Sticking to funk for another day, here’s a 1974 album by the genre’s signature artist, James Brown.
Hell is a wild Frankenstein creation, a double album that features remakes of previous hits, some smooth R&B, a Spanish-language detour, and unlikely covers of ‘Stormy Monday’ and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ Plus a number of songs, such as today’s SOTD, that embrace Brown’s signature sound.
I’ve covered a lot of legendary artists over the past two weeks, while featuring albums released in 1974 as part of my ‘Decades’ series.
Today’s song, by contrast, comes from a band I’d never heard of before now.
The Meters are a New Orleans funk band that recorded from the late 60s through the late 70s. They weren’t as popular as contemporaries like James Brown but were quite influential in their own right.
After Tom Petty’s death, I did a countdown of my favorite Petty albums. 2006’s Highway Companion came in at #4.
Revisiting that list now, I was surprised at how high I placed this album. It certainly had no chance of cracking the top three (Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers) but four is still a pretty lofty position given Petty’s legendary status.
Today’s random iTunes selection comes from the second disc of a 30th anniversary edition of Bryan Adams’ 1984 album Reckless. That disc is a recording of a live performance at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1985.
‘It’s Only Love’ first appeared on Reckless as a duet with Tina Turner, and was later performed live with Turner on her own world tour. That’s the “couple of weeks ago at Wembley” Adams refers to when introducing the song.
Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen released his fourth studio album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, in 1974. It was a continuation of the spare, elegiac style of his first three releases, though he did introduce new instruments to the mix.
I’m familiar with Cohen more through his reputation than his music. The only full album of his I’ve owned is 1992’s The Future, a gloriously dark and apocalyptic record. Of course I know ‘Hallelujah,’ his most beloved (and at this point, overexposed) song, and a smattering of other singles (‘Suzanne,’ ‘Everybody Knows’).
Meet Me In Montauk 