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.
It's become undeniably evident that the president of the United States had a sexual fling with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. Right before the 2016 election, his lawyer paid Stormy Daniels off with $130,000. POTUS denies the whole thing. I'm so sick of money and the terrible things that it enables. It's pretty obvious no one in the GOP or Trump's base is going to bat an eye at this little hush money cover up. What it reveals about the soul of America is no surprise, but still troubling. Yeah, money changes everything. Even the core values of religious zealots and fiscally conservative nut jobs. But, we should have known that. The Brains called it back in '80. "You think you know what we're doing. We don't pull the strings. It's all in the past now. Money changes everything." The Brains were a hard rocking quartet from Atlanta, Georgia. For their 1980 debut, Steve Lillywhite stepped in to the production role, added a littl
Imagine if the Beach Boys grew up in Vancouver and had a love affair with Hall & Oates at a Pablo Cruise party in Malibu. That's what Chilliwack sounds like to me. This is their biggest single, My Girl . According to my friend, Aaron from Toronto, this is a "classic from (his) youth." I picture Canadian kids in the early 80s cruising around at malls, eating poutine and wearing Chilliwack shirts. I know this is a total fabrication of my non-existent memory that is mostly rooted in watching Rush's video for Subdivisions one too many times. C'mon, let me have my dream. Meanwhile, you get your dose of Chilliwack. Are you hooked on Chilliwack? Go behind the scenes with them in this "decent" interview on American Bandstand. Why is Dick Clark giving Brian MacLeod such a hard time? Plus, the band records their albums on boats!!!!
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