Author: Paul

The Doors – Tracks From “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine” (“Break On Through”, “Riders On The Storm”, “The End”) And “Light My Fire”

In early 1972 (summer in New Zealand), aged 14, I mowed my parents’ rather large lawn to get the NZ$14 required to buy the double album “Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine” by a band called The Doors.

I had never heard of The Doors before, and at the time I don’t believe I realised that their iconic singer Jim Morrison had died just months before the previous year (3rd July 1971 in Paris).

Nor did I realise that “Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine” was a compilation, I didn’t know any of the songs.

When school started I took the album with me to my boarding school. One of the guys in the dorm had a record player linked up to some lights that pulsated according to the music.

We turned off the dorm lights and I remember all these 14 years olds jumping up and down and dancing to “Break On Through” with the flashing lights.

Here’s the original:

And a live version:

Other tracks from “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine” that stood out for me were…

Riders On The Storm

And of course The End (a little weird in places):

“The End” was featured in the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film “Apocalypse Now”, the Vietnam War epic with Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.

Perhaps the best known song of The Doors is “Light My Fire”. Here’s the album version:

And a longer version of “Light My Fire” with lots of Doors images:

Actually The Doors were really a band of the Sixties, but I only heard about them in the Seventies, so I’ve included them here.

There have been various versions of the band since, but none of them matches the original lineup and the mythical magic of their poet lead singer Jim Morrison.

Hope you enjoyed this little peak “inside the gold mine” of Doors music…

Paul
Kiss – “I Was Made For Loving You”, “Black Diamond”, “Deuce”, “100,000 Years”, “Strutter”

When I came to write this, at first the only Kiss track I could think of was “I Was Made For Loving You”, but then I kept finding more and more that I recognised from the Seventies, when I was a big Kiss fan.

I had the Kiss double album “Alive!”, which unfortunately was among a number of my record collection that went missing, something I only discovered after I returned from a visit to New Zealand in 1982 and took all my records (at least I thought they were!) back to Europe.

Anyway, after I located “I Was Made For Loving You” I then found songs like “Black Diamond”, “Deuce”, “Strutter” and “100,000 Years”, and the memories came flooding back.

So first, here’s a studio version of “I Was Made For Loving You”. (The text at the end says it’s from the album “Dynasty” in 1997, but that’s wrong, it was 1979!)

Next up is a live concert version of “I Was Made For Loving You” filmed in Australia, complete with Kiss-faced violinists, trumpet players etc.:

I finally got to attend a Kiss concert after I went to Germany in 1980, at the age of 22.

They played in a big sports hall in the village of Neunkirchen am Brand, out in the country east of Nuremberg.

It wasn’t that easy to get to if you didn’t have a car, and even harder to get back from, but I went to quite a number of concerts at the venue that year, including going there two days running for different bands!

The Kiss concert was almost the end of me.

As I tended to do back then, I had worked my way right up practically to the front, just below the stage. I’m not that tall, and was pressed in really tight on all sides by really big guys.

So far so good, but then every one jumped up and down and side to side, and suddenly the whole body of people moved further and further to the right and almost tipped over.

I know for sure that if I had gone down in that crowd, I would never have gotten back up again, but would have been crushed.

Luckily I survived to attend more concerts, but it was a pretty harrowing experience at the time.

Okay, time for some more videos…

Like I said, I found a few more from the Seventies, some are early versions, some have been filmed in later years.

In fact, I even found a few from 1972-73 when they first got going, playing in a club in front of a handful of people instead of the huge arenas they later played to.

Here’s “Deuce” from that time:

And again “Deuce” in later years:

This is the first demo version of “Black Diamond”:

And the same song “Black Diamond” at Madison Square Gardens in 1977:

“100,000 Years” in the early days (a little hard to see in places):

A slicker studio version of “100,000 Years”:

And “100,000 Years” live in front of a bigger audience in 1975:

Finally, also from that early gig, “Strutter”:

And “Strutter” in front of a larger audience:

Most recently I have read more about the marketing and merchandising brilliance of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons (he was a featured speaker at one of direct marketing genius Dan Kennedy’s information marrketing conferences last year) than about their musical activities, but I was glad to see they’ve been recording again and touring as well, albeit only with half the original lineup of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss.

Their Sonic Boom tour is due to hit Europe later this year.

Good to see them strutting their stuff again!

Paul
Cheap Trick – “Surrender”, “Dream Police”, “Takin’ Me Back”, “On The Radio” and “Ghost Town”

The first Cheap Trick song I remember hearing, and one that has always stuck in my mind, was “Surrender”…

“Mommy’s all right, Daddy’s all right, they just seem a little weird, surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away”:

It must have been 1979 when I piled into a car with a few other guys and headed for Wellington for the “Dream Police” tour concert.

In a scene reminiscent of “Wayne’s World”, with the windows down and long hair (in my case at least) blowing in the wind, we sang the songs all the way from Palmerston North, a trip of about an hour and a half if I remember rightly.

Unfortunately, when we got there, we waited, and waited, and waited…

It turned out the truck with all the band’s gear had come off the road on the way from Auckland to Wellington and ended up in a ditch.

So we all got back in the car and went home.

There was a happy ending however, as next day (I think) off we went to Wellington again.

It was great.

There was seating in the Wellington Show Building, and we were right up the front on the right hand side – about 6 to 10 feet in front of these MASSIVE speakers.

I got a really good view in particular of the bassist, Tom Petersson with his legendary 12 string bass (if you know anything about rock music, you’ll know a bass usually only has four strings!), and behind him the poker faced drummer, Bun E. Carlos, contrasting with the lively vocalist Robin Zander with his long blonde hair.

And of course madcap Rick Nielsen was batting guitar picks out into the crowd with one of his many guitars.

Speaking of which, to show you how maniacal he can be, here’s a live recording of “Dream Police” with a long intro of Rick playing not one but THREE guitars (this was made about two years later):

Or if you prefer the original studio video…

And this track from “Heaven Tonight (the same album as “Surrender”) says it all:

You’re takin’ me back…

You sure are!

But wait, there’s more – finally found a live version, albeit around 20 years later:

Still hitting the high notes.

And to close out, from the same concert, another track from “Heaven Tonight”, called “On The Radio”:

Okay, not quite closing out, I just had to leave you with this hauntingly beautiful track from Cheap Trick’s “Lap of Luxury” album, not strictly from the Seventies, but I covered myself for cases like this in my very first post 🙂 (“My Seventies Music – Welcome!”).

Time to get out of town…

Paul
Elton John – “Rocket Man”

When I think of “Rocket Man” from Elton John I think of 1975.

Probably because it reminds me of a guy at (boarding) school I roomed with for part of that year, whose nickname was connected with a slightly adapted version…

The man himself, i.e. Elton John AKA Reginald Dwight, first came to my attention in 1973 with “Crocodile Rock”, and the following year I took in his “Yellow Brick Road” double album quite extensively, I even have the sheet music of the album.

I finally saw Elton John live some time in the Eighties or Nineties in the Festhalle in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where I was living at the time.

(Just in case you were wondering, this particular Frankfurt, the one everybody knows, is on the banks of the river Main, pronounced “mine”, and this differentiates it from the city of Frankfurt an der Oder near the German-Polish border in what was previously East Germany; there is even a tiny village in northern Bavaria/Franconia most Germans don’t even know, called Frankfurt an der Hecke…).

Anyway, here is a live version of “Rocket Man” at Wembley, London/England, from 1977:

Rock(et) on…

Paul
Kate Bush – “Wuthering Heights”

Kate Bush suddenly entered my consciousness – and presumably that of many others – in February of 1978 with her debut hit “Wuthering Heights”.

I was staying with my grandmother in Brighton, England, on my way back from Germany to New Zealand to finish my degree when I heard this magical voice on British radio, and I just had to get the album when I got back home (“The Kick Inside” – it had only been released a few days earlier).

Here’s the original, “white dress” version:

And the less surreal (visually at least) “red dress” version:

Kate Bush was “discovered” by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, so her first album was bound to be a masterpiece technically at least.

Artistically it has a great deal going for it too, and I still find every song on the album worth listening to again and again. (I’ll find a few more tracks from this and later albums for you to listen to some time in the future.)

Meanwhile I just found this live clip from 1978 with Kate accompanying herself on the piano:

Don’t you just love those eyes…

I don’t know about you, but I have always found there is something intensely feline about Kate Bush – you almost expect her to turn into a cat in some of the videos.

Well, that’s enough for now, watch out for more another time.

Paul

Author: Paul

The Doors – Tracks From “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine” (“Break On Through”, “Riders On The Storm”, “The End”) And “Light My Fire”

Kiss – “I Was Made For Loving You”, “Black Diamond”, “Deuce”, “100,000 Years”, “Strutter”

Cheap Trick – “Surrender”, “Dream Police”, “Takin’ Me Back”, “On The Radio” and “Ghost Town”

Elton John – “Rocket Man”

Kate Bush – “Wuthering Heights”