Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DLXIV--Blues Image: Ride Captain Ride

 You can go your own way, go your own way...and I'll still be late again...

My introduction to this week's tune is simply being a child of the seventies.  Though I may have recalled it from when it was first released (my family used to go camping for a week on my father's vacations, and without a TV the radio was all we had for entertainment and it well could have been released around the time of one of those camping trips), it would mostly be from its being ubiquitously played throughout my teenage years.  Even to this day, it's not unusual to be walking around any number of retail establishments and hear it over their sound systems--as well as on numerous oldie stations.  Not a bad feat more than fifty years after its release....

Blues Image formed in Miami, Florida in 1966.  After a couple of years playing local gigs, they became the house band at Thee Image (an innovative club that saw the likes of Cream, Grateful Dead, and last week's band of the week, Blood, Sweat & Tears), and their success there led them to move to Los Angeles in 1969, where they were signed by Atco Records (I have 45's--google it, kids--with the Atco imprint on the labels).  They released an album that first year in L.A., and two more in 1970, and then they were done.  Seriously--no reunion tours, nothing.  For their career, they released the aforementioned three albums (two of which charted), one compilation, and four singles (ditto).  The band's members would go on to perform with the likes of Iron Butterfly, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, Alice Cooper, and Three Dog Night. and two of their members would have some success in the Contemporary Christian genre.

Fun Fact:  The line "Seventy-three men sailed up, from the San Francisco Bay..." came about because lead guitarist Mike Pinera was sitting at a piano trying to compose a song and wanted to come up with an opening word.  A piano has seventy-three keys, and Pinera liked the rhythm of those words and wrote the rest of the lyrics and music from there (with help from Skip Konte).

"Ride Captain Ride" was the first single from their 1970 album, the rather widely (do you know how many definitions there are of the word "open"?  Too damn many, that's how many.) entitled Open.  The single would reach #4 (with a bullet!) in the U.S. (as well as Canada--once again, so many cool kids in the Great White North!), while the album peaked at #147.

"Ride Captain Ride" tells the tale of a band of men aboard a ship setting sail to find their Shangri-La.  When they ger there, the people are too ensconced in their own lives to notice them, so the captain says, "Fuck it, we're out of here."  And so, they set sail once again, and eventually they disappear forever.  How fucking cool is that?  As for the song itself, it's a smooth groove, lots of fun and funk (catchy as all hell chorus with backing vocals to die for), and some blue-eyed soul singing.  I've mentioned a time or two (or three, or four, or....) about how sometimes very talented people get together and make magic to create a song that outshines and outlives anything else said band members do musically, and this week's tune is one of those times.  Just a wonderful piece of funky pop to remind those of us of a certain age just how wondrous the seventies were musically--and hopefully give some young whippersnappers a glimpse of that wonder.

Lyric Sheet:  "Ride, captain, ride upon your mystery ship/Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCLXII--Sniff 'n' the Tears: Driver's Seat

While doing my half-assed research for this week's tune, I ran across a writer who proclaimed that the song was one of the best one hit wonders of the 70's, and maybe of all-time.  Don't know if I'd go quite that far, but it is one of the better one hit wonders in my musical lifetime....

Sniff 'n' the Tears (and there's one of your better band names) began in 1973 in the U.K., but lead singer Paul Roberts gave up after a couple of years of no success and moved to France.  In the interim, Luigi Salvoni heard some demos he and Roberts had recorded and gave Roberts a call to see if he was interested in picking up where they had left off.  Sniff 'n' the Tears formally came into being in 1977, recorded their debut in 1978, and due to pressing problems with the record, waited until 1979 for its release.  The band immediately had a worldwide hit with "Driver's Seat." and shortly thereafter went its separate ways.  Roberts continued with the band name and has released 7 more albums through the years, with exactly none of them ever charting.  Somehow in this age of bands releasing 90 greatest hits packages for their lone hit, Sniff has only released one.  The band has also released eleven singles with just one charting anywhere other than the Netherlands, where they had a whopping three singles hit the charts.  While mostly a Roberts production, the band continues touring and recording to this day.

"Driver's Seat" was released as a single in 1979 on Sniff 'n' the Tears debut album, Fickle Heart.  "Driver's Seat" would reach #15 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, the only charting single of their career in the U.S. (it would reach #1 in the Netherlands in 1991 thanks to a television commercial--so many cool kids in the Netherlands!).  The album would reach #35 on the Billboard 200, and was one of only two albums of theirs to chart in America.  Surprisingly, they have never had an album chart in their native U.K.

They should make a law that any time you like a song, you should have to read a lyric sheet as the song plays.  I have literally loved this song since 1979 and never noticed that about a quarter of the way into the song after every line Roberts sings, the band alternates between an "ooh" on the first and a "yeah" on the second, and how much these small harmonies make the song so much better.  For its time, "Driver's Seat" was actually quite different as a single--I've often thought of it as a precursor to the New Wave movement that would hit a few years after its release.  While the song mentions driving, Roberts claims it's actually about the disjointed thoughts one often has after a relationship ends.  Be that as it may, once the song opens with an acoustic guitar part (and how many songs have I loved that open with an acoustic guitar part?), and the drums drive and an electric guitars blasts into the first verse, one is easily hooked by the music before the lyrics even begin.  "Driver's Seat" is another in a long line of songs featured here on FNJ where for a little more than three minutes, a band executes perfection...and another in a long line of songs that makes a lifetime of devotion to pop music worth the while.

Lyric Sheet:  "Doing all right/A little driving on a Saturday night/And come what may/Gonna dance the day away..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee