Tune in at noon for the Blue Plate Special with Spenny, a collection of themed songs every weekday on KLBJFM
Monday, 7-27
Monday was the 52nd anniversary of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” hitting the Billboard singles chart. This came a month after its release, and the song wound up peaking at #8 a few weeks later, making it Skynyrd’s highest-charting single in their career. Rather than simply sticking with one band, we decided to play songs that included state names. That of course includes our featured Skynyrd track, but also “Mississippi Queen” from Mountain, as well as “Texas Flood” from our favorite blues rocker Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Tuesday, 7-28
Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special release of the album. Of course we had to play three songs straight off the record. This day kinda meshed with the theme, “Whatever Spencer F***ing Feels Like,” on account of the actual 50th anniversary being prior to today. Anyway, whatever, music is great, listen to it. I’m allowed to adjust these rules however I see fit anyway.
Wednesday, 7-29
Wednesday was Rush bassist Geddy Lee’s birthday. He turned 73 years old! Lee is the son of Holocaust survivors, and he wrote a memoir called My Effin’ Life about three years ago. My partners-in-crime, Lynn and Donna, have read it and highly recommend it. Lee has also written a book about collecting baseball memorabilia. A goofy, pleasant guy to be around, he likely fits the idea you’ve got painted in your head about what a brainiac, prog-rocker nerd is like. In honor of his birthday, we obviously had to play some Rush, but we also featured a band who was friends with Rush and toured with them often – Max Webster. We included a song of theirs that they literally performed with Rush after both bands pushed their equipment together for a jam. “Battle Scar ft. Rush” is the song you’re looking for if curious. Shout out to listener Lalo who loved that we played it. He and I bumped into each other over the weekend. Anyway, moving on…
Thursday 7-30
Thursday was all about litigation. It was the 17th anniversary of Procul Harum organ player Matthew Fisher successfully suing to be included in future royalties for the band’s first and biggest hit, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”. He was initially denied a share of the copyright and ensuing backpay because he waited too long to stake his claim to songwriting royalties. Fisher claimed he wrote the signature organ part to the song. Anyway, that set the stage for the theme on Thursday, which was bands that got sued.
The next was Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, which lifted a sample from part of The Rolling Stones song “The Last Time”. Richard Ashcroft was successfully sued by the Stones’ former manager for using the sample, though the business had initially been arranged between the two record labels for each band – Virgin Records and Decca Records. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were given songwriting credits for The Verge’s signature song, and Ashcroft lost millions. He eventually appealed to the son of the Stones manager who sued him, and 22 years after the song’s release he was given songwriting royalties.
And finally, Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was the focus of a lawsuit after Mark Andes brought up a case on behalf of the American rock band Spirit. Andes claimed that the song lifted melodic lines from Spirit’s instrumental, “Taurus”. He ended up losing the lawsuit, as it was filed 43 years after the release of “Stairway to Heaven”.
Friday 7-31
And Friday was the 50th anniversary of the release of Blue Oyster Cult‘s classic single “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”. It came out in 1976 following the release of their album Agents of Fortune. We played three absolute bangers from the album, including the single that inspired today’s theme in the first place.
