Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1020 in the Series) is Burt Ward, The Boy Wonder Sessions Produced by Frank Zappa “Batman” actor Burt Ward was 21 when he recorded the song “The Teenage Bill of Rights.” It’s a surprisingly stirring number, which decried the second-class treatment of American teenagers and was composed at the height of the nation’s battle over civil rights. “I don’t suggest we march all day and picket every night,” Ward proclaims with the utmost conviction. “I just propose the following: a Teenage Bill of Rights.” The music swells behind Ward as he launches into the first amendment. “Nothing we do so go unnoticed, not even the smallest deed. And no one should even...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#968 in the Series) is Ten Years After,  A Space In Time When you are three pints in, and the conversation as it inevitably does, turns to the greatest guitar players of all time, and the usual suspects Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and the rest are shouted out from around the bar, the name Alvin Lee is largely and criminally ignored.  As one of the early pioneers of Blues Rock, Lee and his band Ten Years After were mostly known for their spacey psychedelic blues jams that were groovy enough to grab the ears of concert promoter Bill Graham, who brought the band to San Francisco for a series of...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#967 in the Series) is Traffic, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Back in 1986, my friend Bruce Embree and I went to see Steve Winwood in concert. He was touring in support of his Back In The High Life album.  We had second row-center seats.  That was a treat considering I nabbed them via phone order!!   On the way to the show we had discussed ‘what were our chances to hear any Traffic tunes?’ This was one of the first solo Winwood tours that I had remembered. We certainly had not seen him before.  So we weren’t sure what to expect. Some artists will play quite a number of songs from...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#950 in the Series)  is Cat Stevens, Teaser and The Firecat. I was going to feature Catch Bull at Four because it contains “Boy With the Moon and Star on His Head” but went with Teaser and The Firecat instead. I love that song but I’ve read that it’s one of the few songs that Cat Stevens recorded years ago that he’s actually embarrassed about. Sometimes when I do some research for these pieces you learn little nuggets that you didn’t know about and they catch you totally by surprise.  For instance, I learned when looking up Teaser and the Firecat that Rick Wakeman of Yes fame played keys on the top 40 hit “Morning Has...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#881 in the Series) is Judee Sill, Judee Sill A charter member of the “should have lived longer” Pearly Gates hall of fame, a musical muse to the Laurel Canyon cosmic cowboy congregation in the 70s’ with a tonal purity that would make Eva Cassidy blush, Judee Sill, an angel that flew too close to the sun also holds the distinction with her debut self-titled record of having the first proper full-length release on David Geffen’s Asylum label. Beating out musical luminaries the likes of Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt and Tom Waits, Closing Time was released on Asylum, Sill earned debut honors largely on the strength of her songwriting.  Her song...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Do You Know What I Mean?” by Lee Michaels When one thinks late 1960s San Francisco rock, images of psychedelic light shows and twirling female fans in peasant dresses populate the mind’s eye, while the sounds of endless goodtime jams by the likes of Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Moby Grape and It’s A Beautiful Day fill the ears. But late ‘60s San Francisco rock also produced the stripped-down, organ-driven blue-eyed soul of Lee Michaels who released four albums before breaking it big with his top-ten signature hit (and today’s Song Of The Day), “Do You Know What I Mean” from the album Lee Michaels Fifth. Michaels got his start...

Today’s Cool album of the Day (#870 in the Series) is The Flamin Groovies, Teenage Head If the Whigs, The Black Keys, Parquet Courts, Black Angels, or any of the rest of the present day bands  that are making that electric, salty, psychedelic, garage rock music today were a crime scene, the DNA would lead all the way back to the 1965 San Francisco Rock scene, and The Flamin Groovies would be found guilty as charged. While their influence might not quite be considered beatlesque, and the pairing of guitarist Cyril Jordan and singer Roy A. Loney might not exactly be Lennon and McCartney, their impact on the flowers in your hair Grateful Dead, and the trip happy Jefferson...

Today’s Cool Albums of the Day (#863 and #864) in the series are Dust, Dust & Hard Attack (We’re going to do something a little differently and bring you both of these albums on one piece since they were just rereleased together on one Compact Disc.) Forty-two years ago (wow!), this skinny, longhaired, 12-year-old future metal head (thank you, Steppenwolf & Blue Cheer!) opened his trusty Circus magazine and read a small story about a new band called Dust. I don’t recall any specifics, but I assume the words “hard,” “heavy,” and, quite probably, “power trio” were used to describe this rather surly-looking threesome. Imagine Motörhead in 1971… Like most, I’m always up for new music. So, off I...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Café Regio’s” by Isaac Hayes This breezy instrumental comes from the movie Shaft, one of the most popular Blaxploitation films of all time. However, most people probably first discovered today’s Song Of The Day on the B-side to the number one single “Theme From Shaft.” Hayes initially agreed to write the score for the film only if he was given the chance to try out for the lead role. And while he did have a bit part in the film as a bartender, he was never afforded the opportunity to audition for the lead. Fortunately he decided to fulfill the agreement anyway. Isaac Hayes was the backbone of Stax Records, who...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Push Push” by Herbie Mann Duane Allman’s final session… Herbie Mann was already ten years into a career that established him as a purveyor of Afro Cuban Jazz, Latin Jazz and Bossa Nova music by 1971 and the release of his album Push Push. Mann had released albums for Bethlehem, Prestige, Epic, Verve and Savoy, before signing with Atlantic Records in 1962 where he would release numerous records for the label over the next eight years that established him as the premiere flautist in all of jazz. While at Atlantic, Mann worked with a whole host of influential percussionists and instrumentalists like Ray Barretto, Michael Olatunji, Sergio Mendes, Antonio Carlos...