I've always loved glam rock -- Bowie, The New York Dolls, Mott The Hoople, Queen, T. Rex. The flamboyant and gender-bending style. The attitude, sparkly and swagger. The first time I heard Sweet was Fox On The Run. It was my favorite song on the Dazed and Confused Soundtrack. I think it was the swirling, bubbling synthesizer that drew me in. At the time I had no idea that Sweet was a part of the 1970s glam world. Later, I found out that they sang Ballroom Blitz. That's the same band? Then, in college, I bought Action and fell in love with tunes like Lady Starlight and the title track. As I pieced together their discography (in a pre-Internet age), I noticed that the band's sound inexplicably wavered between hard rock, glam and bubble-gum pop. I could never put my finger on what Sweet was all about. I just loved a lot of their songs.
This week, I picked up a copy of their 1977 album, Level Headed. The album is anything but steady (as the title would have you believe). Each song seems to be a world of its own: hard rock a la Cheap Trick, Bolanesque acoustic numbers and then... disco. Capitol Records' A&R folks must have been shaking their heads when it came to this LP.
In the end, the unsteady and unpredictable nature of the album is what I love. But, it is the final song on side A that I absolutely love: Love Is Like Oxygen. This song is a perfect statement about major label rock & roll at the close of the 70s. It was confused, sometimes desperate and experimenting with its own identity as a means of survival, often unsuccessfully. It is the glorious, final pop hit of a band in the midst of an identity crisis. It scored a top ten hit in several countries, including Finland! Love Is Like Oxygen is as perfect a swan song as you're ever gonna hear.
You know the story. The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" becomes the first music video shown on MTV in the U.S. on August 1981. The 80's first flash in the pan is born. But do you know the next part of the story? The Buggles (Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn) brought prog rock dinosaurs, Yes, back to life for a brief stint as new wave zombies with rad guitar solos. Now, how the hell did that happen? Turns out that Downes and Horn were under the same management as Yes. After 1978's Tormato , an album featuring the forgettable "Don't Kill The Whale," Jon Anderson (vocals) and Rick Wakemen (keyboard wizardry) went splitsville. At that point, most people would probably agree that the band was dead. Steve Howe and Chris Squire saw it differently. Yes' management approached their buddies in The Buggles about jamming with the remains of Yes: Howe (guitar), Squire (bass) and Alan White (drums). What I can only imagine as a weird experience fo...
Clocking in at nearly 23 minutes, Supper's Ready was the first extended composition that Genesis attempted in the studio. It appeared on 1972's Foxtrot . With Steve Hackett's ornate and chiming guitars, Tony Banks classical sounding keys, Phil Collins' athletic drumming (hitting 9/8 in section VI) and, of course, Peter Gabriel's dramatic voice -- lifting from an ethereal hush to a fantastic shriek throughout, it's a prog-rock masterpiece. This was Genesis firing on all cylinders. They were in their formative stage as a band and in love with composing together. Ultimately, the tune would provide a perfect opportunity for Gabriel to develop costumes and portray a host of fanciful characters, including a giant daisy (pictured here). Lyrically, the song is expansive, dealing with themes of good and evil, particularly allusions to the Book of Revelations. Gabriel based the lyrics for the first section, Lover's Leap, on two otherworldly experiences. On one occ...
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