To hell with what they think! There are people out there who like to go to bed and have babies!
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So, what was the New Year’s Eve show in your house? I had pretty young parents, so I am pretty confident that Guy Lombardo was not quite their cup of tea…It was always “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” in my house and Clark produced the first one in 1972 with his co-hosts, Three Dog Night. That means Three Dog Night had the distinction of having the first song played on “American Top 40” and “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” Clark was definitely taking aim at the king of New Year’s Eve traditions, Guy Lombardo, who played big band music on his New Year’s Eve special. For many years, if you didn’t have plans on New Year’s Eve, Guy Lombardo from The Roosevelt Grille, and then for the last couple of years, the Waldorf-Astoria, was appointment TV. But Clark thought it was too dated.
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Clayton-Thomas said that without him, [Blood, Sweat, and Tears] was just a jazz band but he brought the R&B and soul to make it more of a rock band.
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If you got an invitation to the release party for “The Gilded Palace of Sin,” you also got a package of hay. It was a publicity stunt, designed to signal “country” but it was tested to see if it might be marijuana, at the suggestion of the US Postal Service. But nope. No pot, just hay -- but the publicity and the image that it created -- Bob Proehl, the author of a book on “The Gilded Palace,” wrote, “the media buzz the seizure created was better than anything the A&M marketing department could have dreamed up. Before anyone had heard a note of the album, the Burrito Brothers had the exact image A&M wanted: psychedelic cow-punks, drug-addled.”
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“They’ve…said I’m the most powerful black man in the world.” —- James Brown
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Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney and Wings from the album Wings at the Speed of Sound. It was the #1 song in America on July 4, 1776. Fitting that one of our favorite British invaders would have the #1 song on that day.
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Marley said of the critics and fans who tried to compare him to Mick Jagger that they were not listening to what he was saying. He said the message is not the same and “Reggae is not the Twist.”
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Is there anybody out there who could pull off a musical comedy variety show nowadays?
“Nobody. It’s not possible because the audiences got to the point where the desire is on reality and the desire is on shock. And the Donny & Marie Show was (built) on simplicity and innocence, and we just don’t have that anymore. Nobody could pull that off — not even Donny and Marie” — Donny Osmond
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Don't let the handshake and the smile fool ya
Take my advice, I'm only tryin' to school ya
— Smiling Faces by The Undisputed Truth
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Challenging the idea of art, which is entirely subjective, in the 70s is a very 70s thing. This is the “Me Decade.” The decade of psychotherapy and liberation -- or at least attempts to move toward liberation -- raising consciousness. We did not have a collective vision of what progress meant. It was up to us to explore that, as individuals.
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Dewey Bunnell of the band, America, said that even though “Ventura Highway” is not a real highway, it was inspired by the Pacific Coast Highway and his thoughts of returning there while he was a kid living in Omaha. Also, alligator lizards in the air are clouds.
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“Although I prefer the heavier beer of rock and roll, the sweet white wine of Joni Mitchell is welcome.”
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If Bruce Springsteen’s music can be called the sound of a ‘56 Chevy fueled by ground up Crystals records, then Parliament’s records must surely be the result of James Brown and Isaac Hayes records mixed in a high-speed Waring blender in the backseat of a leopardskin Cadillac pimpmobile.”
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The festival seating system was designed to squeeze as much money as possible out of the fans who made the industry possible. Safety was secondary, if it was a concern at all.
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Amy cites Professor Laurence Ralph, who said that “Soul Train” showed young African Americans doing things that were “radically ordinary.” Just like American Bandstand.
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The people behind No Nukes learned from the Concert for Bangladesh and avoided much of the financial drama, although the festival did not come close to achieving its goal. Still, $600,000 got into the right hands.
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There is no harm in creating fictional worlds, like the worlds in Grease or Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley. The harm is in either presenting them or accepting them as eras that never were.
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They commit Gen X blasphemy by saying bad things about Boston and Queen (Boston is an “android" band.)
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