Category Archives: Pop Goes Our Culture

11 First Tracks Into Historic Territory

The first track of an album is your introduction to the artists’ work. Like a novel it can be their first, their sequel, their latest in a series or their last. And like a book it can drive the reader into the story or out of it. These 11 tracks are some of my picks that lead you on a journey into a seminal work. A work that establishes or re-establishes the creators as major players. A work that turns their past work upside down and either confirms it or destroys it. The first track also is as worthy as every track that follows, it is the first chapter of a remarkable book that stands the test and ravages of fickle time.

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club BandSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Right off the bat you knew something was different, what did it mean, where were the Fabs? Ok Revolver was different and wonderful but who are these guys? Well, from here to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds to A Day In The Life you found out and it blew your mind… and the first track starts the engine. All aboard the train from Fabland to Pepperland… and beyond.

Alice Cooper – Under My WheelsKiller

A blast of screaming guitars, howling vocals, booming bass and drums and you knew Alice Cooper had arrived. Every teenaged boy’s catharsis embodied over 8 rocking tracks and, of course, every parent’s nightmare. Wonder why Alice Cooper is enshrined in the Rock n Roll hall of fame? Here’s the answer in about 37 minutes.

Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling StoneHighway 61 Revisited

The needle hits the vinyl and explodes. This ain’t no Blowing In The Wind. This is Dylan tough, uncompromising, and plugged in. Considered the greatest rock song ever written Like A Rolling Stone starts your journey all the way down to Desolation Row. It’s a hard earned trip but worth every minute.

The Band – Across The Great Divide – The Band

This song sets the stage for a sepia toned trek through the full spectrum of American music – country, blues, rock n roll – and characters. From The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to King Harvest Has Surely Come, The Band opens the back doors to rock’s history. This is where the genre Americana started and where it ends. It is a timeless precious artifact.

John Lennon – MotherPlastic Ono Band

The bells toll and the John begins to sing. The music is stark, the vocal full of angst but beautiful in its rage. This was not The Beatles, nor the John of In My Life, this was the John of In My Real Life Fuckin’ Right Now. If you had to pick only one Beatle solo record for your collection, this is the one. It is one of the most brutal and beautiful albums ever recorded. John’s singing was never better than on this collection, just listen to God, and Ringo’s drumming is fantastic. John’s emotional travels always starts and ends with his Mother, as it does here.

Linda Ronstadt – You’re No GoodHeart Like Wheel

Up to now she had made nice music with a terrific voice, but with the first punch of You’re No Good you know this is really a Different Drum. This starts a musical trip of fantastic songs sung by one of the greatest voices in any genre of music. Produced to bring out her vocal prowess, backed by her crackerjack band and an array of pros and stars, such as The Eagles and David Lindley, this was a game changer of a record and remains one.

Tom Waits – Tom Traubert’s Blues Small Change

This voice was different from his first two studio albums, it was rough, gravely and as real and impactful as any instrument. Tom Traubert’s Blues kicks this album off and it is a masterpiece of songwriting and as sad and beautiful as any Charles Bukowski poem. Waits wrote of the life after dark: the alleys, the bars, the dives, the drunks, the taxi drivers, the night people. Here on this album he writes from the life. It marks a change for him artistically and emotionally and more than likely saved his career and life. After all, the starting gun track’s character is named Tom.

The Rolling Stones – Rocks OffExile On Main Street

The needles hits this first track like a race car hitting the gas – but it’s not quite what you’d expect. Rocks Off is a great Stones rocker punctuated by some horns but the sound is murky, the vocals are to the back of a muddy mix. Thus the greatest rock n roll album by the World’s greatest rock n roll band begins. Upon first listening you may think you have a badly pressed vinyl but no, listen again. Underneath that dark water is why they were also labeled the most dangerous rock n roll band in the World. These songs form a quilt of sex, drugs, sweat, piss and blood. It’s a masterpiece but a dark masterpiece. It gets your rocks off.

Van Morrison – Astral WeeksAstral Weeks

Well from the first bars you know this ain’t no Brown Eyed Girl. This first and title track opens up an album of mystery and mojo. Like most critics and fans I can’t explain its beauty or its compelling allure. It has no genre, it has no shelf, it has no structure, what is has is magic. All I can tell you is to turn down the lights, have a glass of your favorite beverage, sit with someone you love then start Astral Weeks, you won’t understand it, only feel it. And it’s fine.

Deep Purple – Highway StarMachine Head

The bass starts, the drums kick in, the organ lays a riff, guitars well up, the vocal rises up and Highway Star starts one the best heavy rock/metal albums ever released. The song tells the truth of the work, here’s what you get and you’ll like it. This is driving fast music, either in or out of the car. Look, it has Smoke On The Water and Space Trucking in its gas tank, hit the damn ignition and ride with it!

Taylor Swift – The 1 folklore

Yup Taylor Swift. The 1 starts an album of great beauty and heart. Written during 2020’s unprecedented pandemic times, this is a masterful work that we needed right then and now. This is songwriting at the highest level and every track rings true. Lyrically and musically here is an artist working at the top of her game, just listen to The Last Great American Dynasty. One of the best albums of this 21st Century.

Favorite Albums 2020

Bob Dylan – Rough & Rowdy Ways

A masterpiece from our greatest songwriter/poet. Murder Most Foul, a 17 minute pop culture treatise on the JFK assassination alone is worth the price of admission. Brilliant.

Taylor Swift – folklore

A beautiful, cleareyed journey into the storytelling charm of this gifted writer. A not expected acoustic cycle of songs with The Last Great American Dynasty being her best work… up to this point.

Jason Isbell – Reunions

A raw, intimate album burning with introspection, regret and triumph. Isbell’s greatest gift is opening his heart to the listener without losing it. It Gets Easier is a spare anthem of truth to recovery.

Every Echo – self titled

Four singer/songwriters form a project to present their gifts to the waiting arms of pop connoisseurs and raconteurs everywhere. Full of hooks and heart and so many ear worms you may need a prescription. Fantastic.

Andrew McKnight – Treasures In My Chest

Exploring a family tree has never sounded so good. A rustic unpacking of family secrets and treasures written and performed beautifully by one of America’s true troubadours. A companion book chronicles the trip.

REISSUES / BOX SETS

John Lennon – Gimme Some Truth

Procured by Yoko and Sean Lennon, these totally sonically remastered tracks represent the best of John’s solo work. Uncovering these deep tracks and rarely heard works bring a clearer view to his body of work. Love, Out of the Blue, I Know (I Know) and Steel and Glass are just some of these prizes. The accompanied hardback book that comes with this set is a revelation of design, photos and ancedotes.

Tom Petty – Wildflowers & All The Rest

A remastering of one Tom’s most beloved albums would have been sufficient but to add a whole other disc of outtakes and songs that didn’t make the cut, well that’s a beautiful thing. What I cannot understand is how these unreleased songs stayed unreleased. They show the wealth of talent of this remarkable artist making our hearts break more for his absence.

Elton John – Jewel Box

A massive box set of deep cuts, rarities and never heard songs. The latter being recored before his debut album Empty Sky, here you can hear the raw talent ready to explode. With all the glitz, glamour and showbiz of Sir Elton we overlook his body of work with Bernie Taupin. Look no further here it is in all its splendor, from Tumbleweed Connection to Wonderful Crazy Night. Thankfully the Bitch never left. Glorious.

Sgt. Pepper all over again.

June 1, 1967, I was 12 years old and I was in Leesburg Drug Fair. Most likely I had a few comic books in hand when I picked up The Beatles’ new album, or what I thought was the Beatles’ new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Looking at the cover I didn’t know what the hell was going on except amongst the many faces I saw four, eight really, familiar ones with the words The Beatles arranged in flowers on the ground. So with a little over $10 spent I had my reading material and music in a paper bag as I walked home. I was not expecting how everything would change so quickly.

I was a Beatle kid, from Ed Sullivan to Revolver I was in it. I already had the single Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane so I was anticipating something different from the band, but I wasn’t really ready for this.

Opening Pepper was an experience, it was my first gatefold album, it was the first to have the lyrics printed on it, the first to have an insert of cutouts… it was bright, beautiful, shiny and more than new, it was birthed.


I remember my first listen, it was on my white Sears stereo. I was sitting in the middle of my room with the speakers as wide apart as they would stretch with the volume on “loud”. Suddenly a smash of guitars and someone singing “It was 20 years  ago today….”

I was gone, I didn’t know what I was listening to, I only knew I wanted to hear again and again. It was rock and roll but it was also something all together different. It was Beatle music, not Fab, but Beatle music. That afternoon discovering Pepper is still close to my living awareness. I can almost bring back that strange feeling of a door opening. In retrospect, it was the day I became a teenager. Pepper grabbed my hand and lashed me into a more adult world with plasticine porters with looking glass ties.

Flash forward 50 years. A new remixed version of Sgt. Pepper is released with great hoopla and anticipation.  I received an email notice that an Amazon package arrived at my house. I quickly took the afternoon off, hurried home, opened the package and there was Pepper. Not newly birthed, but it was grinning at me, saying: “well kid, you ready… again”?

I was in the house alone, the volume was on 8 (that’s louder than my 12 year old loud), and that feeling came again, and it was more than what I expected. They did it again. But this time the door did not open to adulthood, it opened a window to that kid in a second floor bedroom with head, ears and heart wide open. I didn’t return to being that kid, but for the first time I could see him with my older eyes. I was equipped with the knowledge of what lies ahead for him in the next 50 years, both good and bad. It was Pepper‘s new gift to me, we are who we were and somewhere deep down in our blood innocence still flows within you and without you.

SG: May 30, 2017

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To answer your question, how does the new mix sound? 

You can search the net on how this new mix came about, it’s a fascinating read especially with George Martin’s son Giles at the board. Here are 10 of my reactions:

  1. It’s a totally new listening experience with dynamic leveled stereo.
  2. Ringo’s drums are brought to the front and he does some of his best work, work that before was buried sonically.
  3. Getting Better rocks harder.
  4. Harmonies and background vocals are much sharper, you can even hear George’s wonderful harmony vocals.
  5. John’s rhythm guitar is very present in the new mix.
  6. Within You Without You is a new experience.
  7. Good Morning‘s tension is turned up and it’s great
  8. There is more space in every song
  9. You can hear The Beatles as a 4 piece band and realize they could have played most of the songs live.
  10. A Day In The Life remains the masterpiece and this new mix throws all pretenders to its crown aside

Here’s a link to the 2 CD Deluxe version.

The vinyl version.

And the 4 CD, DVD, Blu Ray and Anniversary Book version.

I wish there was a record store I could direct you to, or a Drug Fair.

 

 

Ten things I’m thinking….

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1. Van Morrison is singing better than ever, this proves it.

2. Cerphe’s Up should be on every music lover’s bookshelf.

3. We need John Lennon today more than ever.

4. It’s scary times when elected officials, especially Congress, are more afraid of the President than the power of the people.

5. The half hour black and white Gunsmoke episodes are better than the full hour color episodes.

6. Saturday morning cartoons suck. I’m so happy I grew up with Hanna-Barbara and Warner Brothers toons.

7. The new Tarzan movie was great and critics are wrong most of the time.

8. Jim Gaffigan, Chelsea Handler, Amy Schumer and Conan O’Brien have never made me laugh.

9. The Beatles could have thrown their careers away in 1964 when the refused to play America’s segregated venues, instead they changed the world.

10. The bottom line is not money, it’s people.

Small Town Talk Speaks Volumes

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Any book dealing with Bob Dylan is usually full of conundrums and partial truths, but any book dealing with Bob Dylan is usually a good read. Sprinkle in The Band, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Todd Rundgren and other rock notables and you should have an enjoyable word stew. Barney Hoskyns’ new book, Small Town Talk, is a very good entree.

Dylan was visiting his brooding, enigmatic manger Albert Grossman in Woodstock NY. He had just returned from a hard grueling career changing 1966 electric world tour with his backing band, The Hawks. He needed to re-charge. Woodstock was the ideal place for him and his family to leave the public eye and enjoy a more rural pastoral life. In other words Bob was tired.

That all changed on July 29, 1966 when Bob wrecked his beloved Triumph motorcycle. Reports of the time ranged from his death, to broken neck to career ending injuries… at this point the book takes off.

During his recovery Bob invited The Hawks up to the village to play, write, and have some fun. The Hawks became The Band, the playing and writing became The Basement Tapes and the fun became infectious. Word leaked about what was happening up in Old Woodstock, then the songs leaked out and then Big Pink leaked out,  then everything changed.

Soon every rock star passed through, visited  or moved to the tiny village, and with them came sex, drugs, and, you know, rock and roll. It was a startling invasion of not only musicians but their entourages: parasites, groupies, drug dealers and media. This book chronicles those stories from 1966 until today. Some of the best parts of the story is how the locality and its governing officials and town business owners had to deal with this new paradigm of change. (The Chief Of Police has some fine stories with regards to the driving escapades of certain members of The Band ). Money was flowing in, but the quiet farming/art community was becoming more Greenwich Village than Mayberry. A seamy underbelly was growing underneath the narrow streets of the beautiful old village. The uneasy balance between old and new Woodstock is as much a character in the story as any musician. It is also filled with sadness as many of the Woodstock icons succumbed to their demons: Richard Manuel, Janis Joplin, Rick Danko and others.

Small Town Talk is a wonderful read, and any rock fan who cares about the birth of the Americana genre should pick it up. I’m betting most Dylan and Band fans already have. My only complaint is I wish the author would have dug deeper into the locals’ reaction to the conquering horde, being from a small town I know how my father would have.

Available at your favorite bookstore and here at Amazon.

Beards. Nine Things To Know.

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Beards are in these days. Scruffy beards, huge beards, barely there beards, well coiffed beards and hipster “touch of a beard.” Well, I’ve had a beard for 43 years. I grew mine as a sophomore in college, it sprung from my fu manchu mustache to goatee to full-on beard. Many of my family members, including my wife and daughter, and friends have never “seen” me without a beard. I’ve had a beard for over two-thirds of my life. So in the name of lumberjacks and other facial hair aficionados, I’d like to dispel some beard falsehoods and add some biased beard truths.

  1. Most of us shave, some like me everyday. Some of us keep a clean edge to our beard and some don’t like the neck beard thing. So throwing the razor away, in most cases, is a myth.
  2. We don’t need less napkins when we eat, we need more. We also need a good “food in your beard” partner to point out when we have ketchup in our beard. See non-beards can feel that shit on their skin, we need other eyes on it or a napkin-wipe after every bite.
  3. They don’t itch. When people say to you “doesn’t that thing itch”?, it’s because they can’t grow one. Beard envy is a horrible thing.
  4. Most us us get our beard trimmed as often as your get your hair cut. You may not be able to tell it, but we do. Finding the right professional that can give you a beard trim that looks like you didn’t get a beard trim is a gift. When you find one, as I have (thank you Bonnie), you never leave.
  5. We shampoo and condition our beards. See #2, all the shit that falls on your beard needs to be washed out. EVERYDAY. Because of that we also need our beard to be conditioned so it doesn’t dry out and get, now wait for it, split ends. My wife has now turned me on to “beard oil”, bless her heart. Look it up, it’s real and wonderful.
  6. Beards do not make you warmer in the winter nor more comfortable in the summer, they just make you cooler.
  7. They have a surprise factor. A beard can be any damn color it wants to be and you have no control over it. I’ve seen dirty blond haired men have a red ginger beard, I’ve seen dark haired men have blond beards, I’ve seen gray beards on 20 year olds, and the one I respect the most is when the mustache is a totally different color than the beard. Weird but cool.
  8. I’ve never understood the Amish or Lincoln beard, you know the beard without a mustache. It’s oddly incomplete and I feel somehow the wearer is judging me harshly.
  9. Chicks don’t really dig beards.  ‘Nuff said.Beards

 

 

 

Fab Phases

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The appeal of The Beatles’ work is their ever changing style, the experimentation, the boundary pushing and the pure unexpected path they would show us from album to album. In this post I’ll break down what I consider the phases of their career and pick a song from that phase. The song may not be their best or my favorite but will act as a gate to their particular wheelhouse at the time.

The Fab Years

From the second you heard or saw them you knew something was up, something just shifted. They popped from the radio with an exuberance that has yet to be equaled. From I Want To Hold Your Hand to Eight Days A Week the songs from 1963 and 1964 were pieces of youthful innocence with just a taste of cheek thrown in. Hold Me Tight sums up that time and their sound, soon it would all change.

The Look Inside Year: 1965

With Beatlemania still raging, The Beatles found a cohort amongst the madness, Bob Dylan.  They both shared a public meteoric rise and the chains that accompany it. They also admired each others’ work, Dylan went electric and The Fabs looked inside. You can hear this new introspective earlier in I’m A Loser but it really blooms in Help! and especially Rubber Soul. Songs like Hide Your Love Away, Tell Me What You See, Norwegian Wood and Nowhere Man come from a place not akin to yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s In My Life that represents this phase in its glory. I’m still floored that two twenty four year olds penned such a beautiful song about looking back over a life lived.

Peppered

Starting with 1966’s Revolver through 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the boys shook off a lot of Fab. The decision to quit touring and concentrate on studio work, and with EMI giving them full reign and unlimited recording time, they rewarded us with music so new and exciting it was if it came from another place and time.  Songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, Eleanor Rigby, Taxman, A Little Help From My Friends, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and the great A Day In The Life were so different some critics insinuated that it wasn’t really the Beatles, and in a sense they were right. The shot across the bow of this phase was the single Strawberry Fields Forever. It sounded like they recorded a fever dream of John’s and released it on an unsuspecting audience. The shot hit its target square on.

Individually Speaking

A trip of meditation to India, personal problems and shifting tastes all stewed together brought forth 1968’s The Beatles, forever known as The White Album. A wide collection of songs that were mainly written individually and recorded non-collectively. Martha My Dear is just Paul on every instrument. Paul and John even play drums on a few cuts as Ringo left the band for a few weeks. It is evidence of their talent that even in this poisoned atmosphere they got anything done, much less a two-set magnus opus. While My Guitar Gently Weeps represents this beautiful mess brilliantly in the sense that it is a George song that shines with anything John and Paul wrote at the time. It also features an outside musician in a pivotal role: Eric Clapton plays the lead guitar.

The Get Back Days

Feeling lost and anxious The Beatles decided their next album would be a return to roots. (Note:They began recording this album in 1968, due to the unpleasant process and squabbling over mixes the album was not released until 1970 as Let It Be. Even though it was their last official release, Abbey Road was recored after these sessions.) They decided to venture into a new studio, film the sessions, produce the music themselves and record everything live. So begins the band’s breakup. The Get Back sessions were a disaster. Acrimony ruled, petty arguments were so heated George stormed out and didn’t return for days. What was intended as a filmed reunion of sorts became a public recording of a band in crisis. Not that it doesn’t hold brilliant moments: the rooftop concert, the title track Let It Be, Get Back, and Across The Universe; but it is Two Of Us that shines on their purpose. Here John and Paul sing blissful harmony on a song they wrote together at a time when they were falling apart.

Note: In 2003 a new version of Let It Be was released, Let It Be…Naked. These are the original performances recorded sans Phil Spector audio clutter and wild mixes, this truthfully represents The Get Back Sessions.

Swan Songs

One thing about The Beatles, they were self aware. Knowing the troubles and bad feelings of the Get Back Sessions and their unhappiness with the work, they pulled together to do something special. Reconvening at Abbey Road Studios with producer George Martin in 1969, they set out to prove to the public and, more importantly themselves, that they were still The Beatles and still Top o the Pops. They did, they were and they are. First titled Everest, the album Abbey Road is considered by many as their finest hour. The songs are excellent and the performances are as strong as anything they recorded. Something, Come Together, Here Comes The Sun are important canon to their legacy but it is the side two medley that sums up Abbey Road. Their last shout from Everest on their final recording was all anyone could ask for from four young lads from Liverpool.  One sweet dream……

The White Album – Edited

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The Beatles, also known as the White Album, is the ninth studio album by the Beatles, released on 22 November 1968. This was a double album and to many it’s their favorite album by the band. Not me. Don’t get me wrong, I love this work but I’ve always found it a bit, let’s say, over indulgent. I want to hear every song on it but I think it could’ve been an amazing one disc release.

So here is my edited version of The White Album. I cut it to a 12 song album with, IMO, the strongest cuts.

The Beatles

Side one:

1. Back in the USSR

2. Dear Prudence

3. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

4. Happiness is a Warm Gun

5. Martha My Dear

6. I’m So Tired

Side two:

7. Blackbird

8. I Will

9. Helter Skelter

10. Revolution 1

11. Savoy Truffle

12. Cry Baby Cry.

I know the villagers are picking up pitch forks and lighting torches to storm Castle Stilson for omitting Rocky Raccoon, Bungalow Bill, Mother Nature’s Son and many others, but just think, they would comprise the best outtakes album ever released. Here’s the complete list of tracks that didn’t make my cut: Glass Onion, Ob La Di Ob La Da, Wild Honey Pie, Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, Piggies, Rocky Raccoon, Don’t Pass Me By, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, Julia, Birthday, Yer Blues, Mother Nature’s Son, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Sexy Sadie, Long Long Long, Honey Pie, Revolution 9 and Goodnight.

I would love to see your edited version of this classic or your reasons why it’s perfect as is.

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If I owned…

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If I owned a TV Network

Primetime would start at 7pm, I know it would put Pat Sajak and Steve Harvey out of some work but shit, they got enough.

Any writer submitting an evil twin or doppelgänger script would be immediately fired and that goes for goofy-ass time travel, too.

A Western and a Star Trek series would always be on the schedule, it’s my network right?

We would do an hour-a-week of classic Warner Bros and Hanna-Barbara cartoons,  uncut dammit. Frying pans, eye balls bulging out of the sockets and the Coyote getting’ his ass flailed while consistently trying to kill RoadRunner, hell every kid needs to see that shit. Hell, I need to see that shit!

The only reality show would be The Kardashians Krumble and a show that follows that TMZ ass around all day with a camera asking him stupid inappropriate questions.

Finally this cat below would never ever be an actor on any show on the network. He may be a fine guy and a good actor but … never mind I just can’t stand him.

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If I owned a Rock Radio Station

I would have Cerphe as my only radio personality.

The only musical mandates would be, Foreigner and Styx are never to be played. Hotel California, Dream On, Brown Eyed Girl, Moondance, Free Bird, Turn The Page, Good Ol’ Rock n Roll, Black Water, Satisfaction, The Joker, Another One Bites The Dust and More Than A Feeling are off the playlist.

You would hear more 50’s and early 60’s stuff, more Dylan, more Elvis, more The Band, more Kiss, more Beatles and early British invasion, more prog rock, more singer/songwriters and only the good new rock, which face it aint much, so it will be heavy on the classic shit but with…wait for it… deeper tracks.

Did I say no Foreigner and Styx?

BADFINGER – A primer

20140320_532a5e9028fcaFormed in 1961 as the Iveys, Badfinger was one of the first acts signed to The Beatles’ new record label Apple. Their first album, Magic Christian Music, was a home run with their first smash single, written by Paul McCartney, Come And Get It.

They followed that single with No Matter What You Are, Day After Day and Baby Blue, all worldwide hits. They were all over George Harrison’s opus All Things Must Past, they backed up Ringo on his hit It Don’t Come Easy, they played on most of John Lennon’s Imagine album and they were the stage band for George’s famous Concert for Bangladesh.

With a pedigree like that you would think they would be part of rock’s canon. But no. Badfinger was plagued by bad management, lost opportunities and sadly, two tragic suicides.  You can read a good synopsis of their journey on their Wikipedia page.

So this post is just a introduction to some Badfinger you may not be familiar with, but should be, let’s get to it.

The followup to Magic Christian was the album No Dice.  This work contained the hit No Matter What and a soon to be world wide hit for Harry Nilsson and eventually Mariah Carey, Without You. Every cut on No Dice is great and each one moves further away from The Fab’s shadow.  Here is a beautiful song about the tragic life of a London call girl, beautifully rendered cinematically by writer Peter Ham, Midnight Caller.

The album Straight Up followed and became the band’s biggest seller. Both Day After Day and Baby Blue were on this seminal album, but they were not alone. Here is the poignant Perfection, whose lyrics are as relevant today as they were in 1971.

Also on this album was the great Name Of The Game.

Subsequent albums followed, all worthwhile, but none as powerful as No Dice or Straight Up.  Leaving Apple Badfinger signed with Warner Bros., their second Warner release Wish You Were Here was released in October 1974 and garnered glowing reviews. Unfortunately the bird was mired in management and label woes, thus the album never received any push from either. The band then went on a sad and tragic spiral. (Note:Today, Joey Molland, guitarist and vocalist, keeps the band’s music and legacy alive, you can follow him on Twitter @BadfingerJoey). Wish You Were Here is now considered the band’s masterpiece and one of the great lost classics of rock and roll. I agree, it is a beautiful work. It is hard to find, but if you can ever get a copy, get it. The above Amazon link has it in stock periodically.  Here is a fantastic cut from Wish You Were Here, No One Knows It.

I hope this will open the door for you to discover more of Badfinger. There are some very good Best of collections available, but start with the three albums above, No Dice, Straight Up and Wish You Were Here.