1970s

DECEMBER BOYS GOT IT BAD
Seminal Memphis rockers’ ’70s work anthologised. Rarities and unreleased tracks abound.
By JOHNNY BLACK.
BIG STAR
Keep An Eye On The Sky
Rhino 4-CD box set
www.rhino.com

I still remember the shock of hearing Big Star for the first time. All I knew about them from the grapevine was that they sounded like my all-time favourite band The Byrds and included some bloke who used to be in The Box Tops.
This latter factoid was a double-edged sword. The Box Tops had a bunch of respectable mid-60s blue-eyed soul hits (‘The Letter’, ‘Cry Like A Baby’, ‘Soul Deep’ etc) but they quickly went off the boil, so the presence of their singer Alex Chilton suggested that this might be a cynical last-ditch attempt at success from an over-the-hill spent force.
I visited Bruce’s Record Shop in Rose Street, Edinburgh’s coolest temple of rock at that time, and asked to hear a couple of tracks on their big chunky headphones. I shut my eyes to make the shop disappear as the gently descending bass intro of ‘Feel’ flooded into my ears, followed by the slightly sinister hi-hat tick and those little electric guitar stabs as precise and sharp as a surgeon’s knife. Then, just as I was settling down to drift away and bliss out, Chris Bell’s anxious shouting started, the bass kicked in and the song evolved through an energetic guitar workout into a soulful horn section shot through with a high tinkling piano.
The Byrds? Hell, no. Sure, there were angelic harmony vocals soaring over the top, but this was more like The Box Tops jamming with Little Richard in a backwoods bar halfway between Memphis and New Orleans.
Without waiting for more, I bought #1 Record, marvelled at the bizarre neon sign cover artwork on the bus home, and then stuck it on the turntable of my prized Elizabethan stereo auto-change record player. The Byrds influences became more evident with ‘The Ballad Of El Goodo’ but, truth to tell, influences was all they were. Big Star was clearly not a new Byrds of any description. This was a band that wore its influences on its sleeve but almost invariably rose above them to create something fresh and compelling.
To cut a long story short, I was hooked and I still am.
The guiding hand of the revered Alec Palao is behind this compilation, and he’s made a bold and intriguing decision about the running order. Essentially, each of the first three discs is devoted to a single Big Star album, with the attendant extras and out-takes draped around that album’s original layout.
They’re not, however, the original albums as such, because alternate mixes abound on the discs devoted to #1 Record and Radio City. I have to confess that I can’t discern huge differences in most of these mixes apart from (very welcome) improved clarity, so don’t expect to find a previously unheard bagpipe solo suddenly bursting into the middle of a favourite track – although the acoustic intro on ‘My Life Is Right’ is a welcome plus.
Disc one, then, is #1 Record plus umpteen intriguing extras. Apart from its obvious historic interest, I could live happily without ever hearing Chris Bell’s scrappy opener from ’69, ‘Psychedelic Stuff’, but the Icewater cut, ‘All I See Is You’, clearly shows that by ’70 Bell was on his way to Big Stardom.
Bell and Chilton were both, by this point, hanging out at the now legendary Ardent Studios, so it was just a matter of time before they’d come together. With that in mind, it’s fascinating to hear Chilton’s ‘Every Day As We Grow Closer’, chunks of whose chorus melody and structure would eventually re-appear in the middle of ‘Give Me Another Chance’.
Chris Bell’s pre-Big Star band Rock City offer a pleasant early treatment of ‘Try Again’ but it sounds almost as if they’d acquired their steel guitar the day before and were determined to use it come what may.
The one intrusion into #1 Record’s original running order is Bell’s lovely ‘Gone With The Light’, sandwiched between ‘Try Again’ and ‘Watch The Sunrise’. Palao’s logic is, presumably, to illustrate how ‘Gone With The Light’s acoustic guitar coda was re-cycled for ‘Watch The Sunrise’ and, of course, if it bothers you, it’s always possible to re-programme the running order.
We also get a second version of ‘The Ballad Of El Goodo’ with a different, and slightly political, set of middle eight lyrics. Then there’s ‘Country Morn’, which is ‘Watch The Sunrise’ with a wobbly vocal and completely different lyrics, plus two demos – ‘I Got Kinda Lost’ (which could have been worked up into a Big Star classic with time) and a decent enough cover of Loudon Wainwright’s ‘Motel Blues’.
Disc two focuses on Radio City. Chris Bell had unexpectedly quit the band, but Chilton took the helm with admirably ragged panache. I tend to feel that his sparse acoustic demo for ‘What’s Going Ahn’ is preferable to the completed version, whereas the rockier demo of ‘Back Of A Car’ lacks a certain sparkle. The distorted passion of Bell’s solo gem ‘I Am The Cosmos’ sits well here, as does his delicate ‘You And Your Sister’, but even these are overshadowed by Chilton’s chillingly beautiful demo of ‘Blue Moon’.
Disc three takes us into the much-disputed hinterland of my personal favourite, Third. Was Chilton completely out of it? Did it have to be pieced together from fragments? The demos presented here are certainly more coherent than the finished product, but that’s precisely why they don’t quite hit the mark. It’s only when you hit the original album versions with their wacky orchestrations and lopsided mixes that the tortured beauty of Third emerges. I’m delighted to have the demos, but I doubt I’ll play them too often.
The final disc offers 20 live cuts recorded in early ’73 at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, just after the release of #1 Record. Despite the recent loss of Bell, the band delivers a show that the chattering, apathetic audience really didn’t deserve. It’s a fascinating document, nicely recorded, with several songs from Radio City already approaching their final shape.
Regrettably, I’ve had to review this set from pre-release discs with no packaging, but I was sent the 11,000 words of superb sleeve notes, which would serve as better holiday reading than the latest Harry Potter.
If the rest of the package is as good as the music and the notes, it’s a must-have for anyone who, like me, has lived with Big Star for the past 40-odd years.

LONG TIME NO SEE
California Wunderkind EMITT RHODES’ back catalogue collected at last.
By BRIAN GREENE.
EMITT RHODES
The Emitt Rhodes Recordings 1969-1973
Hip-O-Select Limited Edition 2-CD
www.hip-oselect.com
Emitt Rhodes hails from the hallowed musical grounds of Hawthorne, California, but sounded more like Paul McCartney than Brian Wilson. The story of his recording career has a lot in common Wilson’s, though. A gifted songwriter turning away from the public eye to create music in the sanctified privacy of his own self-made recording haven – hmm, this is starting to sound familiar.
Rhodes’ four solo albums, released in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and following the all too brief life of sparkling power pop/bubblegum act The Merry-Go-Round, have all the makings of a cult phenomenon. The mystique around these records is partly due to their brilliance, partly to their longstanding inaccessibility and partly to the maddening story around them and Rhodes’s career.
The American Dream (’69), the first album to be issued as an Emitt Rhodes solo project, is an embarrassment of riches. Released to fulfill a contractual obligation with The Merry-Go-Round’s label A&M, it’s a combination of leftover M-G-R tracks and some new material Rhodes was cutting on his own. On the newer songs the playing of studio hall of famers like Hal Blaine, Don Randi, Jim Gordon and Larry Knechtel is featured but, with all due respect to those musicians, and to The Merry-Go-Round guys, this is simply a showcase for Rhodes’ pop majesty.
It’s almost pointless to single out individual tracks as highlights, because every song shines in its own way. The whole thing sounds like Rubber Soul/Revolver era McCartney fused with The Left Banke. If you twist my arm and demand I name the best few selections, I will mention the gentle psychedelic wonder of ‘Pardon Me’, the pleasantly warped baroque classic ‘Come Ride, Come Ride’, the whimsical exotica of ‘Mary Will You Take My Hand’ and the yearning closer, ‘Til the Day After.’
1970’s Emitt Rhodes – the first of three records he would release on ABC/Dunhill – is where things started to get a little strange. Rhodes built a crude recording studio in his parents’ garage in Hawthorne, and he taught himself to become a serviceable player of a variety of instruments (he’d been a drummer in The Palace Guard prior to forming The Merry-Go-Round). He basically became a studio animal and a musical shut-in. Rhodes’ transition into hermit had no ill effects on his music initially. If anything, he improved on the song craftsmanship and graceful performance he’d already shown himself capable of.
The sound here is a little heavier than The American Dream, coming off more like Badfinger than The Monkees. ‘With My Face On The Floor’ has to be one of the freshest, most charming pop tracks to open an album. ‘Long Time No See’ marries a perfect vocal melody with some thick guitar, and has an overall heavy sound that’s reminiscent of late-era Beatles. ‘Fresh As A Daisy’ could easily be a Chris Bell-penned contribution to Big Star’s first album. You could stop at the end of the first side and declare this record a masterpiece. But then ‘Live Till You Die’ cues up, and that might be the best song of all. An aching ballad that calls to mind The Merry-Go-Round’s signature song ‘Live’, both lyrically and musically, it’s pop perfection by a guy who seems able to pull off these gems effortlessly.
That’s where the problems began.
ABC and Rhodes’ management seemed to consider him some kind of music-making machine. The label created – and the management advised Rhodes to agree to – a ridiculous contract that demanded a new album every six months. Rhodes was then a sensitive soul who needed time, space and trust to create his pop wonders; instead he got a label who soon began suing him for not churning out product quickly enough.
The strain of his relations with ABC, as well as his state of his mind as he worked in this internalised mode, started to show through on Mirror (’71). The lyrics are angst-ridden and foreboding, with their tone of ultimate aloneness, futile searches for personal safety and “dreams of torment”. Musically Rhodes continued in the dense, chunky, power pop vein he’d established on the previous record but the baroque stylings he worked to such perfection all but vanished. Mirror is not without its highlights: ‘Better Side Of Life’ is a dreamy, existential ballad that wouldn’t be out of place on Badfinger’s Straight Up album and ‘Golden Child of God’ is a spiritual lament with an effectively haunting sound and feel. And while there’s nothing on this record you would call weak, it has to be said that it doesn’t quite stand up to what Rhodes had come up with in The Merry-Go-Round and the prior two solo albums.
If the title of the album Farewell to Paradise (’73) doesn’t tell the story of where Rhodes’ head was at that time, the sleeve photo does. Rhodes, who had always sported a clean, boyishly handsome look up to this point, is bearded, solemn and tired-looking. And if the title and cover aren’t proof enough of Rhodes’s malaise, this line from his sleeve note is: “Someone said something about the world stepping aside when a man knew what he wanted. I’ve known for some time and the world hasn’t made it any easier for me.”
Quality-wise, this is easily the weakest of the four albums. Rhodes at his worst was still musically interesting, still worth listening to, but the songs just aren’t there on this record. Where the more downcast material on Mirror had a plaintive beauty about it, on this set they’re just plain weary. The bad business with his label, and the pressures and discouragement that situation created for him, caught fully up with Rhodes and had an ill effect on his songwriting and delivery.
After his fourth solo album Rhodes declared enough was enough and has not released any new material since. His records have become collectors’ items treasured by baroque pop/power pop/psych bubblegum crate-diggers for decades.
What a treasure to finally have all four albums in one set.

ERIC BURDON
Mirage
Esoteric CD
www.cherryred.co.uk
Recorded in San Francisco in late 1973 and early ’74 and originally conceived as the soundtrack for a feature film in which Burdon himself was set to star in until United Artists had a change of heart and withdrew funding for the project, this is the first ever release in any format of a previously lost chapter in the discography of the then exiled former Animals front man.
With a double album’s worth of material in the can it was originally intended the album would eventually see the light of day on Atlantic but ultimately the project was put on ice and would remain so for the next 35 years. Appropriately given that the title track features lyrics written by Jimi Hendrix the night he died the ghost of Jimi casts a long shadow across the album’s guitar heavy sound which compliments Burdon’s iron-lunged vocals heard at their most uncompromising on ‘River Of Blood’, ‘Driftin’’/‘Geronimo’s Last Stand’ and ‘Highway Mover’.
Grahame Bent

THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Road Trips Volume 2 Number 3: Wall Of Sound
dead.net CD
www.dead.net
The Wall Of Sound was the Dead’s 1974 touring sound system: 26,400 watts, 127 decibels, 641 speakers; as high as a two-storey building and a model of clarity and volume.
Two June shows are featured here, highlighting Iowa and Kentucky. The Iowa disc kicks off with a lovely, almost funky ‘China Cat Sunflower’ and achieves lift-off with a half-hour ‘Playing In The Band’, blazing an almost Sun Ra-like trail through the space ways, emanating light and heat, convincing us that aliens have touched down in the Iowa cornfields.
The Kentucky highlight begins with a sublime ‘Weather Report Suite’, seamlessly shifting from ecstatic jazz jam to stoner-scaring space freakout to comedown blues before easing, some 45 minutes later, into a languid and lovely ‘Stella Blue’.
Unique and thrilling stuff – the kind of thing only this band could do and one of the best Dead releases in years.
Neil Hussey

STEVE HILLAGE
Deeply Vale
Ozit-Morpheus Records 2-LP
Like Stonehenge Free Festival in the South West of England, Deeply Vale Festival is fondly remembered by those who were there in the late ’70s as the crucible of underground music in the North West of England. Recorded in an age when health and safety went no further than some bloke in tights called The Green Cross Code Man, the underground, free-living vibes shine through unhindered. You can almost smell the campfires and exotic aromas as Hillage takes to the stage and transfixes the assembled counter cultural throng.
As a document of a late ’70s Hillage gig this is of undoubted historical significance containing material from Green, Motivation Radio, L and Fish Rising. The only let down is the sound quality – akin to an early Ozric Tentacles cassette – but, nevertheless, for hardcore fans it fills a wanting gap.
Richard Allen

JERUSALEM
Jerusalem
IRON CLAW
Iron Claw
POOBAH
Steamroller
CAIN
A Pound of Flesh
All Rockadrome CDs
Rockadrome is fast becoming THE reissue label for early hard rock and metal collectors and they’ve done a superb job again with these four releases.
Ian Gillan (who produced this, their only album) described Jerusalem as “rough, raw and doomy” which is pretty much spot on. Devoid of the showy theatrics of the day (’72) the band has a stripped down rough-hewn majesty that gives them a timelessness lacking in many of their contemporaries.
Iron Claw have had several collections released before but not as handsomely as this new CD which collects together 16 demo recordings from various line-ups between ’70 and ’74. The band actually incorporated the entire first Black Sabbath album into their live shows and the Sabs influence is evident in many of the songs here; from the gloomy ‘Clawstrophobia’ to the gothic riffing on ‘Winter’. Best of all is the should-have-been-a-hit ‘Pavement Artist’, which hits all the right spots.
Poobah’s third album from ’79 is a completely over the top guitar-hero-hard-rock overload. The band’s debut had some heavy psych leanings but this had been pretty much eroded by the late ’70s. All in all, this is tremendous fun and brilliantly tasteless in its utter excess.
Cain’s debut from ’75 is a showcase for some awesome riffs and the huge lungs of front man Jiggs Lee. A couple of tracks lapse into ham-glam but when one of them is a hilarious paean to masturbation (“If the left one don’t get you the right one will”) you can’t complain too much. The album cover is truly hideous and the pictures of the band in white jump suits aren’t much better. However, when the vast majority of their material is timeless, energetic hard rock, I’m not holding it against them.
Austin Matthews
KLAATU
Solology: The Science Of The Sun
Bullseye DD
www.bullseyecanada.com
In 2005 Klaatu released Sunset, a great double CD of rarities including ‘Hope’ performed with an orchestra, along with a companion vinyl LP containing 13 additional demos and alternate takes which was even harder to get hold of. At the same time original band members John Woloschuk, Dee Long and Terry Draper came together on stage for the first time since 1982 to perform six songs at Klaatukon, the fan convention.
This new CD contains the 13 tracks from the vinyl album plus the six live tracks and great it is to have them all in one place. Of the rarities, standouts are the seven-inch edit of ‘Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Space’ and the alternate mix of ‘The Love Of A Woman’ but it’s the live tracks that are a real treat. Aided by backing vocalist Maureen Leeson the trio perform stunning versions of ‘At The End Of The Rainbow’, ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Home’, ‘Magentalane’, ‘Little Neutrino’, ‘Cherie’ and ‘All Good Things’.
Highly recommended.
Pat Curran

THE RAIDERS
Indian Reservation/Collage
Raven CD
www.ravenrecords.com.au
Two albums that find The Raiders (no longer Paul Revere & by then) just past their creative peak but before they became an all-out novelty.
Collage (1970) is a dense, interesting collection of songs. It opens with a pounding rendition of Laura Nyro’s ‘Save The Country’ and features the Mark Lindsay original ‘Just Seventeen’ – a risqué, rocked-out paean to a teenage honey – while ‘The Boys In The Band’ has an early ’70s arena rock feel. Re-recordings of ‘Gone – Movin’ On’ and ‘Tighter’ from ’67’s excellent Revolution! seem pointless.
1971’s Indian Reservation is almost all covers. The most notable of these, of course, is the chart-topping title track – the J D Loudermilk-penned native American protest anthem. The Raiders’ take on Joe South’s ‘Birds Of A Feather’ made some commercial noise as well. There are also renditions of ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’, ‘Eve Of Destruction’ and Leon Russell’s ‘Prince Of Peace’.
Some of these versions are nicely done, but by the end of the record you want to hear something that doesn’t sound like it belongs on a “Hits Of The 60s” compilation you could buy at the drugstore. The one Mark Lindsay original, ‘The Turkey’, is just that.
The set closes with two singles from the ’72 album Summer Wine. One of these, ‘Powder Blue Mercedes Queen’ is a hardly-disguised effort to trade in on Mountain’s ‘Mississippi Queen.’
Brian Greene
DAVID GOLD
Big City Suite
STAN BUTCHER
Magician
TURNING POINT
Creatures Of The Night/Silent Promise
JAMES CLARKE & STEVE GRAY
Hardcore OST
All Vocalion CDs
www.duttonvocalion.co.uk
Four new reissues from Vocalion focus on fusions of jazz, rock and funk in a various helpings to make a mash of groove.
KPM fanatics will be particularly pleased with the appearance of 1977’s Big City Suite, the last project David Gold undertook for the company. Both glitz and discomfort permeate this mini-album; the unnerving ‘Pulse Of A City’ underscores the flashy raid of ‘City Police’, before settling into the self-explanatory ‘City At Leisure’. It’s sugary and polite funk music, and the CD is nicely rounded out with 20 extra tracks of more vintage KPM, few of which have been reissued before.
Although Stan Butcher’s Magician, from ’78, was a commercially-released album, sonically it has much in common with the jazz-groove of later KPM material such as Gold. However, it stands apart from something like Big City Suite through Butcher’s obvious keen love for material on the CTI jazz label. Eumir Deodato’s influence is particularly noticeable as the jazz-funk elements here are far more overt, but there’s something a little bit po-faced about the whole album. It doesn’t have a joyful spirit to accompany its technical assertiveness, and that is such a crucial element in the best British library beat of this era.
Even more indebted to US influences are Turning Point, a bunch of jazz-rock hairballs. Their two albums, from ’77 and ’78, are a bit too Weather Report for these ears; and again, its all permeated by the feeling that everyone is jolly pleased with themselves for being so intricate and accomplished.
In contrast, the Hardcore soundtrack – a CD which also features bonus tracks from two other British ’70s sex films, Exposé and Let’s Get Laid! – was for a cheapy movie and recorded in just one day with very little preparation. The music noticeably lacks any sense of wah-wah raciness despite the film’s subject matter – it could quite easily be for a documentary on Stevenage instead (but I suppose that’s British porn for you).
Nevertheless, it’s worth it for the 11-minute ‘The Tension Mounts’ – and goodness knows what that title could imply – a richly-polished, multi-faceted classical piece that seduces with its featherlight touch.
Jeanette Leech