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Thursday, Mar 3 2022, 7AM
In the track, we hear nothing but Slick’s vocals, reverb and echo galore. She hits every note with perfect precision, clarity, and vibrato on point where it needs to be. The song was originally written in 1965 after an LSD trip at her Marin county home. Slick had been listening to Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain continuously for 24 hours straight.
doyouremember.com
Bob Dylan plays Jimi's cover version of his song. Since his first performance of the song in 1974, Bob Dylan has performed the Jimi Hendrix version more than 2250 times.
Dylan said, "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using.....Ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way. Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”: dailyreview.com.au
The Temptations were the first to record this; it was included on their 1970 album Psychedelic Shack. Motown had no intention of releasing it as a single, but many in the protest movement, especially college students, made it clear that the song would be a big hit if it was. Motown head Berry Gordy had other plans for The Temptations and didn't want them associated with such a controversial song, so he had Starr record it and his version was released as a single. Starr didn't have as big a fan base to offend.
www.songfacts.com
Mick Jagger: "That song was written during the Vietnam War and so it's very much about the awareness that war is always present; it was very present in life at that point.
McGuire's vocal was recorded late at night as a rough take. His voice was raspy and tired, but the producer loved it and used that take. The producer Jay Lasker brought the song to Los Angeles radio station KFWB the morning it was finished, where it was played for the first time.
A protest song about political issues of the '60s, many radio stations refused to play "Eve Of Destruction" because of its antigovernment lyrics. There was an upside to this controversy, however, as it piqued interest in the song, sending it to #1 in the US.
When recording with the Rolling Stones, Merry Clayton did a take of her line, then decided to "blow them out of this room" on the next take. This time, she delivered a chilling vocal an octave higher, her voice cracking on "murder." This can be heard at about the 3:04 mark, and you can hear an impressed Mick Jagger in the background saying "Whoo!"
In the liner notes to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Dylan says of "Masters Of War": "I've never really written anything like that before. I don't sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn't help it with this one. The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?"
The soundtrack to Questlove’s beautiful documentary on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival! Questlove said about the film:
"I’ve had time to think about what this film really is. This film is about Black joy. Our pain is well documented, our struggle is well documented. And we often think the antidote to the pain, the suffering of our story in America to be comedy, or that sort of thing. But it still doesn’t reflect joy and… to me, this was really truly a case of pure unadulterated joy [for the concert audience]. These are people just in their natural joyous element… This was really just the break that people needed in the summer of 1969 in the borough of Harlem.”
bit.ly
www.searchlightpictures.com
“This machine kills fascists” was emblazoned on folk singer Woody Guthrie’s guitar, and he used his weapon of choice to compose timely songs of protest, which still remain relevant. One of those tunes is “All You Fascists Bound To Lose” which Guthrie wrote in 1942.
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Rhiannon Giddens from the Carolina Chocolate Drops sings and plays fiddle with the Resistance Revival Chorus, an activist and musical group that formed out of the 2017 Women’s March-- video here: youtu.be
www.resistancerevivalchorus.com
inspired by the original Bed-In held March 20, 1969 by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, the KEXP family came together as a community in the Gathering Space for a Bed-In for Peace. Live music from local artists Wimps, Tomo Nakayama, DoNormaal, Grace Love, and Gabriel Teodros culminating in a sing-along of "Give Peace a Chance" led by Sean Nelson.
You can watch the entire event: www.facebook.com
John Lennon wrote this in India while The Beatles were at a transcendental meditation camp with The Maharishi. Lennon told Rolling Stone: "I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this 'God will save us' feeling about it, that it's going to be all right (even now I'm saying 'Hold on, John, it's going to be all right,' otherwise, I won't hold on) but that's why I did it, I wanted to talk, I wanted to say my piece about revolution. I wanted to tell you, or whoever listens, to communicate, to say 'What do you say? This is what I say.'"
Bob Babbitt of the Motown house band The Funk Brothers recalled to Mojo magazine February 2009 the recording of this track: Putting it together was simple, we just did that one song in the three-hour session and we had enough time left over to eat some BLT sandwiches. We didn't know it was going to be political, because the lyrics weren't written when the rhythm track was recorded.
Watch the video of Love and Rockets covering The Temptationss.: www.youtube.com
Time Zone was an electro project by New York’s influential hip hop producer and DJ Afrika Bambaata and John Lydon. Bambaata wanted to bring in a vocalist that was “really crazy” and the producer, Bill Laswell, suggested John Lydon for the part. The idea came to life and was recorded in Evergreen Studios in NYC over a period of about four hours.: www.lethalamounts.com
Chuck D speaking about this track:
"Once again, regardless of what anybody thinks, pushing the musical envelope is what hip hop is all about. It's about making the unpopular move as much as it is the popular move."
www.mtv.com
"The [Kent State] incident spurred The Isley Brothers to record “Ohio/Machine Gun.” Fusing Neil Young with Jimi Hendrix, The Isleys re-framed the narrative of the song around rising racial tensions, bridging the cultural gap between the two songs as a deliberate statement: music was one of the few forces that could bridge the racial divide and bring people together - cultural connective tissue for a divided world." - jperiod.com
The album is regarded as U2's first overtly political album, in part because of songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day", as well as the title, which stems from the band's perception of the world at the time; lead vocalist Bono stated that "war seemed to be the motif for 1982."
Band Member Michael Been said this about "The Walls Came Down":
"There was a great deal happening politically - Grenada, Lebanon, or the government saying the Russians are evil and the Russian government probably saying the same about us. That kind of thinking inspired me to write the last lines of 'Walls Came Down'."
Midnight Oil's guitarist/keyboardist and songwriter Jim “Seamus” Moginie was asked if the Oils have returned now to “save the world" when they reunited in 2017:
“The world has swung so far to the right since we split in 2002. The right has learnt successfully how to govern, blocking legislation like crazy whilst in opposition and then be totally non-transparent and arrogant in power. If anything, we’re part of the kick back against tyranny. Our lyrics are still relevant. Whether it’s nuclear annihilation, environment or the plight of the indigenous, the same things are still happening 30 years later. Go figure. And also partly because we still like playing together.”
The "Ship of Fools" concept has been around since Plato's Republic, written in 380 BC. In Book VI, the philosophy uses it as an analogy to describe the instability of democracy, with a captain trying to navigate a ship full of mutinous sailors who think they can do the job better. The idea inspired the 15th-century satirical novel Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant and the Hieronymus Bosch painting of the same name. The phrase gained popularity in rock lyrics (see The Doors' "Ship Of Fools") after Katherine Anne Porter published her allegorical novel Ship of Fools in 1962.
www.songfacts.com
Watch Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds doing this one live at Brixton Academy in London in 2004 here: www.youtube.com
"War Pigs" was inspired by the Vietnam War. Sabbath bass player Geezer Butler, who was also their lyricist, recalled to Mojo in 2017: "Britain was on the verge of being brought into it, there was protests in the street, all kinds of anti -Vietnam things going on. War is the real Satanism. Politicians are the real Satanists. That's what I was trying to say."
This song deals with the US military and their aggressive tactics. It mentions how the arms industry encourages war to get military contracts with lines like, "Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes, not need, just feed the war cannibal-animal," and "What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and moving."
The song is from the album Evil Empire, whose title itself is a reference to US president Ronald Reagan's description of the former Soviet Union.
Ministry's "The Industrial Strength Tour" will make a stop at The Showbox SoDo on April 18th, 2022.
ministryband.com
ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ (a Greek word roughly pronounced as "ke-fa-lee," meaning "head" or "leader," and the number 69 in Greek numerals), though Psalm 69 is used for simplicity's sake, the album is also known as "Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed And The Way To Suck Eggs."
"March Of The Pigs" is the fourth track on 1994's "The Downward Spiral." It has one of the most unusual meters of any song to enjoy popular radio play, alternating three measures of 7/8 time with one measure of 4/4 time in the verses (in effect, a 29/8 time signature). The chorus is in the common 4/4 time signature. As a result, with eighth notes getting the count, the song has a BPM rate of 269.: www.nin.wiki
This is an antiestablishment song of defiance and blue-collar pride, both anti-Washington and against the Vietnam War. John Fogerty and Doug Clifford both enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1966 (to avoid being drafted and shipped to Vietnam) and were discharged in 1968 after serving their military commitments. "The song speaks more to the unfairness of class than war itself," Fogerty said. "It's the old saying about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them."
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were husband and wife (and future Hall of Fame) songwriters associated with the 1960s Brill Building scene in New York City.
Mann and Weil wrote and recorded "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" as a demo, with Mann singing and playing piano. It was intended for The Righteous Brothers, for whom they had written the number one hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" but then Mann gained a recording contract for himself, and his label Red Bird Records wanted him to release it instead. Meanwhile, record executive Allen Klein had heard it and gave the demo to Mickie Most, the Animals' producer.
The movie The Wall is a semi-autobiographical story about a young boy that loses his father in the war and is raised by his overly protective mother. The child grows up alone as an outsider that absolutely does not fit in. He feels trapped by his overly protective environment while being shunned by the men around him.
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), often referred to as just Arthur, is the seventh studio album by the Kinks, released in October 1969. Kinks frontman Ray Davies constructed the concept album as the soundtrack to a Granada Television play and developed the storyline with novelist Julian Mitchell; the television programme was never produced. The rough plot revolved around Arthur Morgan, a carpet-layer, who was based on Ray and guitarist Dave Davies' brother-in-law Arthur Anning.
This sentimentally optimistic song was written in 1939 by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles. The most popular version was recorded three years later by The Forces Sweetheart, Vera Lynn.
Both this song and Vera Lynn herself are directly cited in Pink Floyd's 1979 song Vera from The Wall.
Explaining this song, lead singer Michael Stipe said: "The words come from everywhere. I'm extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am in a sleeping state, awake, dream-state or just in day to day life. There's a part in 'It's The End Of The World As We Know It' that came from a dream where I was at Lester Bangs' birthday party and I was the only person there whose initials weren't L.B. So there was Lenny Bruce, Leonid Brezhnev, Leonard Bernstein... So that ended up in the song along with a lot of stuff I'd seen when I was flipping TV channels. It's a collection of streams of consciousness."
The lyrics were inspired by US president Ronald Reagan's belief that Christ would return after a nuclear war. The "two tribes" are America and the Soviet Union, who were engaged in the Cold War, putting the entire world under threat of annihilation.
The song was banned by the BBC due to concerns by Radio 1's legal department that it libeled Reagan.
Chapman said about the inspiration for this song, "they didn’t think that people’s lives who…, people who didn’t have money or who were working class, their lives weren’t very significant and they also somehow couldn’t make a change. But I feel that’s where change comes from, that’s where people are in most need.” www.tracychapman.com
According to the book Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves & Demons of Marvin Gaye, Motown head Berry Gordy initially refused to release this song, calling it the "worst record I ever heard in my life." The song was slipped out by the man in charge while Gordy was on vacation and, of course, he was furious... until he found out the single sold 100,000 copies in the US upon its release. Needless to say, he soon changed his mind about this song.
Sting to Revolver in 2000 about this one: "I actually wrote the song in Ireland, where I was living at the time. It was during the hunger strikes in Belfast. I wanted to write about that but I wanted to show some light at the end of the tunnel. I do think there has to be an 'invisible sun'. You can't always see it, but there has to be something radiating light into our lives."
XTC founder Andy Partridge would eventually become an atheist, but explained he was "wrestling with the tail end of my belief" when he wrote this. He said in an interview with SFGate: "As a kid, I was really... I got myself worked into such a sweat over religion. I remember that, about the age of eight or nine, one afternoon I had visions in the sky of clouds parting, and there was God on His throne, surrounded by angels, talking to me and grinning at me. I mean, if I lived in a Catholic community, I could've milked that and made myself a fortune! But, no, I think it happened because I was in such a hysterical state about religion as a child, and about the existence of God and that sort of thing. Religion is a source of a lot of problems, and if there is a God, he would hate Christianity, he would hate Islam, he would hate Buddhism, he would hate everything that's done in His name, because nobody behaves in a way that you're supposed to behave."
Sample from Radiohead's "Planet Telex" in this one. Watch the video for "Letter From God to Man" here: www.youtube.com
Guitarist Brian May told Ultimate Classic Rock about how the vocals were created in a novel fashion: “David, because he had experience of this avant-garde method of constructing the vocals... Everybody just goes in there with no ideas, no notes, and sings the first thing that comes into their head over the backing track.’ So we all did, and then we compiled all the bits and pieces—and that’s what ‘Under Pressure’ was based on; all those random thoughts.”
Co-writer Eno said of this in the April 2007 Q Magazine: "It's a beautiful song. But incredibly melancholy at the same time. We can be heroes, but actually we know that something's missing, something's lost."
Richie Havens became a household name after opening the 1969 Woodstock festival, which included an improvised encore called "Freedom," based on the traditional spiritual "Motherless Child." With his roots in the Greenwich Village folk scene and a handful of eclectic albums in his repertoire, Havens was an ideal choice to play the Woodstock festival, but he was never meant to have top billing. A traffic jam held up several of the performers and Havens, who was slated as the fifth act, was urged on stage (along with his band: Eric Oxendine on bass, Paul Williams on lead guitar, and Daniel Ben Zebulon on congas). Three hours later, he ran out of songs and created the enduring anthem on the spot. "When you hear me play that long intro, it's me stalling. I was thinking, 'What the hell am I going to sing?'" he explained. "I think the word 'freedom' came out of my mouth because I saw it in front of me. I saw the freedom that we were looking for. And every person was sharing it, and so that word came out."
The song, recorded by The 5th Dimension, was a medley of two songs written in 1967 by James Rado, Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot for the 1967 musical, "Hair."
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Their performance at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival was captured for the soundtrack of the documentary "Summer of Soul": pitchfork.com