It was the early 70s, before there were laws about kids and seat belts and things like that, so when I went with my mom to run errands, I had to slide onto the bench seat in the front and if that seat was too hot from baking in the sun, I would kind of hover of the seat for a few minutes before lowering myself on it. If you know, you know. My view on these drives was the car radio, which was AM only but had these big silver knobs, one for tuning and one for volume. There were 5 or 6 push button presets and I was not allowed to touch any of this but the power my mom had, a twist of the dial here, a push of the button there and boom there she was…the soft rock queen, Olivia Newton-John.
American Top 40 was not going to eliminate any songs, although they did shorten songs as singles more routinely grew to be longer than the traditional three minutes. That will eventually lead to adding a fourth hour to the show. They also edited the word “shit” out of Bob Dylan’s “George Jackson” and issued a warning about the word “crap” in Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.” Affiliates could edit out songs if they wanted to, but AT40 was not going to do that. Some affiliates, for example, would not play “My Ding-a-Ling” by Chuck Berry because of, well, his reference to his ding-a-ling.
…this, from journalist Jim Farber in 2021 is a more than apt description: It is a mixture of creamy strings, punching horns, snaking bass lines and fulsome melodies all combined to create something at once complex and light – a sonic soufflé fired by soul. Or, we could simply go with Bobby Eli, producer and guitarist, said the Philadelphia Sound is “funk dressed in a tuxedo.”
The greatest compliment is when people think nobody wrote it; they just think it’s always been there archetypally. So, ‘We Will Rock You’ has become traditional, like it goes back to the stone age, and that makes me happy.” — Brian May, Queen
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.”
“Parallel to my musical career I’ve always been on a spiritual sojourn, looking for truth and meaning. It was a song of self-encouragement. I was telling myself to keep on looking and I would find what I sought.” — Kerry Livgren on “Dust in the Wind” by his band, Kansas
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.
“…when you watch film footage of David singing this song that he resisted but so many people loved, you would never know he was ambivalent about it -- at least them. ‘It’s a high going out on that stage. You look around and it’s all there for you, people loving you like that.’”
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.”
To give you an idea of how soundtracks were still not very respected, Paramount Studios declined to take any shares of the royalties from the SNF soundtrack. WHOOPS! It was only the best selling album of ALL TIME until Thriller.
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
“I have no message whatsoever. I really have nothing to say, no suggestions or advice. All I do is suggest some ideas that will keep people listening a bit longer. And out of it all, maybe they’ll come up with the message and save me the work.” — David Bowie
“Heavy metal pimply, prole, putrid, unchic, unsophisticated, anti-intellectual but impossibly pretentious, dismal, abysmal, terrible, horrible, and stupid music, barely music at all; deaf music, dead music the beaten boogie, the dance of defeat and decay…”
