Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1974
by Scott Miller

"Boots" [edit plus ~30 sec. of "Numb Erone"/fadeout] - The Residents
I don't think I knew them except for the defaced Meet the Beatles cover that was Meet the Residents I'd see hanging on specialty used record store walls, until I got their "Duck Stab" e.p. in 1977. After the Mothers' We're Only In It for the Money, should it be possible to get to be the most subversive act by dissing the Beatles—don't you now have to dis the Mothers? At the very least, the Residents were subversive in an appreciably novel way. Neither parody, exactly, nor anything like Zappa's end-run at the level of musicianship or that of modern composition, the Residents were something like pure expressionism: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari minus the story arc. Or what we have here, Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking" minus its entire set of cultural moorings. And sung by Dr. Caligari.

"Radar Love" [Radio edit] - Golden Earring
In retrospect I like 1973 a lot because now I know about Raw Power, Aladdin Sane, and other material that didn't make it to thirteen year olds, but at the time 1974 seemed a lot better, because there was starting to be a radio niche where louder rock was a growth industry—Joe Walsh, Bad Company, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and similar acts were having F.M. hits and also getting on T.V. on a new late-night network live rock format: "In Concert," "Midnight Special," and "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert." "Radar Love" by the Netherlands' Golden Earring was my favorite of this direction (though I don't believe I saw them on one of those T.V. shows).

"Mandy" - Barry Manilow
Barry used to go on shows like "The Mike Douglas Show"—daytime variety—and the point of interest was that he was the guy who had written or sung several of the most prominent commercial jingles, like "You deserve a break today, so get up and get away to McDonald's" and "I am stuck on Band-Aid, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me." Interestingly, this didn't read as objectionably commercial to me, just curious and fun. Same with "Mandy": it's so frankly melodramatic that you can't fault it for it. It's the missing link between "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (check the reverb snare near the end) and 80s power ballads, an unpromising type, but the melodic and lyrical connectivity is so winsomely direct that it's hard not to accept "You came and you gave without taking" as sincere.

"Home" - Roy Harper
Roy has had a very interesting career (at about this time he was honoring Pink Floyd's left-field request to sing lead on "Have a Cigar"), first as an acid-tongued folk rocker, then as an acid-tongued art rocker, and here as a sweet-talking pop rocker. On the CD my wife has, I believe this is identified as a single; I'm not sure if that was intention or reality. Anyhow, it's a simple little thing that's quite impressive at doing what Big Star does: working with unusually pretty melodic elements but bringing a surprisingly crunching rock whenever necessary. This sounds great right after "Mandy"—its intro's flutes and delicate strumming sound at least as non-rock as Mr. Manilow, then a muscular rhythm section comes in with the words "And I need some lovin'."

"All I Want Is You" - Roxy Music
I want to put the epic "Mother or Pearl" from Stranded here (the problem is I think it's technically a 1973 release), but it may be slightly more important to have the peculiarly challenging Country Life represented anyway. "All I Want Is You" is in a way simplistic compared with "The Thrill Of It All" and "Out of the Blue," but it's punchy, economical, and has a strange way of co-opting the worldly sophistication it professes to reject in favor of monogamy in lines like, "Don't want to know about one night stands/Cut price souvenirs" and "Don't want to learn about etiquette from glossy magazines."

"Jungle Boogie" - Kool and the Gang
Kool and the Gang's hard funk sounded great on the radio with "Hollywood Swinging" and even better, and harder, with "Jungle Boogie." Its complex chromatic ascents and descents in odd bursts make it one of the most harmonically rich one-chord songs ever—it strikes me as slightly influenced by Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein." All the "Get up with the get down" is done really well, and probably contains the single best "uhhh" on record. To quote my six-year-old, "Does he even have any bones in his mouth?"

"Boy Blue" - Electric Light Orchestra
Eldorado (the one with the ruby slippers) had stupid moments, but is mostly a very good album. "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" is a gorgeous Rodgers and Hammerstein influenced radio hit, and most of the songs have strange, rococo hooks to them. "Boy Blue" seems to be a crusading soldier who comes back and tells the town it's not worth the bloodshed. The alarum trumpet fanfare is a cute production touch, and the pizzicato string break is one of the early seventies' best symphonic pop sections, of which there were more than a few.

"Just a Chance" - Badfinger
Poor Badfinger—this was the second record they were contractually obligated to deliver every year starting in 1974. The first was the, unsurprisingly, very rushed sounding self-titled album with the lady with the Ascot bowler hat and monacle. It had the terrific "Lonely You," and a very good one called "Song For a Lost Friend"; beyond that, there's some unfortunate material. The basket into which they may have been putting eggs is later 1974's Wish You Were Here (not to be confused with). Both albums were produced by Chris Thomas, but the first one sounds awful and the second one sounds great—it even sounded a little like Foreigneresque arena rock a couple of years ahead of its time. In a good way. "Just a Chance" roars in; it almost doesn't sound like the same band. The chorus doesn't really go anywhere, but on balance another Badfinger gem. That album also had the more conventionally catchy "Know One Knows."

"Sweet Home Alabama" - Lynyrd Skynyrd
I recall hearing "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio when it came out, but I don't think I ever heard "Free Bird" from the year before. Besides being a great hook, it set the standard in my world for fancy playing in a non-prog setting. That is, I wouldn't have known how to compare this non-cape-wearing musicianship with that of Yes, ELP, or King Crimson, yet I still tried to play it. And, my man Al Kooper nails another production. But, okay, is this a stupid answer to Neil Young's "Southern Man" or what? I really don't suspect Skynyrd of having been racist, and I'll suspend disbelief that they're jumping in to defend George Wallace, but "Watergate does not bother me"?

"#9 Dream" - John Lennon
Both "Mind Games" and "Meat City" were good, but it was starting to seem like too long since a really good Lennon song. "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" was, uh, all right, and I was cheering for it to top the charts, albeit with some amazement, but "#9 Dream" was was the first real reappearance of the 1967-1968 John—the one who could write the chords of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" or "Sexy Sadie."

"Gun" [edit] - John Cale
This really christened Cale the wild man for me. I heard it in my familiar Watt Avenue Tower Records and walked around for many minutes assuming it was some Velvet Underground I hadn't heard (which at that point was still a lot) until I talked to the staff. In fact the guitar is Roxy's Phil Manzanera, and, pardon me, it's a good deal beyond Lou's limitations. The lyrics are a somewhat cartoony narrative about some species of low-life killer ("me and my partner")—you're never quite sure what manner of law they break or enforce—and the guitar itself conjures everything from ambulance sirens to screaming distress. The snare-on-the-beat drumming is played just right with the ensemble to conjure its own alternative momentum. I edited the eight-plus minutes down to between three and four—retaining most of the important guitar soloing. Another "job"; blood everywhere; we get it.

"Free Man In Paris" - Joni Mitchell
Here is more of the hyperpersonalized lyric portaiture of Blue, only more sophisticated—mostly a good thing. This is a more climactic melody than anything on Blue, although it's not as bare-nerved. I think the song is supposed to be about David Geffen's ruminations.

"Tell Me Something Good" - Rufus
A phenomenal Stevie Wonder composition, it's one of the hardest songs for me to count straight through and not get gutterballed onto the off-count by the verse vocal. It was starmaker machinery (as Joni would say) for Chaka Khan, but I'm as much impressed by Al Ciner's rude metallic guitar, and the beautiful bass, clav, and heavy breathing groove.

"Amateur Hour" - Sparks
The whole first side of Kimono My House is splendid. "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both Of Us" is so big; Sparks in a way invented what Queen do and never got credit. "Falling In Love With Myself Again" and "Thank God It's Not Christmas" are adept grandiosity with a good heart. Very 19th century, really. "Amateur Hour" rocks the hardest in my listening test. There are some slightly embarrassing adolescent humor moments, but of course that is the whole point of the song. I love "She can show you what you must do/To be more like people better than you."

"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" - Steely Dan
There's a tantalizing hint at what the set-up to the relationship and the passing of the phone number are. Some days I think it's an estranged parent talking ("We can stay inside and play games, I don't know"), but I take that and other touches to be artful ways of adding weight to the feeling: a friend in town has heard your name; we've heard you're leaving. People care about this phone number being passed. For a plain song, there are a few utterly unexpected chord change. Brilliant playing.

"Killer Queen" - Queen
In this teenage symphony to gaudiness, Queen come up with the headiest brew yet of old-timey jazz, blues, and baroque as a futuristic device following the Bowie recipe. Brian May and Freddie Mercury vamp and phase shift their way to a fantastically rewarding listen.

"Tangled Up In Blue" - Bob Dylan
The Italian poet from the 13th century has to be Dante, right? "Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul, from me to you" is spectacularly good writing. First, no one thinks of describing literary passion in a pop song; second, even if they thought of it, no one who attempted it would be any good at it except Bob. This was the first inkling I had that he was for real in a way that was probably unique within the whole generation, and I was helped along by the fact that it's a very forthcoming and lovingly crafted record. But what did the girl in the topless place hand him, La Vita Nuova? Or the Inferno?

"Sweet Thing/Candidate" - David Bowie
The cover prepares us for the fact that Diamond Dogs is a monstrosity. I like just about every cut, possibly excepting the disco version of "1984" (I like the earlier 1980 Floor Show live version a lot), and the most monstrous is my favorite. Sounding like a B-movie Scott Walker, Anthony Newley, and Mae West, Bowie tour-guides the brothel district of his Armageddon city. It's good—not one of the stronger things on the album, although I adore Bowie's own sax work and guitar work—but then the digression called "Candidate" kicks in, and all the rockets fire. The storm of half-conscious images culmitating in "Bullet-proof faces/Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay" is amazingly similar to Joyce's "Circe" chapter of Ulysses, which is in turn similar to Goethe's Walpurgisnacht in Faust. John Easdale once did a cover of this that captures the crazy power.

"Back of a Car" - Big Star
There's a good chance Radio City is the best album not by the Beatles; it's hard to evaluate the way one does other contenders like Who's Next or This Year's Model because those albums made a big splash, and Radio City went so completely neglected on initial release (I didn't know about Big Star until 1980). It's hard to explain how certain I was, almost immediately, of the success of the record. Auteur Alex Chilton typically disavows that much specialness; he once said something like, "Those are just the chords your hands want to play on guitar if you've been at it a certain length of time." That (probably botched) quote is just more specialness to me: sorry, Alex, vicious cycle. The diminished second chord of the song is palpably unlikely except maybe in 1920s blues, although, you know what? Your hands do like to play it. Maybe it's about doing what your hands want. The lyrics of Radio City are an interesting analog to the mind-grabbing Bill Eggleston photo of the red ceilinged room on the cover. That black light astro-sign sex position poster occupies the same realm of gently-scrutinized artifacts of youth as the whirring teen thoughts in the lyrics: "Sitting in the back of a car/Music so loud I can't tell a thing/Thinking about what to say/And I can't find the lines." One impressive twist is, "I know I'll feel a whole lot more when I get alone." There's a rare astuteness about that. Then there's the patented Chilton wrong yet strangely right diction of "I'll go on and on with you/Like to fall and lie with you." Why is that so good? There's a longing in there for a sexual connection to act as a leap of faith—a context in which words fail by nature, except that here in Alex's little song, maybe they don't quite fail.