Volume I • II • III• IV • V • VI • VII • VIII • IX • Team Tortoise Blogs • Volume 10 • The #BestSongIHeardToday series is often centered around hearing great songs while exercising. These posts will tend to drift into health related topics but will always come back to the music that brought you here. This particular series is probably more about a self journal to help me stay on the path of healthy living that includes, listening to old and new tunes. If you're looking for a great mix playlist of 25-30 songs, just click on one of my Volumes above.
A beach walk with good friends Ron & Paul last week on the California Central Coast.
In this and future rounds of #BestSongIHeardToday, I've dropped the Running on the Trial part. I'm now taking songs from wherever I hear that gem song for the day to add to the current volume. I also see so many great live tracks on YouTube that you'll be seeing more performance videos in this series of playlists from now on.
With that said, I still get most of my songs for this segment while running and hope you'll still stomach my slogger (slow jogger) advise here.
In my last installment (Volume III), I talked about slowing my pace down even further to prevent injury and boy that sure seems to be the ticket for me. I'm not so tired after a run and have been even running a couple of days in a row now in the past several weeks.
My running app has also taken notice, as Siri has said to me several times, "Runner Paused" when I walk to cross a rocky part on the trail. Geez Siri, "I'm not dead yet, I'm still moving." I can see her saying to me at some point, "Runner are you still there? Runner, should I send out a search party?"
For all of you walkers out there, I've found a great pair of Altra shoes that I highly recommend for walking, or for road running. These shoes have soooo much cushion like a HOKA shoe, but I especially love the Altra toe box that has the same toe box shape as Birkenstocks. I have a wide foot, which for me is usually 10EEEE. Altra does not have width sizing, so I just go up a 1/2 size and get a 10 1/2 and they fit great! Altra also has a great return policy and if you're buying directly online, they send you the free shipping return label in the box if they don't fit to your liking. Here's the Altra website links for their Paradigm 5.
I wrote this post right after the guilty verdicts came in for the Derek Chauvin trial in the murder of George Floyd. During the past couple of weeks, there have been marches in Minneapolis and Chicago for recent police shootings, including a thirteen year old boy.
My current thoughts are a general feeling of relief, and that these marches and protests will continue, peacefully. I believe that the Black Lives Matter protests in the streets for the past several years actually helped create a positive result in the Minneapolis courtroom last Tuesday.
New police shootings of unarmed people of color seem to happen every week. The black body count continues. The difference now is video- from phones, security cameras, and police body cameras. This is why the purpose of shining a light by the Black Lives Matter movement is not going away.
The Black Lives Matter movement is a continuation and renewal of the civil rights movement started in the early 1960's. It's actually a wonderfully simple branding that harkens back to the, "I Am A Man" posters carried by the black Memphis sanitation workers in their 1968 strike, and at protests shortly after Dr. Martin Luther King’s death.
As a sixty-six year old white man, the Black Lives Matter movement has given me a better understanding of what black people deal with everyday in America.
The Black Lives Matter movement simply presents the fact that white lives have always mattered in a dominant Anglo-American society, but with particular favor compared to people of color in our criminal justice system.
Of all the things for and against the slogan, "Black Lives Matter," I believe Michael Che has said it best way back in his 2016 Netflix special.
In the Chauvin trial, one realizes that justice itself is something much systemically larger than a singular guilty verdict of a police officer methodically killing a black man in the street. But, I'm hopeful that this may be 'the catalyst event' in our history to begin the process for the transformation of law enforcement in our country. The blue wall of silence was not a factor during this particular trial, and I'm encouraged by the testimony of the many law enforcement individuals called to the stand. The factor that made this guilty verdict possible was in large part due to the brave citizens who stood witness, and most importantly video-taped what the Minneapolis Police Department initially reported as a "medical incident."
Darnella Frazier (Center)
My thoughts are with the eyewitnesses who also testified at the trial. I can't get out of my head seventeen year old Darnella Frazier who recorded the entire killing on video, as she was crying on the witness stand,
"When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles," Frazier said. She said she has stayed up some nights "apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life."But, she said, "it’s not what I should have done. It’s what he (Chauvin) should have done." (USA Today)
Darnella, the whole world watched your video, you're a hero.
We don't need to "Defund the Police," a stupid liberal branding that in fact does not help solve the larger problem of systemic racism in the criminal justice system.
We have to move forward with national strategic planning to completely 'transform' NOT 'reform' law enforcement as it currently exists. To me, policing reform initiatives are like buying retread tires where new tire tread is molded onto an existing tire, for an old car. Criminal justice transformation is entirely different, it's like designing and building a new car not dependent on dinosaurs.
The planning and implementation required for such a transformation will in fact need MORE funding to help structure an entirely new criminal justice system. A new justice system that systemically performs at least to the low bar expectation that the lives of all people of color 'just matter' in interactions with the police. This verdict is not justice, it is rare. Hopefully it's the beginning, that spark in time for a new standard of accountability in law enforcement.
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In my search for new music this month, I found an Allison Russell song on Spotify who will be releasing her debut solo album, Outside Child in May.
Allison Russell is a new find for me and so I began to search her on the Internet. In that discovery, I found her moving spoken word essay, Dream of America published on YouTube (10/30/2020) just before the Presidential election. As I listened to Ms. Russell talk about her life experiences, I found it an important piece that continues to help my awareness of race and culture, and where we need to be as a people, for the people.
I would suggest that if you don't have the time right now to view this video, that you come back to view it later as it will be well worth you time.
My usual moaning in new music searches for rock 'n' roll and Americana genres of music is that there is just sooooo much music coming out every month. Actually, a nice problem to have in a world full of real problems, don't you think?
I look at lots of different 'New Releases' reviews and playlists from many of the music streaming services or major (and even minor) online music publications out there.
So why check out my little music publication every Monday?
My answer, I generally curate a new playlist every week. I do this from artists' EP's or albums over just 'singles' releases. It doesn't mean I don't do singles, I include them in almost every playlist I make. It's just a marked contrast with the commercial music streaming playlists today that are typically put together with a mix of singles only.
As a distinction from the pack, my YouTube playlists are most often a mix of 2-5 songs from an album or live video recording with individual artist singles mixed throughout. My hope is that you'll come away with at least one familiar or new artist that causes you to further seek out their songs or albums.
With that said, here's 68 songs, most you've probably have never heard before. Believe me, I'm often just a couple of weeks or even days ahead of you on that one, but in channeling my inner Stephen Colbert I'll say, "A curated mix of my taste in music, found in album, sifted and separated by song, and carefully sorted, that is my segment... A Playlist."
The last couple of weeks I've featured two entire albums from April 1971, James Taylor's Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon, and the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. A complete album feature is often the kiss of death in terms of people hitting the blog post and/or sampling the playlist. I did take a drop in the hit count these past couple of weeks, but for 1971 we are still very much in the sweet spot of the classic generation of the rock 'n' roll era, and I plan on featuring more entire albums in the months ahead from fifty years ago, and the continual roll in time.
April, 1971 also featured fine albums from John Denver, The Doors, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, John Sebastian, James Gang, and CSNY.
John Denver's Poems, Prayers & Promises was not on my hit parade in 1971, but by the time I became a summer camp counselor for individuals with disabilities in 1976 at Camp-A-Lot on Palomar Mountain, John Denver was in heavy rotation at the campfire sing-alongs. I'm tripping back right now to a memory of friend Mark Hunter playing and singing Sunshine On My Shoulders with the band of acoustic playing counselors while a beautiful young camp counselor named Kim provided sign language with a ton of good vibes interpretation.
I believe in the summer of 1977, John Denver did in fact visit the Palomar Observatory for a television special he was filming that featured some of our campers from Camp-A-Lot, and a dream come true for many of them to see and interact with him on that day... take me home country roads.
Where's The Money (1971) is another album that didn't register for me until the summer of 1973 when I started dating a special girl who turned me on to the very funky and funny swing band, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. She had all of Dan's albums, with one of my favorite songs ever... How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?
In 2014, I reconnected with music in a big way after years of doing the day job career thing. That special girl and I wanted to start going to concerts again, and she found out online that Dan Hicks would be performing just north of San Diego, in Escondido. We hopped at the chance and got tickets right away, as this was to be our first concert together after many years. Shortly after, we found out the show had been cancelled as Dan had developed both lung and liver cancer. Dan Hicks died in 2016, and we didn't get that chance to see him live. I'm sure his many fans miss him dearly, and I never skip his songs when one comes on during a run.
This past week I also enjoyed listening to John Sebastian's, Cheapo-Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live John Sebastian (1971). Like Dan Hicks, Sebastian's a good musician and terrific entertainer who puts a smile on all who listen to his records or see him live. John Sebastian, born in 1944 and raised in Greenwich Village grew up in what would be the epicenter for folk music in the early 60's and is part of the folk and rock 'n' rollers that influenced a generation, and... a younger girl keeps rollin' 'cross my mind.
Opting for the above promo photo shoot for the Rolling Stones 1971 album, Sticky Fingers is probably the better decision than blowing up the Andy Warhol designed album cover.
By 1971, 'The Stones' weren't holding anything back with the new album title and cover photo, and were certainly living up to the band's shortened name.
As iconic as the Sticky Fingers cover was with its functional zipper the bad boys of rock had just left their record label Decca and Mick wanted a new logo for their own record label.
A London artist, John Pasche who had done some poster work for the band, created the lips and tongue logo over a weekend for 50 pounds (around $76). The logo was first introduced as the inside cover sleeve of Sticky Fingers and has now gone on to be the band's logo for fifty years. The tongue and lips graphic is in fact the most famous of all band logos, if not one of the most recognized icons used on t-shirts and promotion products around the world.
The logo pictured above was used to commemorate the band's 50 Year Anniversary in 2012, and works well here for the 50th year of Sticky Fingers, a masterful album full of hits with new bandmate Mick Taylor aboard for his first full-time studio Stone's album.
Here's the complete Sticky Fingers with a couple alternate tracksincluding my mix from the Sticky Fingers Deluxe and Super Deluxe Editions of live tracks in 1971 as your must listen to playlist this week to get you rolling.
My first thought after looking at James Taylor's third album, Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizonwas, is James wearing the same blue shirt as his second album, Sweet Baby James? After examination, they're two different shirts, but wait a minute, yes he's wearing another blue shirt on his fourth album, One Man Dog.
What's my point? I don't really have one. You've just got to love the simplicity that is James Taylor and maybe his fondness for the color blue. During this time in James' life, he was going with Joni Mitchell as she sings backup vocals on three Mudslide Slim songs. I've always loved their voices together. In June of 1971, Joni would release her now revered album, Blue, so maybe a theme was developing.
Here's a 1970 live version of You Can Close Your Eyes, a song James wrote for Joni, where they did a couple of shows together in Europe. Man, what I would have given to have been there. I've always loved this version as a duet with two of the best of all-time during this magical time of acoustic music.
Here's a great story by James about being with Joni Mitchell.
Here's a video by Peter Asher about the making of Mudslide Slim.
Enjoy my friends, stay well and mask-up.
And, here is Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon, released in April, 1971.
March has been a Neil Young month of sorts. Neil has so much unreleased material that he is just now getting around to share with the public- Neil Young Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976, and Young Shakespeare (1971). If you're a fan, it's new music (or a new release) to our old ears.
Right now, I'm on a Neil Young biographies jag. Good friend Ken Forman sent me Neil's 2012 autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace: Hippie Dream that was perfect timing with his new batch of releases that I have mixed in this month's playlists. Thanks Ken!
Friend Mark Hunter and I are getting together next week for some takeout sushi and beers. After not seeing each other for many months due to the pandemic, he's going to bring along the 2003 Neil Young biography Shaky for me to borrow, and I'm going to do the same as he has never read Waging Heavy Peace. I love how I'm reading these backwards in time.
Neil's a very special musician to several generations now. If you're into my blog and playlists, you know I always manage a way to stick his tunes in my playlists. So enjoy some of his new old stuff that I have selected and mixed right in with all the younger musician's new songs. I'm thinking, Neil would probably like that last sentence.
This week, all the work is in the playlist (80 songs), or my new spin on an old proverb, The proof of the playlist is in the listening.
The #BestSongIHeardToday series is often centered around hearing great songs while exercising. These posts will tend to drift into health related topics but will always come back to the music that brought you here. This particular series is probably more about a self journal to help me stay on the path of healthy living that includes, listening to old and new tunes. If you're looking for a great mix playlist of 25-30 songs, just click on one of my Volumes above.
Pain is a signal that something is wrong. If it is mild and disappears quickly it's probably nothing to worry about. However, if the pain is severe, or persists for over a week, your body is trying to tell you something. Take it seriously! Catching an injury early always makes it easier to take care of. There are many people who fail to listen to their body's early warning signals, and as a result they have compounded their injuries, crippling themselves with unnecessary pain for months and even years.–Dr. Ben E. Benjamin, Ph.D
My good friend Mark Hunter turned me on to the book, Listen to Your Pain many years ago during its first edition back in the 80's. It's a great reference book for every household.
Mark has in fact given me two life-long mantra's to work with. First, as roommates in college with his enduring, "Health is a lifestyle." Living with Mark in the mid-1970's, I felt that I had earned a minor in Health Science in our countless conversations in the dorm and then living together in a couple of different apartments. The second, is right here in the book title and is my runner's manta, "Listen to Your Pain." Now I haven't always been a good listener, but I think I'm finally getting this running thing down since I started a 'running the streets' PE class in what used to be called, "Junior College" back in the fall of 1973 (with friend Paul Hobbs).
That PE class in fact provided a blueprint for maintaining a healthy life-long habit as Paul and I have both been consistently running now for 48 years. We've both had our share of injuries over the years, but nothing to stop us permanently, yet.
Now for me, I've always set some personal goal in relation to distance and speed, that upon recent reflection, has me uttering Dirty Harry's line. You see, the mortal process of degeneration has taken me from a runner to now a slogger (slow jogger).
My goal for the past three years or so, was to run 5 miles and average 5.0 miles per hour for one hour (a 12 minute mile). Starting last year, this goal has in fact resulted in typically a calf or knee injury for me every three to four months. Man's got to know...
Recently, I felt a slight pain in my right knee, that wasn't going away. I listened to my body, stopped running and only walked. It took FIVE weeks for the total discomfort to go away. After the first three weeks, I finally woke up to my slow brain saying, "Why aren't you icing your knee dumb ass!" So, I began icing twice a day, and like Trump off Twitter, that nagging pain simply disappeared after a couple of weeks.
I then started slogging again, but this time at 4.0 mph for 4 miles. This past couple of weeks I'm averaging between 4.2 - 4.5 mph for 5 miles. I've found that my sixty-five year old body is now humming at a natural rhythm at 4.33 mph and I'm feeling great with no mental stress to push my body beyond the reach of my reality. In fact my new goal is NOT to run faster than 4.5 mph for 5 miles. The hare is dead, long live Team Tortoise!
A lot of people don't understand why runners run. I don't have a pat answer. For me, I do some of my best thinking while running alone on the trail. I hear terrific new and old songs. It helps me battle the weekly fight against weight gain since my late 30's. Probably the best answer is Mark in my head, "Health is a lifestyle, dumb ass!"
Here's several suggestions for walking or running with your life's pair of wheels.
I ice my knees at least once a day for a half hour in my recliner. There is no silver bullet, but there is ice. Meanwhile, enjoying the Bob Dylan doc, No Direction Home
This is the kitchen sink of the four main joint support supplements on the market, all in one capsule. I take two of these twice a day with a meal, everyday. It takes about two-three weeks to start working in you system and quietly works in the background. If I stop taking my joint support supplement for a week or two, my knees mysteriously start to bark at me!
Enjoy my friends, stay well, ice if you need to, and mask-up out there!
Oh and speaking of masks, if you wear glasses of any kind, I have ditched the anti-fog spray as my daughter Shawna has turned me on to reusable dry anti-fog cloth. Here is my current suggestion.
Here's a selection of 25 #BestSongsiHeardToday that took longer to assemble this go around, but now I'm back bouncing to these beats and have started a Volume IV.
The wealth of rock 'n' roll material in the late 60's - early 70's is a gold mine of riches to reflect upon. Such is the month of March, 1971. I think right now I have a playlist of three complete albums and eleven other albums with two or more songs, with a total of sixty-two songs. Do I write one post or four? Well, I settled for one because I have just enough words for about one post here.
You see, I've also started writing my second book, which has cut into my word count here on Monday Monday Music. This blog suffered a bit with weeks of inactivity from 2016-2018 as I was running my educational consulting business and writing my first book, Learning Environment Design (LED (shameless plug here).
This go around I'm swearing, no not in a pledge, but cussing that I damn better hit 'Publish' every Monday Monday until a distant future blue hot cremation fire succumbs my body, "Am I in hell?"
Okay, first up is an all-time favorite, Friends (film soundtrack) that I probably played more in 1973-74 because my girlfriend was in love with Elton John and I was in love with her. We went to the $1.00 Cinema Theater in Orcutt, CA to watch the movie, as we did for Fiddler On The Roof, Finian's Rainbow and a bunch of other movies that weren't first run movies any longer.
As a young teenager, friend Paul Hobbs was infatuated with the young French actress lead from Friends, Anicée Alvina as a young boy's dream. Every song from the soundtrack made the playlist this week as this soundtrack was a big hit with Elton's growing fan base.
Second up is Bryter Layter by English singer-songwriter Nick Drake. In 1971 Nick Drake was not on my radar, but over the years I have heard some of his music, and here 50 years later, I'm a fan. Unfortunately, Nick Drake suffered from depression and died from an overdose at the tender age of 26. This sad story just continued to play out in the early 1970's.
Every song makes the playlist this week. Drake's shy introspect lyrics mesh with the wonderfully crafted string and brass arrangements from Robert Kirby as this album stands the test of time and is prime for a new generation to discover. Long live Nick Drake!
Next up is Aqualung by Jethro Tull. This album got initial play in friend and next door neighbor Ron Zieman's bedroom and I dedicate the entire album to our listening experiences together. The album also got some quality airplay in my college dorm in 1975 as my room was music central. I brought my high school graduation stereo sound system with its 3 ft. cubic speakers packed in a two bed dorm room. My roommate Kevin Kuhlmeyer was a wonderful person and we bonded as education majors. Poor Kevin put up with many spur of the moment listening sessions with fellow dorm hall mates Mark Hunter and Chris Mitchell, and sometimes if we were lucky, a few girls from Zapotec Hall would join us. Chris really loved 'The Tull' and I remember him saying he loved Martin Barre's guitar playing on this album.
I've also got lots of songs from Alice Cooper (of all people), The Kinks, Buddy Miles, Leonard Cohen, John Mayall, Dave Mason and Cass Elliot, Humble Pie, Delaney and Bonnie, Janis Ian, Mott The Hopple, and James' brother Alex Taylor to finish the large mix of music this week. A little something for everybody.
I also want to dedicate this post to friend Kevin Kuhlmeyer, my dorm roommate in Toltec Hall from 1975-76. I found this picture of Kevin online in a 1977 San Diego State Yearbook pdf this past week, which I think is kind of amazing. I remember him telling me he was going to take a graduating class photo, and all these years later, I'm so glad he did. Here's to our days on campus, at Catalina Island, and you showing me around your home town of Pasadena. Rest in peace brother.
It was recorded January 19, 1971 and circulated for years as a bootleg before Neil officially released it March 13, 2007. Now I'm a couple months late in getting this post out, but it's timely because Mr. Young has a wonderful surprise for his fans and a birthday present for me coming up on March 26th.
On that date, he is going to release Young Shakespeare, a live concert album recorded just three days after Massey Hall on January 22, 1971 at the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Connecticut.
What makes Young Shakespeare special unlike the Massey Hall performance is that the Shakespeare Theater concert was filmed (although from what I've seen so far on YouTube, it looks like a ten year old was behind the camera).
I'm planning on presenting the Young Shakespeare concert in my March 29th post as my readers and I can just take in this new release in our continuing journey through the past together. Being only three days apart we can compare to see if Young Shakespeare rivals Live at Massey Hall 1971. Here is what Neil has said on the subject.
Coming March 26th
“[Producer] John Hanlon and I both feel Shakespeare is superior to our beloved Massey Hall,” Young wrote last year on the Neil Young Archives. “A more calm performance, without the celebratory atmosphere of Massey Hall, captured live on 16mm film. Young Shakespeare is a very special event. To my fans, I say this is the best ever. Young Shakespeare is the performance of that era. Personal and emotional, for me, it defines that time.” Rolling Stone, Andy Greene, 2/12/21
Okay Neil we trust you all the way, but for the moment we're going to take in your famous Massey Hall performance and a little shout out to your best bud and producer, David Briggs.
According to Young, "This is the album that should have come out between After the Gold Rush and Harvest...David Briggs, my producer, was adamant that this should be the record, but I was very excited about the takes we got on Harvest, and wanted Harvest out. David disagreed. As I listen to this today, I can see why." Wikipedia
The Neil Young Archives (NYA) is an ongoing project started by Neil to curate all his recordings, photos, videos and memorabilia spanning across his career. In 2016, NYA became a website and in 2019, he created a subscription service website with enhanced high-quality audio streaming all his music.
The subscription service is $2.00 a month or $20.00 a year. This includes getting all of Neil's music through his Xstream audio service on your phone, tablet, or by using the NYA web site. If you are a yearly subscriber that also gets you to the front of the line for concert pre-sales.
NYA provides a free experience in that you can browse and read so much information relating to Young's life that I highly recommend you check out and explore the web site. One of the features of the site is the NYA Times-Contrarian with tons of articles organized in an old faded yellow newspaper format. You can also hear the 'Song of the Day', or a 'Featured Album.'
The web site is one of the most creative web sites I have ever seen. Its just so retro-funky cool, reflecting Young's personality and attention to detail as he does with all the varied projects in his life.
Now what got me back to look at NYA was the February 26th release for his never released double live album with Crazy Horse, Way Down In The Rust Bucket.
The album was recorded on November 13, 1990 at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, CA, where the band was warming up for their upcoming Ragged Glory tour. The show consisted of three sets and an encore, featuring most of recently released Ragged Glory, as well as older fan favorites and deeper cuts. Wikipedia
Here's the web interface for Way Down In The Rust Bucket on NYA, and I've got you covered this week with the playlist of the album on YouTube.
Enjoy the concert my friends! this is only the beginning
as March is going to be a Neil Young Archives month, and remember,
I search, review, and post new song releases or new song covers from a variety of artists. I also post new releases or covers that are several months old that my fishing line missed on the first, second or even third pass. As a boomer, I'm challenged just because I don't pay too much attention to young pop stars in the vast ocean of media. If you want to take a fun little music test, do the following.
The New and Old Game of Album Lists
New List
Go to the Wikipedia website List of 2021 Albums for February. (I'll provide the link in #3)
For February, there are 198 listings of album releases. I recognized 13 artists or bands total. For example I know who 'Robin Thicke' is because he had a hit once, but don't really know anything about him other than he is Alan Thicke's son.
Go to the Wikipedia website 1971 in Music for February. (I'll provide the link in #3)
For February, there are 29 listings of album releases. I recognized 26 artists or bands total.
See how many artists or bands you can recognize on this list here - 1971 in Music- February.
How did you do? If you like, write a comment below to share your new and old list scores.
One thing that's obvious in comparing the two lists month to month is that the new lists are always greater in number than the old lists. In searching for new releases, I get exposure to so many young singer-songwriters making great recordings whether they are studio albums, live in concert, or this year, live in the living room. If you're a rock 'n' roll or Americana fan of music, the beat goes on!
Here's a new list of young Americana artists that I had never heard of before starting my #NewMusicMonday search for February. From the six artists listed here, only one appeared in the List of 2021 Albums. So if you're into Americana music, you've also learned to fish in deeper waters.
The sheer volume of music being produced today has many more streams that lead to the sea of music. For me, it's a fun charter I take once a month to catch new songs, or board a yellow submarine to search for buried treasure as the deep dive for music from the past is still a great adventure.
Speaking of the past, I also search, review and post old songs that have been 'newly' released. That's my teaser for next week with none other than Mr. Neil Young.
Last week, I focused on the 50th anniversary of Carole King's, phenomenal album Tapestry. This week, I finish up February, 1971 with fifty songs mainly from twelve albums. Every month, I take a musical journey in the past with my '50 Years of Music' theme and I usually discover one or more albums that I paid little attention to at the time, but now think are fantastic albums. This month I found two, Crazy Horses's self-titled album, Crazy Horse, and Donovan's children double-album, HMS Donovan.
Danny Whitten, Jack Nitzsche, Billy Talbot, Ralph Mollina
Crazy Horse is best known for being Neil Young's backup band. Crazy Horse originally started in 1963 as Danny and the Memories, a doo-wop group with Danny Whitten as the lead singer. The group, with its two life-long bandmates Billy Talbot on bass and Ralph Molina on drums morphed into a San Francisco band called, 'The Psyrcle' and then moved down to LA as the 'The Rockets' (a folk-rock band) in 1968. In 1969, Neil Young began to rehearse with The Rockets and liked them so much he used the band in his 1969 solo album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It is during this time that Young himself renamed The Rockets, 'Crazy Horse' as they are given credit on the album cover, "Neil Young with Crazy Horse." In 1970, Young used Whitten, Talbot, and Mollina, including Jack Nitzsche (on piano), and Nils Lofgrin (guitars, vocals) on his solo smash hit, After The Goldrush. On After The Goldrush, Crazy Horse is not given a band credit, but it did lead to the band getting their own record deal and the release of the album Crazy Horse in 1971. The album would include Lofgrin and Nitzsche with both contributing songs to the album. Jack Nitzsche was also the album's Producer.
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After The Gold Rush are two of my favorite albums of all-time. Why I wouldn't have dived into the first Crazy Horse album in 1971 is beyond me? The raw energy of Young's early solo albums has a lot to do with Crazy Horse's 'three chords and the truth' basic rock 'n' roll playing style that jumped right out at me 50 years later.
To answer my own question above, I came up with two main reasons. One, the album sold poorly; and two, I believe one reason the album sold poorly was because the album cover art sucks. Did the design and photograph literally have to be- a crazy horse?
I started thinking about it. In 1971, every rock 'n' roll fan was very much into the vinyl album art as most devoured the front, inside and back jacket art and liner notes on albums. I think the first album Crazy Horse cover art just scared most teens off, it puts out a very aggressive negative image, that says, "Don't touch this." I do remember seeing the album in a record shop album bin sometime in college and said to myself, "WTF!"
What if they had simply gone with some cool graphic of Chief Crazy Horse right from the get go, like when they (probably Neil's people) started using the Crazy Horse logo shown here to the right. All I'm saying is Crazy Horse could have used some promotional artistic help after recording a very fine first album... presentation, presentation, presentation.
Sadly during this time, Danny Whitten had become a heroin addict and quickly descended into the hell that it brings. By early 1972, Talbot and Mollina had to fire their leader and main songwriter Whitten from Crazy Horse because he simply could not function to be an active member of the band and work on their second album.
In April of 1972, after receiving a call from Young to play rhythm guitar on the upcoming tour behind Young's Harvest album, Whitten showed up for rehearsals at Young's home outside San Francisco. While the rest of the group hammered out arrangements, Whitten lagged behind, figuring out the rhythm parts, though never in sync with the rest of the group. Young, who had more at stake after the success of After The Gold Rush and Harvest, fired him from the band on November 18, 1972. Young gave Whitten $50 and a plane ticket back to Los Angeles. Later that night Whitten died from ingesting a combination of diazepam, which he was taking for severe knee arthritis, and alcohol, which he was using to try to get over his heroin addiction. Wikipedia
Back in February of 1972, Neil Young had released the song, Needle and the Damage Done from the Harvest album, a heartfelt lament that was written directly about his friends Danny Whitten and also Bruce Berry, a roadie for Crazy Horse and CSN&Y. Whitten had in fact turned Berry on to heroin and he would also later die of an overdose in 1973.
The story of Crazy Horse continues in its many iterations, including Whitten's replacement on guitar in 1975 with Frank "Poncho" Sampedro who would become one of Neil Young's greatest compadres over the years working with and without Crazy Horse. Poncho retired from the band in 2014 and is a neighbor of Neil's in Hawaii. Since 2018, the current lineup of Crazy Horse has Nils Lofgrin on guitars who plays with them on their reunion gigs with Neil, and has been a regular member of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band since 1984.
Long live Crazy Horse! And, rest in peace Danny Whitten, as I can hear from your five songs on this first Crazy Horse album, you were on your way and Neil Young still misses you.
The second album that caught my attention 50 years later was Donovan's HMS Donavan. It's a double album of children's songs but I looked at it as more than just that, as it connects Donovan with his Scottish roots. I was most impressed with his guitar work as I had always just thought of him as 'a strummer over a picker.' Here you get to hear Donovan's skilled finger picking on many tunes from the album. If you think of it, Donovan is the perfect children's musician with his cosmic quality to songwriting and singing that's so completely unique and makes him a beloved person around the world.
Donovan also knew something about album art.
Enjoy my friends! Stay well and mask-up, it's beginning to get better.
