My Seventies Music

Author: Paul

  • “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – Pink Floyd

    Pink Floyd album cover Dark Side of the Moon

    “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from Pink Floyd accompanied me all the way round New Zealand’s South Island in the back seat of the family car at the end of 1975, my last year at school. (I grew up on the North Island, by the way.)

    And a few years later I remember hearing a band called Father Time playing it in the “Old Wool Room” at Massey University, where they used to hold the student dances before it was pulled down. Key members of Father Time later went on to become “Mi-Sex”, a top band in Australia.

    Of course, Pink Floyd was everywhere in the 70s, you couldn’t go to a party without hearing the album “Dark Side of the Moon” if nothing else.

    I had a bit of a problem regarding a video of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – the song is so long, people have had to break it up and it wasn’t so easy to find the matching clips!

    This one is an earlier live version, from 1974:

    And here are two parts form a concert in LA, also in the Seventies, though the accompanying footage is more recent, i.e. 2008:

    Finally, three more recent renderings, Pink Floyd… in 1990 –

    and David Gilmour… electric in 2007:

    And Dave Gilmour solo doing a purely accoustic version on his own:

    I could have spent all night listening to all the different versions of this song, but I’ll leave you with these ones for now….

    Keep on shining!

    Paul

  • Marc Bolan and T. Rex – “Bang A Gong (Get it On)”, “Jeepster”, “Life’s A Gas”, “Planet Queen” and “Children Of The Revolution”

    Marc Bolan and T. Rex entered my life when I was about 14 with their album “Electric Warrior”.

    T. Rex Electric Warrior album cover

    I didn’t really know who they were at the time, when they were being feted by some as the “new Beatles” (not the first and not the last to be called this…).

    And I had never seen live footage of them until finding these videos for you – I hadn’t realised what a powerful, charismatic live performer I had missed out on!

    (As far as I know T-Rex never came to New Zealand, and Marc Bolan was tragically killed in a road accident in late 1977, just three months before my first visit to the UK.)

    The music itself (from “Electric Warrior”) has remained in my head for close to 40 years now, especially the “Planet Queen” who “used my head like a revolver”.

    Perhaps the most well known song from the album was “Get It On”, renamed “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” when released in the US to avoid confusion with another song.

    I’ve gone to town a bit here and given you four different versions to take your pick from…

    First, the studio version:

    Here’s a live version for German television station 3Sat (for whom I helped film some documentaries in the South Pacific about 20-25 years later):

    Now this version I really like. It was filmed live in 1972 at the Wembley Empire Pool for a film by Ringo Starr, and features some powerful, Hendrix-like guitar action:

    Finally, finishing up our little Get It On excess, an extended version on the midnight special:

    Let’s continue now with a different song (what, I hear you say, haven’t you got any more of that one…?)

    It’s “Jeepster”, another piece filmed live at the Wembley Empire Pool on 18 March 1972:

    “Life’s a Gas” is typical Marc Bolan:

    And “Children of the Revolution”, here in a promo film (see if you can spot any cables) is another T. Rex favourite:

    Finally, perhaps my favourite from the “Electric Warrior” album, the “Planet Queen”.

    As it turned out, the only original version I could find was the actual creation of the song, an acoustic version of the “work in progress”…

    Well it’s all right, love is what you want
    Flying saucer take me away
    Gimme your daughter…

    It’s OK, you can keep your daughter, I’ve got my own. Funnily enough, only yesterday she said to me “You should put T. Rex on your blog”.

    And I told her I had already planned to, the first entry I have actually decided on a day in advance!

    Get it on…

    Paul

  • The Sweet – “Fox On The Run” And “Love Is Like Oxygen”

    Short and sweet today – The Sweet, from the UK, and a couple of their hits from the mid to late Seventies.

    First up, “Fox On The Run”.

    This version starts out a little scratchy, but soon gets past that:

    A couple of years later came “Love Is Like Oxygen”.

    I’m pretty sure I was in Zurich, Switzerland when I first heard this. Or they were playing there when I was there, on my first trip to Europe.

    Weirdly, in the Youth Hostel in Zurich I bumped into another Paul at breakfast who had been in my first-year German language class at university the year before.

    Anyway, here it is:

    And because “live” is always nice, here’s a live version from 1978:

    Ain’t that sweet…

    Paul

  • “Welcome To My Nightmare” – Alice Cooper

    Alice Cooper took his “Welcome To My Nightmare” stage show to Auckland, New Zealand in 1977.

    Having been an avid fan of this master of the whole range from hardest hard rock to the most sensitive of ballads since I first heard the “Billion Dollar Babies” album at the tender age of 16, I had to “get me to the show” (a reference other fans may recognise…).

    Only thing was, he was only doing one concert in New Zealand, and my university town of Palmerston North was several hundred miles away to the south.

    Undaunted, with a car load of other Alice Cooper appreciators, in April of that year we set off in my 1962 six-cylinder, three-gear, column-change Mark II Zephyr, and happily actually made it to Auckland safe and sound for the concert at Western Springs Speedway, a former volcanic crater like many other parts of Auckland.

    I tried to take photos for a review I was doing for the student newspaper, with a massive telescopic lens and “natural” light.

    Unfortunately that didn’t turn out too well, fortunately the programme from the show had pictures to illustrate the article – to which I artistically added a spider’s web that sprawled down towards an ad for a local butcher…

    The show was awesome.

    When it finished, before we could head for home we first had to “unstick” the column change leverage under the hood down to the gearbox so we would be able to get out of second gear, then off we went through the night straight back to “Palmy”.

    I can tell you, I got a bit sleepy going down the seemingly never ending Desert Road, past the (very much still active) volcanic mountains of the Central Plateau of New Zealand’s North Island. It was cold too!

    It was light well before we got home, and I could barely keep my eyes open, so on arrival I slept sound as a baby, with no dreams and no nightmares, as far as I can recall…

    Anyway, here’s the original of “Welcome to my Nightmare”…

    And here’s a live version, though I find it a bit fast, perhaps because I’m used to listening to the studio recording.

    Hope that didn’t scare you! 🙂

    Paul

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