Songs of the Day II: 70's Rock

I recently had a request from a reader for some 70's rock.  I can dig it.

Legend has it that when the Eagles were working on their last album "Long Road Out Of Eden", one of Glenn Frey's kids found an old video of them on YouTube performing on a Dutch tv show in 1973.  Frey had forgotten about the song they performed and reminded Don Henley of it.  The band reworked the song and it became the lead single from their new album.  Here is the original performance from 1973 of "How Long":



And the 2008 version:


Led Zeppelin, "Since I Been Loving You"


Bad Company, "Ready For Love". A little shaky on the audio side, but vintage:


Steve Miller Band, "Jet Airliner"


Doors, "L.A. Woman", directed by Ray Manzarek

Songs of the Day: the 70's

Here are three songs that just happened to play sequentially on my iPod today, three of my faves from the 70's:

"Feelin' Stronger Everyday" by Chicago. 



"We're All Alone" by Rita Coolidge



"Fooled Around And Fell In Love" by Elvin Bishop. Vocals by Mickey Thomas, later lead singer of Starship. I could not find a good performance clip, but I did run across this one with Jason and Sam from "General Hospital". Good stuff.

Songs of the Day

Here are three great songs from the late 60's/early 70's.


"Expressway To Your Heart" by the Soul Survivors

The Ides of March started as a group of neighborhood kids from Berwyn Illinois.  They worked their way up through Chicago and the region before hitting it big.  After the Ides broke up in the early 70's, lead singer/songwriter Jim Peterik wrote and played in the Chicago area before forming his next group, Survivor.  Even while writing songs for Survivor ("Eye of the Tiger", "I Can't Hold Back", "The Search Is Over", "Burning Heart", "Is This Love") he wrote hits for .38 Special ("Hold On Loosely", "Caught Up In You", "Fantasy Girl").  Like the Blues Brothers, he "got the band back together" and now plays with the original Ides of March.  Here they are performing "Vehicle".




Finally we have the Phil Spector song that isn't.  After Phil Spector's run of hits ("Da Doo Run Run", "Be My Baby", "Then He Kissed Me", "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'") in the early/mid 60's, a spate of "Wall of Sound" imitators cropped up.  Some learned at the hand of the master (Bill Medley, of The Righteous Brothers, produced their soundalike hit "Soul and Inspiration"), others succeeded by trial and error.  So many tried, in fact, that a series of cds was later released that consisted only of Phil Spector soundalikes (called "Phil's Spectre" One, Two, and Three).  The most famous Spector soundalike, however, does not appear on any of those compilations.  It is The Walker Brothers hit, "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore".