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Former Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent's band Argent had one huge hit from their 1972 album All Together Now, but the great second number on that album has disappeared from rock radio:
Feel free to add links to your favorite Argent songs or performances.
We haven't featured this Israeli rock band in several years, which also performed at times under the name "The Churchills" and sometimes just "Jericho." This is another number from their 1971 album memorably titled Junkies Monkeys & Donkeys:
Please feel free to add links to any favorite numbers by Jericho Jones/Churchills/Jericho.
ORIGINALLY POSTED JUNE 29, 2019--COMMENTS NOW OPEN
They don't get much more obscure than this Japanese pscyhedelic/progressive/hard rock band of the late 1960s and early 1970s, that enjoyed no commercial success even in Japan, but has long had a small cult following. They began by doing covers of various British blues rock numbers, of which this is one--a rather distinctive version of the song Led Zeppelin ripped off from Howlin' Wolf and Albert King and made famous:
If anyone knows the precise year of this recording, please post in the comments, along with links to any other "Flower Travellin Band" favorites!
Reader Dave Wasser tipped me off to this California-based band active in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, that had something of a local following, but never made it nationally. (They aren't even on Spotify!) The style is sort of rockabilly, but also calls to mind The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and others of the era. This is the lead number of their debut album:
More information about Redwing or recommendations of other songs welcome.
The lead number on the eccentric Captain Beefheart's debut album, I find it quite a bit more likable than anything from the 1969 album for which he is "famous" (at least among diehard fans of the period), Trout Mask Replica:
Feel free to add links to your favorite Captain Beefheart performances/songs.
It doesn't get any more obscure than the British band "Universe" (background here); the whole album is worth a listen for fans of the rock of that period, but here's a favorite of mine:
The James Gang was Joe Walsh's first band in the late 1960s and early 1970s, perhaps best-known for the brilliant Rides Again album of 1970, one of the best rock/blues albums of a very good year for such albums.* Their less successful 1969 debut concludes with their version of a Ragovoy/Shuman number recorded by a number of acts in the 1960s, but this is, for my money, the best version, which then evolves into a long jam:
Feel free to add links to your favorite James Gang numbers, studio or live, in the comments. (I first posted this song in January 2018, but it appears that version has disappeared from YouTube.)
*Other very good albums in that genre from 1970 include Black Sabbath's debut album and Paranoid; The Who's Live at Leeds; the debut from Cactus; Mountain's debut, Climbing; Grand Funk Railroard's Closer to Home; Deep Purple in Rock; The Doors, Morrison Hotel, Allman Brothers' Idlewild South, and Free's Fire and Water. The Sabbath debut album was probably the best of the year, but Rides Again has a claim on being #2 in the blues/rock genre.
This is one of the very first obscure numbers I posted several years ago, but it's such a great tune by a forgotten British band that I'm putting it up front again (a mix of Blind Faith and Traffic, as it were):
ORIGINALLY POSTED APRIL 13, 2019--STILL LIKE THIS NUMBER!
German hard rock band that had some success in Europe in the early 1970s. This song is a bit atypical, and better than their standard fare (which I found a bit tedious):
Wayne Kramer, one of the two lead guitarists for the proto-punk band the MC5, has died. (Only the drummer from the original band is still alive.) The Michigan rock band was best-known for the 1969 live album "Kick Out the Jams," and recorded two other studio albums. They enjoyed modest success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but are now widely acclaimed as the progenitors of punk rock music. Here's a few clips of the band, starting with Mr. Kramer's best-known number, "Ramblin' Rose," on which he also sings the lead in his strange falsetto; this is live in 1970:
As readers will know, there were fewer new obscure finds this year (I think I have come close to exhausting what's actually worth flagging here!), so I expanded to posting some relatively obscure number as well as obscure "covers" of great rock numbers, and recycling "great moments" from prior years. Here, in any case, are my four favorite really obscure discoveries from this past year:
Feel free to add your own favorite "obscure" (or fairly obscure) rock 'n' roll finds over the past year; you can just cut and paste the URL into the comment, it will convert automatically. I may take some of your suggestions for next year! (Two of the four on this year's "really obscure" list were suggested by reader Dave Wasser.)
Parker James has only a couple of dozen listeners on Spotify, but he sure does a fine rendition of this number from the Grand Funk "Red Album" from 1969:
We haven't featured this Detroit-based blues rock band of the late 1960s and early 1970s in several years (e.g., here and here). This number only appers, to my knowledge, on this 2011 collection by a reformed version of the band, although I believe it's one that was part of their much earlier live sets--it certainly soundsl ike it could have come from the "original" band.
Feel free to add links to other favorite Frijid Pink numbers (and if anyone knows the origin of this particular number, please feel free to add that too).
Reader Ian York tipped me off to this Danish progressive rock band, that recorded several albums in the early and mid-1970s, with some modest success in Europe. This comes from their debut:
Feel free to post links to other Culpeper's Orchard favorites.
Paul Gilbert is probably best-known as the guitarist for the 1990s hard rock band Mr. Big, but this cover comes from a more recent solo album. His version of the old Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes song is really quite good, I think (unlike Nugent, one can understand the lyrics in Gilbert's rendering--although I usually prefer not to understand rock lyrics, given the low intellectual level of the genre, to put it politely):
Feel free to add links in the comments to either your favorite Ted Nugent covers, or to your favorite Gilbert or Mr. Big songs/performances.
"Popa Chubby" is the stage name of Ted Horowitz, a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx, who has been active since the late 1980s as a rock blues guitarist. This is his very fine cover of the Led Zeppelin number:
Feel free to add other Popa Chubby favorites in the comments.
A cover band comprised of Alice Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, and actor Johnny Depp, plus a rotating cast of other well-known rock musicians, this is their version of my personal favorite David Bowie song, with Depp on vocals:
Marcy Playground had one very successful album in the late 1990s, but this cover of the Neil Young song from a 2012 album is uncanny in how much it sounds exactly like the original!
The Stealers are a British band from Brighton, with not even 50 regular "listeners" on Spotify! But they have a great cover of this Rolling Stones number from 1967 off the classic Beggars Banquet:
This Los Angeles-based band (active in the late 1960s and early 1970s) was supposed to be the opening act at Woodstock, but got stuck in traffic, so they performed after Richie Havens (whose performance made the movie). This was the closing number of their debut album, and a nice one:
Comments are open for those who want to share links to other Sweetwater favorites.
The duo Delaney & Bonnie had a lot of prominent friends with whom they played, and they enjoyed some modest success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mostly for work with Eric Clapton. This is a song co-written with Clapton, which they recorded live with Clapton, but also in this studio version, which I prefer:
Feel free to add your favorite Delaney & Bonnie links in the comments. I always enjoy seeing what readers come up with. (Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.)
Best-known as the guitarist and primary composer for The Band, he died this week at 80. The first two albums by The Band really are "classics" in the rock 'n' roll genre. Here's two of my favorite songs, each written by Robertson, from those albums. First, "Chest Fever" from 1968:
The Kinks are certainly not an obscure band, but the 1975 album Soap Opera didn't do very well in the U.S. or the U.K., and is hardly one of their better-known efforts. The album also includes one of my all-time favorite songs by The Kinks (which also didn't do very well as a single, surprisingly I think):
Feel free to add links to other lesser-known and under-appreciated numbers by The Kinks.
Renowned rock and blues guitarist, Cooder is probably best-known for his work with others (including The Rolling Stones, Doobie Brothers, Rita Coolidge, Arlo Guthrie, Van Morrison, and many others). But he also produced many solo albums. This song comes from his second solo effort:
Feel free to post links to other Ry Cooder favorites in the comments.
A leading figure of "New Orleans blues," famed for his live performances, this comes from his fifth album, right before his 1973 hit "Right Place Wrong Time":
Feel free to post other Dr. John links in the comments, or other New Orleans blues/soul favorites.
Youngstown, Ohio hard rock/heavy metal outfit (think Black Sabbath) led by guitarist Jim Gustafson. They had a big Ohio following, but thanks to bad luck and lack of smart management, never made it nationally or internationally. Hard to understand why this song, from their debut album, isn't a standard of "classic rock" radio, for example:
This hard rock/blues rock trio came out of Florida, their debut album, from which this tune comes, produced by Rick Derringer. The guitarist Floyd Radford was, alas, hired away by Edgar Winter not long after the first album (he subsequently played with Johnny Winter as well). But this is one of several strong numbers from the one and only album by the original lineup featuring Radford.
We've mentioned the Savoy Brown Blues & Boogie Band before (several members went on to fame and fortune in Foghat in the 1970s), but this is one of my favorite numbers that one never hears on the radio:
The concluding number of this terrific, but under-recognized British hard/progressive rock band (with one American, Gary Wright, of later "Dream Weaver" fame in the 1970s), this is the concluding number of their best album, Spooky Two:
We haven't featured a new tune from the great Welsh heavy metal trio in quite some time (we reposted an earlier item last fall); here's the closing track from their debut album:
It's hard to believe this groovy tune, very much of its moment, couldn't even crack the Billboard top 100 back in 1968. That's a young Todd Rundgren on lead guitar; ironically, the flip side, "Hello It's Me" became a big hit for Rundgren in the early 1970s.
Part of the British blues explosion of the late 1960s, Savoy Brown enjoyed some modest success in both the UK and the US circa 1969-1972, before three members of the band (Dave Peverett, Roger Earl, and Tony Stevens) left and went on to greater fame and fortune in the mid-1970s with Foghat. This tune was re-recorded by Foghat, but this is the Savoy Brown version.
The multi-instrumentalist (best-known for mastery of dozens of string instruments) died on March 3. He was well-known within the rock world for the work he did with Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Rod Stewart, among others, in the 1970s (it's his slide guitar on, for example, Browne's hit "Running on Empty"). But his most interesting work, in my book, was in the 1960s with Kaleidescope, which I've featured periodically over the years. So here's a retrospective:
Kaleidescope, "Egyptian Garden," the lead number from their debut album in 1967:
Before Humble Pie, Steve Marriott rode to fame, especially in Britain (less so in the U.S.), with the Small Faces, though by 1969 their star was fading even in the U.K. This great cover of the Tim Hardin tune comes from their last album (released after the band's official dissolution):
The English band "The Move" enjoyed some success in Britain and Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s; its front men, Roy Wood and (from 1970) Jeff Lynne subsequently went on to great fame and fortune with the Electric Light Orchestra later in the 1970s. Although The Move began as more of a pop band, with occasional psychedelic flourishes (vide "Flowers in the Rain"), by their third album in 1970, from which this tune comes, the British blues explosion began to dominate their style and sound:
Blue Cheer, the psychedelic blues band out of San Francisco, is remembered, if at all, for their very good 1968 version of the "Summertime Blues," but by 1971 the personnel and the sound had changed; this was from their last album before calling it quits until the 1980s, when the group reformed:
Another good tune, probably the best on the album, from the long-forgotten Australian's debut album:
ADDENDUM: One trivia point: Paul Rodgers, later of Free and Bad Company, is one of the backing vocalists on this track (the album was recorded in London).
Reader Dave Wasser kindly flagged the long-forgotten Mr. Thomas for me; born in Australia, he recorded this number in London for his second album and it's not bad! He later played with the Edgar Broughton Band and with his own band in Berlin.
David Crosby, who enjoyed great success with The Byrds in the mid-1960s and then with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young) from the late 1960s onwards--and occasional success on his own and with Graham Nash--was a fine singer, capable especially of brilliant harmonies, but never as good a song composer as those he worked with. Here's a few notable songs he either authored or co-authored during his long career that are among my favorites:
He co-wrote one of The Byrds's biggest hits and most memorable songs, "Eight Miles High," from 1966:
My favorite Crosby composition is "Long Time Gone," from the CSN debut in 1969:
Beck was one of the three great British blues-inspired guitarists who passed through the Yardbirds in the 1960s--the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. He died this week, age 78. What follows are some selections of some better- and lesser-known highlights from his long career.
The Yardbird, "Over Under Sideways Down," 1966 (Beck on lead guitar):
Jeff Beck (with Rod Stewart on vocals), "Let Me Love You," 1968, from his very best album Truth:
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