The Sweet – Love is Like Oxygen

The Sweet were Glam Rock Godfathers, the epic, Ballroom Blitz, for example has been covered ad nauseum by many an inferior band.In 1973 The Sweet were on top of the world with 3 top 10 hits including the aforementioned Ballroom Blitz, and had been plunking around in bands since 1965. So lets just say for arguments sake that they “peaked” in 1973.

“Love is Like Oxygen” received a lot of airplay in 1977, four years after their heyday and after they’d dropped the glam angle. Apparently they dug what ELO’s was doing and rode their stylistic dick, but it would be easy to dismiss this song as mere style biting by a band past their prime.

The song itself is an incredibly well written pop song and the guitar hook is pure FM Gold. I could argue that the best “Rock” bands just knew how to hide kick ass pop songs in Wizards’ robes or pyrotechnic stage shows. Look at Kiss for instance, the best Beatles cover band of the 70’s. Anyways, I think that I’ll close quoting Macker505 from you tube who wrote:

Reminds me of my friend Randy. We used to smoke weed then laugh while singing this song. That was back in the mid 70’s.

Mud – Crazy

Last night I went down Glitter Rock road on YouTube and watched a bunch of Bowie videos from the early 70’s. Holmes was on point! I’m not going to post any here tho as he doesnt fall under the auspices of 21st Century Greensleeves banner. This band however is called Mud. I know nothing about them. This song is pretty far off the beaten track of our regularly scheduled programming, but I’ll be damned if this song isn’t super badass in its own proto-new-wave-rock-cum-plaid-suit way. Tell me these dudes didn’t rock 3 or 4 future steezes at once in this video. And they do synchronized moves…

Slade: Cum on Feel the Noize

So yeah, I knew that Slade had originally written the excellent (at the time) Quiet Riot song Cum on Feel the Noize. Slade had written a lot of songs later covered by US bands that became hits. Mama Were All Crazy Now, God Gave Rock n Roll To You (oops, that was Argent…)are the two at the top of my dome. So its was a pretty great 80’s hard rock song end of story right? Wrong…

Coop dropped a bunch of Sweet and Slade videos on his blog and of course the top hat made me stop and take notice. I imagine one day when I’m a fancy artist with gallery shows and whatnot I will have the money to have this selfsame suit made for me, But until then give a listen to this version, I can’t tell if its the video compression or not but I’d swear the drummer was busting a skiffle and let not get into the mirrored pharoah (is he flashing the horns at the end?) dear god this is a stellar performance…