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CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

Jason Hare September 5, 2008 15

Welcome back to another edition of CHART ATTACK!, everyone! Sick of the ’90s? Sick of the ’80s? Sick of … uh … the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, 1970, 1971, and 1973 – 1979? (I’m reaching here.) Then have we got a year for you! This time last year, guest writer Beau Dure covered a 1976 CHART ATTACK!, and he’s back to tackle 1972! By the way, Beau runs his own fantastic blog, Mostly Modern Media, and is also all over the Sports section at USA Today. Between the two sites, it’s almost like you were at the Olympics yourself! But for now, enjoy Beau’s fine writing right here at Popdose! – JH

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Are you ready to rock? Or R&B? Or AC? Or whatever you call Looking Glass?

Welcome to a diverse bunch of classics, most of which you can still hum today. You can also still hum Kid Rock’s latest, but only because you’re really humming “Werewolves of London.”

September 2, 1972:

10. Back Stabbers — O’Jays Amazon iTunes
9. Rock and Roll Part 2 — Gary Glitter Amazon iTunes
8. You Don’t Mess Around With Jim — Jim Croce Amazon iTunes
7. Goodbye to Love — Carpenters Amazon iTunes
6. Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me — Mac Davis Amazon iTunes
5. Hold Your Head Up — Argent Amazon iTunes
4. Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) — Looking Glass Amazon iTunes
3. I’m Still in Love With You — Al Green Amazon iTunes
2. Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress) — The Hollies Amazon iTunes
1. Alone Again (Naturally) — Gilbert O’Sullivan Amazon iTunes

10. Back Stabbers — O’Jays

I had a lot of insights into this song as an allegory reaching beyond mere relationship paranoia to the greater social realm into which many R&B contemporaries were operating, but AllMusic already did that. They also noted the dichotomy between this one, their first hit, and the next one, the #1 ray of sunshine “Love Train.”

So what can I add to this? Probably just the performance clip from Soul Train to get us all feeling that 70s vibe …

9. Rock and Roll Part 2 — Gary Glitter

Upon reading a few books on Tibetan mysticism, a young Gary Glitter made a pilgrimage to the region. He was stunned to be greeted by the Dalai Lama himself. The Dalai’s teachings on happiness and desire were a revelation to Glitter, who had been raised on French existentialism. Now convinced that his actions and words had meaning far beyond anything he had encountered in Western philosophy, Glitter returned to the studio determined to explore connections between Buddhist meditation and the obscure Austrian philosophical school that rejected nihilism.

Then Glitter remembered that he wasn’t in Yes, and he recorded something for American sports teams to play during timeouts.

8. You Don’t Mess Around With Jim — Jim Croce (download)

Like Quentin Tarantino with an acoustic guitar, Croce was obsessed with telling stories of bad, bad men. He also recorded the gorgeous ballad “Time in a Bottle,” as if atoning for his tales of small-scale violence.

The metaphors in the chorus, of course, are pop-culture standards.

7. Goodbye to Love — Carpenters

She’s never known love, but she’s saying goodbye to it? Yeah, welcome to one of the most forgettable of the Carpenters’ zillion Top 10 hits during this period.

6. Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me — Mac Davis

I think the reason Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” was such an instant classic is that it expresses the same sentiment as this piece of dreck and several others like it in a much more dignified –- and rocking -– way. I’m guessing most women looked over at ol’ Mac through bleary eyes and said, “Uh, I’m already hooked on cocaine. Why else do you think I’m here?”

Ick. After this, we need something inspirational, maybe with some great riffs and some light head-banging. What’s next? Awww, hell yeah …

5. Hold Your Head Up — Argent (download)

Granted, after all these years, most people can’t come up with more than 10 words to this song. There’s “Hold your head (up/high)” and “And if they saaaaaayyyyy …”

And yes, the organ solo meanders awkwardly at times, though it neither overreaches as badly as the Doors’ “Light My Fire” nor underreaches as badly as Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride”. Geez, my 5-year-old could play a better organ breakdown than the guy from Steppenwolf.

But this song is a true testament to the power of a good guitar riff, a good hook in the chorus and a few dramatic chord progressions. Listen to it on a good classic rock station (or, today, an iPod) while driving through the countryside after a bad high school experience, and it’s almost a religious experience. It’s an organ, after all.

And speaking of my 5-year-old, he got an early exposure to this song while potty-training. Now, whenever he hears this on my iPod, he sings, “Pull your pants up, whoa-oh, pull your pants up, whoa-oh, pull your pants up …”

4. Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) — Looking Glass (download)

Sort of the same theme as Mac Davis’ song, but at least there’s a reason for this one. He’s in love with the ocean. Silly Brandy. How can you compete with a 41.1-million-square-mile body of water?

This one also has some hooks. A couple of generations can sing the chorus.

3. I’m Still in Love With You — Al Green

Most of Al Green’s songs sound the same. Anyone have a problem with that?

2. Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress) — The Hollies

I refuse to believe Graham Nash had anything to do with a song this cool. And now that I read the Hollies’ band history at Wikipedia, I see he did not. That’s a relief.

I just wonder if the long woman had a long dress or a short dress. Or a long jacket.

1. Alone Again (Naturally) — Gilbert O’Sullivan

You’re not going to hear many self-consciously clever songs or artist names like this today. Anti-intellectualism is back in vogue, so cutesy wordplay is out.

In 1972, though, being clever was a good thing. We were only three years removed from a massive intellectual exercise in which, in response to JFK’s great challenge, we had successfully faked a moon landing. (Kidding, kidding – yes, I did see the Mythbusters episode.)

What really bugs me about this one, though, is that the vocal track is overprocessed to the point at which you wonder if they were trying to dupe listeners into thinking this was the latest Paul McCartney record. In those days, anything with the McCartney name was still guaranteed money.

And today, we just have Jesse McCartney.

So enjoy our trips back to 1972 whenever you can. Not a bad time at all, aside from oil shocks and the friction surrounding a drawn-out war … hey, wait a minute …

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POSTED IN » Chart Attack!, Music
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  • http://outsidethelaw.blogspot.com/ Bill Altreuter

    “Brandy” has always been my candidate for worst song of all time. It is hysterically bad– so bad that even the Mac Davis song on this chart can't beat it.

  • JonCummings

    Aside from my head exploding from your dismissiveness of Al Green–though I admit that the horns on “Still in Love” and “Let's Stay Together” are practically interchangeable–this is a supremely amusing Attack! You even had me going on Gary Glitter for a second, there. I mean, if Mike Love can meet the Maharishi and come back still a dickweed…

    My first pop concert, 1973: Mac Davis in Nashville, with Helen Reddy opening. My parents dragged us to Nashville (I was 7) because my mom WAS woman, hear her roar. Everyone else was there to see Mac, and these two guys in front of us chatted/snarked their way through poor Helen's set, to my mom's verging-on-apoplectic disgust.

    Finally she'd had enough; Helen announced to the crowd, “Now I'm going to sing a song called 'Time,'” and one guy said to the other, “Hey! What time IS it?” My mom leaned forward and, in a voice she normally only used with my brother when his laundry had piled up under his bed for six weeks, hissed, “It's time for you to SHUT UP!”

    Go ahead. Somebody try to top my first-concert story. Good luck…

  • amy777

    this was a really short chart attack. that makes me sad, because we only get one once every 2 weeks and to only write a sentence or two under each track with only two youtube videos…that's not good enough. we also haven't gotten a mellow gold breakdown lately either. please make your entries longer. thanks!

  • http://www.drcastrato.blogspot.com drcastrato

    no way! brandy, it's a fine song. what a good song it will be. such a fine song.

  • http://captivewildwoman.blogspot.com Miss_Lisa

    The O'Jays were R&B philosopher kings to me as a kid and taught me a lot about social interactions, good and bad. The proliferation of afros in the Soul Train clip is very cool.

    The Zombies just toured America and Rod Argent, with his Argent bass-player regaled us with “Hold Your Head Up.” Their awesome 70s appearance on the John Denver Show is here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkNA1H8ctEo

    I love the scene in “Freaks & Geeks” where Lindsay gets stoned and reminisces about her childhood love of Mac Davis. “His hair looked so SOOFFT…” This is the only time I've ever seen an appreciation of Mac Davis within modern media channels.

    I agree, this Chart Attack was too short! 1972 had it all, man.

  • http://www.popdose.com DwDunphy

    First concert experience: Keith Emerson dry-humped his fireball-shooting keytar.

  • sini

    The horn interlude in “I'm Still in Love with You” is pretty unique in his repertoire. It may be his quietest, mellowest hit from from the golden period.

  • http://jabartlett.wordpress.com jabartlett

    I rise, sir, to defend “Goodbye to Love” and “Brandy.”

    The former contains a completely wack guitar solo that dropped in from somebody else's record by mistake–the sort of thing that you would expect to have killed Karen Carpenter merely by its rocking-ness. The Carpenters never recorded another record remotely like it. The latter is, quite simply, one of the perfect pop records of the 1970s. Sorry you don't hear it that way.

    Good call on the “Free Bird”/Mac Davis thing, though.

  • http://mostlymodernmedia.wordpress.com Beau

    Quick clarifications/comments:

    1. I wasn't intending to dis Al Green at all. Just saying this sounds similar to a couple of his other songs, and frankly, I don't mind. This isn't Rick Astley's producers recycling the same synth programming. This is a master of music revisiting the same themes.

    2. I work for USA TODAY. We're brief. You have no idea how tough it was to write my thesis.

    Actually — and I wonder if other Popdosers want to weigh in — it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.

    I really should expound on Jim Croce, though. I think I can name four of his songs off the top of my head. Two are irresitable catchy folk tales. The other two are brilliant ballads. “Operator” is an underrated classic — a great story of conflicting emotion told very well. For concise storytelling, can anyone top a line like “She's living in LA with my best old ex-friend Ray”?

  • http://www.popdose.com DwDunphy

    Beau, it's the razor's edge. You can't be too clinical with a bad review because, well, they're boring. If you really don't like it, and the audience knows as much, they want you to shred as much as you, the writer, want to.

    Good reviews, however, are so much more difficult. You have to almost be clinical here, otherwise you sound either dispassionate (I guess you really didn't like it) or like a drooling fanboy (of course you like it, you'd like an hour of the band farting into the mic.) As a fan, you wouldn't want to harm prospects by misappropriating admiration, at the same time you want to put across that you actually liked the damn thing.

    My advice: have Al Green write them. No one ever can argue with Al Green.

  • amy777

    not that anyone asked me to weigh in again, but i agree w/dw. what i mean when i said it was too short is that i like the extra links and youtube postings and any weirdness about the song or singer or songwriter that can be found on wikipedia. and that's whether you like the song or not, no matter how cheesy it may be.

  • Pingback: What I’ve been writing « Mostly Modern Media

  • http://www.lexalexander.net Lex

    All I know about the Long Cool Woman's dress was that it was black. (Of course.)

    [[it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.]]

    Not true of all forms of art criticism, however. I remember reading a piece in the New Yorker years ago about how the critic found it easy to write reviews of good plays because he would leave them feeling energized, whereas crap plays just sort of sucked out his soul.

  • http://www.lexalexander.net Lex

    All I know about the Long Cool Woman's dress was that it was black. (Of course.)

    [[it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.]]

    Not true of all forms of art criticism, however. I remember reading a piece in the New Yorker years ago about how the critic found it easy to write reviews of good plays because he would leave them feeling energized, whereas crap plays just sort of sucked out his soul.

  • http://www.lexalexander.net Lex

    All I know about the Long Cool Woman's dress was that it was black. (Of course.)

    [[it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.]]

    Not true of all forms of art criticism, however. I remember reading a piece in the New Yorker years ago about how the critic found it easy to write reviews of good plays because he would leave them feeling energized, whereas crap plays just sort of sucked out his soul.