Forgotten Classic Rock and Cheap Wine
The first album of forgotten classic rock worth resurrecting is Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, a masterpiece by Spirit, a semi-popular 60’s and 70’s California band.
If you remember Spirit and Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, I know a big smile has just come over your face.
But if you were born in the After Beatles age you are probably scratching your head. If so, my advice is to click this link NOW and order it up.
Warning: the 30 second listening samples do not do this album justice. Songs like “Nothin’ to Hide”, “Mr. Skin”, “Animal Zoo”, and “Nature’s Way” are way too complicated and intricate to be understood and appreciated in only 30 seconds. This was a drug-induced “concept” album after all.
While researching this band, I was thrilled to read that Twelve Dreams achieved “Gold” status in 1976 and many of the comment reviews state it was “one of the best rock albums of all time.” I could not agree more. The only reason I can think of why Twelve Dreams was not a double-platinum mega hit was because when it was released in 1970, there was such a nuclear explosion of great and powerful music that it simply got lost in the shuffle. (Which may account for why this album finally went “Gold” six years after it was released.)
Well played ! I’ve partaken much of both the album and the Edna Valley.
Why, Myra, then you probably remember Mister Parmagene at Needham High.
Yes I do remember the name but remind me what he taught. Did you go to Needham High?
Biology, if I remember the stories correctly.
I’m ten years younger than my older siblings, and we’d moved, so I grew up in Newton. But apparently my two older brothers (classes of ’65 and ’66) used to bedevil him if they got a chance. Years later, my oldest friend (who moved from Newton to Needham, class of ’76) also took him.
All I remember about high school biology is jars of dead frogs and classmates throwing them around. Thanks for reading the new column. Hope you like it and if you do, please forward it to your friends.
As someone who’s just a tad older than you, Myra, I’d be voting for anything by Jerry Lee Lewis, but especially “Great Balls of Fire,” and perhaps my all-time favorite, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode. “ As for a favorite (and seriously cheap) wine (think single digits), that would have to be the fondly-remembered, long-unavailable Burgundy once made by Christian Brothers, back when God was a boy.
Great column! Born in 1950 and a Beatlemaniac. Random notes:
Note how well dressed the kids in the video are! Most (all?) of the boys are wearing ties. Sullivan may have had a dress code, but still.
Cheap burgundy (single digit price) still exists in the Vella and Franzia boxed wines. . . my drug of choice.
Since we who lived through “Classic Rock” are well into our 50s and 60s, I doubt many of us can listen to a drug-induced album for the first time “in the right circumstances.” Kudos for the Beatles video though!
Tried all the cheap Burgundies….Vella and Franzia way too sweet, not hearty enlough. Christian Bros. was in a class by itself. Almost a poor man’s Chateau Neuf….
Oh. You’re gonna bring up taste.
My wine buying decision is the biggest of:
volume * %alcohol / price
I’ll drink to that.
My first concert? I had two very close together in the same week:
Al Stewart: the greatest lyricist in the history of music.
Yes: the greatest… well, just the greatest.
What a difference 5 or 6 years made in those days! You saw The Beatles on TV as a nine year old – I saw it too – and I, b. 1949, saw them in ’65 at Atlanta Stadium. An upper level ticket was $4.50, lower $5.50, and upper was all I could afford. My parents didn’t like the idea but they took me to Midville, GA to catch the Central of Georgia’s Nancy Hanks passenger train that summer morning and I rode the train to Atlanta, got picked up by a cousin, and went to “The Stadium.” Atlanta Stadium was a big damn deal in The South in ’65. You could kinda, sorta see them and kinda, sorta hear them over the girls screaming, but I was there. I remember “I Got a Line on You” by Spirit from my long-haired, dope-smoking, FM-radio listening days a few years later but by the time of the album you reference here the only California music I was much interested in was the Northern CA doper guitar stuff that was drawing heavily on Country.
But I’m with you on Classic Rock; the music died in ’72, and by the mid-70s other than ocassional episodes of nostalgia the only “new” music I listened to was Southern Rock and Country. In those thrilling days of yesteryear, the late ’60s, Ripple and reefer was the cocktail of choice, sometimes with a little Mad Dog in the mix. If you know what Mad Dog is, you were once a degenerate like me. I’m still a sucker for cheap wine though and my drug of choice is Black Box Chardonnay.
Speaking of “the music died,” did anyone else hear Glenn Beck’s discussion some months ago of Don McLean’s song “American Pie”? Long before I heard Beck talking about it, I had thought that McLean’s song was a darned good poetic description of the 60′s, including the devastation. Maybe McLean, who used to hang out with Pete Seeger, would vehemently deny any Tea-Party-like sympathies, but in spite of that it seemed that Beck nailed it with his discussion.
I suppose it may be a sad commentary on one’s life if one knows all the words to “American Pie,” but I do come from the last “drill and kill” generation so my memorization skills are damned good. I know it is a reflection on the crash of the American Pie and the death of Buddy Holly and his companions, but that really was a generation before McLean and the people who listened to him; I was a musician in the late ’60s and I barely knew Holly and the Big Bopper; that was almost my parents’ music.
That said, it is a good commentary on the ennui that had set in by ’72 or so. It was evident to anyone with a brain that we weren’t the “change we’d been waiting for.” It wasn’t going to be either pink Bubble-Up and Rainbow Stew or Acid, Incense, and Balloons; we were all going to have to get a job, pay taxes, get married, buy cars and house and all that crap that our parents had done and that we thought we’d never have to do. Not just the music but Peter Pan died in ’72; the days of “I won’t grow up, I won’t grow up, I won’t go to school” ended about then too. If you managed to go straight, make that directly, not straight, from your dorm room to an office job, you could keep the same dumbass ideas you’d had smoking dope in the dorm; the rest of us were quickly mugged by the reality of stagflation, not to speak of addiction and herpes.
I actually saw that football game where the stoner bandmembers were already out on the field as the football teams tried to resume the game. You know, it was California; some of those stoners are probably billionaires, and others are homeless in SFO. And that’s the way it was …
“…the rest of us were quickly mugged by the reality…”
Yes, thank goodness, Art Chance, that I too was eventually mugged by reality! I went through a drug-and-Marx-addled phase, but thankfully some events and people helped me to turn back down a more sensible road. I just spent a couple of days with some guys I knew, way back when, who haven’t grown out of their New Left illusions. They’re still blaming America for all the evils of the world, while they have relatively cushy jobs including, in one case, a few months leave in order to finish writing his Trotskyist book.
On a brighter note, I can still enjoy listening to the non-ideological pop music of the 60′s and 70′s, such as the Zombies, the Who, Dusty Springfield, Vince Guaraldi, the Supremes, Jethro Tull, and much of the Beatles. Of course the New Left would say that nothing is non-ideological, but that’s a story for another day.
Thanks for your comments, Art Chance, and thanks Myra Adams for your new series. I look forward to future installments!
Love both the album and the wine! That was the theme song for the morning after a real bender!
Nice column, Ms. Adams. Brings back memories. I’m a little longer in the tooth than thou. Loved Spirit. Haven’t heard them for awhile. First concert was the Who with the Troggs, at DAR Constitution Hall of all places. My wining experiences were similar to yours. Boones Farm was an old favorite. Imbibed plentifully at college football games in the snow!
Falco,
You’re not responsible for Der Kommissar, I hope.
Well, being a collector of fine music – a great deal of it from well before I was an adult – here’s a great one from 1965: Barry and the Remains, Once Before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etFcLI3tyKE
Well, I was born ten years before you, Ms. Adams, so my timeline encompasses the whole of classic rock n’ roll, beginning with Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee Lewis, countless other old-timers. I liked most rock up through half the 80′s, but it lost me after that. I’m content with my CD collections of the classic stuff.
As for wine, I’m a red-wine drinker (when I drink). An Australian vintage, Yellow Tail Shiraz Grenache, is my favorite, medium dry, not too fruity, and it sells for around $8-$9 a bottle.
I do remember Boone’s Farm from college, one of the many extremely cheap soda pop wines we bravely downed (79 cents in 1965, believe it or not), and yes, I gag at the memory too.
Having been born in March of 1946, I’m a contemporary of RebeccaH. It certainly did my heart good to finally see a musical article worth reading on PJ Media.
I have a DVD of all the Beatles performances on Ed Sullivan, so I’ve seen this hundreds of times, including the original broadcast, when I was just short of my eighteenth birthday. It just never gets old. In my mind, it’s probably the most electric moment in rock history, because it changed everything that came after it.
Thanks, Myra, and I’ll be looking forward to your articles in the future.
In passing, I want to mention that I was never much of a wine drinker, although many of my friends were. I was busy acquiring a taste for Johnny Walker Red Label.
Ugh. Sorry but I’m sorry I bothered reading. Wine slides down your throat with ease because it’s liquid. The folks at Edna Valley deserve better than a reference to cheap, supermarket wine.
Myra, we may have been separated at birth:
Born in 1955 – check
Saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan – check
First live concert in 1970 – check; It wasn’t Hendrix, though. I saw a young Bonnie Raitt with Willie and the Bees. (I did have a Henrix poster from the Rainbow Bridge concert on my bedroom wall, though.)
Pounded Blue Nun and Boone’s Farm in high school – check; and don’t forget T.J. Swann
Used Mateus bottles for the dripping candle center piece – check; usually on an old, wooden cable spool as a coffee table.
Currently a self-proclaimed wine snob – check
Love Spirit and agree the Dr. Sadonicus album to be their best – check
I still listen primarily to classic rock, blues and their various counterparts because it’s still much better than any of the new stuff out there. Even my son and his friends agree with me on that one. I have them hooked on UFO, Savoy Brown, Grand Funk, Ten Years After, etc.
My tastes in wine tend to go toward complex cabernets, crisp sauvignon blancs, old vine zinfandels, Australian shiraz and French pinots.
Then again, I have no problem with a cold beer and an old Johnnie Winter album.
Phew. The Sex Pistols came along JUST in time.
Sure thing, Kathy. I’ve always heard how popular they were with tone-deaf, misanthropic, drunken midgets.
Sorry if you think I am insulting the Edna. The phrase “cheap supermarket wine” is used more for humor than denigration of a fine product. Perhaps you need to drink MORE Edna and lighten up just a bit!
Hi Myra. Enjoyed the column. Interesting choice in forgotten “classic rock” albums. As for the wine, I’ve never had it. I can’t drink for a serious medical condition dating back to childhood. Here though, is an even more forgotten “classic rock” band (in this incarnation anyway) than Spirit. Enjoy:
http://youtu.be/RtmW2ek7WkQ
I, like RebeccaH, was born 10 years before you Ms. Adams so I can say I grew up with Rock and Roll and cheap wine. Orange Rock, wine topic, comes to mind along with nauseating memories of hangovers. Now for forgotten classic rock, who remembers Pacific Gas and Electric? “Are You Ready” is still one of my favorite songs.