This is a follow-up of sorts to fellow Blogcritic Glen Boyd’s recent “Whatever Happened To The Live Album?” article published on BC a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed Glen’s piece. But there seemed to be an essential element of the Seventies live album absent from his article.
Whatever happened to the drum solo?
When you went to a concert in the Seventies, the drum solo was a given. And it was never really an issue. It simply provided you with an opportunity to reload the bong, or to take a whizz. Kind of an intermission basically. But then someone got the bright idea to include the drum solo in the inevitable double live album, and all hell broke loose.
Blame it on Iron Butterfly, or I. Ron Butterfly as Bart Simpson calls them. At one point their In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was the biggest selling album in Atlantic Records’ history. The centerpiece
The song wasn't originally written as a march, but it seemed to work out pretty well this time.
So I was listening to some music today -- specifically an old R&B instrumental called "Night Train," by King Curtis -- and as I enjoyed his honkin' sax I kept thinking to myself, why does that song sound so familiar? I don't mean just familiar in the sense that I'd heard it before, because practically everybody would know...