January 26th, 2010 by Paul
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from Pink Floyd accompanied me all the way round New Zealand’s South Island in the back seat of the family car at the end of 1975, my last year at school. (I grew up on the North Island, by the way.)
And a few years later I remember hearing a band called Father Time playing it in the “Old Wool Room” at Massey University, where they used to hold the student dances before it was pulled down. Key members of Father Time later went on to become “Mi-Sex”, a top band in Australia.
Of course, Pink Floyd was everywhere in the 70s, you couldn’t go to a party without hearing the album “Dark Side of the Moon” if nothing else.
I had a bit of a problem regarding a video of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – the song is so long, people have had to break it up and it wasn’t so easy to find the matching clips!
This one is an earlier live version, from 1974:
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January 25th, 2010 by Paul
Marc Bolan and T. Rex entered my life when I was about 14 with their album “Electric Warrior”.
I didn’t really know who they were at the time, when they were being feted by some as the “new Beatles” (not the first and not the last to be called this…).
And I had never seen live footage of them until finding these videos for you – I hadn’t realised what a powerful, charismatic live performer I had missed out on!
(As far as I know T-Rex never came to New Zealand, and Marc Bolan was tragically killed in a road accident in late 1977, just three months before my first visit to the UK.)
The music itself (from “Electric Warrior”) has remained in my head for close to 40 years now, especially the “Planet Queen” who “used my head like a revolver”.
Perhaps the most well known song from the album was “Get It On”, renamed “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” when released in the US to avoid confusion with another song.
I’ve gone to town a bit here and given you four different versions to take your pick from…
First, the studio version:
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January 24th, 2010 by Paul
Short and sweet today – The Sweet, from the UK, and a couple of their hits from the mid to late Seventies.
First up, “Fox On The Run”. This version starts out a little scratchy, but soon gets past that:
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January 23rd, 2010 by Paul
Alice Cooper took his “Welcome To My Nightmare” stage show to Auckland, New Zealand in 1977.
Having been an avid fan of this master of the whole range from hardest hard rock to the most sensitive of ballads since I first heard the “Billion Dollar Babies” album at the tender age of 16, I had to “get me to the show” (a reference other fans may recognise…).
Only thing was, he was only doing one concert in New Zealand, and my university town of Palmerston North was several hundred miles away.
Undaunted, with a car load of other appreciators, in April of that year we set off in my 1962…
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January 22nd, 2010 by Paul
“Frampton Comes Alive” by Peter Frampton with his trademark talk box guitar effects was THE live album of 1976, my first year at university in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
There were three songs on that album – currently the fourth biggest selling live album of all time – that really stood out:
“Baby I Love Your Way”, “Show Me The Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do”.
Here they are:
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Tags: David Gilmour, Music of the Seventies, Pink Floyd, Seventies Rock Bands, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Syd Barrett
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