Early 1970's rock: Name some of your favorites

He wasn't. Double wow! (Jim McCartey was the ex-Yarbird guitar player.) Since the Cactus rhythm section was Tim Bogert and Carmen Appice - as in B(eck) B(ogert) & A(ppice) - the confusion is understandable.

From the "enlightened" vantage point of middle age (I'll be damned), I must say that Zaikesman's list--plus a Whitman's Sampler of other nominations--constitute the music from that period that I really love--especially Big Star, the New York Dolls, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Steely Dan, the Stooges, the Rolling Stones, and Neil Young.

However, it would be revisionist history to say those were my favorites then. Growing up in a very small North Carolina town, I hadn't heard of most of these artists, and wouldn't until the late 70s (and my late teens), when I discovered CREEM magazine and another world opened up for me. Of the aforementioned, the only songs I can remember hearing from that period are "Angie," by the Stones, "Reeling in the Years" by the Dan, and "Heart of Gold" by Young. Not even Morrison and Mitchell made it up into our neck of the woods, much less Alex Chilton or Iggy Pop.

The bands I really loved were Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and Elton John. Then, in 1975, I discovered Kiss! And Fleetwood Mac! And puberty!

Anyone else out there ever join the Kiss Army? I did.

And this concludes this week's episode of True Confessions. Join us next week when we examine the disco era and blow dryers.

Darryl Way's Wolf, especially the Saturation Point Lp. John Etheridge who went on to Soft Machine after Holdsworth left really tears things up on all 3 Wolf records.

Hmmm...Kiss Army, shortly after that one came out a co - worker at Crystalship, (a Portland Ore. record store) took a sticker out of one of the sleeves and changed the K on the emblem to a P. Then he pinned it on his baseball cap to display the fact that he was a member of Piss Army. He wore the thing during his shift every day for months. He even wrote a letter to the Kiss fan club in an effort to convince Gene Simmons that he should drink lighter fluid or inject it into his bladder so that he could urinate fire into the front ranks of his adoring conscripts. Seems like a shame that Mr. Simmons missed this golden opportunity to live up to his full artistic potential.

I hate to admit it, but I actually went to a Kiss concert; of course we REALLY went to see the opening act--REO Speedwagon, again, way before "Keep on loving you" cr*p, and left before Kiss even started. Now having said that, I do think that there were some half-decent songs on (I think) the first Kiss album--Black Diamond and Strutter.

Yes, Kiss did have some half-decent songs, and even a half-decent album (Destroyer), but I must be just a couple of years younger than Waltersalas, and I can truthfully say (not pridefully say) that I didn't like them even a little back in the day. However, I was definitely a weird kid: grew up on The Beatles and Elvis, and was buying Howlin' Wolf records by the time I hit junior high school. Most hard rock from the late 60's onward (that I heard) didn't do it for me - in fact it turned me off. When all the other kids were heavy into Boston, Foreigner, Kiss, Frampton, Aerosmith, Bad Company, Led Zep, et al, I was digging back into the early Who and Little Walter. It was only when I first heard "Allison" and "Psycho Killer" on free-form FM that I became interested in what was going on in current rock. Of course, I wasn't listening to Iggy or The Dolls in the early 70's either, but my whole tolerance for hard rock and heavy metal slowly increased as I got more into Zep and especially Hendrix and latter-day Stones during high school (for better or for worse). It wasn't so much the sound (although I don't like guitar-wanking - I like songs and feeling) that kept me away, as it was the whole aesthetic of cock-rock posing and high-times lifestylin'(not to mention stupid lyrics), all of which made me a prime candidate for punk when I finally got exposed to it around the tail-end of the first British wave, which led back to Iggy and Lou, etc. But I still like '67-and-backwards the best, and The Beatles still make everything else sound stupid.

(BTW, one my fav bands as a kid and today, whose heyday began in '69 but covered the early 70's, is I believe not on the list yet: The Jackson Five. No matter what Michael has done since Thriller - J5 forever!)