Singles?

In the golden age of Progressive Rock these "singles" and many more came out, show that they could "pay the bills" or get some quick cash.  This is a small handful that still keep me reaching to increase the volume every time I hear them.  Some of these "singles" were out here in the US but some songs remained shelved for quite a while.  The reason for the title Singles? is because of the oddness of these tunes and who did them and a "what were they thinking" moment.  There are so many more that I could do two or three posts and I might, but these are good old rockers that I thought at the time of writing and researching this.  

Evil Woman one of my favorite Sabbath A-Sides or single it's a great little tune.  It is sad that this never reached the states as I know of.  It's got great Geezer bass lines that have you playing air bass along with him.  American versions of the album got "Wicked World" and felt kind of cheated.  I picked up a import of the first Sabbath album with better sound quality and this gem snuck in.

Jethro Tull is band who despite their creative efforts was still not very popular till Aqualung hit the shelves.  The song "Teacher" was a hit on AM radio, but not much from these guys.  An early collection called "Living in the Past" had "Sweet Dream" on it and it only appeared as a stand alone single and on that compilation.  It's too bad, because the song is pretty damn' good tune too. Even it's B-side never showed up till later re-issues of Stand Up.

A Richie Blackmore tune that he and the whole band wrote was released as a single a few weeks before the classic album Machine Head came out. For a single you figure it would be played often live right?  Wrong. Played once on the classic In Concert album.  By the way, if you don't own that album it's a nice microcosm of what Machine Head would sound live and also to me rawer then Made in Japan and a lot smaller audience.  The B-side was a tune Blackmore hated with a passion and was never played until the early 90's and is now a tour regular.

What King Crimson had a single in the early years?  No Way!  Well if you count Cat Food as a single sure.  It's nothing like they ever did then and maybe the song Dinosaur as some of their quirky "radio friendly" songs.  Cat Food and Dinosaur could be even be novelty type songs.  The lyrics have a sort of Beat Generation rhyme to them too.  Cat Food though on the album has a great piano part for Keith Tippett. The middle on the album version is pretty fun to hear the band stretch out.  The cookie with this single is the B-Side. Groon is an instrumental and only came out on the album Young Persons' Guide to King Crimson.  It did show up later in 1991 on the Frame By Frame Box Set. The B-side though shows that King Crimson had excellent chops and as a trio they were highly skilled.  Both Peter and Michael Giles along with Fripp make this be side one of the best.

So here is an interesting single.  This wonderful moment were even Brian Eno was up to his old self with the song Seven Deadly Finns and also channeling some proto-punk and the backing vocals were very Doo-Wop.  Then the odd angular guitar solo, and what my favorite and also Julian Cope favorite was the classy word play and sexual innuendo's.  Everything is run through his VCS3 to make it less of a single.  To quote Julian Cope "Unorthodoxy, wit, sexiness, electronics and a pre-punk guitar solo -- Not too much to ask from a top 40 single, is it?"  The B-Side Later On sounds like early ideas of Fripp-Eno collaborations.  Good stuff, the interesting part of this single only Seven Deadly Finns was released later on a rare box set of Eno in 1983 called Working Backwards 1983-1973. The B-Side was never heard from again.  It was a great first single for Eno and for me one fantastic toon.

Hawkwind, what can I say about this very cool Psych-Rock, Metal, Space Rock and Acid tripping music.  Silver Machine does not like it would crack the top 40, but it's one of my favorite tunes of theirs.  The opening keyboards do give it feel like your going to blast off into space.  Lemmy's vocals help you reach that journey.  It sure sounds like a spaceship through out and fun, not a bit dated to my ears, but it's pretty cool.  Again a song never put out in regular form.  It appears on some best of's.  It is on a later Hawkwind live album but it does not have the era coolness of 1971.  The B-Side is not much to write home about.  Seven By Seven has a spoken word middle that makes the song sound dated.

All these singles are some of the interesting I wrote about, there is a few more I'm thinking doing a part two.  The fun part about these singles is that in a era that was singles driven like the ones we hear on the radio, none of these would get airplay.  AM radio and good progressive radio stations or even college radio (where I first heard them) would love to play these.  More intriguing is the fact that some of these songs took a bit longer then usual to get out on some format for our listening ears.  If my ears could have a great big grin, these songs would be truly ear to ear.