My Seventies Music

Tag: Midnight Special

  • Linda Ronstadt – “When Will I Be Loved”, “You’re No Good”, “Blue Bayou”, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and “First Cut Is The Deepest”

    Linda Ronstadt single cover "Blue Bayou"
    Linda Ronstadt was a name you heard a lot in the Seventies, her biggest hits included “When Will I Be Loved”, “You’re No Good” and “Blue Bayou”.

    By coincidence, these are just about the only ones of her many songs I can recall…

    I found a couple more that I recognise though, but I can’t say now whether it’s just the songs themselves that are familiar or Linda Ronstadt’s versions of them!

    Songs like “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and the Cat Stevens number “First Cut Is The Deepest”, best known in the Rod Stewart version.

    Whatever Linda Ronstadt sings, with her powerful voice she certainly makes it her own.

    Here are some of those songs –

    “When Will I Be Loved”, live in 1977:

    From the same concert in Atlanta, Georgia, the quieter track “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”, featuring Linda Ronstadt accompanying herself on acoustic guitar:

    “You’re No Good”, on the Midnight Special (with an introduction by Jose Feliciano):

    This is probably the Linda Ronstadt track I like the best, once again from that 1977 concert in Atlanta, “Blue Bayou”:

    And finally, “First Cut Is The Deepest”:

    “I’m going back in time…”

    Paul

  • Journey – “Wheel In The Sky”, “Lights”, “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’”, “Any Way You Want It”, “Who’s Crying Now” and “Don’t Stop Believin’”

    Cover of 1978 Journey album "Infinity", featuring "Wheel In The Sky"
    San Fancisco band Journey were very successful from the late Seventies on into the Eighties, with songs like “Wheel in the Sky”, “Lights”, “Lovin,’ Touchin,’ Squeezin’”, “Any Way You Want It”, “Who’s Crying Now” and “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

    I remember that in the part of southern Germany where I lived in the early 1980s (Franconia, North Bavaria) you used to hear a lot of the 1978 release “Wheel In The Sky”, both on American Forces Network AFN (there were a lot of GIs stationed in the area back then) as well as on German stations and just generally at parties, dances and concerts.

    This is what “Wheel in the Sky” sounded like live when it first came out:

    Here’s “Lights”, live in Chicago in 1978:

    And “Lovin,’ Touchin,’ Squeezin’” live on the Midnight Special in 1979 (nice and bluesy!):

    The next few songs are actually from the early years of the following decade, but the sound is still pretty much as it was in the Seventies. As you can see, all of these performances are live.

    “Any Way You Want It”:

    “Who’s Crying Now”:

    “Don’t Stop Believing”:

    Journey continue to tour live and record today.

    The Journey continues, so to speak…

    Paul

  • Steely Dan – “Do It Again”, “Reelin’ In The Years”, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” “Pretzel Logic”, “Haitian Divorce” and “Hey Nineteen”

    "Steely Dan/greatest hits" album cover
    In the early Seventies a band from New York (really a duo, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, with additional musicians) called Steely Dan began having a series of hits, such as “Do It Again”, “Reelin’ In The Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”.

    At the end of the decade, or easing into the next one, “Hey Nineteen” reached No. 10 in the US and 11 in the UK.

    There were of course others as well, but these are the ones I remember.

    I have their compilation album “Steely Dan/greatest hits”, a double album from 1978, which also features “Pretzel Logic” (the title of another album as well) and “Haitian Divorce”. Like their other albums, this too was produced by Gary Katz.

    Here’s “Do It Again”, from the album “Can’t Buy A Thrill”, live on the Midnight Special in 1973:

    And “Reelin’ In The Years”, from the same album, also live on the Midnight Special in 1973 (introduced by comedian Bill Cosby):

    From the “Pretzel Logic” album, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”, No. 4 in 1974:

    “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” performed live over 20 years later in 1996:

    And the title track of “Pretzel Logic”:

    Two years later, in 1976, came “Haitian Divorce”, from the album “The Royal Scam”:

    “Hey Nineteen”, from the 1980 album “Gaucho”, sung live here in 2006

    Now that’s what I call “Reelin’ in the years”…

    Paul

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