June 1970 was the tail end of my first year at university. I'd come down to London with some experience of local radio back home in Stoke and was introduced to Radio One by my boss back there. Surprisingly, a brief meeting and chat led quickly to four programmes on Saturday evenings at 1900 in a slot for new DJs. I don't think I was ever completely comfortable with network BBC and this got off to a discouraging start for me in that I was limited in what I could play. Partly this was because each programme included two taped sessions, as the amount of records was limited by the needle-time restrictions. The producer chose the music although he did leave a single, short, disc for me to choose. Free's All Right Now wasn't in the first of my programmes but it's a choice that still resonates with me now. At that time it was faded out when the instrumental break kicks in ... but not here.
June 1970 was hot and just as I was about to do the first show there was one record that seemed to sum up the weather and the vibe for me and my friends. I badgered the producer to let me kick off the first show with it and he finally agreed. Next week it was Number One. According to the log it kicked a Supremes track to the end of the show and hence kicked the Jackson Five off completely! We do our bit you know!
The Who's Live at Leeds album had just been released and this next track was chosen as a single from it. Something else I was able to choose for the last of the shows.
The producer must have been tuning in a bit to my taste by the final programme because he included Joni Mitchell without me asking. Things still had to be singles, and while this was on the Ladies of the Canyon album, it was also her first single.
I can't remember who chose this, but probably not me ... although I do like it. Status Quo were finding their groove at this time. What's interesting about this track is that although it sounds like classic Quo it was written by an Australian singer-songwriter named Carl Groszmann and the arrangement was apparently down to the Welsh band Man, who were working as a studio band for the record company at the time. I dedicated this to a Radio Stoke colleague who was off on his honeymoon "down the M-whateveritis".
This next track, by the Moody Blues, was included by the producer and is a bit of a belter. The Moodies were part of my university history for an odd reason. I was going to be living for a while within walking distance of the Albert Hall and hoped to be able to go and see lots of great rock shows: ones I couldn't get to from home in Stoke. I had a ticket for a Frank Zappa concert early on but the Albert management took exception to the content (all to do with 200 Motels) and not only banned the concert but banned all rock concerts. What seemed like years later they finally relented, with a 'safe' concert by the Moody Blues. At least that's what my memory said. Since the two events happened in the opposite order, my memory is clearly playing tricks. Oh well!
Listening to a recording of the first show from 50 years ago, I said I was going to play tracks from hit LPs as my 'choice' slot in the show. (I completely forgot about this until I listened back to a friend's tape.) First one was a bit of joyous Taj Mahal. It's a country song from 1961, and trucking is one of country's persistent themes. So much so that Steve Goodman once wrote a song in that vein which started off something like "I remember when my mom got out of prison, and drove her pickup truck into a train". But I digress.
I had to choose a theme tune and decided to take the then-latest Donovan single and loop part of the opening into something I could talk over to open the show. This is the whole thing of course, although I think Spotify clips the first note a bit! A final thought about those 50 year-old shows: listening back to the first one: I'm rubbish!
One problem with Spotify is that you have to play from the start of the track: so bear with me. When I sat in for Bob Harris in 1972 the producer and I were much more in tune with each other's taste. He suggested a weird and wonderful track by experimental electronic artist Annette Peacock, which was new to me. The log says to start at 1'50 rather than the beginning for reasons that will become apparent. I was pleased to find this track included in an installation on recorded sound at the British Library recently. It is a classic ... but the opening is probably a bit of Marmite. If you don't like it to begin with, please stay with it. By the way, the distortion is deliberate: do not adjust your set.
Sticking with electronics. I got on well with the TONTO guys, Margouleff and Cecil, when I interviewed them so in 1975 I went over to Los Angeles and stayed with each of them. Bob Margouleff was in Topanga Canyon and Malcolm Cecil lived on Birdview in Malibu ... so a heady introduction to LA. Sadly they were in the process of falling out at that time but they were fascinating people. Malcolm had the TONTO machine set up in his house and one night I wandered in on it bleeping quietly to itself; lights pulsing. The Tonto's Expanding Head Band music was a fine example of early synthesiser work, so here's a track from their second album (not counting an electronic Stabat Mater). It's a musical telling of Pharaoh's journey into the afterlife: called the Pyramid Suite. Pyramids were also cool at the time and Malcolm performed Tai Chi under one each morning.
Let's continue by letting the Fugs cover roughly the same territory in their own way. The Fugs were a New York band from the 60s who mixed musical styles and poetry. Some of their stuff could be a bit, shall we say, difficult to play on the radio. And someone wrote to the FBI saying they were "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive". Sounds like a line from Withnail and I. (Never mind that an Elektra sampler sleeve note once described David Peel and the Lower East Side as being "like the Fugs only without their literary qualities".)
You might not see multi-talented jazz singer Mel Tormé as fitting into this stream, but back in 1962 a guy named Bob Dorough added lyrics to a tune by Ben Tucker and Mel took it into the US top 40. It didn't bother the UK charts too much but did pop up on the radio occasionally. It's very much in the groove heavily ploughed by Ramsey Lewis a couple of years later and you can almost hear the clap-along and party noise ... but thankfully you don't.
While we are on singers you wouldn't expect to hear here. Once upon a time the head of promotion for Liberty Records would on occasion put his arm around my shoulder and ask if I was interested in the latest release by Shirley. Shirley Bassey that was. As it happened, suddenly she popped up on an 1987 album by Swiss duo Yello. What a voice!
We'll finish with another longish track, and yet again it's Dylan. His ability to build surreal storyscapes in song was always one of the things I really appreciated about him. Songs like Tombstone Blues, Desolation Row and this one from Blonde on Blonde ... where the country music station plays soft and the heat pipes just cough.
That's it for this fourth playlist. I hope you enjoyed it.