3 posts tagged “1974”
Here's Eddie Floyd, direct from Soulsville, USA, Memphis Tennessee. There's been a lotta Stax around here just recently. The album is Soul Street, from 1974, and it's worth a look.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, live in 1974 on Sleazy Roadside Stories. These guys released a studio version and another few live ones, but I like this one the best.
Words really can't express what this song means to me. It, well... it means a lot.
Charlie Ryan wrote the song in the early '50s and released it as a single in 1957. There's a lot of history around it. The sexy-devil-girl-rock-poster artist, Coop, probably has about thirty five versions of this song and related records, "answer songs", etc. Bit of a hot-rod fan, that guy, as well as a record nut.
Well, anyhow. Dig it.
P.S. There was a character named Commander Cody in the last Star Wars movie. The rest of the audience must've wondered who that guy was rolling around laughing. It was me. But like as not, Lucas got it from the same place these guys did, rather than from these guys themselves.
Never heard of Mud, didya? Not if you're American, anyhow. In 1974 this single spent eleven weeks on the charts in the UK, four of those weeks at #1. Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, men of many hits, wrote it. Never drew flies in the US. Mud had two other #1 hits: One of those moronic Christmas singles the Brits love so much, and a cover of Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy". They started out glam-with-Elvis-overtones, and wandered into more sort of pure Elvis-tribute territory later on. All their hits, large and small, were worth hearing. No, really! But the glam stuff was key. And what was glam anyway, after all, but camped up, futuristicated '50s rock'n'roll?
They weren't a real band, right, because they didn't write their own songs, and I wonder if they really quite played all of their own instruments, either. And they did retarded dance routines on TV, while miming very badly indeed. But listen to the song! Listen! It totally rules.
