My Seventies Music

Tag: Kiss

  • Mother Goose – “Baked Beans” And “This Is The Life”

    New Zealand Seventies band Mother Goose had a hit with "Baked Beans"

    Last night by chance I came across an old favourite from New Zealand in the Seventies: Mother Goose singing their slightly ludicrous “Baked Beans” – which just goes to show you can make a rock song outof anything!

    I had forgotten about Mother Goose, but they actually did pretty well for themselves, having coming up with the idea of mocking themselves by dressing up ridiculously when they performed in the South Island city of Dunedin and then nationally.

    The more they made fun of themselves, the more popular they became: they broke attendance records accross Australasia, and their debut album “Stuffed” was Mushroom Records’ fastest selling album.

    When they went to Australia, what later became top bands queued up to be their support acts, like Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Men At Work and The Angels.

    Their first national tour was with international, i.e. British, band Supercharge – this particularly got my attention because a flatmate of mine in Bamberg, Germany in the early Eighties was later in a blues band that had a number of gigs with Supercharge, including when they toured with Chuck Berry.

    Mother Goose moved to the USA in 1978 for a year and did very well, with members of Kiss and Devo becoming fans of their shows in New York.

    After returning to Australia the band continued to attract huge crowds there and also on tours in Canada, eventually breaking up in 1984, with a reunion in 2007 as part of a celebration of 30 years of the “Dunedin Sound”.

    Here now is the “Baked Beans” video, which was so well received it even got shown on TV between prime time programmes in Australia and New Zealand:

    Just to show they didn’t just do humour, here is “This Is The Life”, live in Dunedin, New Zealand:

    Glad I chanced on this one again, hope you enjoyed it too. 🙂

    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

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