Conceivably Great Albums of the 70s (An Occasional Series)

From 1970, please enjoy the most interesting cut from the eponymous album by Brit sort of mutant blues band Dada -- a slightly sinister cover of The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time."





I had a promo copy of this back in the day, but if truth be told, I never actually bothered to listen to it. In fact, the only reason I only bring it up now is because one of Dada's lead singers was a then uncelebrated Robert Palmer (yes, him) and because my college band -- we were called, with totally unearned arrogance, God -- opened for Dada at C.W. Post (my old school) in the spring of '70.

Of Dada's perfomance, I remember very little except that Palmer was already the annoyingly handsome fashion plate that captivated MTV viewers some years later; in particular, he was wearing an absolutely smashing crushed blue velvet sport jacket that I came this close to stealing from the dressing room, until I figured that karmically that might be a bad idea.

Of God's performance, I remember somewhat more, mostly because it was the first time we'd ever played to a crowd bigger than a frat party. It was also our first experience with a concert quality professional sound system; we were all like, "Whoa -- monitors! Awesome!" I can't imagine we were terribly good, but I know for a fact that when we did our interestingly rocked out cover of Bob Dylan's "Too Much of Nothing," as we went into the "Say hello to Valerie, say hello to Vivian" four part harmony chorus, we all -- more or less spontaneously, as a joke -- sang it as "Say hello to valium, say hello to librium." The fact that we could actually hear each other was astounding enough I recall we cracked up so badly we could barely continue.

Oh, if you're interested in the rest of the Dada album, you can download it from the estimable Redtelephone66 website here. There's all sorts of interesting stuff over at that site, BTW, and it's updated daily, so check it out.