayward - Vocals, Guitar, Mandolin
John Lodge - Vocals, Bass
Ray Thomas - Vocals, Flute, Tamborine
Graeme Edge - Drums, Percussion
Mike Pinder - Vocals, Mellotron, Synthesizer, Piano, Harpsichord, Acoustic Guitar

btw, nice democratic division of labor on the songs

QUESTION — Writer & lead vocals = Hayward
HOW IS IT (We Are Here) — w & v = Pindar
AND THE TIDE RUSHES IN — w & v = Thomas
DON’T YOU FEEL SMALL — written by Edge, vocals = Hayward, Thomas, Pindar, Lodge
TORTOISE AND THE HARE — w & v = Lodge
IT’S UP TO YOU — w & v = Hayward
MINSTREL’S SONG — w & v = Lodge
DAWNING IS THE DAY — w & v = Hayward
MELANCHOLY MAN — w & v = Pinder
THE BALANCE — writers Edge & Thomas, vocals Pinder

[Fman99]

Fun House is a good record to have coming out your windows on Halloween.

It's a terrific soup of long traxx, with the Stooges' signature attack on the high end. Really bends the needle and puts your equipment and ears at risk if you set the level before the guitars come in.

I always thought that the Stooges were a weak pick for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as their rhythm section was really sloppy, Iggy's solo legacy is much larger, and they only had three albums, but man, I dig all three albums, back to front.

The way "Dirt" plods along like a creepy Doors track, it makes you think of how young Iggy was terrified he'd get called out by critics as having a voice so simultaneously derivative of Jim Morrison (on the low end) and Mick Jagger (on the high) that they'd name him Jim Jagger or Mick Morrison. But Ron Asheton's guitar part and solo are better than anything Robby Krieger ever laid down.

First I'm hearing of this track. I like this sound. Going to listen to more of the Stooges at work tomorrow. Thanks for sharing.

[Fman99]

Don't know the Moody Blues album cited here but I am a big fan of the other 3 most recently shared (Stevie Wonder, CCR, and Traffic). I've listened to all of them end to end many times.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

After a thin summer so far (we’ve had just three entries in the last 2-1/2 months) July 25th of a half century ago brings us a two-fer.


JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE — TRAFFIC, Released July 25, 1970

What originally started out as a Steve Winwood solo project turned into a comeback album for TRAFFIC as he brought former members Chris Wood (woodwinds) & Jim Capaldi (drums & lyrics) back to make
it a group project, the first since the band had parted ways in late 1968 after just two albums (a third consisting of leftover material and live recordings was released in the interim). Only itinerant guitarist
Dave Mason from the original TRAFFIC’ers (he had already left the band after both their first and second albums) failed to make the return.
Only six cuts on the album although four of the six topped six minutes, a fact which led to critical comments about the absence of Mason’s songwriting giving license to Winwood’s tendencies towards excess.

All songs written by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi except where noted

GLAD (S. Winwood)
FREEDOM RIDER
EMPTY PAGES
STRANGER TO HIMSELF
JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE (Traditional, arr by Winwood)
EVERY MOTHER’S SON

Streamed BARLEYCORN yesterday. Pretty top-heavy LP as I don't know if its possible to beat the energetic jazz-folk of the opener and next 2 tracks but those 3 alone make it a fine listen and at volume

[Frayed Knot]

Don't know the Moody Blues album cited here but I am a big fan of the other 3 most recently shared (Stevie Wonder, CCR, and Traffic). I've listened to all of them end to end many times.

The Moody Blues are definitely a one of those ‘Your Mileage May Vary’ type of bands.
Their debut in 1964, which included future ‘WING’ Denny Laine on guitar & vocals, was consistent with the times meaning it was very British Invasion-y sounding including the hit ‘GO NOW’



But the follow-up album didn’t come for another three years and only after wholesale personnel changes were made as Laine and others gave way to Justin Hayward and John Lodge who would go on to
assume the guitar & bass plus the bulk of the writing and singing. By the time they released the second album the band had a completely different sound, one which was much more art-y and space-y
complete with lots of instrumentation (including regular use of flute by holdover Ray Thomas), frequent use of strings and synths, plus the occasional spoken word interludes thrown in.
That second LP, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, was the first in a string of seven albums over five years which formed the backbone of their R&R HoF resume. The band then disappeared again only to reappear
six years later (1978) at which point their middle-age-ness resulted in more of a Lite-FM-ish vibe, kind of like CHICAGO in that sense.

QUESTION was their bigger hit from this album.

[Frayed Knot]

ERIC CLAPTON — ERIC CLAPTON, Released August 16, 1970

Clapton, by his own admission, spent much of his early years in the music scene preferring to be just about anyplace other than where he was at that moment. So after years of looking for his
particular niche while lurching between The Yardbirds, Cream, John Mayhall’s Bluesbreakers. Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominoes, this was the first album for Clapton strictly under his own
name although many of the musicians and writers from the Dominoes album were with him for this one as well. Among others the record, which was recorded back in late ’69 and the early part
of 1970 though not released until August, includes contributions by Delaney Bramlett, Bonnie Bramlett, Stephen Stills, Leon Russell, Bobby Whitlock, Rita Coolidge, and Sonny Curtis

SLUNKY — written by Delaney Bramlett and Eric Clapton
BAD BOY — Bramlett, Clapton
LONESOME AND A LONG WAY FROM HOME — Bramlett, Leon Russell
AFTER MIDNIGHT — J. J. Cale
EASY NOW — Clapton
BLUES POWER — Clapton, Russell

BOTTLE OF RED WINE — Clapton
LOVIN' YOU LOVIN' ME — Bramlett, Clapton
TOLD YOU FOR THE LAST TIME — Bramlett, Steve Cropper
DDON'T KNOW WHY — Bramlett, Clapton
LET IT RAIN — Bramlett, Clapton





STAGE FRIGHT — THE BAND, Released August 17, 1970

I recently heard an assessment by Bruce Springsteen who said that The Band had, not one, but Three voices in the band who could have been lead singers anywhere else. I tend to hear Danko as a
more specialized voice that worked for certain types of songs. But I get his point as Helm and Manuel could sing the hell out of anything so, at worst, it was a five-man band with 2-1/2 lead singers.

Produced by the group itself for the first time with veteran English producer Glyn Johns and 22 y/o up-and-comer Todd Rundgren listed as the mixing and recording engineers. This, their third studio
album, saw Robbie Robertson taking over the lion’s share of the writing credits, a trend which would continue on later releases and eventually cause money/jealousy fights down the road.

STRAWBERRY WINE — Written by Helm & Robertson, Lead Vocals by Helm
SLEEPING — Robertson, Manuel; V = Manuel
TIME TO KILL — Robertson; V = Danko, Manuel
JUST ANOTHER WHISTLE STOP — Manuel, Robertson; V = Manuel
ALL LA GLORY — Robertson; V = Helm

THE SHAPE I'M IN — Robertson; V = Manuel
THE W.S. WALCOTT MEDICINE SHOW — Robertson; V = Helm, Danko
DANIEL AND THE SACRED HARP — Robertson; V = Helm, Manuel
STAGE FRIGHT — Robertson; V = Danko
THE RUMOR — Robertson; V = Danko, Helm, Manuel

[batmagadanleadoff]

ERIC CLAPTON — ERIC CLAPTON, Released August 16, 1970

Clapton, by his own admission, spent much of his early years in the music scene preferring to be just about anyplace other than where he was at that moment....


STAGE FRIGHT — THE BAND, Released August 17, 1970

Ironically, where Eric Clapton wanted to be, more than anywhere else, during this period, was guitaring it for The Band.

[Fman99]

While not as strong as the first two Band albums, there are a number of excellent songs on "Stage Fright." I am partial particularly to "The Rumor" and "Sleeping," myself.

[batmagadanleadoff]

[Frayed Knot]

Hard to see how Hendrix's death led to rushing Marines into the middle-east conflict, but our's is not to question why.



And now back to albums for the first time in a while.

Black Sabbath's PARANOID was released on September 18, 1970
This one was discussed up the thread a bit but I'm not sure it was ever really discussed musically and it is always free to be revisited.




NEIL YOUNG — AFTER THE GOLD RUSH, September 19, 1970
Recorded more or less contemporaneously with the CSNY ‘Deja Vu’ project released earlier in the year, this third solo album by Neil Young was only partially backed by longtime backing band Crazy Horse.
In addition to backing vocals by Stephen Stills on the album, the then 18 y/o D. C. area musician Nils Lofgren was recruited to fill in on piano.

TELL ME WHY
AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
ONLY LOVE CAN BREAK YOUR HEART
SOUTHERN MAN
TILL THE MORNING COMES

OH, LONESOME ME (written by Don Gibson)
DON’T LET IT BRING YOU DOWN
BIRDS
WHEN YOU DANCE I CAN REALLY LOVE
I BELIEVE IN YOU
CRIPPLE CREEK FERRY





SANTANA — ABRAXAS, September 23, 1970
Carlos Santana - Guitars, Backing Vocals, Producer
Gregg Rolie - Keyboards, Vocals
David Brown - Bass
Michael Shrieve - Drums
Jose Areas - Percussion
Michael Carabello - Percussion

The second studio album from the group featured their usual mix of instrumentals and vocals, English and Spanish.

SINGING WINDS, CRYING BEASTS (Instrumental) — written by Michael Carabello
BLACK MAGIC WOMAN/GYPSY QUEEN — Peter Green (of Fleetwood Mac)
OYE COMO VA — Tito Puente
INCIDENT AT NESHABUR (Instrumental) — Albert Gianquinto / Carlos Santana
SE ACABO — Jose Areas
MOTHER’S DAUGHTER — Gregg Rolie
SAMBA PA TI (Instrumental) - Carlos Santana
HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER — Gregg Rolie
EL NICOYA — Jose Areas

[Fman99]

I know both of those albums inside out and upside down. Paranoid too, for that matter.