Hawkwind SOTA @ HMV

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Pete J Howe wrote:

>     i was just thinking of what people consider truly classic, or
> influential albums(O.K. Computer, Dark Side of the moon, Led
> ZepIV,Revolver,Joshua Tree,Nevermind,etc... even Songs for Swinging
> Lovers! etc...)this is the music that will remain important and sell buy
> the bucketload..(oh , and of course Space Ritual,W.O.T.E.O.T, and
> Q.S.&C !!)Some of these bands had massive singles, too, but influential
> bands /albums are  far more important in musical history than 90% singles
> chart tosh...of course, the list could go on..(Joy Division,Bob Marley,
> The Smiths,Miles Davis,Sex Pistols...)

        One of the things that's always struck me as an essential
characteristic of the great seventies bands is that their almost-always-
only hit is nothing to do with the rest of their sound. BÖC are top
example; there's nothing else like `Reaper' in their catalogue (except
maybe `I Love The Night'? and anyone going to their stuff for more of that
won't find it. Similarly a whole load of the `classic' rock bands: Deep
Purple have `Smoke on the Water', it's not exactly `Flight of the Rat' is
it--Rainbow's `Since You Been Gone' isn't going to prepare anyone for
`Stargazer', Focus's `Hocus Pocus' thank gods isn't like the rest of their
stuff. Floyd until the mid-1990s had `Money' as the one song people who
didn't have an album knew. The Damned still suffer from `Eloise', argtur
Brown has `Fire'.

        On the other hand some seem to have got closer to showcasing their
sound with singles: Led Zep'S `Whole Lotta love' probably qualifies, and
of course `Silver Machine' is a pretty fair summary of what was going on
in Hawkwind in 1971, even if it was way out of date for that purpose three
years later. And `Ace of Spades' is so typical a Motorhead track that
they've written it again at least once since 1979 :-) Is it just down to
the individual bands' ability to resist the record execs? The notes in the
Deep Purple and Sabbath remasters suggest that really had no sense of what
would make a single, and nor did their record companies, and both had
their throwaway efforts (`Black Night' and `Paranoid') go huge on them for
no reason they could understand... Perhaps there isn't really a phenomenon
here after all :-/

        So, um, yeah, more tea less rambling perhaps. Yours,
                                                             Jon

ObCD: Ship of Fools - _Let's Get This Mother Outta Here_
--
    Jonathan Jarrett    "There is scarce any tradition or popular error
    Birkbeck College     but stands also delivered by some good author."
        London         (Sir Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica", 1646)