https://open.spotify.com/playlist/747xowaGzKhhChUkpfCXSX?si=f3d3ae975eda4828
BLONDIE CHAPLIN
"Lonely Traveler"
I'm still waiting for another solo album from Blondie. He's sent me new music, but...he's kind of elliptical when it comes to communication.
Anyway, I read about the Flame and then there he was singing "Sail On Sailor" on "Holland"!
As for this solo album... I bought it from the promo bin, but I would have paid full price if not. It's good throughout, but this is the best song on the album. I positively love this track. I remember playing it and talking about it the spring of my first year of law school, when the records I bought and the shows I went to were more important than anything I learned in class, never mind enjoying them a lot more (and paying more dividends today!) One record can brighten up your whole day, play this and see if it does yours.
CARL WILSON
"What You Gonna Do About Me"
I fell in love with Carl's voice on "Girl Don't Tell Me" from "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!)." And I love, love, LOVE his vocal on "I Was Made to Love Her," the third cut on the "Wild Honey" album, which actually had a hit, albeit released before the LP, "Darlin'." And the title track was also exquisite, with Carl's vocal.
And, of course, you've got "Good Vibrations" and "I Can Hear Music" and "This Whole World" and "Feel Flows" and "The Trader" and "Funky Pretty" along with Blondie and "Good Timin'" and "Full Sail"...god, that's a playlist unto itself.
So, needless to say I had to buy Carl's initial solo LP, on Columbia and produced by Buckinghams/Chicago legend James William Guercio, and I even went to see Carl at the Roxy when he toured on this album.
But I'd be lying if I told you the material on this LP and the second Columbia one was as great throughout as the songs I mentioned above. And by time the second LP was out there was little hype, but this song on the first...
Just like "Lonely Traveler," "What You Gonna Do About Me" was not on streaming services for a long time.
But now it is.
ROBERT PLANT
"29 Palms"
I bought all the solo LPs up to "Now and Zen," which was actually the best of the first four, but I loved "In the Mood" (for a melody!) and "Big Log" from "The Principle of Moments," both of which got radio airplay, the former especially, and "Little by Little" from "Shaken 'n' Stirred." "Now and Zen" was seen as a comeback, a return to form, you heard "Heaven Knows" and "Tall Cool One" and "Ship of Fools" all the time.
And for some reason I purchased "Manic Nirvana," whilst skipping "Now and Zen," but that was not a big success, and then fully fourteen years after "In Through the Out Door," when little was expected, when grunge had captured the airwaves, Plant came back with a tour-de-force, "Fate of Nations." I played it ad infinitum, and got hooked on "29 Palms" and told Danny Buch that it was a hit but he told me they'd tried with radio, but radio rejected it, stations said it didn't react, so...
You may not have heard "29 Palms."
Now I saw this tour at the Universal Amphitheatre, and this was when Plant was still faithfully rendering Zeppelin tunes to keep the fans coming, and after this Robert reunited with Jimmy and..."29 Palms" doesn't really sound like Led Zeppelin, but this was when Robert was still rocking, before he jumped the track with Alison Krauss.
CHRISTINE MCVIE
"Ask Anybody"
I was always a Christine fan. Not that I bought any of those Fleetwood Mac albums before the one with Stevie and Lindsey, but you heard her voice on "Station Man" and "Heroes are Hard to Find," which got some radio airplay. But what people forget in the wake of the gargantuan success that followed was that no one was waiting for the so-called "White Album" that contained the first contributions by Stevie and Lindsey. There were no hosannas. And what made inroads, and what broke the album, was Christine's "Over My Head."
Now after that, "Rhiannon" broke big and Christine was overwhelmed by the twirling witch Stevie Nicks who deserved her success...
But so did Christine.
One can argue that Christine was the secret weapon, writing hit after hit, but that's not the way it was perceived by the public.
Now there was an initial solo album, re-released as "The Legendary Christine Perfect Album" after the Mac's commercial breakthrough, but...
It was Stevie who branched out to a solo career first, she had two albums, with hits, before Christine even had one. But in 1984, Christine finally released hers, produced by Russ Titelman, a Warner/Reprise staple who was not part of the Fleetwood Mac camp. But Russ had a well-deserved rep, making some of the best records of the seventies with Lenny Waronker and...
Russ was ultimately famous for bringing Eric Clapton back from the dead, or at least limbo, with "Journeyman" in 1989, and in the interim between Christine's album and Eric's, he produced Steve Winwood's legendary "Back in the High Life" and...
Winwood is on this track.
Now the single was "Got a Hold On Me," which was good, but in an upbeat, jaunty kind of way, like those latter-day Fleetwood Mac singles Christine spearheaded.
Oh, the opening cut, "Love Will Show Us How" was also released as a single, but made little headway.
And neither of these tracks are the best on the album.
The third best is "One in a Million," which features a duet with the aforementioned "Winwood," and it's really very good, but...
"So Excited" is even better, it really sounds like reconnecting with a love, it's a veritable tear.
But the best song on the whole LP finishes side one, and not only is co-written by Winwood, but he plays on it too and his keyboards help define the mood...
"He's a devil and an angel
Ooh, the combination's driving me wild
Drive me wild"
Supposedly that's about Dennis Wilson, but...
The song changes, amps up with the chorus, and then retreats...despite being released in the eighties "Ask Anybody" is really more of a seventies album track, and that's a good thing!
DON HENLEY
"The End of the Innocence"
"O' beautiful for spacious skies
Now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king"
That was about Reagan, even though he had already been succeeded by Bush. But the lyrics fit Trump, yet no song today can have the ubiquity "The End of the Innocence" had in 1989, never mind be as good.
Now the funny thing is despite being a big hit, this track has been nearly completely forgotten, superseded by "The Heart of the Matter."
But...
This was when Bruce Hornsby was still a chartmaker, it's his music, his piano, but don't underestimate Don...in addition to the words and the delivery he adds a gravitas that Bruce has never been able to equal in his versions.
But that's Henley.
This is one of my go-to songs, one that I play the most.
I remember going to visit my younger sister in Minneapolis and driving around the lakes in her Fiero punching the radio buttons to try and find this song, which I did a couple of times.
Remember that?
Maybe you do.
But that's how it was. When tracks were giants, known by everybody.
Like "The End of the Innocence."
MIKE & THE MECHANICS
"Something to Believe In"
You might have never even heard this song. There was a hit on this 1995 album, "Beggar on a Beach of Gold," "Over My Shoulder," but that featured the other Paul in the group, Paul Carrack. Yes, there were two Pauls in Mike & the Mechanics, and they were both lead singers. The other one was Paul Young, who is not the Paul Young who had solo hits, and had a great voice and died of a heart attack way before his time, and it's Young who sang this song.
You've got to hear this to get it. There's the simple descending figure, but even more there's Young's vocal and the mood and...
At this point Mike & The Mechanics was a band out of time, and after this Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford reformed Genesis with a new lead singer, Ray Wilson, and that album, "Calling All Stations," was really pretty good, but sunk like a stone commercially so...
Turn out the lights late at night and listen to this.
GRAHAM NASH
"I Used to Be a King"
He was the last member of the group to release a solo album and for a long time I thought it was the best of the initial LPs.
Now with time I've reconsidered, that initial Stephen Stills solo album is a monster, yet I still don't understand the veneration of Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name."
As for that initial Stills album, "Love the One You're With" was very good, just not as good as "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "Carry On," the previous album openers, and it blows my mind that the man is totally forgotten, but still...
"Songs for Beginners" was great, but unfortunately its heart on the sleeve lyrics makes it a bit dated, but still...
This was the flip side of "Blue." Songs for the broken up. When you're young and both hopeful and vulnerable the lyrics of both mean so much to you, you pick them apart, find meaning...
"I Used to Be a King" was the best song on the album.
PHIL COLLINS
"You Know What I Mean"
"Thunder and Lightning"
There was a time when almost no one knew his name, and now everybody seems to have a bad taste in their mouths regarding Phil Collins. And he's hobbled and there was the story of the ex who wouldn't leave the house, but once upon a time he was just another rocker home from the road who found his wife had abandoned him.
And with an 8-track recorder he stayed at home and made an album all about his situation, his feelings and...
No one was waiting with bated breath.
I bought it because I was a fan of latter-day Genesis, loving "Squonk," having seen them at the Forum, but...this is an album that took a while to percolate in the marketplace, before "In the Air Tonight" not only garnered airplay, but whose bass sound was then sampled ad infinitum.
And "I Missed Again" was nearly as big.
But although I liked both those numbers, those were not the ones I cottoned to first, that I played incessantly.
The one that resonated was "You Know What I Mean."
"Just as I thought I'd made it
You walk back into my life
Just like you never left
Just as I'd learned to be lonely"
It's SO hard to break up, so hard to recover, and I was going through a breakup myself at this point. And at some point after the back and forth you have to call it quits and stand your ground and...it's the only way you can get through.
"Oh, leave me alone in my heart
It's broken in two and I'm not, I'm not thinking too straight
Just leave, oh, leave me alone with my dreams
You've taken everything else, you know what I mean"
It's just Phil and his piano and... It's haunting and meaningful. And then when it ends...the track segues into "Thunder and Lightning."
"'Cause they said thunder and they said lightning
It would never strike twice
But if that's true then why can't you tell me
How come this feels so nice
Feels alright, feels alright, alright"
This is self-explanatory, but that feeling of falling back in love...
Ah...
PETE TOWNSHEND
"Pure and Easy"
"Who Came First" was promoted as a Meher Baba-influenced album and by this point at the end of 1972 I'd had about enough with the spiritual seekers finding gurus and...
I guess my natural skepticism... Like anybody is really god. We're all out here alone and the challenge is to address the world facing forward, believing in yourself.
Anyway, needless to say, I didn't buy this.
But just after Thanksgiving junior year John Hughes picked me up outside Painter Hall after a wet snowstorm in his '66 Catalina with a cassette deck and the song playing was this, the opening cut on "Who Came First."
To say I got it immediately...
Now there's this other magical number on "Who Came First," "Nothing Is Easy (Let's See Action)," and I wanted to write about that one, how Townshend got the groove from a machine outside his window, but...
The truth is "Pure and Easy" is a bit better.
Now both of these numbers were written for the aborted "Lifehouse" project, which was ultimately released by RED about twenty five years ago but is not available on streaming services and...
The Who version of "Pure and Easy" was finally released in 1974 on the "Odds and Sods" collection, and most people who are familiar with this number know the one with the Daltrey vocal, however, this is one instance where the original home demo with Pete on vocals is superior, it's less bombastic and more meaningful. It's both in your face and subtle. Is that possible?
I'm not sure, but there is magic in "Pure and Easy."
"We all know success when we all find our own dream"
Ain't that the truth.
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