Late 60s Detroit is a place that exists best in my imagination. I picture it as a city where it was normal to see the odd Motown star strolling into the studio at 2648 West Grand Boulevard and hear Berry Gordy's particular brand of driving soul pouring from every radio and car window. Obviously this is not the case, and Gordy himself felt that the Motor City had given him all that it could when he started the process of moving out to Los Angeles, but any place that births the music of Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, Iggy Pop and the MC5 is going to be alright by me.

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So, of course, I picture myself studying at the University of Michigan and getting the opportunity to see these great bands (and maybe even Ted Nugent) in the flesh. Late 60s Parliament must have been a pretty incredible sight as George Clinton broke away from the Motown mould to get funkier, dirtier and nastier. And quite simply cool.

Clinton was on Revilot records, home of Darrell Banks and the wonderful Debonaires, among others. After a few non-hits for The Parliaments the label dropped Clinton. He later emerged on the Invictus label and by then Parliament had become as heavy a funk band as could be heard. Their sound was influenced by The Stooges and the MC5 as Clinton said in 2016: “Oh, we played with them all the time. ...We saw that Detroit had its own version of rock 'n' roll coming out. They influenced us a lot.”

As Clinton was twisting the Motown sound the MC5 were updating rock and roll, trying to play their own sonic versions of surf tunes and R&B classics, like James Brown's I Don't Mind. To my uneducated ears, their early tracks have the sound of The Who, and you can hear that even in 1966 they have a sharp, energetic crashing sound that has that wonderful cheap mid-60s production that makes drums sound like shoe-boxes and some sort of wood block knocking out little triplets.

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Kick Out the Jams

I first started listen to the MC5 by discovering their debut, live album, Kick Out the Jams. I think most people growing up in the late 80s who were trying to understand the history of punk music were led to Kick Out the Jams. Funnily enough, I wasn't too enamoured by the record. It was alright, which is good enough for me, but often seen as a criticism nowadays. I particularly liked Rocket Reducer and album opener Ramblin' Rose with it's declaration:
”Brothers and sisters, I wanna see a sea of hands out there. I want everybody to kick up some noise. I wanna hear some revolution... Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are going to be the problem or whether you are going to be the solution! You must choose, brothers, you must choose. It takes five seconds - five seconds of decision, five seconds to realise your purpose here on the planet. It takes five seconds to realise that it's time to move, it's time to get down with it! Brothers, it's time to testify. And I want to know - are you ready to testify? Are you ready? I give you a testimonial. The MC5!"

Back in the USA

The MC5's second album is called Back in the USA. It's a mixed bag for me, because their covers don't really work. Let's me be honest, I have never heard a version of Tutti Frutti that works, other than the original, of course, and on this one Rob Tyner's voice just cannot carry the song. The tracks the band write are all pretty good, and for me the stand out tracks are Call Me Animal, The American Ruse (this is what 3-chord garage rock should sound like) and The Human Being Lawnmower.

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But what I want to discuss is the third album as it heads towards its 55th birthday

High Time

Sister Anne

This blasts into existence with a deep opening chord, followed by a riff that leads into a great rock'n'roll groove that drops into that wonderful genre of songs that describe some mysterious woman, slowly giving us more and more information about “every man's saviour”. The harmonica (Rob Tyner) screams along after a superb 'Sonic' Smith solo. The song wails like a ramshackle gospel chorus stopping but not stopping, as the riff bursts out at the end, a choir of backing singers repeating "She's my Sister Anne" over a feedback driven collapse. Out of the crumbling collapse marches a band of trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, tuba and bass drum.

Baby Won't Ya

This one snarls out of a riff that the rock bands of the mid to late seventies would have loved. It's clear that this album is less political than the earlier stuff, but for sheer entertainment it wins for me. The chorus of this one apes Dylan's Baby Let Me Follow You Down. The twin guitars of Fred Smith and Wayne Kramer twist around each other perfectly in the solo, building to the final verse and another run through the chorus. The song becomes choppier and choppier, with everyone fighting for space as the song slowly fades out.

Miss X

A Wayne Kramer piano riff, copied by the guitar leads out this anthemic track that Kramer himself wrote, which is an undiscovered mid-70s classic rock track. Actually it feels like very atypical MC5 stuff, and I can imagine any fans of the band from the early days feeling a bit let down by this one, which seems like a template for Guns 'n' Roses and a millions other radio friendly rock bands This could have easily been a hit, but it seems like no singles were released from this record.

Gotta Keep Movin'

Back in the land of garage rock and roll here, 3 chords Mouse and the Traps like groove, touching on the political in a simplistic way

Presidents, priests and old ladies too
They'll swear on the Bible
What's best for you
Atom bombs, Vietnam, missiles on the moon
And they wonder why their kids are shootin'
Drugs so soon

It sounds like it would be quite at home on one of the Nuggets sets and it wins with a delightful solo after 2 and a half minutes that then brings in the second guitar as they fight it out to the end over the top of Dennis Thompson's rolling drum fills.

Future/Now

With its bouncing, moody bass line this one feels more like it's rooted in the heavier supergroups like Cream and rather than being derivative it demonstrates how versatile the band were. And this track enjoys another monster drum pattern from Thompson, even if they are recorded to sound a bit dull.
The guitars dance left and right through the opening 3 minutes. A shout of “The key to the mystery” by Tyner brings everything to a calm stop. Reverb-heavy guitars play quiet little patterns into the more psychedelic section of the song. Tyner's voice clearly warping through a Leslie cabinet or some other processing as it washes in and out. All of this is designed to demonstrate the birth of a new future:

A strange new day for the people of the Earth
Traditions, burned away by the rising sun

It's a bit of a weak ending to a song that starts so well, and sounds like an unfinished idea of Tyner's to me.

Poison

A staccato riff pushes the band through another great rock track. The real star here is Michael Davis's bass that bounces under a track that sounds like it would not be out of place on one of the Norman Whitfield experimental soul-rock tracks for The Undisputed Truth. This has one of my favourite guitar solos on the record, blistering out of the speakers after a minute and a half. Tyner brings everything down quietly after that, which works more successfully than Future/Now because of how the anger returns with a final verse.

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Over and Over

The MC5 channeled The Who on this brilliant track. Electric and acoustic guitars vie for space after a neatly picked, wobbly opening and another bass riff from Davis. Tyner sings this well, setting out his frustrations with technology and revolution when views through the lens of real life where “the cat next door spends all his time trying to think up new antisocial crimes” and “I was working in a factory, over and over, just trying to make it satisfactory”. It's not a Springsteen like tale of working the factory floor but more like another of songwriter Smith's free association of rhyming ideas.

The cop on the street wants us down on our knees
The president says we’ve got to have peace

The whole thing works because it rocks it riffs so well and the Townsend-like clangs of the acoustic guitars drive the whole thing on incessantly.

Skunk (Sonicly Speaking)

Drums, drums and more drums. The "sonicly2 speaking" sounds thunder out at the start of this, Thompson's drums joined but an array of percussion for a good minute until Smith and Kramer hop on board with a great garage rock riff. It's more 3-chord stuff that the MC5 could do so well. This is the kind of music you can imagine just killing on stage. The drums rumble along non-stop and allow the rest of the band to open up properly. More dumb but fun lyrics carry the song along until out of nowhere a horn section appears, neatly bookending things after the horns of Sister Anne. These horns feel more free association, a touch of Albert Ayler's Music is the Healing Force of the Universe rather than the marching band sound. Funnily enough, Ayler started life off with a marching band sound which opened up to more freedom as time went by, and the horns on this album seem to do the same.

I haven't found any of this music on any bootlegs, even though the band continued to tour for a good year after this before breaking up in 1972. There were reunions (although all after Tyner had died) and I'm not a big fan of these things. According to wikipedia Wayne Kramer was leading some sort of "MC50" tour with him and a “rock stalwart” that surely no-one needs to see.

Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!

About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/george-clinton-lays-it-all-down/Content?oid=2441830

In 1975 the Vietnam War finally came to and end, although in the same part of the world the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh leading to the “killing fields” of the Cambodian genocide. Conflict was ever present in the world, a civil war took place in Angola as they fought for independence from Portugal, but at the same time there was positive change: Franco’s regime died with him, and Spain began the transition to democracy, and other countries such as Suriname, Mozambique and Papua New Guinea gained their independence.

In what makes for an interesting contrast to where we are now, the UK voted for EEC membership, with 67% support. Two important acts came into law, the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts, trying to bring some form of equality to the country, but at the same time unemployment exceeded 1 million and the IRA were still running a bombing campaign in England.

Some of rock’s greatest album were released this year, such as Blood on the Tracks, Wish You Were Here, Born to Run, Horses and Physical Graffiti. At the same time disco was on the rise, already deeply embedded in the clubs of the biggest cities and now becoming ever present on the charts.

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The top twenty-five

25: Fatback Band - (Are You Ready) Do the Bus Stop

The Bus Stop was a popular street dance in many US cities, and the Fatback band jumped on the popularity to release a funky proto-disco track. It is made by that deeply funky opening bass line that runs through the song, rumbling and grooving with cool. The horns have a Kool and the Gang feel to them, as the band chant out instructions to a song made for dancing.

24: Carl Malcolm - Fattie Bum Bum

A great hit of nostalgia on a song that clearly defines this list as personal favourite. Malcolm’s biggest hit was a cover, the original was by Alton Ellis, and it was a song I heard regularly growing up. It wouldn’t make many people’s lists but I love the ringing steel drums and the languid beat.

23: The Four Seasons - December, 1963 (Oh What a Night!)

Originally written about the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933, the band turned it into a cool love song, full fo disco energy using Judy Parker’s lyrics. A UK number one, it is buoyant and feels instantly recognisable. It features drummer Glen Polci singing, not Frankie Valli (although his voice is recognisable on the bridge). It’s a great example of a well polished disco groove.

22: Parliament - Chocolate City

In contrast, this is a skeletal and freaky funk groove, using census data to argue that over time the US would see Black Americans in political power. It is done through a slowly building groove that bursts into life during the funky “Gainin’ on ya!” chorus. Bernie Worrell throws out some cool piano and Bootsy holds the bass heavy and funky while Michael Brecker blasts a jazzy sax solo. Later in the year Parliament would put out some of their greatest work, building on this groove.

21: John Lennon - Stand By Me

Working with Phil Spector, Lennon recorded a number of his favourite rock and roll songs in 1974 and 75. This single, his last hit before he took up the life of house husband, staying at home and raising his son Sean, is a great version of the Ben E. King classic. Lennon had an incredible voice, seemingly coming from nowhere, and he uses it so well here, cracking and straining but full of love for the material. It is different to the original, and the shuffling guitar chords give it a raw, live feel.

20: Television - Little Johnny Jewel

Skeletal take on punk by the fabulous Television. It is post-punk before punk and a superb example of Art Rock. Tom Verlaine’s guitar weave and whines as the band snap out the chords. His voice is wild and weedy, but absolutely perfect. The two parts of the song formed the A and B sides of the single, which slows and accelerates at various stages of the track. Billy Ficca’s drumming is incredible, never showy but adventurous and exciting. This is what the best music of the late 70s sounded like.

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19: Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion

A very different band to Television, Aerosmith symbolised the excess of the hard rock world, with the Toxic Twins of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the forefront of it all. But on Sweet Emotion that create something mystic and magical. It opens with that chiming and ringing bassline from songwriter Tom Hamilton as Perry’s guitar talk box whispers “Sweet Emotion” over the top. The song opens into the chorus, funky and cool, before shifting into a sassy set of verses featuring some excellent drumming by Joey Kramer. It’s funky piece of hard rock, sounding like nothing else.

18: David Essex - Hold Me Close

More gentle and enjoyable pop magic from Essex, although his cheery, cockney smile would soon be nudged out by the rise of punk music, to my ears at least. This is a simple and perfectly written piece of pop music, his second number one in the UK, and it is made memorable by the whistling flutes of the musical motif, perhaps played on synths, I’m not sure. That doesn’t matter, it’s a great pop song.

17: Bruce Springsteen - Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

1975 saw the release of Springsteen massive Born to Run album. The second track on that album and the second single released from it was this funky little track that tells the story of the formation of the E Street Band. “I still have no idea what it means. But it’s important,” Springsteen said of the cool title. This is the classic E Street Band line up, and Roy Bittan’s piano dances delightfully throughout, adding clever notes behind the lyrics. Miami Steve Van Zandt created the horn arrangements for the song, filling it up with soul, and making it clear that this band were no ordinary rock group.

16: Funkadelic - Better By The Pound

I am hooked on the captivating wah-wah guitars that funk throughout this track, adding a snake-like groove to the tune. Eddie Hazel is in full control of his guitar here, and sings with Garry Shider on the song, who is in great voice. The song allows George Clinton to push his own vies on society, and how pleasure is not necessarily the be all and end all:

Feeling good is the bait, Satan uses to fish for you and me
Comfort is the poison when it's the spirit he wants to kill

By the end he is reminding us that being free is the most important thing one can achieve: he who is truly free, free from the need to be free.

15: ABBA - SOS

The Swedish band continued to put out stunning singles during 1975. This one has a drama filled and emotive opening, before a drum and guitar drive us into that fantastic chorus. I get a shiver down my spine when they sing “When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on…” moving the D♭ and E♭ up to the F chord. It is effervescent pure pop music, a top ten hit in seventeen countries.

14: The Walker Brothers - No Regrets

Their first new single for seven years came after Scott Walker felt that his solo career had totally derailed. He didn’t write any songs for the subsequent album, the band relying on a range of songwriters. No Regrets is a warm and powerful piece of country pop, and it is perfect for Scott’s deep, expressive voice. The strings dance and swoop behind the chorus, and the acoustic guitars ring and chime with beauty. It’s a sad and delicate song, written by Tom Rush, and it gave The Walker Brothers their last real chart success. Of course, they followed it up with some of Scott’s most remarkable songwriting. (Look out for a later article).

13: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me)

This joyous piece of glam rock dances into life with a wonderful acoustic guitar riff before Harley sings with his best Dylan impression and the band throw in doo-wop style backing vocals. It’s lyrically dense but delightfully light and stunningly infectious. Jim Cregan plays an amazing acoustic guitar solo and the whole track feels like some amazing outtake from Abbey Road filtered kicked around by a platform shoe.

12: ABBA - Mamma Mia

The journey from a band I didn’t like as a child to one appearing twice in a single list is complete with this incredible pop song. Just from the clockwork opening I am hooked. Bjorn’s guitar wails and then the vocals leap in, charming and full of sweet energy. The “just one look” middle section is incredible, just full of captivating hooks. The song is a collection of superb parts that add to make a perfect whole. In fact, the chorus is the weakest part, and it is still great. I love how it seems to soar in the section after the chorus, pulling you in and getting you up out of your seat.

11: Roxy Music - Love Is The Drug

They were such a different band from the one that appeared in 1973, and Love is the Drug is a slinky, quasi-disco soul track, with a thudding, liquid bass and snapping guitar chords. Lyrically full of daft moments (“Late that night I parked my car/Staked my place in the singles bar” and “Lumber up, limbo down/The locked embrace, stumble round”) but it is a fabulous pop track, weaving like a snake in the undergrowth, the band as sharp as a knife and having a great time. I love it. You can guess the rest.

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The top ten

10: Simon & Garfunkel - My Little Town

This song saw Paul Simon working with Art Garfunkel for the first time since 1970, and the pair create a magical piece of music with a dark and bitter song about hating the little town where the narrator grew up. It opens with some descending piano notes and kicks into a shuffling beat with a cool affection. The pair sing like they always did, voices locked perfectly together, Garfunkel’s voice soaring high and Paul’s cool and relaxed. The song is complex and clever, feeling like a wistful look back at a childhood until you realise the song is full of bitter hatred to the town. There’s a romantic and soaring horn section that gives way for the incredible chorus: “Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town”. It feels like such a mature and powerful idea for a song because of how it is executed. It’s not simplistic but poetic, dramatic and full fo soul.

9: AC/DC - It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock & Roll)

What an opening riff! Malcolm Young cranks out a simple but stunningly catchy groove on the A chord and then Angus comes in, rolling his riff over and over and the song is up and running. Bon Scott belts out his story of the horrors of being in a band as the group build up the funky rock until we get to the super chorus. It is a hard rock masterpiece, given an incredible extra boost by a growing and whining bagpipe solo by Scott. The pipes and the guitar have a call and response section before Angus starts to properly throw out an amazing guitar solo. I love the moment when everything dies down and Malcolm comes back in with that crunching groove, Phil Rudd’s drum thudding madly in the background. It is an angry blast of rock and roll energy that gallops to a sweaty fade.

8: David Bowie - Young Americans

Ever changing, 1975 saw Bowie’s “plastic soul” period and he kicked it off with this glamorous Philly soul groove, powered by David Sanborn’s cool saxophone. Singing about a newly-wed couple who don’t know if they really like each other, Bowie’s voice is at it’s very best, expressive and cool. He is supported by some delightful backing vocals, featuring a young Luther Vandross amongst them. Although it is a swinging seventies soul track, lyrically it feels very different, full of dark and strange cut up imagery, Bowie juxtaposing the soul sound with his intelligent writing. The track seems to build with energy as it approaches the close, Bowie getting more exasperated and wild, his voice breathy and leaping. An amazing creation.

7: Roxy Music - Both Ends Burning

Inspired by the stress that the band were feelgin as they recorded their Siren album, this song is a hypnotic piece of soulful pop, featuring one of Bryan Ferry’s best vocals. Musically it looks towards the metronomic groove of disco, whilst swirling synth sounds jousting with stabs of piano, a liquid guitar groove and Andrew Mackay’s soaring saxophone. It twists and swirls, soudnign at time like the kind of new wave pop groove that the band would subsequently inspire in others. It is baroque and at times decadent, like all good pop music.

6: Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Don’t Cry No Tears

In complete contrast, this superb single is as unfussy and as direct as can be. The opening riff is quite marvellous, the twin guitars of Young and Frank Sampedro clanging out the chords, a metallic country sound that is slick and sharp. Young’s thin voice is perfect, full of sweet drama, broken and battered. It’s a set of simple chords, but as ever, Crazy Horse propel the track into another space, their gentle harmonising vocals juxtaposing with the pre-grunge guitar sounds. If I was in a band we’d cover this every night. (Badly).

5: The Rolling Stones - I Don’t Know Why (Aka Don’t Know Why I Love You)

This piece of soulful rock was recorded in 1969 on the day Brian Jones died. It is a cover of a lesser known Stevie Wonder song, and it feels ramshackle, like it could collapse at any moment. But it doesn’t. It weaves and twists and the guitars ring out Keith plays an incendiary guitar solo that Mick Taylor copies note for note a few verse later - his parts were overdubbed just before the track was finally released in 1975. The track just never stops for breath, battered and bruised, bobbing and weaving like a punch drunk fighter showing why this band could easily be the best band in the world when they wanted too.

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4: Kraftwerk - Autobahn

A ground-breaking piece of electronic music, it sounds like nothing else on this list. Trying to capture the feel of driving on the motorway, the album track was 22 minutes long, and it was sliced down to four and a half for this elegant single release. The band sing in German throughout, the synths dancing behind Ralf Hütter’s “Fahren Fahren Fahren” and it sounds alien and unique. The later part sees drum machine groove pulse, beat and shuffle, as cars horns wail and squawk. It feels wrong that such a simple song should be so good, but I am captivated by it every time I listen, the pure essence of electronic music.

The top three

3: Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (Once)

Of all the versions of this song, this is my favourite. Roadrunner (Once) is powered by acoustic guitar chords, and there’s not a single keyboard in sight. It pulses with a robotic, head nodding beat, mainly just dancing around two chords, A and D, as Richman tells of his love of the radio, and of riding in his car listening to rocka nd roll music. The Modern Lovers sing their parts with a sassy loucheness as Richman’s almost nasal voice tells its tale. This is, to me, the essence of perfect punk: simple, yet full of spiky energy, doing exactly what it wants to without fear of criticism.

2: Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

Springsteen’s behemoth of a huit single, a song he’s probably played in every concert since it was released. It’s a song that he felt had been written before, as it drips with Spector-like echoes and energies, exploding out of the stereo from the first drum beat. Springsteen screams the song, blasting out that incredible chorus as his guitar rings and bends behind him. It’s a complex tune disguised as a straightforward rocker, but nothing else sounds like it does. The Boss smiles with cool power throughout the track, and Clarence Clemons throws out a Stax soul sax solo before a dreamy middle section they gets us ready for the famous “1 2 3 4” cry that leads us into the final verse. The lyrics are full of cliches, none of which sound like cliches because the track is quite simply perfect rock music, made to sing along with, made to raise your hand to, made to love forever.

1: Donna Summer - Love To Love You Baby

Perhaps a surprising choice for my number one, but I cannot get enough of this sexually charged slice of Euro-disco, full of funky goodness and breathy magic. Donna Summer felt embarrassed at first, hoping she was recording a demo before produced Giorgio Moroder convinced her to release it as a single herself. Summer groans with sexual ecstasy throughout the song, and it sounds delightfully cool, amazingly authentic, and just perfect for the swinging fuck groove that play on. The album version stretched the idea out to 16 minutes, and I love every one of them, but the 5 minutes of the single version are enough. It so much more than the sum of its part, one of the coolest pieces of music very released.

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment!

Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!

About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

The album opens with the stunning Bop Gun (Endangered Species), a cool guitar riff squirting out before we burst into an incredibly funky track. It is just perfect from start to end. The “Bop Gun” is used to help funk defeat the Placebo Syndrome of disco and was always used to cool effect in concert. Bootsy’s bass is superb, popping and pinging with dirty energy, almost alien sounding. “I gotta get over the hump, “ they chant, cool as hell.

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On Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk (Pay Attention) we get an opening, soulless missive from Sir Nose himself: “I will never dance!” before Starchild (ie Clinton) returns from the Mothership Connection and we have a funky montage of nursery rhymes. He raps with dark style, the slinky beat a deep funk cut. The track slips and slides - “I love these meeces to pieces” - becoming a hypnotic funk groove full of Clinton’s usual obsessions: nickle bags, the “pleasure principle” and the danger of faking the funk.

Wizard of Finance is a cool R&B track, reminiscent of label mates Cameo. It has a neat funky melody that bursts in from time to time and is a sheer delight

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On side two we get the centrepiece of the album: the ten minutes of Funkentelechy, a deep funk setting out Clinton’s bizarre but brilliant view of the world and the power of funk to fight the force of evil. The horns bristle and dance, vocals almost chanted, as we get one of those remarkable ensemble P-Funk pieces: “When you’ve taken every kind of pill…” only funk is the solution. A long track, but never boring, it slides into a cool chorus sung by the whole band. I have a great memory of the band performing this at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester many years ago.

The Placebo Syndrome was Clinton’s phrase for disco, and the track itself was disco tinged, but also a swirling funk ballad with a superb, stuttering horn riff. It’s a catchy groove built around lovely keyboard themes from Bernie Worrell.

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The final track is the masterpiece. Flash Light was a top 20 US hit and made no.1 on the R&B chart. It is incredible, built on layers of Bernie’s keyboards. He plays Moog bass instead of a regular bass guitar line. The handclaps and the chanted chorus are wonderfully catchy. Fans started to bring flashlights to concerts after this (we call them torches in the UK). Never missing a trick, George started selling P-Funk flashlights at concerts but I have never even seen a picture of one.

The song just digs into your head and stays there. After almost five minutes there is a wonderful sax line from Darryl Dixon that is just scintillating.

Clinton would take this idea even further over the next few years and I’ll be writing about his next record soon.

Here are my previous posts on this period.

Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!

About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

The tri-fold record sleeve is a delight, featuring a fantastic photo of Stevie as well as lyrics. As Stevie liked to do at the time, there is some braille text which Wikipedia explains

⠄⠁⠃⠧ ⠯ ⠔⠎⠊⠙⠑ ⠮ ⠑⠍⠃⠕⠎⠎⠫ ⠎⠟⠥⠜⠑ ⠊⠎ ⠮ ⠳⠞⠇⠔⠑ ⠷ ⠁ ⠋⠇⠪⠻ ⠾ ⠧⠑⠔⠫ ⠇⠂⠧⠑⠎⠲
⠠⠌⠑⠧⠊⠑ ⠠⠺⠕⠝⠙⠻⠄⠎ ⠄⠚⠳⠗⠝⠑⠽ ⠄⠐⠹ ⠠⠮ ⠠⠎⠑⠉⠗⠑⠞ ⠠⠇⠊⠋⠑ ⠷ ⠠⠰⠏⠇⠁⠝⠞⠎⠲
”Above and inside the embossed square is the outline of a flower with veined leaves. Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants.”

At times it is ambient and hypnotic, opening with the deeply portentous synth notes of Earth’s Creation, sounds swirling like the inchoate storms as the planet formed. The First Garden sways delicately, surrounded by birdsong and using a sweet folk melody from Stevie’s harmonica, a rumble of thunder leading us into the string synths of Voyage to India, ambient, warm and steeped in baroque sensibilities before shifting into more traditional Indian sounds.

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On Same Old Story we get Stevie singing for the first time. It has a simple folk melody but is tinged with his soulful touches. Lyrically, it’s almost comical, such as

For most felt it was mad to conceive
That plants thought, felt, and moved quite like we
But with instruments Bose would devise
Would take science itself by a surprise

but Stevie somehow always gets away with such silliness. It tries to put over a clear reminder that plants are living, growing things.

Venus’ Flytrap and the Bug is a jazzy piece of fun anchored by a walking bass as Stevie plays a creepy creature via his electronically processed voice - I imagine it accompanied similar visuals in the film. It is a swinging little jazz groove.

The album pulls from various world sounds, and there is a Japanese folk feel to the opening plucked string instruments of Ai No Sono, Stevie’s atmospheric church organ taking over before a children’s choir chant the words. It is surprisingly touching and full of character.

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Side two opens with Seasons and someone (Syreeta Wright? Yvonne Wright?) tells a story about a garden before the music grows into a swaying quasi-Hawaiian instrumental, the Moog bass the real star of the piece.

I love Power Flower, easily one of the best tracks on the album, moving slowly with real soul cool. Stevie sings gentle and high, using Michael Sembello’s lyrics about Pan to paint a pastoral picture. I love the way it grooves carefully and how each time he sings, “Well excuse me I have so much more to do,” it slides into the wordless “Doo, doo, doo…” section. He plays a great harmonica solo too, and the track has a lovely coda, Stevie’s layered voices repeating “Flower power, flower power…” over and over, deliciously hypnotic.

Send One Your Love was the first single, but side two has an instrumental version, a simple jazzy piece, but slight and forgettable. It is followed, however, by the magnificent Race Babbling which paved the way for the techno/house groove of the 80s. You can put this track alongside Giorgio Moroder, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk in the way it uses electronic instruments to create a hypnotic electro-groove. It blends acoustic horns with its bubbling (or babbling) synth funk. A masterpiece.

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Side Three opens with the lyric version of Send One Your Love and this works better than the instrumental. It is a love song sung with Stevie’s typical charm. He builds a clever sound with the mesh of synths and his jerky rising and falling melody.

It is a long double album, clocking in at over 80 minutes, designed to accompany a film, and yet it manages to work much better than one would expect. Outside My Window is a bouncy soul groove with a catchy “La, la, la,” hook and a great chorus that sways with poppy charm. It is followed by Black Orchid, with lyrics by Yvonne Wright. It moves with glacial care, gentle and lovely, Stevie singing with deep passion on a simple AoR tune.

The dramatic instrumental Ecclesiastes opens with a potent church organ accompanied by dramatic synth strings and then Stevie demonstrates the influence of West African sounds on Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye, the song powered by a range of incredible percussion by Ibrahim Camara and the weeping plucked strings of the Kora played by Lamine Konte.

Syreeta Wright sings the sweet Come Back as a Flower to end the side. It is a typical soul ballad from mid-70s Stevie, his piano romantic and dramatic.

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Side Four opens with a live performance of A Seed’s A Star / Tree (medley). Recorded in concert somewhere, it is a buzzing disco groove, the whole band locked into a funky rhythm. It is absolutely fabulous, full of energy and snaking into a sonic groove. Stevie throws in a quirky electronic voice before the Tree section, duetting with Tata Vega for a wonderful few moments.

The album ends gently. There’s a title track, and Stevie points to his 80s ballads with The Secret Life of Plants. There’s an instrumental called Tree that is sparse and glacial, growing slowly over its five minutes, full of atmosphere, before the record finishes with the appropriately titled Finale, a strange sounding piece making full use of his range of synth sounds. It sways through different styles, at times playful and then dramatic and moody. It becomes the overture, working through all of the pieces that had come before, a fascinating reminder of the variety found on the record.

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It is easy for this strange soundtrack to be overlooked, sitting where it does in his marvellous array of music, but it certainly requires a listen and a reevaluation.

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About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here on Mixcloud

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

After visiting a fascinating exhibition of Bob Dylan’s artwork at Castle Fine Art in Manchester I decided to finish off an article that had been bubbling around my head for months on end. Both his artwork and this album demonstrate Dylan’s ability to reflect tradition through his modern sound. Both are quite fantastic.

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Coming after his so-called “comeback album” Time Out of Mind and the brilliant blues album Love and Theft, Modern Times was a much anticipated 2006 album, a record that delves and digs into, and also steals, from traditional blues, folk and country.

It opens with Thunder on the Mountain a jaunty rock and roll track full of clever rhymes. The track references Alicia Keys, Hell’s Kitchen, the art of love and the love of god, all over a metallic rockabilly groove full of Chuck Berry licks. The song is flooded with Dylan’s magical imagery and kicks the record off with style.

Spirit on the Water is a jazzy old-time pop track. A warm love song sung in Dylan’s nasal voice. In this he seems to be updating a classic jazz standard sound and the band are as sharp as hell: George Receli lays down a relaxed beat over Danny Freeman’s liquid guitar. It’s a long track, over seven minutes, but it wraps itself around you with jazzy cool, and features Dylan’s first harmonica solo for nearly ten years.

Rollin’ and Tumblin’, with its dangling apostrophes, is a deep Delta blues. I love to hear Dylan play tracks like this. The song is credited to Dylan but it is an interpolation of a Hambone Willie Newbern track from 1929. Around this Dylan said, “My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head,” but he did not credit Newbern. Of course, as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott said, “Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn’t teach me. He just said, ‘If you want to learn something, just steal it—that’s the way I learned from Lead Belly’”. Through this song the buzzing blues guitars are delightfully cool sliding and sharp, and it shuffles forward with an infectious groove.

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When the Deal Goes Down is a fantastic country ballad, gently moving, almost whispered, over elegant guitars sounding modern and remarkably traditional at the same time. It has that classic Dylan feature, using the title as the last line of each section. At the same time it is deeply powerful, full of tender and emotive imagery. Is he singing about his love or to his god?

Someday Baby is a sharp rock and roll blues. It feels restrained but is full of power at the same time. It is Dylan as Muddy Waters, even if his breathy voice is unmistakably his. It was, in fact, based on Muddy’s Trouble No More, and it is powered by snaking twin guitars, hinting at the rolling and sliding licks of John Lee Hooker.

Workingman’s Blues #2 is a remarkable piano-led ballad. It would not be out of place as a mid-70s AoR ballad and whilst it is full of distinctive Dylan sensibilities, it shows how he could easily write a great, mature-sounding, pop track. Just imagine it sung by Scott Walker in 1976. What it isn’t, given the title, is a blues, instead full of dramatic rolling piano and snapping guitar chords.

Beyond the Horizon is Dylan recreating a country folk standard, full of swinging upright bass, brushed drums and softly chopped hollow-bodied guitars. It’s atmospheric and breezy even if it is the most lightweight track on the album. Dylan croons with a croaked gentleness.

Nettie Moore is a superb track, with thudding, echoing percussion and an undulating melody that brings the post-80s work of Tom Waits to mind. “This is coherent, not a bunch of random verses,” Dylan said, and he tells a cinematic narrative of love and loss over gently picked guitar, the song full of space and beauty.

The Levee’s Gonna Break is a jitterbug blues and although it is marked as written by Dylan it is his interpolation of another 1929 blues, this one by Kansas Joe McCoy. Like all of the tracks on the record, it avoids being flashy or ornate, simply showcasing the perfectly precise talents of the band. It absolutely swings from the first moment and drags you in. The song weaves around themes but keeps hinting at the impact of the Mississippi Flood of 1927. It is full of love, full of strangely mundane observations, and relentlessly cool.

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Final track Ain’t Talking is a marvellous minor blues with a deeply cinematic and drama-filled narrative, The menacing bass is a delight, anchoring the perfect chord choices. Hints and whispers of viola run in the background. It is the longest track on the album, a dusty, western masterpiece, expansive and tinged with sunset.

The mature, post-millennium Dylan feels like he belongs to the whole of time, his musical fingers stretching back to the birth of the blues and bringing it forward, and, amazingly, his paintings do the same.

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Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!

About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

I have always been clear about my favourite period of their music, basically the time when Mick Taylor was in the band with a little before and after, and you will see that reflected in my choices.

But what choices! I think it is fair to say that at their best they are neck and neck with the very best bands in history, and this collection shows their versatility and their breadth. It is a shame they couldn’t prolong the magic after the middle of the seventies and onwards. I’m sure you’ll disagree in the comments.

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My twenty-five favourite songs by the Stones

25: Who’s Driving Your Plane?

The B-side to Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows? This is also a “question mark” of a song, and it is a thundering and clanging 12-bar blues number built around some wonderful piano playing by Jack Nitzsche. Brian Jones wails his harmonic as Keith Richards throws out sliding, snaking guitar. The band grind out a magnificent piece of music, the song thunders like a juggernaut, seemingly out of control, swinging and swaggering to a calamitous ending. It shows the band playing perfect blues but giving us a glimpse of that glittering, wayward style that they perfected in the early 70s.

24: Get Off My Cloud

Opening with a stylish drum line from Charlie Watts, this track is a simple three chord groove, swaying to the sound of Brian Jones’ lead guitar and Keith’s crunching chords over Bill Wyman’s solid bassline. Jagger is full of American drawl, sneering and angry, sick of the people pushing themselves into his atmosphere. It’s full of pop energy, with a simply stunning and catchy chorus, but it’s also razor sharp garage rock, loud and dirty.

23: Let’s Spend the Night Together

Another fantastic guest performance from Jack Nitzsche kicks this track into life, and suddenly we’re into a poppy explosion of energy as Jagger sings this solicitous and saucy number. In 1967 “let’s spend the night together” was still a scandalous thing to say, almost as naughty as that dirty bass line groove thrown out by Keith Richards (no Bill Wyman on this recording). Two local London coppers guest as well, tapping their truncheons together in the quiet middle section (allegedly to keep them from looking around at the drugs in the studio). This is a great rocker, but it’s full of sweetly melodic backing vocals too, which makes it such a pop classic.

22: Ventilator Blues

What the hell…? I was not ready for this the first time I played Exile on Main St.. Found in the middle of side three, it creeps out of the shadows with a dirty, bluesy riff that slides up and down the fretboard. The only song that features Mick Taylor as an official songwriter, and he delivers that incredible clockwork riff before the band burst in. Nicky Hopkins plays some superb piano and Charlie plays a deeply cool shuffling drum line. Jagger is trying his best to emulate his Delta blues heroes, and although he will never have a gravelly timbre of Howlin’ Wolf, he is in great voice. Add in Bobby Keys and Jim Price on saxophone and trumpet and you have a magnificent, swampy blues number that swells, bobs and weaves with dark energy. Something quite magical.

21: Wild Horses

The Stones marvellous and tender slice of country rock, all powered by Keith Richards open-tuned 12 string guitar and Mick Taylor adding Nashville tuning guitar lines. It is a dramatic and plaintive song, almost creating alt.Country as it stretches into life. Whilst the guitars are superb, and Jagger sings a with a perfect, lazy cool, for me the track is made by Charlie’s incredible drumming1. It was such a good facsimile of exotic, cosmic country music that Gram Parsons copied the lyrics and chords into his notebook so the Flying Burrito Brothers could cover it on their second album

20: Out of Time

In total contrast, Out of Time is the Stones’ best soul song. With some Motown-influenced marimba kicking the track off, it rumbles with a Northern Soul beat, building to a catchy sing-along chorus that soars and shines. Musically it is cleverly intricate, with almost Spanish guitar lines, and Brian Jones’ marimba chiming in the background. I particularly love the second version I’ve chosen here, with backing vocals by a group of unknown female singers and some stunning and swooping strings that were designed for Chris Farlowe’s cover version; it adds to the sassy soul of the track.

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19: Let It Bleed

Groaning into life the title track from their 1969 album is an uptempo acoustic blues track that barrels along with Ian Stewart’s bluesy piano licks, whilst Jagger has great fun with some risque and delightfully silly lyrics. Keith is playing all the guitars here, adding some stylish stabs of slide guitar as the song builds and builds. The beat is a shuffling, rumbling groove, and each verse circles around to the drunken chorus as Jagger and Richards sing, “We all need someone to lean on…” It sounds like it is on the verge of collapse at any moment, which is what I think I love about it. The track gallops to its dirty ending, “You can come all over me!” and the band bring it home with style.

18: 19th Nervous Breakdown

One of their best garage rockers, this song explodes with its superb riff, crunching out high up the fretboard before the drums roll in and Jagger starts to sing his tale of a spoilt life being wasted. It’s a great character assassination. The chorus is fantastic, building and building, as the guitars ring out in the background. Keith’s fuzz guitar is dirty and angry, whilst Brian adds some superb touches throughout. It’s snarling and edgy but also louche and aloof at the same time. A remarkable record.

17: No Expectations

The band met as fans of the blues and played blues and R&B from the start. In 1968 the recorded Beggars Banquet, a fantastic record of roots, country and blues rock. Sitting early on side one is this stunning slide blues. Simple in every way, it is delicate and perfect. Everyone involved is on top form. Jagger sings in his Americanised drawl, gentle and touching, cleverly referencing Robert Johnson with his lyrical choices, and Keith plays cool acoustic guitar. Bill Wyman’s bass sits at the back, but pushes forward at the right time and Charlie adds a range of percussion, including gently tapped claves. Nicky Hopkins guests on the piano, adding some wonderful Charlie Brown touches. But the heart of the song is Brian Jones’ incredible slide guitar, recorded just over a year before he died and really his last major contribution, flooding the songs with warm but sad blues.

16: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

The shorter single version, which omits the choir at the start, is the definitive version for me. It is a brilliant, shuffling piece of gospel rock, a stunning example of the genre. Keith’s acoustic guitar bounces between C and F throughout most of the song, and he adds snaking electric guitar touches here and there. As the songs kicks in it builds to a funky groove, powered by Jimmy Miller’s drums2 and utilising the London Bach Choir as a makeshift gospel choir. Rocky Dijon adds congas, maracas and tambourine and, coupled with the infectious handclaps, it helps the song build to that stunning finale, as everything bursts into double time and it reels off into fantasy land as it fades. Brutal and marvellous.

15: Citadel

For a band that influenced so many garage rock bands of the sixties, little of their work has that gritty garage sound, but Citadel demonstrates what they could do with a dirty, grungy riff. The riff is simple, three chords: E - A - D that come back to E but are played with an echoing snap. The song feels trippy and psychedelic, even if it is partly about Candy Darling, the transgender actress from Andy Warhol’s Factory. It is all about that fantastic riff, so catchy and cleverly repetitive, just about in tune, just about in one piece. After about 2 and a half minutes a short, bluesy, string bending mini-solo is added, helping the song fade and disappear.

14: All Down the Line

Opening side four of Exile on Main St. All Down the Line is a blistering electric rocker, built around the twin guitars of Richards and Taylor. What really makes it is the way the horns build up and come in to the track and so this uptempo groover gets filled with a soulful feel, especially when Kathi McDonald adds her cool backing vocals. Taylor’s guitar solo is masterful, demonstrating his incredible talents, and the song is a ramshackle blues-rock track - the band at their very best.

13: Country Honk / Honky Tonk Women

The original version was the acoustic Country Honk, with Keith playing his country blues on an open tuned acoustic guitar as Byron Berline added fiddle, recorded on the street outside the Elektra studios, a car horn from tour manager Sam Cutler breaking in at one point. Jagger’s voice drips with faux-country drawl. It’s bouncy and full of Nashville charm, a delightful piece of pure country. It feels live and it feels lively, especially as Mick and Keith sing together on verses and chorus.

A few months later the band went into a studio to re-record the track, turning it into a bluesy rocker with some sharp electric guitar and a stuttering cowbell opening. Honky Tonk Women was released as a single four months before Country Honk was put out on Let It Bleed. It shuffles and feels darker and sharper. The lyrics change slightly, but what really makes it is the snaking and sharp guitar lines. Some of it is Mick Taylor, and some is Keith at his very best. It’s cluttered and messy, but that’s what we want from the Stones.

12: Stray Cat Blues

A controversial choice, I’m sure, and I want to tell my history with this song. I loved it when I first heard it, slowly coming into life as it does with a line based on the Velvet Underground’s Heroin. The chords are inspired, adding a bluesy pop groove to a dark and dangerous song and they are delightful fun to play on the guitar. Keith’s electric guitar slices over the top of his acoustic chords, and Nicky Hopkins adds deeply echoing piano lines. As I got older I felt uneasy over the lyrical content, Jagger sounds exploitative and menacing as he sings to the “fifteen year old” stray cat. The more we got to know about the predatory nature of rock stars the more the track felt wrong, especially in those live version where Jagger drags her age down to 13.

Now, however, I see it differently. The song is distasteful for sure, or at least the content is, but deliberately so. It feels like Jagger is creating a character just as he would do on Midnight Rambler. He is playing a predatory monster who lies to himself and makes excuses for his dreadful behaviour (“It ain’t no hangin matter - it ain’t no capital crime”) and does so over a musical tour de force.

11: Monkey Man

A track that drips with solicitous style, built around four cleverly descending chords, Nicky Hopkins ringing piano touches and some stunning riff playing from Keith Richards. Keith punctuates each verse with some incredible playing, simple yet stunningly effective. Jagger’s voice is at its very best here but nothing beats Keith’s guitars: he plays them all, slide guitar dueling with his open chord riffs, accompanied by Hopkins expansive and remarkable piano. Listen carefully and you can hear Bill Wyman’s vibraphone ringing along at times to, adding to the ambience of the track.

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The top ten

10: I Don’t Know Why

Recorded in 1969 on the day Brian Jones died, this amazing cover version of a Stevie Wonder song was finally released in 1975. Many of the Stones’ covers fall flat to my ears, but this one soars. It takes the soulful groove of the original and adds a dark rock groove throughout, most especially when Keith Richards plays a brilliant little guitar solo, Jagger is not trying to emulate Wonder here, thankfully, but instead sings it in a yawning and elastic voice, guitars ringing and dancing behind him. It sounds like Nicky Hopkins on the piano to me, and that’s Taylor playing the second solo, a copy of the first, spliced in at a later date. His inflections and touches just add enough colour to make it feel different. Did they know Brian had died when they recorded this? Unlikely, but it adds a historic touch to an incredible song.

9: Let It Loose

Their best example of gospel rock, Let It Loose closes side three of the remarkable Exile on Main St. It’s a perfect example of that gospel blues rock that emerged around this time, the wobbling guitar played through a Leslie speaker jousting with Nicky Hopkins lazily cool piano licks. Jagger sings with power, embodying a bluesy gospel that he rarely bettered. It’s made by the wonderful backing vocals by Tami Lynn, Dr. John, Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Shirley Goodman and Joe Greene, and I particularly love Charlie’s relaxed but perfectly timed drum lines. The horns are muffled and muddy and that just adds to the whole mess, allowing you to drag your arms around your friends and sway to the magic of the song.

8: Sympathy for the Devil

When I saw the Stones live in Manchester in 1990 they played a great version of this after a surprising rendition of 2000 Light Years From Home. After the concert my friends and I headed into the city centre and went to a club. As we descended the stairs to the dingy dive (Fifth Avenue, if you need to know) this was the song that was playing. That incredible drum and conga opening is eternally recognisable. The percussion snakes and sways and builds the tension, and then we have the delightfully clever touch where Jagger starts to sing at exactly the same time Nicky Hopkins chords ring out on the piano. It feels like an orchestra of percussion, like the band have been taken over by a different group of people, and Jagger sings like a mesmeric madman, taking ideas from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita and updating them into his dark poetry. After two minutes the song steps up further, with the famous “woo-woo” backing vocals coming in, the song descending further into darkness as they do. Keith adds a stunning guitar solo, very possibly his best ever, and the songs gallops onwards, almost out of control, Jagger full of evil charm.

7: Sway

The obvious choice from 1971’s Sticky Fingers would be the huge hit Brown Sugar, but time has left that lyrically weak and dubious, and the group have themselves stopped playing it. The second track is a superb blues rocker powered by a circular riff that is hard and heavy. It demonstrates to me that when Taylor was in the band they were at their most virtuosic. Richards doesn’t plays on guitar on this at all; it’s Jagger playing guitar with Taylor adding the colour, the lead and the flourishes. The song seems to spin drunkenly - probably due to Keith singing backing vocals - with that chorus, “It’s just that evil life that got me in its sway…” ringing round and round. Taylor plays the hell out of his guitar in the final few minutes, a rock god solo that the band rarely had, and it adds so much deep colour it is quite stunning.

6: Rocks Off

A burst of guitar, a snap of a snare drum and Jagger, “Oh, yeah,” kicking both the song and side one of Exile on Main St. into life. This bluesy swagger is superb, and I was taken aback the first time I heard it. It rings and it sings as Mick almost croaks out the words, sounding tired and cracked. It is full of great lines like, “The sunshine bores the daylight out of me…”

The murky, damp sound fits the song perfectly. It was recorded in the basement of Keith’s Villa Nellcôte, hot and dank, with the heat sending instruments in and out of tune. The mix is so muddy it is wonderful, and Mick’s voice is hidden at the back of the mix, adding to the mysterious feel of the track. It is a classic example of the Stones at their drug fuelled best.

5: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

With one of the most famous riffs in musical history it would have been hard to leave this incredible track off the list. That fuzzing, buzzing three note riff B - C# - D sounds so familiar now I cannot believe no one had written it before Keith woke up one morning, grabbed a guitar and a tape recorder and quickly got it down. The song pulses and bleeds as Mick sings his tale of desperation. On American TV the line, “Trying to make some girl,” was censored and came out as, “Trying to **** some girl,” immediately making it sound worse than it was and the song perpetuated the “bad boy” image of the band with its stomping, dangerous garage beat. Essential.

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4: Jumpin’ Jack Flash

The band, and Keith especially, seemed to be able to rock with acoustic guitars better than most. The way they pushed Keith’s Gibson Hummingbird’s sound through a cassette recorder, compressing and crunching the sound, but with notes ringing out from its open D tuning [D-A-D-F#-A-D] makes the song unique, and instantly recognisable. Coming just ahead of Beggars Banquet it points to their return to the rootsy blues sound following the dark psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request. It’s wild and brittle, full of unstoppable energy, brooding and sour. It’s an incredible piece of art, one of 1968’s greatest singles.

The top three

3: Gimme Shelter

A tour de force performance from Keith on the menacing opening track of Let It Bleed. It fades into life, notes ringing out from the open tuned Maton SE777, winding like a snake before it strikes, and suddenly the song is galloping away, almost out of control, until Mick comes in to sing his song of war, death and destruction.

The percussion envelopes the song as Wyman’s bass chugs along and Nicky Hopkins adds his perfect piano lines. Charlie Watts plays with laid back cool, almost standing away from the dark feelings contained within the track. The most stunning contribution comes from Merry Clayton, called up at midnight to come in and quickly add her vocals. She screams and her voice cracks, exploding with such breathless energy Mick can barely keep up. The track is a journey into a heart of darkness and it is done with dangerous perfection.

2: I Just Want to See His Face

Perhaps a surprising entry, but this wonderful, dark and muddy blues track is a perfect example of why I love the Stones at their bravest. It fades up out of the ashes of Ventilator Blues, totally unexpected, a broken gospel groove that echoes and clangs, mixed into a wash of noise. Mick vamps and preaches, his voice full of blood and then leaping into his highest register. Tom Waits said of the track, “that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do that.’” There are few tracks like it and few tracks to match it.

1: Torn & Frayed

A song that pulled on my heart from the moment I heard it. A perfect amalgamation of the country and blues Mick and Keith had listened to their whole life. It opens with such simple chords, Dsus2 - D - A - E - D, and is such a simple song. It floats past your ears as you listen, full of cosmic Americana style, with Mick singing about the landscape of the battered musician, in dressing rooms and smelly bordellos, hangers-on offering drugs and disaster. The musician Mick sings about - surely it’s not Keith - has that torn and frayed coat and a codeine habit. It’s a cinematic masterpiece, framed by outstanding musicianship: Keith’s guitars, Mick Taylor on bass, Nicky Hopkins adding that country piano and Jim Price’s organ weeping along. It’s made by a superb pedal steel solo from Al Perkins, bringing such an authentic country sound to the song it propels into into space.

It is a song I will never tire of playing, one of my all time favourite songs, a country rock masterpiece.

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment!

Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!

About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

In 1974 the world saw the final moment in the ongoing Watergate saga as Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, a seismic moment for democracy and the rule of law and as the oil crisis put the world into jeopardy there were other huge political moments taking place. Haile Selassie was deposed in Ethiopia by a military junta that then ruled the country for the next seventeen years and a military coup in Portugal called the Carnation Revolution led to the overthrow of the Estado Novo regime.

The Three-Day Week in the UK was introduced to conserve what had become scarce electricity resource following a series of strikes. The year would see a hung parliament followed by a Labour victory deposing the then Conservative government. The mainland saw increased activity by the IRA as they stepped up their bombing campaign. As a very young child the world seemed lost and scary.

Music, however, felt positive and hopeful. The sounds of funk, soul and disco were everywhere and rock music was glamorous and energetic. ABBA famously won the Eurovision song contest with the brilliant Waterloo and Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway pushed intelligent art rock into popularity.

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The top twenty-five

25: Kiss - Strutter

Off the back of their debut album Kiss released this sparkling glam rock track, an example of just how good they were in the very early years. Strutter shines above their later hard rock nonsense, full of crunching guitars and featuring a superb solo by Ace Frehley. A simple but delightfully catchy rock track.

24: Labelle - Lady Marmalade

With the fantastic funk band The Meters as backing musicians Labelle pulled off a funky soul classic with Lady Marmalade, full of outer space funk sounds and near perfect vocals, it drips with confidence and sass. The vocalists, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash sing with style, creating a funky space jam that digs into your body and never lets go.

23: Status Quo - Down Down

An incredibly mesmeric rock track, built from jangling guitars and morphing into a relentless 12-bar boogie. Whilst it is easy to joke about Status Quo writing the same song over and over (or again and again, I should say) in fact they wrote some excellent rock and roll throughout the 70s.

22: Marc Bolan and T. Rex - Teenage Dream

Marc Bolan gives us a theatrical take on 50s pop with the four chord melodrama of Teenage Dream. That classic pattern: G - Em - C - D is combined with Bolan’s opaque imagery, lyrics mainly chosen for their rhyme rather than any reason

The curfew comes at the, crack of night
The sad old wino aches to dissipate the fright
The jet junk jiver speeds past in his machine
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?

This was the first track to be released as Marc Bolan and T. Rex as Marc took even more of a centre stage. I’ve always felt he ran out of steam over the next few years, but I love the magic drama of this track.

21: Suzi Quatro - Devil Gate Drive

Quatro’s second moment of brilliance after last year’s Can the Can, and her second UK number one, Devil Gate Drive is powered by its glam rock chorus. Much of glam rock took its inspiration from the rock and roll of the 50s and this is no different, built around a three chord rock groove for the most part. The chorus, however, is filled with drama and excitement. This drama is lost by a somewhat comic TV performance from Top of the Pops where the band do a clumsy dance, but the song is three minutes of glam rock magic.

20: The Jackson 5 - Dancing Machine

The disco band were returned to the height of their power with this smash hit. It is a slick and smart funky groove, and it uses the overlapping voices of the band to great effect. It burst into life almost straight away and then slips into a great funk beat, Michael Jackson sings the lead with support from big brother Jermaine while the other brothers add backing vocals. It’s made by a superb horn break that is genuinely exciting and was used by Michael to promote his new “robot” dancing. It’s a cool groove and one of the band’s best singles.

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19: David Essex - Gonna Make You a Star

Essex continued to produce great pop music during the middle of the 70s. He wrote this one, which is built around a wonderful synthesiser riff that sounds otherworldly and strange. Essex sings with a lazy cool and the track leapt to the top of the UK charts, although it only made 105 in the US. It straddles the world of glam rock and pop music, catchy and full of hypnotic energy.

The b-side is something else completely. Window is a creepy song, possibly about a peeping tom, and it ends with a terrifying child’s voice, full of fear and dread. It makes the single even more complete.

18: Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On

Even as George Clinton was reviving the funkier pop of Parliament, he powered on with the quirky rock sounds of Funkadelic. The track is driven by the twin guitars of Eddie Hazel - Funkadelic’s greatest guitarist - and Roy Bykowski. Only Funkadelic could really produce a hard rock funk track like this, built around an amazing descending opening riff (once you’ve got through Clinton’s weird vocal opening).

It feels like the whole band is singing and that adds to the track, almost like a live performance. It is totally different from the warm disco sounds of the period, but equally designed to make you dance. Just fabulous. The music is designed to do no harm.

17: Dion - New York City Song

Working with Phil Spector, Dion recorded an album that he ended up hating, calling it “funeral music”. That album, Born to be With You is magnificent and essential, and this single is equally brilliant. It is what intelligent adult oriented rock should sound like, wonderful chiming acoustic guitar ringing behind Dion’s voice as he warns of the dangers of the city and looks back with sadness - “That’s the year my dream died in New York City”. This track was not produced by Spector but fits in with the sound of the whole record. A warm and catchy chorus full of tenderness.

16: Smokey Robinson - Just My Soul Responding

An amazing soul single written as a response to the challenges received by the Civil Rights movement but a song that works on its own as a piece of remarkable music. It’s cleverly built around a Native American sound which adds a remarkable drama to the track, but it swings and sways with soul. Smokey sings about the Vietnam war,

I had a lot to live, said I had a lot to give
Till a man comes to hand me a gun
And though that war he sent me to
Didn't claim me
If I'm bitter don't blame me
It's just my soul responding
Don't you try to tell me I'm unpatriotic
I deserve an explanation

and the disappearing rights of the Native American population,

This land once belonged to my father
And to his father before him too
Let me tell you now, I'm on a reservation
Living in a state of degradation

and does it with a luscious soul sound that is wonderful.

15: Hall & Oates - She’s Gone

Gentle and cool blue-eyed soul from Daryl Hall and John Oates. The chorus is magnificent, their voices locking together, the song swirling and spinning. It is quite exquisite in the way it builds, a gently beautiful song coming from their second album, Abandoned Luncheonette, which is equally brilliant.

14: Sly & The Family Stone - Loose Booty

Sly takes James Brown’s concept of funk to its logical conclusion on Loose Booty, the track becoming a minimalist funk masterpiece, incessant and moving like clockwork. The whole family sing lines and play to perfection, especially Rusty Allen’s bouncing bass. After two minutes the track settles into a fabulous dance groove, Sly repeating the words “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” over and over. They were the three men saved from Nebuchadnezzar’s fire in the Book of Daniel and as Sly himself wrote, “Music could help you resist everyday problems. Music could keep you out of the fire.”

13: The Rolling Stones - It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)

The Stones delved into traditional rock and roll sound with this great track which features Ron Wood on acoustic guitar before he’d officially joined the band and has Keith Richards playing some delicious slide guitar. The chorus is wonderfully catchy, and if you listen carefully you can hear David Bowie singing backing vocals. Kenny Jones plays drums instead of Charlie Watts as it was put together one evening at Wood’s house. Jagger sings about the pressure of being in the band and the standard they were being held to at the time - was anything good enough for the press?

If I could stick my pen in my heart, And spill it all over the stage;
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya, Would you think the boy is strange?

12: Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

Husband and wife team Richard and Linda created a snappy electric folk track here which is the centrepiece of the brilliant album of the same name. It features some incredible vocals from Linda as Richard’s guitar snakes around in the background. The horns are a jolly counterposition to the dark guitar sounds and they propel the song even further. It is a delightful piece of modern English folk music.

11: Stevie Wonder - You Haven’t Done Nothin’

The track opens with the cascading keyboard sounds that rain down incessantly before we snap into a snake-hipped funk groove and Stevie sings directly at Richard Nixon, full of anger and disgust. The song is a funk groove, the clavinet squawking and yelping as Stevie sings. The Jackson Five sing “do-do-wap” backing vocals, introduced with cool style by Stevie: “Jackson 5, join along with me - say”. The horns weave and yell throughout giving a perfect accompaniment to Stevie’s music.

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The top ten

10: Rufus & Chaka Khan - Tell Me Something Good

Stevie Wonder wrote this song too, and once you know you can feel him all over it. Rufus were a Chicago funk band and they worked with the marvellous Chaka Khan on this top 5 US hit. It prowls and stomps, full of strange funky asides, and has a cool singalong chorus that follows a moment of respite, as the band seem to breathe and groan, moving into a bouncy funk groove. I would love to hear Stevie’s version.

9: Roxy Music - All I Want is You

Three minutes of perfect glam pop, the track opens with Phil Manzanera’s ringing guitars before bursting into a double time rocker. The track barrels along, almost unstoppable, Paul Thompson’s drums driving the track. It steps back for the bridge before kicking back in on each verse. The middle section rocks hard allowing Manzanera to solo brilliantly, and the whole track has a sharp pop feel whilst still pointing toward the punk sounds that were to come in the next few years.

8: Commodores - Machine Gun

One of the coolest and funkiest instrumental ever, I can’t get enough of the deep funk keyboard and guitars on this. It explodes and you need to dance when you listen to it. The opening groove is uplifting and joyous, swinging from side to side as the spacey sounds burst in, but what makes it is the more laid back funk groove that lies underneath. Every now and then the song strips back to just that bit, a head-nodding masterpiece. I love the moment after about one and a half minutes when you clearly hear the section sampled by The Beastie Boys for Hey Ladies, the song a strutting, joyful groove.

7: ABBA - Waterloo

A pop masterpiece from a band I really didn’t like as a child. I’m not sure why. Perhaps they were too clean, too neat, for my childish ears. Obviously, I was wrong. This is that rare thing, a Eurovision winner that is truly brilliant. It has a great rock and roll chorus and so feels in sync with the glam rock of the time, but it shimmers with pop as Agnetha and Anni-Frid sing with joy. It has a wonderful 50s feel like so much of the best glam rock of the time, and was one of the catchiest songs of the year.

6: David Bowie - Rebel Rebel

Opening with that dirty and magnificent riff that cycles around the D and E chord this shows Bowie foreshadowing the metallic sound of punk rock and clearly moving on from the glam rock music of the age. I particularly love Herbie Flowers’ wonderful bass lines that leap in and out from time to time. The song is repetitive and hypnotic, an incessant groove, melodic but simple, and stripped down, no guitar solo, just a near-endless groove, Bowie dolled up like a punk pirate.

5: Parliament - Up for the Down Stroke

A lithe and stunning funk track that heralded the rebirth of Parliament, Clinton aiming to give his band a wider range of options for their many vocalists. It is a superb funky chant sung by Clinton, Fuzzy Haskins and Eddie Hazel. This is not disco, with an amazing time signature twist during the middle section. The magnificent Bernie Worrell adds his typical keyboard noises throughout, and the horns throw out a wonderful riff. It is a stunning example of the great music this band would produce over the next five years.

I don’t care about the cold, baby
Cause when you’re hot, you’re too much
Cause when you’re hot, you’re hot
Look at what you’ve got

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4: James Brown - The Payback, Part I

The Payback is James Brown’s greatest 70s album, and he pulled and cut down the title track for this deeply slinky and stunning single. Charles Sherrell lays down a deep and solid bass line as JB yells his words of revenge and crime over the top

I can do wheelin', I can do dealin'
But I don't do no damn squealin'

It was originally planned to be part of a soundtrack to the sequel to Black Caesar but was rejected as being too long. The single version has this wonderful moment when Hank Spann suddenly says, “"This is for Atlanta!” and other big US cities. I don’t know why, but it’s cool.

The top three

3: Roxy Music - The Thrill of it All

Dark and mysterious, this is a stunning piece of music. It builds tension in the first 20 seconds before the drums thunder in and it becomes a hard rocking pop song. Ferry sings with precision and cool and Phil Manzanera adds some superb guitar lines over the top. It is a relentless piece of art-rock, with a middle section that slows and wanders and verses that are unstoppable. I think it is a magnificent song.

2: Wings - Band on the Run

I don’t know how many people would put Band on the Run in their top 3 but I love the way the three sections of the song fit together to create a wonderfully satisfying whole. It opens with ringing, almost folk, guitar sounds accompanied by a weaving and dancing synthesiser. Paul McCartney s playing most instruments here, with support from Denny Laine on guitar and Linda McCartney on keyboards. Their vocals mesh and blend beautifully. Suddenly the song steps into a funk-rock groove built around a great little riff and a fantastic synth noise. And just as quick the song transforms into a symphonic country rocker, acoustic guitar ringing out and Paul’s vocals soaring with joy. It gallops to its end full of energy and makes for a delightful listen.

1: Big Star - September Gurls

What a band! The ultimate example of power pop and a song that should have been a huge hit and should be known by everyone. It opens with some fantastic ringing open chords that move down the fretboard before the strings ring out and Alex Chilton starts to sing. The verses are joyous and dramatic and they take us to the magnificent chorus. But it’s the chords that make it: they clang and ring throughout filling me with pure delight. After a minute and a half we get to a simple but absolutely perfect guitar solo that rings out without ever trying to be flashy. Chilton is the “December boy” of the chorus and he wrote the song about three women he knew who all had September birthdays. This is what power pop should sound like.

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment!

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About me

I have a radio show, Single Minded, on Radio Alty, every week on Wednesday at 8pm (UK). Listen here:

https://www.radioalty.co.uk/

Older shows can be found here:

I have also written a book about the great singles of the 1960s which can be found on Amazon:

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [UK]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [USA]

• The Greatest Singles of the Sixties: A personal journey through music [CAN and beyond!]

Forty years ago today Run DMC released one of the most important and influential rap albums of all time. I had it on cassette, and listened on my little Alba cassette player whenever I could. I can remember every sound even 40 years on.

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Their third album, it was the first Platinum and multi-Platinum rap record and it signalled a sea change in rap music, blowing away everything that came before it. It forged a remarkable crossover with rock music, bringing in guitars to join with Jam Master Jay’s incredible DJ work and the stunning drum machine beats and it influenced a plethora of rap artists over the next few years.

Describing the recording process DMC said, “We did that album in like three months. It was so quick because every rhyme was written on the road and had been practiced and polished. We knew what we wanted to do. Rick was all music and instruments. Jay was music and DJing. And me and Run was lyrics. We definitely had a game plan”.

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This record proved that …

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I don't usually write about the gigs I go to, but on Wednesday Florry rocked up such a storm in Manchester I had to let my readers know.

Florry are a wonderfully cool five piece rock band from Philadelphia, full of the Southern influenced sound of people like early 70s Neil Young. The guitars crunch, but at the same time the fiddle sings and the pedal steel weeps with sorrowful beauty.

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The YES Basement in Manchester is a snug and intimate venue, and the band filled the hall with their brilliant sound.

The show opened with local folk artist Dee Rae. I loved how the band had found a Manchester artist to open for them, and Dee Rae played delicate and plaintive folk music with talent and charm, filling the gaps with sweet humour. It was a warm and delightful start. Her fingerpicking style was graceful, her voice calm and strong, and she was a delight to hear, warming us up well.

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I saw him in concert promoting this first album and the show was brilliant, a small club in Manchester allowed him to fill the room with positivity and love. Even as he cranked up the guitars on the second album I saw him live at Manchester Apollo and he was excellent.

I’m going to look at his first album here and will look at the second in a follow up article.

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Let Love Rule (1989)

Side one

It opens with an acoustic guitar playing some simple chords as Kravitz starts to sing, his voice breaking at one point. On Sitting On Top of the World the band - virtually all Kravitz himself - come in an…

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Like much of the world’s greatest art, this song communicates on two levels. It is a swirling, woozy, 80s ska track, full of echoing grooves that are easy to dance to. But at the same time it is a challenge to the political system, a cry of honesty about the state of the country.

The band were from Coventry, a small city in the Midlands, and there was a huge impact on the manufacturing industry of that city in the late 70s and early 80s as Thatcherism destroyed the country. The band would have seen this first hand, on a daily basis. There’s an old saying in England: if someone is “Sent to Coventry” it means that are ostracised and ignored. In the early 80s that would have been the least of someone’s worries if sent to Coventry.

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In 1976 Parliament released the magnificent album The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein featuring some of the best funk musicians of the time, including Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins and Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns, having recently left James Brown’s band.

The Cover

Clinton is in full Dr Funkenstein garb giving life to one of his many clones, as delightfully deranged as it can be, full of vibrant colour, the electric bolt of the band’s name blazoned across the top. I want to know more about what’s going on here…

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Side one

Prelude gives us a blast of church organ and some spooky backwards voices soon become a deep narrative on how funk was originally buried be…

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Heaven 17 took that emerging electronic sound and began to blend it with disco, funk and even punk grooves. The outcome was their stunning debut album Penthouse and Pavement, rele…

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1973 had two moments that would be in the middle of huge historical change in decades to come. In April in the US, the World Trade Centre opened, and the Twin Towers stood as an emblem of New York City until they were destroyed in the devastating attack of 2001. This attack triggered the “War on Terror” and profoundly altered America’s relationship with the Middle East, intensifying long-standing tensions and reshaping global geopolitics for a generation.

On January 1st 1973 the UK joined the European Economic Community, which over time became the EU. The country enjoyed the benefits of close working ties with the countries of Europe until the Brexit vote to leave the EU in 2016, officially leaving in 2020. The ramifications of this are still being felt in the …

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“I asked Prince what he planned to do. He told me, ‘I’m going to look for the ladder.’ So I asked him what that meant. All he said was, ‘Sometimes it snows in April.’” Steve Fargnoli, Prince’s manager.

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I was in a bar one night on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street, and this lady came in with a dead animal over her arm, looking like she'd obviously been sleeping outdoors. She walked up to the bartender and said, "I'm gonna have a heart attack," and he says, "Yeah, right, you can have it outside." I thought that was pretty chilly. So I re-named Hollywood Blvd. "heart attack."

Following 1978’s Blue Valentine, which drips with rainy backstreet melancholy, Tom Waits started to hint at the direction he would take on Swordfishtrombones with this fascinating, guitar heavy, blues album from 1980.

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Heartattack and Vine was Waits’ final album on Asylum, and in many ways it is a finale. A goodbye to some of the boho themes he’d played with over the previous seven years, to the jazziest elements of his work, and it contains some of his best work.

He stares out from the newspaper cover, sweaty and mysterious, described as a “South Central Los Angeles man” who had been seen in a “burst sienna Chrysl…

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Just over a year after their first, magnificent, album, The B-52’s headed back to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to record their second. In many ways, Wild Planet is a simple continuation of the styles and ideas of that first record, and it is as equally essential.

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While I like much of their later work, at least until Ricky Wilson passed away in 1985, it is the first two albums that really demonstrate the band at their quirky best, full of strange interjections and Ricky Wilson’s amazing and singular guitar tunings.

It starts with the cover, a continuation of the futuristic but ‘50s concept of the first. Lynn Goldsmith’s photo captures the band at their coolest. Fred Schneider looks louche and suave on that little chair, Ricky Wilson leaning in. Keith Strickland appears almost impassive and icy at the back, like an interloper at a strange party. And, of course, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson just look stunningly cool. Kate’s beehive could not be bigger as she leans back, full of style, and Cindy stares back at you, a mane of hair flowing down, mascara circling her eyes. They are backed by a deep blood-red, ready for fun, ready for action.

Side one

The record opens with a building beat, a crunchy chord and a yell of “Surprise!” from Schneider, as they crash the Party Out Of Bounds. Playing an odd BADXG#C# tuning, Ricky Wilson cranks out a mean little riff as the band groove. The song is made by Kate Pierson’s interjections here, crazy little hoots as the song twists and moves. It’s an electric piece of rock and roll, full of post-punk energy and galloping grooves and it builds to a nice singalong section for Cindy and Kate.

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It is followed by Dirty Back Road, an angular piece of new wave, a stabbing little riff, Kate and Cindy singing together over little bursts of Kate’s organ. It bounces and shimmies, a simple but nagging beat, and it’s sung with a laid-back joy, keeping a cool metronomic beat throughout the three minutes.

On Runnin’ Around the band explodes with post-punk energy, words overlapping each other, yelled and yawped as Ricky cranks out some cool chords using a CFxxFF tuning. The song builds to a delightful punky chorus, an angular take on ‘50s cool, twisting itself into knots as it stops for a brief second before kicking on again.

We get to some of the band’s greatest tracks now. Give Me Back My Man is pure joy. A delightful, ringing guitar riff bouncing around some open notes and featuring pop energy from the clapping percussion. Cindy Wilson sings the track with an effervescent smile, bursting out those wonderful moments

I’ll give you fish,
I’ll give you candy,
I’ll give you everything I have in my hand!

When she almost cracks as she yells, “Give me…back my man”, I get a chill, it is just fabulous. She sings low and sultry, but the punky energy means the song becomes a pure earworm, digging itself into your head and never leaving.

It would be hard to top a track like this.

But then we have Private Idaho, probably the band’s greatest track, as far as I am concerned. It opens with a superb rising riff on Ricky’s Danelectro Silvertone 1448 tuned to EBDxBB. Kate scats a jazz-tinged owl hoot before Fred begins to sing about “your own private Idaho”, the place we try to use to escape the world. But it’s a dangerous place! There’s a magnificent Twilight Zone organ riff before the stunning chorus which explodes. Ricky plays this cool riff in the background as Kate and Cindy sing and joust with each other, Fred jumping in with lines, Keith Strickland building up to a rolling and rumbling drum line.

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The band sing with blistering energy and the song just never seems to stop. Ricky plays a cool guitar line before everyone starts to improvise for Cindy’s wordless end. Even the chords at the end are fantastic, as it ends without resolving, an uncertain and strange final chord adding to the mysterious nature of this “private Idaho”.

This film clip is joyous; watch the band at their very best. It’s worth it just for Cindy’s arm rolling dancing.

Side two

Side two is more of the same, although it can’t quite reach the joyous heights of those last two tracks.

It opens with Devil in My Car, a glam rock track filtered through post-punk eyes. The riff buzzes and crunches as the band sing. It’s a great rocker, and Schneider sings with his usual wide-eyed craziness, an affectation that some people found difficult by the time of Love Shack, but here it just adds to the cool quirkiness.

Quiche Lorraine is magnificent. It starts with a tick-tock riff and a burst of keyboard in the background. It is a new wave groove, simple and hypnotic, chugging and swinging, full of hidden energy, ready to explode at any moment, but always holding back. Most of the instruments hold off for a cool spoken section before the spiky groove continues.

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Strobe Light is an absolute blast, realy post-punk fire over a surf rock riff using an odd DGCxxx tuning on Ricky’s Sunburst Mosrite MK V. This song is made by it’s girl group chorus: “Want to make love to you under the strobe light”, joy bubbling over as they sing. Schneider plays the quirky lover:

I'm gonna kiss your eyes
Then I'm gonna kiss your neck
Then I'm gonna kiss your tummy
Then I'm gonna kiss your pineapple

and the song explodes back into another singalong chorus before its sci-fi ending.

And 53 Miles West of Venus opens with another sci-fi sounding riff, Ricky showing just how he uses his strings to create slicing, cool sounds, as this mesmeric track pulses in and out. The band just sing the title, over and over, a mantra-like new wave feel and a cool way to bring the album to a conclusion.

The following year the band put out a great remix record, Party Mix, with three songs from their first album and three from Wild Planet. They chose the best tracks, adding a disco beat and merging the music into one long party piece.

I like their later albums, but feel they never reached the wonderful heights of the first two records again.

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In this early year of the 1970s the world was in turmoil. The Vietnam War still raged, and the US carried out a strategic and deadly campaign of bombing the country that Christmas. Rather than end the war it showed that peace would still be a few years away. The country was still reeling from the slowly emerging information around the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

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The two albums have just been issued on vinyl for the first time, celebrating the recent 10th anniversary, so it feels right to look at them in a bit more depth.

Every Prince album is looked at through the lens of his very best work, Purple Rain, 1999, Sign O’ the Times, Dirty Mind and so on. They cast a huge shadow on his later work and perhaps it is true that nothing post Lovesexy came even close to his best work, but there’s usually something good on every album.

I am a huge fan of his rock album Plectrumelectrum and thought Art Official Age from 2014 had some great tracks, but I don’t remember these two very well.

The first thing I have to say is that the design is glorious! The two records are packaged with some fantastic artwork, both featuring…

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The month has been cold and wet in the UK. These albums seem to reflect that icy auste sense

Reviews this month

1. Jana Horn [2026] by Jana Horn Album of the Month!

2. Memorias [2025] by Juan Pastor's Chinchano

3. A Selection Of Hyrs [2026] by psmyth

4. CINCO [2026] by Manager

5. Yans [2026] by YANSANEH

6. My City, My Music [2026] by elliott keith music

7. Dunkle Magie [2025…6] by Oehl

8. Gnawa Jabaryou [2026] by Brahim Hikmi

9. URGH [2026] by Mandy, Indiana

10. In This Room [2026] by Hannah Schneider

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Jana Horn [2026] by Jana Horn

Album of the month

This is superb, creaking, swaying folk music from an artist I’ve not properly listened to over the years. The album is gentle but powerful opener Go on, move your body is icy and brittle, moving with grace, and Horn uses her expressive voice with calm. Don’t think is hypnotic, a mesmeric finger-picked line rolling behind her voice. On All in Bet, the band add a shuffling brushed beat to the music, voices calling with beauty. Come on has textures that remind me of Cate Le Bon with Horn’s clarinet-like voice, the track moving at its own controlled pace. A track like Love has a cute acoustic indie groove, and it skips gently to its brief conclusion. It’s alright feels darker, another simple acoustic line picked out, piano ringing in the background, the band tight and cool. Unused slowly emerged, cymbals riding, before the song forms itself. It has hints of country folk, but it is reflective and thoughtful throughout. I assume she is harmonising with herself on this, the two voices entwining to create a beautiful sound. Designer has the most metallic sound of the album, chords cleaning as they ring, drums stamping and stabbing, the song cracked and dancing. Quite hypnotic in how it draws you in.

That sense of calm meditation runs through these songs, tender and touching. On Without she pushes her breathy voice close to the mike, feeling near, in the room, music sparse and skeletal, giving a human connection. The record ends with the lo-fi Untitled (Cig) a perfect example of homemade folk, using the instruments to build a musical picture, and rounding off a fabulous folk album.

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