Amazing how many great, well-remembered songs the Doobies had, yet most of them weren't "big" chart hits. Most, until Black Water, didn't even hit the Top 10. Listen to the Music (No. 11) Long Train Runnin' (No. 8) China Grove (No. 15) Another Park, Another Sunday (No. 32) Black Water (No. 1) Take Me in Your Arms (No. 11) It's hard to believe China Grove "only" made it to No. 15. Same with Listen To The Music, which at No. 11, got as high as Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl. This shows that chart position isn't necessarily a good indicator of a song's value.
I really like Another Park, Another Sunday. How it did such middling chart action just chaps my butt but you're right. The Doobies were hit and miss throughout their career as far as the Hot 100.
Been 'thinking' about this song some more (yeah, hazardous to your health). I never really understood the "message" of this song (although considering the one line is repeated about 73 times, I sure can't forget it). The kids o.d's, and someone starts singing the tag line. But how would things have been easier once the dad understood? Are they saying if he listened his kid wouldn't have killed himself on drugs? But wouldn't the kid have been the one arguing for himself to USE the drugs? Isn't it right that the dad didn't listen, at least in this case? Or maybe the kid was the one who should have listened? If only the kid had worked 12 hours a day like the dad? Nah, the kids are never wrong in songs like this. I guess there really IS more to life than being in a band after all. Think!
I was really enjoying the D B tracks I was hearing on the radio around this time. It irritated me that the Eagles seemed to be getting the greater interest and airplay. D B music was a lot more fun. One of my faves at that time below
I'd planned on posting this when we got to '75 but ya beat me to it! Great, atmospheric epic tune. That's Maria Muldaur doing back-up vocals.
The Doobies were like Chicago, in terms of their early chart action. With Chicago, a number of Top 10s, and some, like Wishing You Were Here, made it to No. 11. Odd, because that's a well-loved song which scored highly on the AC charts. I think the Doobies, CHI & other groups show how the charts aren't really that important in determining the quality of a song.
We're entering into the era of the album. The singles charts were no longer a good way to gauge how popular a given artist or song were all by themselves. A song could barely scrape the top 20 on the singles charts - due mostly to airplay - while racking up a million or more in sales as part of a successful album.
I'm not saying an artist's popularity depends solely on the singles charts, particularly after the 60s. Some spectacularly popular artists barely scratched that chart as has been pointed out many times. What is surprising is the quality work by big acts that was ignored by the public but I'm guessing the kids were more apt to buy a whole album by certain artists rather than the singles. Still, there were acts that managed to move large amounts of LPs as well as singles drawn from them - Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, etc.
True, but a lot of acts were hugely successful during this period without actually selling all that many singles (or even garnering all that much radio play). The Doobies are probably a pretty good example of that: Toulouse Street - Platinum The Captain & Me - 2x Platinum What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits - 2x Platinum Stampede - Gold (but got to #4 on the charts) Takin' It To The Streets - Platinum Livin' On The Fault Line - Gold Minute By Minute - 3x Platinum, Billboard #1 album One Step Closer - Platinum Not to mention they were a pretty big concert draw on top of all that. Based on those album sales you'd think they were a constant fixture in the Top 10 of the singles charts, but they weren't. They did however do extremely well on rock radio, not so much the current hits, but the catalog stuff, which kept getting heavy rotation well into the '90s where I grew up in Phoenix. My guess is their perennial radio presence contributed quite a bit to their album sales in the '70s, simply by expanding their fan base and keeping the band in the public eye. We don't tend to realize it when we focus on the singles charts, but that kind of omnipresent longevity likely translated into hundreds of thousands of albums sold with each release for acts like the Doobies.
I can take or leave The Streak. As has already been noted, it's the kind of song that is funny once or twice and then, not so much. On the other hand, I never get tired of the description, in Ahab the Arab, of Fatima "eating on a raisin, and a grape, and an apricot, and a pomegranate, a bowl of chittlins, two bananas, three Hershey bars, and sipping on an RC Cola, and eating a Moon Pie, listenin' to her transistor, watchin' the Grand Ole Opry, and readin' Mad Magazine while she sung, 'Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour?'" I'm not convinced this transcription (on Wikipedia) is precisely accurate, but you get the drift. A lot of it is in the delivery, and since the song was re-recorded a couple of times, only the original (I'm pretty sure it is) is truly funny. I also think Mr. Businessman is a great song, even though I don't agree with much of what he has to say. So basically, The Streak at no. 1 while two gems missed out is further evidence that the public taste leaves a bit to be desired.
Well it so happens that the competition was fierce and not letting up right here 73-74. Far too much quality coming out from everyone from Elton, Stevie. Paul, Paul S., etc. for the Doobies to go any higher. That was the problem for them.
The song was way too long for AM radio, and the lyrics sound like they were made up a few minutes before the recording, but the sheer catchiness and inventiveness of the track makes up for it.
Band On The Run...oh how I remember this song well.In spite of the dumb lyrics the music is really good.
Well, that was certainly an improvement. McCartney had been the most-successful solo Beatle on the singles charts, but his releases had come in for a lot of criticism too up 'till this point. I'm pretty fond of his mellow, tuneful singles like "Another Day", "Uncle Albert" and "My Love", but he didn't really pump out a strong rock hit until '73's "Live And Let Die". Band On The Run picks up where that left off, charting two solid US top 10 rockers in '73 ("Helen Wheels", "Jet") off of the album (plus the flop "Mrs. Vandebilt") before finishing off with 3rd US #1, the title track. I always loved this track. Just had an instant epic feel to it, the languid opening section translating into the more bombastic main tune. Structurally it's a very unusual work, but it's so melodically strong you don't really notice. Cut during tumultuous sessions in Lagos, Nigeria (McCartney beat Paul Simon to Africa by over a decade) and finished at good old AIR Studios in London, it's one of his better-sounding records in spite of the sometimes somewhat primitive recording conditions. Tony Visconti was brought in to work on the arrangements in London, as McCartney had liked his work with T.Rex. So there's more than a touch of glam here. Even John Lennon praised the results. There was a kinda butchered 3:50 radio edit that I don't recall hearing much - I think most stations probably spun the LP version, which likely sounded better, since they were certain to have the LP in their library by this point, around four months after release I think. McCartney originally didn't want to release any singles from Band On The Run, and I wonder if his commercial decline would have started here instead of around a decade later if he hadn't been convinced otherwise by label brass. And that would have been a shame, because the album produced three great singles, and B-Side "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" probably should have been saved and released as a single, too. It picked up enough radio play as it was for me to be familiar with it when I was a teenager in the '80s. Paul was definitely on a creative streak here, and that continued to a degree on '75's Venus And Mars, which sports maybe his finest solo single, the wonderful, chugging "Listen To What The Man Said", another US #1. The poll position would elude all of McCartney's post-Beatles singles in his homeland though until '77's "Mull of Kintyre", which inexplicably was a monster hit in the UK while essentially failing to chart in the US (tho the B-Side "Girl's School" saw limited chart action here).
If memory serves Ray says "RC Coke Cola" which always sounded weird to me on two levels but the rest is pretty much spot on. LOVED this as a kid, especially his camel impression. I incorporated my own version of that sound effect into many a radio bit later on
A great single that made #3 here. I wasn't into Wings anymore than I was anyone else at that point... It was purely on a single by single base I operated. It would be decades until I bought the Band On The Run album, but at this time I preferred Jet, which had made UK #7 earlier in the year. As I've said before, in 1974 I'd be 11 and totally obsessed with singles and the charts. Had I the money, I'd have bought 5 or 6 every week, I'm sure. I suspect both BOTR and Jet would have been on my list to purchase, but funds obviously wouldn't allow. I didn't even have a cassette player so I couldn't even tape them off the radio. I remember both songs very fondly I and I think BOTR is my favourite chart topper since I joined this thread earlier in the "year".
Masterpiece, one of the finest ever #1s. Like Bennie And The Jets, a somewhat reluctant single release of a long album track by an artist who seemed the parent album a finished prospect in terms of hit possibilities. McCartney is the master of multipart pop epics, and this may be the most sterling example. And the lyrics are great, even personal. A+ all the way.
You keep repeating that and I think that you will see how mistaken you are very soon. In fact, this was the time when more retailers started selling 45s. The popularity of Casey Kasem's American Top 40 also grew at this time, and influenced the interest and sales of singles. If you were more into albums, of course you would have that mindset. But, in support of you and Sunspot's belief, the kids who started out with singles in the late 60s were now nearing, or were jr. high age, and probably had more disposable income. The peer pressure started to become a factor. There was a mindset that 45s were for kids and albums were for adults. So, there's that. But, the sales of singles did not slide.
