My love for music lists traces back to American Top 40 and WLS's Silver Dollar Surveys. The WLS lists led to buying 45s of my favorite songs which led to buying entire albums then buying CDs, SACDs, and now Blu-Ray Audio discs. Casey's American Top 40 led to Billboard which led to Joel Whitburn and his Record Research books. All of this led to the 1975 Hideaway 100 and today we're featuring the songs from 50-41.
From fifth grade up through junior high, Nugent was right behind Kiss as the artist whose music we kids wanted because our parents wouldn't let us have it. When we finally got it, we didn't want it anymore. Nugent has stirred up plenty of controversy since then, enough that we generally can't separate the artist from his big mouth. But when it comes to "Stranglehold", we are powerless against its serpentine charms. We don't condone the violence that the lyrics may contain but the song's intoxicating musical vibe is one of open defiance.
I've always been fascinated by words, especially the way some words spelled other words when read backward. Words like dog, nova, and nametag provided me with little bits of entertainment, leading to palindromes and further wordplay. Evil was also one of those words that became a completely different word when spelled backward and in 1982, I acquired two albums titled Live Evil which laid it all out right there. Technically, the Miles Davis 1971 album was titled Live-Evil and the 1980 Black Sabbath album was Live Evil. Though I no longer have either album, I still enjoy the many levels and forms of wordplay and share that love with my grandkids as they continue to learn to spell and read. "Evil Woman" was a hit with me upon first listen though I think that was in 1976 on WLS and I remember the drum and piano sounds, in particular, as well as that cool backward sound effect at about 2:25 into the 3:29 US single edit. Still love the song almost fifty years later though it's a toss-up as to whether I prefer the full-length 4:35 album version or the 4:18 UK single edit.
Linda Ronstadt could make someone else's song her own in one take or one performance. The Everly Brothers' sweet love lament "When Will I Be Loved" is a prime example of Linda's talent for interpretation. Due credit to her backing band, especially Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards, who provide harmony vocals with Ronstadt throughout the song. Linda Ronstadt was a family favorite when I was growing up and this song got a lot of plays around our house, either off the Heart Like A Wheel or Greatest Hits albums. There's no way this track runs almost three minutes — it's barely two minutes.
Based on the lyrics I had heard just a couple of times, I spent fruitless years looking for a song called "Now You're Messing With A Son Of A B***h" by an unknown group though my best guess was Aerosmith. Then, looking for a completely different song ("Love Hurts") by Nazareth, I found a compilation of the group's songs titled Hot Tracks in 1982 or 1983. And when I listened to that album, the fifth track on Side 1 was the "Now You're Messing With..." song I had searched for in vain. The song's actual title is "Hair Of The Dog" and as I learned shortly afterward, both it and "Love Hurts" were originally released on an album also titled Hair Of The Dog. The song still inspires a defiant and rebellious mood much like "Stranglehold" above.
Though it was a Top 10 hit, I don't recall ever hearing "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)" on the radio but I know Dad had the song on a Ronco album (probably Hit After Hit - ed.) and I'm sure I first acquired it via 36 Super Gold Hits, a later K-Tel pickup. Sayer's Endless Flight album was a favorite of mine and I worked my way backward through his singles, re-discovering "Long Tall Glasses" and his original version of "The Show Must Go On". Friends tell me Leo Sayer had some good albums and songs after the huge success of Endless Flight but I never got into any of his stuff after 1977.
Dad liked mumbling along with "Lady Marmalade" whenever it came on; can't really call it singing because it was clear he didn't know the words and even after 50 years, I still don't know the words. He had the 8-track of the K-Tel album Mindbender in his car. As funky as it should be with Allen Toussiant and The Meters as the backing band. For the past ten years or so, both the ringtone and contact name for my wife have been gitchi gitchi ya ya da da. It's a lot of fun on CarPlay and Siri.
Although I may have heard it at some point in the preceding 30+ years, I remember specifically hearing Poco's "Keep On Tryin'" on April 5, 2007. That was the day after The Killer In The Concrete episode of the show Bones had aired and my wife was watching it off the DVR. I was walking through the living room at the time on my way to the kitchen and the harmonies stopped me in my tracks. Still think it is an absolutely gorgeous track. Fun fact: Fans of Poco refer to themselves as Poconuts.
Another song that had no interest to this nine-year-old listener in 1975 was Jefferson Straship's "Miracles". That would change years later when, in the throes of teen love, I randomly pulled the album out from the stack of my girlfriend's mother's awesome collection and threw it on the turntable. My girlfriend and I continued wrasslin' but I became a little distracted when the second track began. Despite the sensory overload, I made a note to seek the song out and we've been together long after that girl and I parted ways.
Dad had Michael Murphey's Blue Sky-Night Thunder album and played it more than many of his other albums. Now that I've been thinking about it, I recall hearing that album more during rain and thunderstorms than at any other time. (Did Dad have his own rain music playlist of songs and albums he liked to listen to while it rained?) The album's two singles have left a huge impression on me and I'll admit that "Wildfire", up at number 60 on the 1975 Hideaway 100, is on my rain playlist which I got to break out over the past three days which is a rarity here in the desert. "Carolina In The Pines" is more delicate than "Wildfire" to my ears, more of a love song in the "Annie's Song" mode although on some listens I wish there was less instrumentation and no uptempo vamps near the song's end. I don't know whether to praise the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for their backing or curse them for playing to their strengths rather than easing back when needed.
"Love Rollercoaster" was one of my earliest exposures to the funk though as a nine-year-old, I had no idea what to do with it other than try to sing along with the catchy chorus which meant I was shouting "rollercoaster" throughout the song much like Dad stumbling through "Lady Marmalade". Of course, I knew what a rollercoaster was but I still had no idea what love was. By the time 1988's exemplary disco compilation Dancin' The Night Away came into my life via a small ad in Goldmine magazine advertising Silver Eagle compact discs at ridiculously low prices, I was more than ready to get down. That collection was the first appearance of "Love Rollercoaster" in my growing CD library though soon it would be joined by more than a dozen other compilations from Time-Life, Rhino, Mercury, and Priority.
Why would you call the song "Hair of the Dog" when the main line is "Now your messin' with....a son of a bitch."?
ReplyDeleteInteresting that this song is part of an article where the author started off with a discussion of word play. The 'joke' here from Nazereth is that it's "Heir of the dog" where an 'heir' of a dog is, literally, a son of a bitch.