Pink Floyd has some lengthy songs.  I think most of the time, it sounds like they rode in on a long traveling cosmic wave from Neptune.  They made sure to reflect the journey accurately with long gentle harmonized verses and guitar solos that surge and bend like celestial orbits.  “Echoes,” from the 1970 album Meddle, was credited to all four members of the group, and is a gorgeous galactic ballad about some undersea magic, or something.  Originally, the song was about two planetary bodies meeting, but Roger Waters was concerned that the band would be pegged as a “space-rock” band, so he made sure to change the imagery to the more aquatic themed variety.  Sorry Roger, the song still sounds like space-rock, and that’s how your band will forever be remembered, nice try though.  Anyway, these clips of “Echoes” are culled from the 1972 film, “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii,” probably one of the pompous cinematic events that greatly inspired the boys in Spinal Tap.  I mean, the drummer Nick Mason looks exactly like Harry Shearer’s character Derek Smalls, no coincidence in my opinion.  Want more “Echoes” fun facts?  Ok, I got two.  The first is the Waters’s claim that Andrew Lloyd Webber plagiarized the riff of the song for his “Phantom of the Opera” musical.  In a great quote Waters said, “I couldn’t believe it when I heard it.  It’s the same time signature, it’s 12/8, and it’s the same structure and it’s the same notes and it’s the same everything.  Bastard.  It probably is actionable.  It really is!  But I think that life’s too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber.”  Fun fact #2 is that one of my favorite bands Ween used a 5 second clip of “Echoes” for their song “Birthday Boy.”  This was no plagiarism, it was a DIRECT LIFT!  I have no idea how Ween got away with putting a Pink Floyd recording on their major label debut record, but sometimes miracles happen.  Anyway, take a 15 minute break and enjoy “Echoes” parts 1 and 2 live in Pompeii, Italy.

AC/DC week won’t stop, but Bon Scott’s contributions will.  Highway to Hell was released in 1979, and it would be the last album to feature the legendary front man.  Ten days after the video below was created, Bon Scott died from choking on vomit.  Whether it was his vomit or not, no one knows, because you can’t dust for vomit.  Anyway, its an appropriate ironic send off for the man who sang hard and drank hard.  I don’t know much about Bon’s personal life, but I’d like to imagine he’s in rock and roll heaven with 72 groupies…hah!  Oh, religion…Bon’s death was a turning point for the band obviously, and who they would replace him with, and the type of songs they’d create are all stories for tomorrow.  So stay tuned!

Welcome to part 57 of my never ending youtube countdown.  Today, I present another one of England’s best, this time, The Kinks!  I start off this blog with an understatement, the Kinks are an interesting group.  Led by lead singer/songwriter and all around musical genius, Ray Davies, the Kinks are the all time kings of garage rock in my opinion.  The rest of the band, which originally featured Mick Avory on drums (who nearly killed lead guitarist Dave Davies (Ray’s 17 year old brother) by knocking him unconscious with his drum set in an on stage brawl), and Pete Quaife on bass.  Also, Ray and Dave were constant bickering brothers who fought constantly for decades.  Yea…the Kinks had a slew of problems which led to a crazy ban from US touring at the height of the British Invasion and their commerical breakthrough success with “You Really Got Me.”  This ban cost the Kinks a potential army of fans, tons of money, and a greater spotlight that the likes of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Who all happily lapped up.  For the rest of their existence, though still managing to churn out hits because of Ray’s sheer brilliance, and still influencing the very bands listed above enormously, the Kinks never got their proper recognition and were forced to carry on throughout the years in a Spinal Tap like state, embarrassingly embracing heavy metal schlock and stage craft by the 1980s in an attempt to stay relevant.  It’s one of the biggest crimes in rock and roll history because the Kinks were that good.  Ray Davies basically invented garage rock with “You Really Got Me,” a song which the Who admitted to copying for their breakout single, “Can’t Explain.”  Ray’s songwriting was also heavily influential on the likes of John Lennon, who considered “Wonderboy” one of his favorite songs ever, and used it years later as the inspiration for “Beautiful Boy.”  Not only that, he turned into one of rock and rolls greatest lyricists and melody makers, basically as good the Beatles, sometimes even better considering he had to put the whole band on his back and never had a partner to share the load with.  The most inspiring thing about Ray is the legacy of gorgeous, honest, and uncompromising music he left behind (well at least through the first half of the 70s,)  and “You Really Got Me,” is his undeniable greatest splash hit.  So here it is, rev it up, and toast one to Ray folks, one of the greatest ever.