Tag Archives: 70s

A weekend in the data!

A brilliant Spring Adelaide day

I am in the middle of my second annual review for my PhD program. The upshot is I’m going well but I have a lot to do!

So knuckling down across a long weekend I was faced with a pile of data to analyse and a dilemma of what to listen too while I got into it. Through a few hours of Ireland’s RTE – Gold ( I discovered RTE Gold last year when we were in Dublin) I moved onto Spotify and quickly onto my own playlists and within a couple of hours to my 60s and 70s playlist.

My 60s and 70s has hundreds of songs and provide good background as well as an opportunity to pause from my analysis, listen and reflect. These are all songs that I found in the 70s my high school and Uni days (that’s the first time around Uni!).

I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about some of the songs I paused on Continue reading

Alice’s Restaurant

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If you haven’t ever listened to or haven’t recently listened to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant, I suggest  make yourself a coffee, sit down and listen to it.

While I owned the record, I hadn’t listened to it for many years until it just appeared on a Spotify playlist I selected. Within a fraction of a second of it starting I knew exactly that it was Alice’s Restaurant and more scarily I  knew every word just as though I’d only heard it the day before. It had been a regular at our Friday night singalongs in the 70s.

I thankfully was too young to be in the Vietnam Draft but knew many who were either in the Conscription ballots or were called up to serve in Vietnam, so its significance is one I understood all too well.

As the song progressed I stopped what I was doing to listen again as I ‘d done so many times before, first chuckling internally and then just laughing out aloud. And there was plenty of time to do this as its more than 18 minutes long! Too long to fit on a 45 it filled  the whole of a side on an LP (Released 1967). It’s hilarious while at the same time having a pretty hard edge.

If you haven’t listened to it and want too click on the link – Alice’s Restaurant before reading on as there are spoilers below. Continue reading

Book Review Man on the Run, Paul McCartney in the 1970s

Source : Amazon.com

There were two reasons that I bought Tom Doyle’s book Man on the Run, Paul McCartney in the 1970s. The first my love of The Beatles and the second my interest in exploring “What’s Next”.

Given my age, my love of The Beatles started about the time of their breakup. My first record was Abbey Road. I have all of their albums and listen to them along with a large slice of their post Beatle individual contributions on a regular basis.

In and earlier post I have mentioned that I have been to The Dakota Building and Straberry Fields in Central Park. All part of paying homage to the greatest band of all time.  That said, when it comes to The Beatles individually my favourite has always been Paul and particularly his time with Wings. I was lucky enough to see them in 1975 on their Australian tour.

So about the book as after all this is a review!

Through access to those individuals who were around Paul including the other Beatles across the 70s, Doyle tells a story that he rightly points out has had little exposure beyond the public slanging match between Lennon and McCartney and Paul’s well publicized drug busts. The book addresses these openly but not in a sensional manner and perhaps even more importantly in context.
In a sentence, the book starts with the end of the Beatles and tragically ends at the time of the death of John Lennon. 

I find the context particularly interesting given my interest in “What’s Next”. Early on we get a pretty raw account of the difficulty Paul McCartney faced; moving from being at the top as a member of the greatest band of all time and then  seeing it all end well before he was 30. It is no wonder he and his new wife fled to Scotland to hide!

Doyle recounts Paul’s early post Beatles solo career. The formation of Wings and Linda’s role in the band which was always controversial. Denny Laine, one of Doyle’s major sources apart from McCartney himself, provides great insight as to Linda’s importance in keeping Paul out of his personal post Beatles malaise. It is an important reminder of the central role Linda played in Paul’s life.  Infact perhaps she  was the true hero in the 1970s Paul McCartney story,  rather than the villain she is so often portrayed. There are also insights into his family life which seemed to cycle from idyllic farm life to the choatic life of a rock band. This perhaps is also a sign of the challenges being faced by someone who has been to the top and is then faced with a void to be filled. One minute living the quiet family life away from it all and the next craving the bright lights and publicity. All provide insights as to how Paul dealt with his early post Beatles days.

The Wings tour of Australia gets a mention with special attention given to the Norman Gunston interview which in my opinion it is one of the most hilarious interviews of all time. In truth, it is this period of Paul McCartney’s post Beatle life that I am most familiar. This is  perhaps not surprisingly given as Doyle notes, the enormous success that the Wings US tour followed by the painstakingly  MCartney mastered triple live album and video Rockshow. 

References to the relationship between Paul and John play an important but not pivotal role in the book. McCartney and Lennon’s post Beatle interactions were bitter sweet . On occasions they and their wives enjoyed each others company and then on others the relationship was decidedly frosty. Again perhaps this is how it is after people move on from an intense relationship – a reminder that it can never truly be the same.

I can’t deny that I didn’t find the references to Paul and John’s relationship the most interesting aspect of the book. However it was also interesting to reflect on, how in the post Beatles phase Paul could ever have thought his fellow Wings members ever be his equal, why did Paul want an amateur (Linda) in a world touring successful rock band and why did he record Mary had a little Lamb? Doyle gives us insights into each and much more.

It’s  well worth a read.

Other posts on The Beatles and Paul McCartney :

The only thing you did was Yesterday
The Beatles Boxed Set
Memories of a Great Concert

Study and what to listen too?

I have always studied and worked listening to music. It provides a background to block out other distractions and it’s a technique I have used since my school days.

My year 12 was completely dominated by Born to Run!

Through Uni, the first time, it was Dylan, Springsteen, Melanie, Supertramp, 10CC and so on.

When I completed my Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance in the early 2000s, it was a combination of old favourites Dylan, Springsteen, Rick Wakeman and newer music REM, White Stripes, Silverchair, and Muse. My children made sure I was listening to what was current as I would usually say I like that and then buy the complete collection – it was a good plan on their behalf! I also filled in a lot of gaps in my music collection across those 3 years.

I am back to study again and after a few weeks of late nights and full weekends with my head in a text book and searching the University library databases it’s all been with the headphones on. I started with the downloads of Springsteen’s Australia and new Zealand concerts, at about $10 per concert they are great value. But even as a Springsteen obsessive that isn’t going to be enough to sustain me. My iTunes library has also had a fair working over as has the recently released iTunes Radio, Spotify and to a lesser extent Pandora.

Whilst I like the concept of the Radio Buttons on iTunes, Spotify and Pandora they tend to see the same songs come up on the play list a little to regularly for me and they can be a little distracting. I prefer to listen to the whole album, the complete collection or whole concert rather than jump around. So apart from Springsteen and the Radio Buttons there has been a little Tori Amos, James Taylor, Carole King and this weekend Joni Mitchell.

As I was taking a break I started to think about what new music there might be to listen too. Surely I can’t sustain the next 2 years and beyond with music from my own youth!

Suggestions will be welcome!

Shorrock & Cadd – Rock and Roll Royalty

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There is something pretty special seeing Australia’s own Rock and Roll Royalty and Friday Night at Her Majesty’s in Adelaide was just such an occasion.

An audience of 50 plussers talking about their grand kids and rocking away – all a bit incongruous but that was how it was.

From the first song to the last, it was a walk down memory lane for the audience who just like me lapped it up.

The first set was a history of Australian Rock which was no surprise given Brian Cadd and Glen Shorrock feature so heavily in it. Covers demonstrating their influences, The Rolling Stones, Beatles and Everley Brothers and then into their own early bands, The Twilights and The Group. With a backing band that included the other two members of Axiom, a lazy 40 years on, we were treated to Arkansas Grass, Ford’s Bridge and to end the set Little Ray of Sunshine.

The stories

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