Back in about 1976 I heard country singer Emmylou Harris for the first time, I particularly remember her singing “Shop Around”.
I also connect her with Bob Dylan, I think it was duets or backing on his “Hurricane” album.
And I know I had an album by Emmylou Harris – I figure it must be one of the ones that went missing from my collection by the time I took all my records from New Zealand to Germany a decade later.
Here is a live version of “Shop Around” by Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band:
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.
“Cry Baby” was one of Janis Joplin’s iconic numbers, full of the energy and passion that characterised all her music.
Janis Joplin only just made it into the Seventies – she died 40 years ago in 1970, on October 4th, aged 27.
But her music kept her name alive through the Seventies and beyond nonetheless.
Here’s a live video from that year, “Cry Baby”, filmed in 1970 in Toronto:
My first encounter with Janis Joplin was in 1971, as a young teenager, when I heard one of the last two songs she had recorded, less than a year earlier: “Mercedes Benz” on the posthumously published album “Pearl”.
I was staying at someone’s place in Wellington, New Zealand, waiting for a lift the few hundred miles to my home – the younger brother of a friend of my parents.
Many years later I was to meet up with him again in Frankfurt, Germany, where I also lived at the time, but almost all I remember of his flat in Wellington was “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me, a Mercedes Benz, my friends all drive Porsches, I must make, amends”, and that album cover…
Janis Joplin's posthumously published album ""Pearl"
By coincidence, as I was locating this video, I discovered it was Janis Joplin’s birthday just a day or two ago (depending on where you live): January 19th.
So here’s a belated “Happy Birthday” Janis. I see you got your Porsche in the end…
Kate Bush suddenly entered my consciousness – and presumably that of many others – in February of 1978 with her debut hit “Wuthering Heights”.
