Sparksiana via Joseph Fluery, December 1973/Sparks Ltd

One from the barn. From December 1973 and Alan Betrock’s The Rock Marketplace, Joesph Fluery as Sparks’ propaganda minister/shadow manager/#1 Fan in Heaven, sponsors a full page ad saluting Sparks for signing to Island. Was Joseph managing Milk & Cookies at this point in Brooklyn? Soon after, Joseph heads over to London to work with John Hewlett as Kimono My House is about to be unleashed onto the world (only a few months later than Joseph states - June instead of March 1974). Joseph is also given the unenviable job of terminating the great Martin Gordon right after the lp takes off, whose Rickenbacker sound on that lp should have been a mainstay on Sparks’ 70’s output. Joseph goes on to manage the Mumps, the Dickies (who play NZ for the first time Sunday night!) and of course Sparks. I have written about Joseph previously, but another secret tastemaker of the 70's who had the vision to see the music of the 1980's in 1973.

'

The Snoop Sisters and Alice Cooper/People Magazine March 4, 1974/Lance Loud & Dennis Wilson

I saw Alice Cooper last November in Las Vegas (at a casino!) and it was one of my favorite shows of 2013, and easily the best performance by any 65 year old I have seen recently (not to be ageist, U Roy put on an incredible performance last year as well and he is into his 70's!). But those great Cooper years of 1964-1974 (the same years covered in the excellent rarities/outtakes 4 cd set "Old School" that came out a few years ago). The good years when Alice Cooper was still a band and not a person. There are lots of good Alice Cooper Band covers though some days I am partial to the Laughing Hyenas takedown of "Public Animal #9," featuring one of the top vocalists/frontpersons of the rock era (Alice included) , John Brannon.  Anyway, sometimes the over-the-counter culture magazines do feature an inkling of what was bubbling up. So from over 40 years ago this month, we take a look at the March 4, 1974 issue of People Magazine found at the local thrift shop. So post "Muscle of Love" and pre Hollywood Vampires, we get Alice helping kindly Helen Hayes infiltrate a coven of satanic witches on NBC prime time. Try getting that on TV today, but in a Watergate/Manson girls/Exorcist world it all made total sense. See kids, things WERE better back then. And clearly Glenn was taking note of the Crimson Ghost suit in between spinning Sabbath records back in Jersey.

So watch Alice (sans band) guesting on "The Snoop Sisters":



What also jumps out in the March 1974 People Magazine, is the continued coverage of the Loud Family. So far the performance of LOUD from the Cavett vaults has yet to surface but we really hope it does. See the Santa Barbara public access performance of the classic, soon to be classic Mumps track, and we can only hope to see the Cavett performance. By the way, anyone ever see Dennis Wilson and Lance Loud in the same room together? I hear Dennis grew the "Pacific Ocean Blue" beard to keep people from calling him Lance!

"If you dropped the name of the Sweet in the course of rock chat"

So Claw Hammer is playing here next month, and I am not sure if I saw a band more often in the late 1980's to the mid-1990's than those guys in both the Rick Sortwell and Bob Lee era. I was thinking of all the covers the band played at one time or another, and in the deep, deep fog of my memory, I seem to recall Claw Hammer covering this nugget by the Sweet. Is that even right? That plus inspiration from the late, great Joesph Fleury's OVER THE TOP intro to his "Will Success Spoil the Sweet?" story from 1973. :