I associate the hard hitting “Black Betty” from Ram Jam with the year 1977*, when I was in my second year at university, and my first year flatting after being on campus in 1976.
This is actually the first time I have seen a video of it, I had no idea what Ram Jam looked like.
In this fun video out on the lawn in front of the house they definitely look VERY 1970s:
It turns out the song (and the expression) “Black Betty” has quite a history, which you can read about here.
Whatever, the Ram Jam song “Black Betty” is clean cut Seventies rock music with a sound that stays with you for years!
Nuff said…
Paul
* No wonder – just found out here that the version of “Black Betty” we know, though recorded and released earlier by Bill Bartlett’s previous band Starstruck, was released by Ram Jam in 1977.
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.
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.
“Rocky Mountain Way” by Joe Walsh of The James Gang fame has always been one of my favourites from the Seventies.
Definitely a touch harder than the “America” tune we had yesterday….
If you’re into blues/slide guitar and all kinds of effects, then this piece from the album “The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get” is for you.
In fact I like it so much that I decided to do videos of more than one version today. 🙂
So first here he is after moving on from The James Gang, with his band Barnstorm, still looking quite young:
In 1977 Joe played “Rocky Mountain Way” with the Eagles, to whom he brought a somewhat harder touch… (this was the year of their giant hit album “Hotel California”). Unfortunately the video of that one has been removed “due to a copyright claim by Eaglesrecordingcompany”…
So instead, much more recently, here Joe still shows how it’s done:
I first heard this song and the album “The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get” with its iconic cover at a student party in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Actually I don’t remember the rest of the album, but these guitar riffs and the image of the old biplane have stayed with me ever since…
Hope you like it too!
Paul
P.S. While updating the videos I just came accross a collection of over 75 Joe Walsh tracks you might like to check out, including “Life’s Been Good” (warning though, there are ads for things like Heinz ketchup in between some of the tracks!):