Best classic rock hidden gems
 

Who do you think are some of the best bands of the 60's and 70's besides the obvious giants like Zeppelin, Cream, The Beatles, The Who, etc...? There were some great bands back then that not many people know about now. Here are some of my favorites:

Captain Beyond
Rare Bird
Spooky Tooth
Cactus
Wishbone Ash
Rainbow
Atomic Rooster
Humble Pie
Trapeze
Mott The Hoople
Uriah Heep
The Small Faces
Procol Harum

It's funny that you said Spooky Tooth. The classic rock station here in Hampton Roads was talking about how Gary Wright was the keyboardist of Spooky Tooth before becoming successful as a solo artist.

Spooky Tooth were the first band that Hendrix jammed with when he came to England to work with Animals manager, Chas Chandler - but they were called the V.I.P.s back then.

The band worked on the first album to include the term "Heavy Metal" back in 1967, and later worked with pioneering electronic composer Pierre Henry (who wrote the mega-sampled track Psyche Rock in 1967). They were called Art back then, but changed their name to Spooky Tooth when Gary Wright joined.

Greg Ridley left the Spookies to join Humble Pie.
Luther Grosvenor played with Stealer's Wheel and Mott the Hoople - and went on to found Widowmaker.

"Better By You, Better Than Me" was (in)famously covered by Judas Priest, they influenced Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath - and probably more diverse groups like Uriah Heep and even Blue Oyster Cult.

Oddly enough, they're not one of my favourite bands - just one of the most interesting.


Add to the list;

Dust
Khan
Wildfire
Buffalo
Warhorse
May Blitz
Jericho Jones
Fuzzy Duck
Pussy
Fanny

...I think 10 is enough for now - they're all good :D

I don`t buy that.........I think they`re your favourite:finger:

Another 10 - some more obscure (and a couple not quite so obscure) crazy diamonds;

Jeronimo
Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come
Necronomicon (much more Kraut than Classic - but amazing, if you can actually find it)
Focus (and Jan Akkerman's solo stuff)
The Scorpions
Bakerloo
Catapilla
Dr Z
Indian Summer
T2


and...

Harsh Reality

Where do you dig all these bands out from?

I have an obsession with "discovering" the more obscure bands, especially those whose vinyl albums sell for silly money.

They tend to sell for high prices because of their rarity - which means you almost never get to hear them on the radio or anywhere else, because so few people have actually heard of them.

I've discovered that they sell for such huge amounts because collectors like to have a complete catalogue of particular labels - e.g. Vertigo "Swirl" - like stamp collecting. These vinyls tend to grow in value over the years - e.g. both of Catapilla's albums - even a damaged copy sells for hundreds of pounds.

Such a pity to horde great potentially great music and never listen to it.

The ones I go for and recommend are the ones I actually like, and fortunately, you can find most of it on Blogspot, because they're so obscure that record companies can't be bothered with them as they make nothing out of the outrageously huge sums that these records trade for :D

For example, this copy of "Tips Zum Selbstmord" by Necronomicon ended on eBay by someone using the Buy It Now feature.

I can't remember if it's 200 or 500 copies that exist, but it's something like that. The band financed an exact re-release a couple of years ago on a different label, and all copies went within a day or two. I made sure to get mine :D

The music is rough as hell, as it was recorded live onto a 4-track - but it's simply amazing, if you can get past that and the limited production;





Here's youtubes of selected tracks of the others from my last post;

Jeronimo's 1970 hit;



Arthur Brown at Glastonbury's first festival in 1971;



Focus' first hit;



The Scorpions promo from 1973;



Nice instrumental from Bakerloo's debut in 1969;



Catapilla, from their second album (1972);



Dr Z (1971);



Indian Summer (1970);



T2 (1970);




...and Harsh Reality (1969)!;




ENJOY - there are so many more I could dig up :D

Dust (1971)


Khan (1972)


Wildfire don't seem to have any Youtubes available - but you can download their lost 1970 album here. Quicksand is my recommended track - it's long, but fan-bloody-tastic.

Of course, there's always the NWoBHM Wildfire (1983), featuring Iron Maiden's first vocalist, Paul Mario Day - they're quite a hidden gem too (***Extreme Spinal Tap moment alert***);



Buffalo (1973)


Warhorse (1970)


May Blitz (1970)


Jericho Jones (1972)


Fuzzy Duck (1971)


Pussy (1969)


Fanny Once you've got over the shock of an all-girl band who play ALL their instruments from 1970... ****SERIOUSLY AMAZING MUSIC ALERT****

Thanks man, these are some great bands. I'm always happy to find some good rock and roll I've never heard. I'll have to look more into these groups. You ever listen to Captain Beyond's first album?

Yes indeed - great album.

As a kind of aside, I recently found out that the members of Fanny played on the album "Stoney End" by Barbra Streisand of all people.

I tracked down a copy today, and was delighted to hear that it is a great sounding album - and 3 of the songs on it are written by Laura Nyro, including the rather cool title track, and one by Joni Mitchell.

Other great names appear among the credits too - it's a Barbra Streisand album I can actually recommend to people without feeling a bit silly.

Of course, I do have a soft spot for the Bee Gees penned "Guilty", and the emotional rollercoaster that is "Make it Like a Memory".

You could add

Cressida
Affinity
Beggar's Opera

to the Vertigo Swirl obscure group

I have the first Warhorse and recently won a Vertigo Red Sea LP on ebay from new Zealand, I will be recording those soon.

Former members of Jefferson Airplane (Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen) formed Hot Tuna. This is their best album.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg

"Double-Dose" was one of those great double live albums that came out of the 70's. Jorma electric guitar playing was patterned after Hendrix and there's a lot of freaky psychedelic passages. The rhythm section is equally as strong.

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov...46187t69vp.jpg

Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Starship
Starship

I just heard an interview with Gary Wright about his new album at iconfetch.com.

Jefferson Airplane were a classic psychedelic band, Jefferson Starship a real waste considering the talent they had at their disposal and Starship extremely commercial..........I actually like some of their stuff.

T-rex, Donovan, Yes

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah motherf*cker.

They could have been one of the prog greats, shame they only had one album but it's a classic of canterbury.

A few from me:

Audience
Baris Manco
Chico Magnetic Band
Fifty Foot Hose
Green Milk From The Planet Orange
Flied Egg
Heldon
Proyecto A

I think this album deserves some love.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...B000WZ8XXE.jpg

This is shockingly good...but any Beach Boy fan will tell you it shouldn't come as a surprise, since Dennis started to emerge as a creative force around the time of "Friends", back in the late 60's. By the 70's he contributed several songs to what many consider the Beach Boys 2nd greatest album, "Sunflower", which if you buy it today, comes bundled with another gem of an album, "Surfs Up", the Beach Boy environmentally topical album, which IMO isn't as consistent as Sunflower, but the last three songs of the album culminating with the title track, all penned by Brian Wilson, are absolutely brilliant.

The Lovin' Spoonful - Summer in the City
Such a fun, great song! But you never hear it played anywhere.

(sorry about the lack of any link/video...I'm new to the site, so can't link to anything until I reach 15 posts...)

I always liked this single by T.Rex, 20th Century Boy.
YouTube - ‪T-Rex Top Ten Greatest Hit's 09: 20th Century Boy (HQ)‬‎
T. Rex were an English rock band fronted by guitarist, singer and songwriter Marc Bolan, formed as Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1960s London, this is from 1973 I believe, T. Rex ended in 1977 after Bolan was killed in a car accident.

20th Century Boy is not exactly a hidden gem though at least not in the U.K. Even my dad likes that one!

Never understood why Bolan never really found any success in the U.S. in the same way that Roxy Music, Bowie or Rod Stewart did.

I would have thought that American audiences at the time would have lapped him up.

I always thought that his music was way ahead of its time, when considereing alot of the other rock bands that recieved alot more notoriety than T.Rex did, T.Rex in my opinion were better than 75% or more of the popular bands out at that time in the 70s.
T.Rex Rocked!

To me I think it's the other way around.

I think Bowie & Roxy Music were more 'out there' and ahead of their time than T-Rex ever were. In fact a lot of Bolan's stuff harks back to 50s Rock n roll.

If what you say is true then that would just make me more surprised he never really found fame there.

20th Century Boy just seems more ahead of its time to me musically, I mean Bolan isnt the greatest guitarist Ive ever heard, but its the way he played and presented the song, it just seemed to me better than most of alot of the other rock out at that time.
I dont know very much more about T.Rex other than their single 20th Century Boy, is there anything that you would suggest that is in the same style as (20th Century Boy) by T.Rex?

He had a great run of chart topping singles in the UK charts between 71 & 73, most of them are collected on the Bolan Boogie album.

That would be a pretty good place to start.

Iron Butterfly's a (somewhat) good band from the 60's. Not sure if you'd call them "hidden" though, since 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' gets a decent amount of recognition.

The Electric Prunes are pretty decent too, if they haven't been mentioned already.

They`re a forgotten band but the album "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" amazingly has sold around 25 million copies!!!........and I`m one of the 25 million that has the album.

Electric Warrior is without doubt the quissential T.Rex album and far superior to the T.Rex debut. The group before that were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex and most of the music had a somewhat folky sound.

Nothing to do with T.Rex but I recommend the film "Velvet Goldmine" starring Ewan McGregor. The film is set in the early 70`s glam rock era and the main character is certainly based on Marc Bolan.

I like Electric Warrior a lot but I think that it is so popular that it overshadows other T. Rex albums that are just as good. The Slider and Tanx are very strong albums.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida as a whole album is surprisingly good.

I always think of The Slider as being very long (50 mins for an early 70`s album) and nowhere near as tight musically as Electric Warrior.

Brain Capers - Mott the Hoople. Their glam "All the Young Dudes" and follow up "Mott" get all the accolades, but BC is often over-looked. The Guy Steven's get everything in one take production is very rough around the edges but resulted in some awesome proto-punk moments like "Death May Be You Santa Claus". In 1970, Mick Ralph's riffing was considered quite brutal, and by today's standard, is still very energetic.

One word - Sparks.

All of their albums in the 70's are must-owns, along with all of their albums for this past decade for that matter. Their 80's stuff...not so much. But in the 70's and the Noughties, they were amazing.

The first couple of albums, were weird sounding T Rex influenced efforts, but agree that albums like "Kimono My House" "Propaganda" and "Indiscreet" are three great albums, and their 1979 "No.1 in Heaven" one of my all time favourite albums. an album that pre-dated a lot of the popular synth pop stuff that came later on.

Disagree about the 80`s though, as they had some very good albums in that decade, far better than the dance influenced stuff that they put out in the 90`s

Well, we can both agree that they weren't very good in the 90's at least, but I think their debut is one of their best albums. It's a tie between that and Kimono My House in my eyes. Have you heard Lil' Beethoven and Exotic Creatures Of The Deep from this last decade? They're awesome, and just as good as their prime material.