1970

Traffic – Freedom Rider

Here is a small intermission from The Kinks…

I listen to this and it’s a fantastic escape from this world we live in. You have Winwood’s great voice with this free-flowing music. There are not too many songs you will hear me say “Hey listen to that flute!” but this is one of them. It’s not a commercial song but it’s pure Traffic.

This song was on the album John Barleycorn Must Die released in 1970. It was originally intended to be a Steve Winwood solo project after Traffic had disbanded in 1969. However, during the recording process, Winwood reunited with Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, and the project turned into a Traffic album although they didn’t have Dave Mason.

The album was recorded at Island Studios in London. The sessions were mostly free-form and experimental, with the band members bringing their different influences. This differs from their earlier psychedelic sound to a more jazz-influenced and progressive rock style. It works well and I’ve listened to the album this week at work several times through.

The album peaked at #5 in the Billboard 200, #6 in Canada, and #11 in the UK in 1970 but the song did not chart.

Freedom Rider

Like a hurricane around your heart
When earth and sky are torn apart
He comes gathering up the bits
While hoping that the puzzle fits

He leaves you
He leaves you
Freedom rider

With a silver star between his eyes
That open up at hidden lies
Big man crying with defeat
See people gathering in the street

You feel him
You feel good
Freedom rider

When lightning strikes you to the bone
You turn around, you’re all alone
By the time you hear that siren sound
Then your soul is in the lost and found

Love Valley Rock Festival…1970

Today is the 44th anniversary of this Rock Festival at Love Valley.

What a festival this was and what a town it still is. It happened in Love Valley North Carolina. The headliners were The Allman Brothers who at that time only had one album out and were largely unknown to the masses. This huge festival was soon known as Woodstock South. Between 100,000-200,000 showed up.

A man named Andy Barker always wanted to live in a western town. When he was 29 years old he bought some land in 1954 and moved his family there. The land was in Iredell County and he he built the town and it was chartered in 1963. It has a saloon, hitching posts, a small church, and more. No cars are allowed in town…you can walk or ride a horse through.

It’s the place for riding horses, rodeos, and hiking trails with 2000 acres to cover. The population of Love Valley is right now at 96. Through the years it seems to stay around 100.

In 1969 Andy’s daughter Tonda wanted to go to Woodstock but he thought she was too young. So he asked her and her 16-year-old brother Jet Barker to organize a festive concert in Love Valley. While in college she had worked with an entertainment coordinator at college and knew the ropes. She managed to secure the Allman Brothers Band who at the time were known in the south but that is about it. They also got some more local bands to fill it out…it was a large bill. It took place Thursday, July 16-18, 1970.

One interesting thing that happened was that the Hell’s Angels and Outlaws showed up to battle each other. According to witnesses, Andy Barker stopped them, confiscated a chain and ax from each, and told them there would be no trouble there. They seemed to respect this man because after that the gangs dispersed and some camped out with no reported trouble. The festival went off without any major hitch.

Tonda: “It was perfect, it was like a dream. We had worked so hard and we could finally just sit down and enjoy it.”

Andy planned to make a documentary of it but it didn’t happen. All we have to look at is some grainy footage but that grainy footage shows Duane Allman a year before At Fillmore East was released. They were finishing up their second album Idlewild South at this time. Some very nice bootlegs are out there from their multiple sets.

Along with the Allman Brothers, the lineup consisted of these bands: Big Brother and the Holding Company (without Janis), Radar, Peace Core, Wet Willie, Johnny Jenkins, Tony Joe White, Hampton Grease Band, Donnydale, Catfish Freedom, Sundown, Chakra, Hot Rain, Kallabash, Warm Stone Blind, Captain John’s Fishmarket. There were over 40 bands over that weekend.

Some like Wet Willie would go on to have a few hits. Tony Joe White had a top ten hit with Polk Salad Annie the year before.

Ed Buzzell was a UPI stringer and took these photographs...they are amazing. They don’t show many bands…just the people…you feel like you are there.

Max Picks …songs from 1970

The Beatles officially broke up in April of 1970…I hate leaving the 60s behind. The seventies was the time of my childhood at the age of 3 through 13. My music tastes were formed in this decade by listening to…well mostly the 60s.

So let’s get started with The Grateful Dead. They released two of their most popular albums this year… Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Two excellent albums and it was hard to pick a song off of them…but this one does quite nicely. It was written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter.

It’s George Harrison time again. When the Beatles broke up, no one knew what to expect from him. Well…George delivered a knockout punch with his album All Things Must Pass. At that time he was outselling John and Paul and just about everyone else. George wrote this song.

This was the opening track on the A Question Of Balance album by the Moody Blues, and at one point it was going to be the title track. The song was recorded several months earlier than the other tracks on the album and its title was shortened from “Question Of Balance” to “Question.”

When I was younger I started with this album and owned everything up until Long Distance Voyager. Their early seventies output is my favorite period but I liked their entire catalog as a whole. It was written by Justin Hayward.

This is what I wrote in my post on this song a while back...”The bass in this song punches you like a heavy-weight fighter and will roll you like wholesale carpet…the timing is absolutely perfect. I hear some Otis and Wilson Pickett in this song and it will make you move.” Huh…I still agree with me!

Groove Me has been a favorite of mine for so long. King Floyd takes almost a full minute to build up to the chorus and it’s well worth the wait when he kicks it in. Thank you King Floyd for writing this song.

This song by Simon and Garfunkel has become a standard. Bridge Over Troubled Water along with Georgia On My Mind was my mom’s favorite song…so I couldn’t leave it off. It was written by Paul Simon.

…

Love Valley Rock Festival…1970

By the summer of 1970, the spirit of Woodstock was still echoing across the American counterculture, and a small mountain town in North Carolina decided it wanted a piece of that magic, or at least its own funky version. Enter: the Love Valley Rock Festival, an improbable blend of peace, pot, rock ‘n’ roll… and cowboys. It went down in July 1970 like a haywire Southern cousin to Woodstock, with more horses, and a whole lotta Allman Brothers.

What a festival this was, and what a town it still is. It happened in Love Valley, North Carolina. The headliners were The Allman Brothers, who at that time only had one album out and were largely unknown to the masses. This huge festival was soon known as Woodstock South. Between 100,000 and 200,000 showed up.

A man named Andy Barker always wanted to live in a western town. At the age of 29, he purchased some land in 1954 and relocated his family there. The land was in Iredell County, and he built the town, which was chartered in 1963. It has a saloon, hitching posts, a small church, and more. No cars are allowed in town…you can walk or ride a horse through.

It’s the place for riding horses, rodeos, and hiking trails with 2000 acres to cover. The population of Love Valley is currently 96. Through the years, it seems to stay around 100.

In 1969, Andy’s daughter Tonda wanted to go to Woodstock, but he thought she was too young. So he asked her and her 16-year-old brother, Jet Barker, to organize a festive concert in Love Valley. While in college, she had worked with an entertainment coordinator at the college and knew the ropes. She managed to secure the Allman Brothers Band, who at the time were known in the south but that is about it. They also got some more local bands to fill it out…it was a large bill. It took place on Thursday, July 16-18, 1970.

One interesting thing that happened was that the Hell’s Angels and Outlaws showed up to do battle with each other. According to witnesses, Andy Barker stopped them and confiscated a chain and ax from each and told them there would be no trouble here. They seemed to respect this man because after that, the gangs dispersed, and some camped out with no reported trouble. The festival went off without any major hitches.

Tonda: “It was perfect, it was like a dream. We had worked so hard and we could finally just sit down and enjoy it.”

Andy planned to make a documentary of it, but it didn’t happen. All we have to look at is some grainy footage, but that grainy footage shows Duane Allman a year before At Fillmore East was released. They were finishing up their second album, Idlewild South, at this time. Some very nice bootlegs are out there from their multiple sets.

Along with the Allman Brothers, the line up consisted of these bands: Big Brother and the Holding Company (without Janis), Radar, Peace Core, Wet Willie, Johnny Jenkins, Tony Joe White, Hampton Grease Band, Donnydale, Catfish Freedom, Sundown, Chakra, Hot Rain, Kallabash, Warm Stone Blind, Captain John’s Fishmarket. There were over 40 bands over that weekend.

Some, like Wet Willie, would go on to have a few hits. Tony Joe White had a top ten hit with Polk Salad Annie the year before.

The Love Valley Festival doesn’t get the press that Altamont or even Atlanta Pop did. There’s no movie, no official recordings, no box set retrospective. Just faded photos, whispered stories, and a ghost-town memory of the time the South went psychedelic under the watchful eye of a cowboy mayor with a dream.

It’s part of what makes digging through this era so damn fun. Not all the magic happened on the coasts. Sometimes it galloped in on horseback, plugged into a wall of amps, and raised a little hell in the Carolina hills.

Ed Buzzell was a UPI stringer and took these photographs…they are amazing. They don’t show many bands…just the people…you feel like you are there. (Unfortunately, Ed Buzzell or someone else took them down.) If you know where they are now, or if they are anywhere, please let me know in the comments.

Let It Be movie 1970

This movie was released in May of 1970.

All of the Beatle movies have been remastered, cleaned up, and released except this one. Let iT Be was released on Laserdisc, Betamax, and VHS in the 1980s but that is it. It’s frustrating that all we have are old grainy copies of it.

I wrote briefly about this movie earlier but now that Yellow Submarine is being released in theaters…it’s past time for Let It Be to at least be cleaned up and released on Blue-Ray. I’ve read where there are thousands of feet of the film that has never been seen. This is historical now. From what I’ve read the Harrison and Lennon estate have held it up because of the acrimony between the members at that time. They act as if this is some secret not known to the public.

The acrimony in the movie is apparent between Paul and George during one scene, especially where Paul is directing George on how to play something. John is pretty laid back throughout the film with the presence of Yoko by his side. Ringo is…Ringo. All in all the film leaves out most of the bad feelings. Behind the scenes, George quit and John Lennon supposedly said they should call Eric Clapton to take Georges place or fill in because ““He’s just as good and not such a headache.” Of course, if this is true we don’t know for sure.

George did come back and participate and brought Billy Preston. That was a brilliant move on George’s part. You always act a little better when guests come over. Everyone was probably on their best behavior. Billy also added some great organ parts to their songs.

I have mixed emotions watching this as a Beatle fan. Yes, the end is coming but they would get together again in a few months and make one of the Hallmark albums of their career and one of the best albums ever with Abbey Road.

The film is not all doom and gloom. The first of the film was shot at Twickenham Studios starting each day early in the morning and you can tell the mood wasn’t good. After a little over 20 minutes into the film, they moved out of Twickenham to Apple and things picked up quite a bit.

The music. The soundtrack is not the Beatles best album but it is still a good album. When you have Let It Be, Get Back, The Long and Winding Road, Don’t Let Me Down and Across the Universe on an album how bad can it be? It would make another bands career to have 2 of those songs on their album. That is the quality of the Beatles.

You will hear the Beatles very raw. That was the whole idea of the movie in the first place.

The payoff of the film comes via the rooftop of Apple at the end. They all got together and played a mini-concert on the roof. We do not see everything they actually played on the roof. This would be the Beatles last public performance. It was a good performance considering it was cold in January in London at the time. They all seem to be having a good time. The performance was at lunchtime and stopped traffic and drew the police up to the roof to stop the music. If they sounded this good on the roof in January I can’t imagine what a tour what have sounded like…

Just release the movie guys. It’s past time to do it.

Paul McCartney interview for Rolling Stone magazine in 2016

You mentioned the Let It Be film. Is there any chance it will ever be rereleased?
I keep thinking we’ve done it. We’ve talked about it for so long.

What’s the holdup?
I’ve no bloody idea. I keep bringing it up, and everyone goes, “Yeah, we should do that.” The objection should be me. I don’t come off well.

Ringo Starr interview for Rolling Stone magazine in 2012

Are you thinking about releasing the Let It Be movie on DVD?
I think that’s also a possibility. One day that will come out. But we’re not talking about it right now. As you know, there’s very little that hasn’t come out. I’d forgotten that one though. You just mentioned the one thing that hasn’t come out. I’m too busy living now.

You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) Beatles

I bought the Let It Be single by the Beatles in the mid-1970s from a relative’s yard sale. I loved Let It Be and then I flipped it over. The song started off with a catchy piano riff and then took a left turn never coming back.

I won’t even attempt to describe it because it would lose everything in words. It is a funny record (I don’t mean “My Love” bad funny… wo wo wo wo, wo wo wo wo…sorry Paul) it’s a comedy record. You could tell they were having a great time doing it.

Brian Jones played saxophone on the recording. Yes, that Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. He dropped by the studio and John and Paul thought he would play some guitar but he had a sax so they thought of this tune and he played on it.

My friend and I would listen to this over and over. We would quote from it…”Welcome to Slaggers” at school. Sometimes…and this is probably sad but we still do.

The song was recorded in May of 1967 and June of 1969 and was released as the B side of Let It Be in 1970.

It’s just so off the wall. The thing that surprises me isn’t the 1967 sessions…it’s John and Paul working on this in 1969 when they were not exactly best mates anymore. How could you not get along and make this? I guess they went through bad and good periods like any friendship or partnership…

The original version was 6:08 long but John edited it down to 4:19 for the single release.

Here is a quote from John Lennon

“That was a piece of unfinished music that I turned into a comedy record with Paul. I was waiting for him in his house, and I saw the phone book was on the piano with ‘You know the name, look up the number.’ That was like a logo, and I just changed it. It was going to be a Four Tops kind of song – the chord changes are like that – but it never developed and we made a joke of it. Brian Jones is playing saxophone on it.”

Paul McCartney on Brian Jones

“I naturally thought he’d bring a guitar along to a Beatles session and maybe chung along and do some nice rhythm guitar or a little bit of electric twelve-string or something, but to our surprise, he brought his saxophone,”

“He opened up his sax case and started putting a reed in and warming up, playing a little bit. He was a really ropey sax player, so I thought, ‘Ah-hah. We’ve got just the tune.”

“It’s not amazingly well played but it happened to be exactly what we wanted. Brian was very good like that.”