WLS Music Survey - November 13, 1976 (Part One: The Thirty-threes)

The Hideaway's computer (aka THEBIGZITI) gave up the ghost on Halloween after nearly thirteen years of service. We're still salvaging a few files off the machine's hard drives with plans to build a new state-of-the-art PC after Christmas. For the foreseeable future, the almost like-new 2018 Dell laptop that allowed me to work out of the office throughout the Pandemic will be used to bang out these missives. It even has a DVD/CD writer built in.

Though the picture on the survey makes him look like Violet Beauregarde after chewing Wonka's forbidden gum, the Jock Of The Week on the survey dated November 13, 1976, is Bob Sirott who held down the afternoon drive slot back then. According to the internet, Sirott, 75, can be heard on the Chicago airwaves each weekday as the morning host on WGN.

• One of the "upcoming" concerts (tix for all shows were going for $5-$7 around this time, according to Billboard's Top Box Office survey) featured Neil Sedaka coming off "Bad Blood", the biggest hit of his long career the previous year and managed to score two Top 40 singles from his latest album Steppin' Out which had fallen off the charts by November 1976.
• England Dan and John Ford Coley were hot like fire then with a Top 10 album still climbing the charts on the back of two Top 10 singles.
• Ozark Mountain Daredevils were reluctantly touring behind their latest album Men From Earth and their woefully underappreciated single "You Know Like I Know".
• His whole life changed in 1976 and Jackson Browne was touring behind his just-released album The Pretender. I wasn't able to confirm it for this particular show but Valerie Carter was opening on some dates of this tour.
• Orleans was riding high with a new album Waking And Dreaming and a single "Still The One" on its way down the Forty-fives at number 19.
• The hot ticket for the week was Chicago Stadium hosting the Eagles and their Hotel California Tour although the namesake album was still nearly a month from its release in December 1976. According to setlist.fm, the band performed all but "Peaceful Easy Feeling" from their other 1976 release, Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975. The group's old buddy and songwriting partner J.D. Souther was the opening act.
• Melissa Manchester was also performing across two nights out in Lakeview at the Ivanhoe. She was supporting her album Better Days & Happy Endings.

There are seventeen artists with albums on the list of Thirty-threes who are now Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. However, the lone artist with TWO albums on the list is not among those legends. In November 1976, "Captain" Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille were so big they were hosting a popular weekly variety show and had two albums with a combined stay of 110 weeks on Billboard's Top LPs & Tape chart. Those same two albums are on the list of Thirty-threes: Love Will Keep Us Together is at number 32 while Song of Joy is at number 18.

There are five live albums on this week's WLS albums list and all five of them are from artists who have been deservedly enshrined in the Rock Hall. Hard Rain from Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue, the only single-disc live album here,  is falling down the list of Thirty-threes at number 24 after just four weeks. Spoiler alert: next week will be its last on the WLS tally. Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same is also the soundtrack album to a bizarre concert/concept film of the same name. In its second week on the list of Thirty-threes, the album jumped up from number 29 to number 11. I was extremely disappointed when I finally got this album and saw the movie in 1985. It remains an epic failure for this Zep fan. Released in September 1976, Lynyrd Skynyrd's One More From The Road lives up to the hype and expectations that their first four studio albums promised. The album was at number 14 and moving up. Rush's All The World's A Stage was also released in September 1976. It's slowly creeping up the WLS chart at number 27. The album is a decent document of early Rush but I'm a fan of what came after this album, namely the six studio albums from 1977's A Farewell To Kings through 1984's Grace Under Pressure as well as the double live document Exit... Stage Left from 1981.

Sitting at the top of the Thirty-threes is Frampton Comes Alive!, from the freshly minted Rock Hall of Famer. Though I heard the edited singles on the radio in real-time, it would be a few years before I was able to experience the album as a whole and it was an experience. I know there are no such things as pure live albums as every artist feels the need to go back and polish their performance but whatever post-production Frampton did only made the album that much more of a delight. It is a high-quality recording that captures top-notch performances from Frampton and his band, never failing to put smile after smile on my face while listening. The album spent six solid months rising up the list of WLS's Thirty-threes before notching thirteen weeks at Number One and then taking another six months tripping down the chart before leaving.

The three albums listed at numbers 28-30 are all greatest hits compilations that have as of this writing cumulatively sold more than 42 million copies in the U.S. Coming in at number 28 this week is the Eagles and Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 which currently ranks as the best-selling album ever in the States with a staggering RIAA-certified thirty-eight million copies sold. The album raced up the WLS list back in March 1976 peaking at Number One for four weeks before dancing up and down the list for the next thirteen months before dropping off the Thirty-threes roll. Endless Summer debuted on the list back in October 1974 way up at number 9 before peaking at number 6 in September. It dropped off the chart for ten weeks in late 1974 before re-entering with the Holiday Sales Rush and spending an additional four months among the Thirthy-threes. On the occasion of the band's higher profile during our Nation's Bicentennial Celebration, Endless Summer showed back up on WLS's list yet again for another forty-something consecutive weeks. We find the album moving up to number 29 this week. For 99% of the general population, Endless Summer is all the Beach Boys one ever needs. Number 30 would be the final place on the WLS chart for War's Greatest Hits after an eight-week stay that culminated in a number 13 peak. There have been other compilations of War's recorded output including an expanded Greatest Hits 2.0 a few years back but for this fan, the original with five-tracks-per-side Greatest Hits album from 1976 is their Greatest "Greatest Hits" album. I could be wrong but I'm thinking my Uncle Sam had all three of these albums as eight-track tapes; at the very least, I'd bet a buck he had the Eagles and War. Dad definitely had the Beach Boys and Eagles.

Before we get to our Album Pick of The Week, let's recap. There are seventeen Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame artists plus at least three others The Hideaway believes should be enshrined on this week's list of Thirty-threes:

• Boston
• Boz Scaggs
• War

The list also contains three Diamond-certified (the equivalent of 10 x Platinum) albums. One is a hits compilation, another is a debut album of glorified demos while the third is a timeless double album representing the artist at the peak of his creative powers:

In fact, every one of the albums on the Thirty-threes is RIAA-certified as Gold (500,000 units), Platinum (1,000,000), or Diamond (10,000,000). There are five Gold albums, twelve Platinum albums, and thirteen Multi-Platinum albums. What does it all mean? It means that you and everyone you know probably have more than one of these albums in their music collections if not in regular rotation nearly fifty years after they were released.

In preparation for this write-up, I poured myself a big ol' glass of sweet tea and ventured out under the stars while a cool autumn breeze whispered and the sounds of this album played softly. Hasten Down The Wind (number 25 and rising on the list of Thirty-threes) is much-loved here at The Hideaway but it still feels somehow underappreciated as each listen brings new sensations. How can that be after countless listens over six decades? That night, that listening session found the Spanish-language harmonies of "Lo Siento Mi Vida" as our favorite track, the one we cued up again after the album had played through. The song was written by Linda with her father Gilbert and her Stone Poneys confederate Kenny Edwards. The song features beautiful harmonies from Linda, Kenny, and Andrew Gold. The album spawned a handful of singles including a rocking cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be The Day" and a very torchy cover of the already torchy Patsy Cline cover of Willie Nelson's "Crazy" for country jukeboxes. I recall "Crazy", the B-side of the "Someone To Lay Beside Me" 45, getting many more plays on the Cow Talk jukebox than the A-side. Hasten Down The Wind is an album unstuck in time, not dated by its production or performance.