Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

There are no words necessary for this songs. Just jump back in time.

1968: Steppenwolf

1973: Billy Presaton

1978: Dire Straits

1981: The Tubes

1983: Big Country

1970: Mungo Jerry

1970: Joni Mitchell

1969: Thunderclap Newman

1968: Donovan

1979: Robert Palmer

1992: The Cure

Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

When I started this series, I didn't really have any great expectations as to which songs would appear on these pages. In the meantime, I really enjoy listening to these songs again after many years or even just watching the videos.

1972: At the height of glam rock, you can't get past Gary Glitter and I thought long and hard about whether I should give a pederast a forum.

1978: Warren Zevon released his masterpiece Werewolfes Of London

1979: Frank Zappa released Bobby Brown and his reckoning with the American dream so bluntly that it was banned in the United States.

1969: A Song from The Who's rock opera Tommy. Still nice watching Elton John playing pinball.

1965: A classic song by Them with the very young Van Morrison.

1970: The movie Easy Rider started when the when the main characters bought drugs for their journey and accompanied this with a song by Steppenwolf.

1965: Bob Dylan and a rare video

1962: A little bit of soul by Arthur Alexander. Willy DeVille made a fantastic cover of this song.

1979: The Pointer Sisters were successful with Bruce Springsteen's Fire. But I prefer the version by Robert Gordon with the great Chris Spedding on guitar.

1979: This year's one hit wonder

Trout

 

There were times when everyone told us that vinyl is going to die and the only media in the future is will be a compact disk. Like many others (and of course you could find less new records on vinyl) I started buying records on this format. I am thankful that times like this are over and nearly every new record will be released on vinyl as well. Sometimes good things come back. I found this track recently in my collection when I was sorting my CD-collection again. Neneh Cherry's second album Homebrew from 1992 is an underrated album because it is far away from the style the mass expected. A hybrid of jazz, hip-hop and rock music seldom made better. Trout is the best example that old fashioned music could be transformed into today's music. Based on the guitar lines of Steppenwolf's The Pusher and Led Zeppelin's When Levee Breaks Neneh collected it as a piece of her own. A forgotten classic.

Neneh Cherry and Michael Stipe - Trout

The Pusher

To attract someones attention is the main task in promotion. In music it could be in scandals, outfits, behavior or recording a cover version. That's what Deap Lips a new collaboration by Flaming Lips and Deap Vally did for promoting their new album. Deap Vally are a Californian two piece heavy rocking band and collaborated with Flaming Lips for a trip into semi-acoustic psychedelic pop fields. But to cover Steppenwolf's The Pusher was enough to get my attention. In their version this anti-drug song sound like a drug-song. Anyway I like this song.

And here is the original by Canadian-American band Steppenwolf. A heavy blues number made famous when it was played in the first sequences in Born To Be Wild, when Fonda and Hopper bought their drugs to go to the Mardi Gras.

Steppenwolf - The Pusher