Category Archives: song of the day

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Song of the Day #2,532: ‘Thick as a Brick’ – Jethro Tull

jethro_tull_thick_brickJethro Tull’s fifth album, Thick as a Brick dropped in March of 1972, one year after the release of Aqualung. Aqualung was often described as a “concept album,” a characterization bandleader Ian Anderson disagreed with, and this album was recorded as a response to critics.

“I always said at the time that this is not a concept album,” Anderson said of Aqualung. “This is just an album of varied songs of varied instrumentation and intensity in which three or four are the kind of keynote pieces for the album but it doesn’t make it a concept album. In my mind when it came to writing the next album, Thick as a Brick, was done very much in the sense of: ‘Whuh, if they thought Aqualung was a concept album, Oh! Okay, we’ll show you a concept album.’ And it was done as a kind of spoof, a send-up, of the concept album genre.”

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Song of the Day #2,531: ‘Walk On the Wild Side’ – Lou Reed

lou_reed_transformerContinuing my look at celebrated albums from my birth year of 1972, here’s Lou Reed’s Transformer.

This was Reed’s second solo album, and his second in 1972 — his self-titled solo debut came out in April of that year, while Transformer was released in November.

The album was produced by David Bowie and Bowie’s frequent collaborator Mick Ronson, both big Velvet Underground fans, and they gave Reed’s work a bit of a glam makeover.

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Song of the Day #2,530: ‘In My Ear’ – Toad the Wet Sprocket

toad_wet_sprocket_fearMy second Random Weekend selection is more upbeat than yesterday’s, at least musically. This little blast from the 90s past comes courtesy of Toad the Wet Sprocket, my pick as the best of the 90s alternative bands that dominated that era.

The most depressing thing about today’s SOTD is when I Googled the lyrics, I found them on a site called ‘Oldie Lyrics.’ Have the songs of my late teens and early 20s officially become oldies?

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Song of the Day #2,529: ‘High Times’ – Elliot Smith

elliott_smith_new_moonToday’s Random Weekend selection is a track from Elliott Smith’s posthumous 2007 release, New Moon, a collection of unreleased tracks. These aren’t songs he was working on when he died in 2003, but rather outtakes from the sessions of two of his earlier records.

As with most of Smith’s music, particularly from that era, this song is a) acoustic and b) about drugs.

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Song of the Day #2,528: ‘Vitamin C’ – Can

can_ege_bamyasiMost of the bands that put out acclaimed albums in 1972 are on my radar to at least some small degree. I might not own any of their music, but I’ve at least heard of them.

But the German rock band Can is completely new to me. I never knew they existed until their song ‘Vitamin C’ played over the opening credits of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. And yes, that’s the second Inherent Vice reference of the week — the film features a lot of music from 1972, despite being set in 1970.

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