Louies Blog

1972 ... The year Pong invaded your favorite bar!

Wednesday's Wozz 9 @ 9 takes us to 1972. Roberta Flack may have won the Grammy for song of the year but Alice Cooper won for best album design.

1972 kicked off with a January premiere of "Dark Side Of The Moon" in the U.K. The rest uf us had to wait a year to hear it. Paul McCartney announces his new band will be called Wings. John and Yoko are guest hosts of the Mike Douglas Show for a week. The Electric Light Orchestra play their first show and Wishbone Ash release "Argus" which would influence many 70's bands. The Eagles debut is released on July 22nd. 1972 marked the end of C.C.R., The Velvet Underground and the Beatles fan club. We'll drop the needle on "Fragile", "Exile On Main Street" and "Machine Head" right after Bob & Tom on Wozz. Let the Good Times Roll on your new Kawasaki and remember: "No cat ever walked away from "Friskies Buffet"!

1969 ...We had Woodstock and Charles Manson and we went to the Moon and someone went to Wallmart for the first time. We had Black Panthers and the Altamont Speedway Free Festival where the Hells Angels had been hired and paid with $500 of beer to bring in the Rolling Stones and keep people off the stage. To review the results of that genius move I suggest you rent the documentary “Gimme Shelter”. John and Yoko held their "Bed-In", The bed was in Montreal.

Grammy Winner for Best New Artist 1969: Crosby, Stills and Nash

We'll travel to 1969 and invent the internet right after Bob & Tom on 93.5FM WOZZ.

In 1983, Former Traffic member Jim Capaldi released the album Fierce Heart. It was produced by Steve Winwood. Winwood also played on the album and one track featured Van Morrison on guitar. I thought this was Jim's best solo album and wondered why "Living On the Edge" wasn't a bigger hit. Just in case you haven't heard it in a long time (or ever) Here it is!

Wednesday One 45 at 1:45. Ringo and the story off "Back Off Boogaloo"

Wozz's Wednesday Nine @ Nine takes us to 1970

1970 saw the death of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. It was also the year for the birth of The Doobie Brothers, Electric Light Orchestra, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Aerosmith and Queen. 600,000 people attend the largest rock festival ever, The Isle of Wight Festival with Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Chicago and many more. One of the strangest events of the year involved Grace Slick being invited to the White House by President Nixon's daughter Tricia. Grace brought activist Abbie Hoffman who was on trial for events at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Their plan was to spike Nixons tea cup with LSD. Fortunately for Nixon, Grace was asked to leave by the FBI. 1970 was a wild one and we'll spend some time there with nine great songs right after Bob & Tom.

"In the Summertime" was recorded in 1970 by the British band Mungo Jerry. The song details some of the greatest parts Summer and struck a cord with folks all over the world. It reached the Number 1 position on charts in several countries and spent seven weeks at the top in the UK, number 1 for 2 weeks in Canada and Number 3 on the singles chart in the US. It’s one of the selling singles of all time with close to 10 million copies sold.

The month of March in 1982 sucked. On March 5 – Comedian and Blues Brother John Belushi is found dead from a drug overdose. Two weeks later Ozzy Osbourne's lead guitarist, Randy Rhoads is killed when the plane he's riding in buzzes Ozzy's tour bus and crashes into a house. The next week, David Crosby is arrested for possession of Quaaludes and drug paraphernalia, driving under the influence of cocaine and carrying a concealed weapon. I guess he believed in never going “half the way”. The next week The Doobie Brothers announced they were breaking up. We’d had enough of the Michael McDonald Doobies anyway.

In 1982 The radio was ruled by band like Foreigner, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Asia. A Time magazine article "Rock Hits the Hard Place" talked about how bland and message-less many critics found their work. John Cougar Mellencamp had the best selling album of the year with American Fool and won a Grammy as Best Male Rock Performer.

We'll head Back to the future after Bob & Tom!