Help an old Soulie get into some Rock

[Cressy Snr]

Now then.
Being an old Mod, I'd like to widen my horizons beyond blues soul and jazz.
Maybe I was born too late or being the eldest, never had a bigger brother who was a refugee from the late sixties to learn from. While everyone was listening to rock in the early seventies, I was boogieing on down to Stax Motown, Atlantic and later on Northern Soul.

I had a brief period around 1973-76 when stuff like Gong, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Dr Feelgood,Thin Lizzy and Pink Floyd tugged at my imagination, but it didn't last long before groups such as John McLauglin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, Stomu Yamashta and all that freaky jazz rock started to take over. Then that fizzled out into smooth jazz/fusion shite and it was back to rare grooves, blues, jazz and soul.

Mainstream stuff such as ELO and later on posturing farts like REO Speedwagon and Chicago then proceeded to totally kill what little interest I had in rock music.

Apart from the singer songwriters, ie. James Taylor, Don Mc' Lean, Carole king, Joni Mitchell et al, whom I always liked, it seems that proper rock music completely passed me by.

So what I'm looking for is an introduction to proper grass roots folk/rock and rock music starting from its roots in the late sixties and early seventies.

I've got plenty of Who, Small Faces, Van Morrison due to their connection to the mod soul movement but very little Rolling Stones and only one Jimi Hendrix single, no Led Zep. Not a lot really.

Listening to some of the stuff played at fests and reading some of the discussions on here I seem to have missed out a lot of good music from the "other" genre

Thanks in anticipation.
Steve

[iansr]

Steve

My recommendations would be these acknowledged classics:

Folk/rock: all the Fairport albums with Sandy Denny are great but the best is arguably Liege & Lief.

Stones: Start with Let it Bleed

Zep: all of em but try the Remasters compilation for starters.

I could go on for hours (and probably will when we next meet) but that will do for now.

Cheers
Ian

[The Stratmangler]

Deep Purple In Rock/Fireball/Machine Head/Who Do We Think We Are/Made In Japan all strongly recommended from this corner - these albums all recorded by what for me is the definitive group lineup first time around (ie. at their most creative).

All of the Zeppelin stuff.

The Yes Album/Fragile/Close To The Edge on a progressive bent.

Jimi good - recordings not so. Stevie Ray Vaughan was one of the best players of Hendrix material too, and well worth a look in.

Like iansr I could go on for hours...

Oh yes, don't forget Robin Trower - the Hendrix comparisons were rather unfair, as his playing style is quite different. IMHO the Hendrix tag was purely down to his use of Stratocaster/Marshall/FX units/playing in a trio thing and journalists like to put easy tags on things.

Chris

[Nick]

Then there is the band that links Gong, Hendrex and Jazz Fusion (before it became bland) Soft Machine.

[Cressy Snr]

Thanks for the stuff so far chaps. I have somewhere to start now.

BTW Nick, that Soft Machine Out-Bloody-Rageous was fantastic.

Steve

[andrew Ivimey]

hm, yes well, cough, takes all sorts, eh!

So, Hendrix, Cream, Grateful Dead (total must!), Quicksilver Messenger Service, Mad River, Country Joe - I put in the west coast stuff because in context it is necessary to understand what Rock was all about.

And there's always Frank Zappa and Cap'un Beefheart for a bit of ideology - dangerous stuff!

and if you want to put the music of Holland, Dosier and Holland into serious heavy rock there's always Vanilla Fudge - oh you keep me hangin'on.

Allman Bros Band - say, live at Filmore East.

I really could go on and on but far out man, like wow! too much, too much!

and where'd the smiley come from?

Are you on the bus?

[Dave the bass]

Howsabout some of the LP's by 'Free', brilliantly played and written Blues Rock.

Also if you're leaning towards the Folk end of Rock think about starting with few John Martyn LP's Steve. 'Solid Air' has a lot of Fairport Convention playing with him, it's an absolute peach of and LP, also try 'One World', chilled out bliss but still 'playing' with the notion of Rock.

Hawkwind covers a lot of rock too, they went from spaced out rock (In 'Search of space'/'Space Ritua'l/'Doremi farsol latido' through Sci Fi 'Warrior on the edge of time' then mixed in a dash of da fonk (with rock) with ' Astounding sounds Amazing music' and then flirted with 'new wave' with '25 Years' and 'Quark Strangness and Charm'.

Avoid anything after 'Live79', I'm not responsible for anything else after that racket....

HTH.

DTB

[Cressy Snr]

Hi Guys

Well I made a start this afternoon and downloaded a few tracks from iTunes to test the water before committing to buying any LPs/CDs

Gimme Shelter and Midnight Rambler by the Stones - Bloody 'ell

Penny Hitch by Soft Machine from "Seven" gentle and jazzy......nice

Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride - no nonsense boogie. Love it

On the off chance I searched for one of my old 73 - 76 period favourites from the old Gull record label. Andy Nogger, by Kraan.

Never expecting it to turn up but there it was. "Holiday am Matterhorn" is a stunning piece of guitar driven jazzy rock but it was was album only however dammit! but the title track is a little gem too.... memories

This rock thing could turn out expensive

Steve

[Nick]

Penny Hitch by Soft Machine from "Seven" gentle and jazzy......nice

Ah, yes, it all gets a bit different after third, well, maybe half way through fourth. About the same time Robert Wyatt left.

[Andrew]

I've got plenty of Who, Small Faces, Van Morrison...
Steve

Not knocking here Steve, just my confusion with your statement, but the Who Live at Leeds is well known as one of the best (and heaviest/hardest) rock live albums ever - so you must actually like rock. Assuming you like Live at Leeds that is, so we just need to find the rock you like. I loaned a copy, to a friend, who was a twenty something, and into thrash and all that and he couldn't stop playing it.

The Nirvana albums are seminal, when you get into them. If you want to start go for Nevermind, they also did an MTV Unplugged Session which is very accessible and got me into them. The Led Zep stuff is excellent and the box set sounds good to.

I got into Midnight Oil when I was in my early twenties, its a lot deeper than just "Beds are Burning" - Blue Sky Mining is an excellent album.

The Joshua Tree by U2 is a bit softer and a great album I just rediscovered this recently.

Can you give us an idea of timelines and what else fits the bill?

[Audiognome]

I'm a bit late seeing this, so a lot of what I would have said, has been said already. But ... if you fancy something a bit "dark" then hows about The Doors? "Strange Days" & "Morrison Hotel" are good. Also, the 40th anniversary Remix of "L.A. Woman" on CD, is a corker, IMHO.

Or ... for some 80s goth metal, how about The Cult? "Love" is my personal fave ... it's a helluva noise, for sure, but a very tightly controlled one

[Cressy Snr]

I've got plenty of Who, Small Faces, Van Morrison...
Steve

Not knocking here Steve, just my confusion with your statement, but the Who Live at Leeds is well known as one of the best (and heaviest/hardest) rock live albums ever - so you must actually like rock.

The Who stuff I have is all pre Tommy ie early to mid sixties, where " like the Beatles, they were doing quite a lot Motown covers interspersed with their more well known stuff.

By the time they were into the Tommy/Quadrophenia phase I had got deeper into the soul scene, so missed out on their "Won't get fooled again ish" stuff.

The Small Faces were just fabulous up to the point when they went all psychedelic, prior to their splintering off into Humble Pie, The Faces.

Van the Man's soul/ R&B roots need no explanations from me

So I guess it is the period from 1969 onwards where I lost track of the rock stuff. As a teenager, Rock did not speak to me at all, which is a pity as the early seventies has to be the golden age of British and American classic rock music. That is the period I want to rediscover.

I still love soul/r&b of course but would like to widen my horizons a bit. Watching some of the recent stuff on TV about rock music I realised that a lot of these groups were not only influenced by Black American blues, which I knew about, but also the very early soul scene.

Away from the hard rock groups, the folk scene and the underground that led to prog rock is of interest to me also.

Steve

[iansr]

Steve

re the Who, Who's Next (which includes WGFA) is indisputably their best album by some distance. Every home should have a copy , as i think I said somewhere else.

Re the folk thang do check out the Sandy Denny era Fairports, its fabulous stuff.

Ian

[Andrew]

Seriously, try Live at Leeds....maximum R&B......

[Cressy Snr]

Andrew/Ian

I'll check out those two Who albums

Thanks.

Steve