Your Sister’s (Record) Rack: Singles, Part 3

Let’s spin some more singles – today, some lesser-known singles from big artists and one really big hit for a band late in its career.

They don’t get any bigger than Bob Dylan, and in 1986 he formed a rock-and-roll summit with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  While they were on tour in Australia, Bob and Co. cut “Band Of The Hand,” to be used on the soundtrack of a movie by the same name.   With Petty producing, Dylan’s song reflected the ruthless attitude of a vigilante gang cut loose in the drug world – “It’s hell time, man,” he sings.  Stevie Nicks is one of the female backing singers, along with Debra Byrd, who worked with Dylan on a number of sessions.  “Band Of The Hand” came out on a 45-rpm single, a 12-inch single and on the movie soundtrack LP – but it’s never been on a Bob Dylan album.

MP3: “Band Of The Hand” by Bob Dylan with “The Heartbreakers”

In the early 1970s, nobody really knew what to do with Joni Mitchell.  An acclaimed singer/songwriter, she put out the critically acclaimed Blue but when she signed with Asylum Records some suit told her she needed a “radio hit.”  So she wrote “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” sarcastically and it appeared on 1972’s For The Roses.   Guess what – it was a Top 40 hit, Mitchell’s first as a performer.  With her next album, 1974’s Court And Spark, Joni would refine that “radio hit” thing (“Help Me” and “Free Man In Paris”).

MP3: “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” by Joni Mitchell

Just a few doors down from Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon hangout was Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young), who ruled music in 1972.  But they’d just completed a big tour and record exec David Geffen wanted another big folk-rock smash: why don’t we get the original Byrds together?  So we have the Byrds, trying to get off the ground with Crosby as the pilot.  The Byrds (1973) turned out to be a sorry echo of past glory, but the single “Full Circle,” written and sung by Gene Clark (with soaring harmony from Crosby) was one of the album’s few high points.

MP3: “Full Circle” by the Byrds

Sampler Daze: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 10

The world in 1976 looked and sounded a heck of a lot different than it did in 1969.  When you went to a club it was most likely a fern bar.  The ladies wore hot pants and halter tops, men wore stacked heels and checkered pants.  The 1970s had its own stupid haircut: the shag (later replaced by another all-star stupid haircut, the mullet).  Music was becoming more rhythmic and slick, it would be another year or so before we’d call it “disco.”  Music more often than not was made for dancing – even at a fern bar.

And so there was Supergroup, the first Loss Leaders sampler from 1976.  We had come a long way from the first Loss Leader sampler in 1969, from the underground to the dance floor.  The sounds of disco were unmistakable: First Choice updated the Philly Groove for a dance audience, and “Are You Ready For Me?” addresses the Big Question.  In answer, everybody seemed to be ready: even the Doobie Brothers, taking to the dance floor with “Rio,” and even a nominally jazz artist like George Benson gets into the groove with “Breezin’,” the title song for an album that would ride all the way to the top of Billboard‘s pop album charts.  Leon Russell had just gotten married, and he celebrated by cutting a record with his new bride.  Hit singles included Seals & Croft’s “Get Closer,” and former Lovin’ Spoonful leader John Sebastian crooning his No. 1 “Welcome Back.”