We may never know. If any of the Native American fraternity happen to be reading this and can shed some light on the matter, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It has been known to keep me awake at night.

Which brings us to Dog Soldier, the short-lived outfit formed in the wake of the Keef Hartley Band’s collapse, and their 1975 self-titled album. The artwork maintains the American Indian look that Hartley sported in previous incarnations and during live performances, albeit with a futuristic slant, as was the vogue for album covers in the mid-70s, particularly among prog and some AOR acts.

Dog Soldier largely falls under the spell of the second of those musical pigeonholes, which, in my laziness, I am wont to crowbar in at every given opportunity. Those that stay the course, however, through this journey into the innocuous reaches of 1970’s American FM radio, are in for a reet royal treat at its close. One that rewards the perseverance of the less-than-inclined with 11 minutes of loveliness.

Prior to that it’s a festival of mid-Atlantic country/blues rock, occasionally rugged around the edges, whose sun-kissed Californian complexion revisits the likes of Steely Dan, The Eagles and The Band, courtesy of a bloke from the murkier climes of Lancashire.

The rum cove, who not only replaced Ringo Starr in Rory Storm & The Hurricanes but also drummed for – of all people – Freddy Starr in 1963, surrounds himself with talent new and old, pulling in former bandmates Miller Anderson and Derek Griffiths, along with new blood in the form Paul Bliss and keyboardist Mel Simpson. Anderson provides the brassy vocals, as well as writing the majority of the songs, while Hartley lurks behind his drumkit, dressed as Big Chief Sitting Bull. Nice work if you can get it.

It’s all fairly run-of-the-mill; an inoffensive journey along America’s west coast, lightly underscored by some nifty organ swirls. Unfortunately, the likes of ‘Thieves and Robbers’, ‘Long & Lonely Night’ and ‘Stranger in My Own Time’ suffer from an over-familiarity that renders them indistinguishable from a multitude of other album-orientated-rock songs of the 1970s.

However, there is a light, quite literally, at the end of the tunnel. The royal treat I alluded to, what seems like three days ago… Actually it was three days ago. Such would be the piss-poor findings if I was to submit to a time and motion study.

But I digress. ‘Looks Like Rain’ is loveliness in a bag. Eleven minutes long and bristling with driving guitars, Hartley’s powerful drum patterns and the unadulterated joy that is the Hammond organ. The mid-section of the song is even given over to an extended instrumental passage, awash with the enigmatic swell of the erstwhile instrument’s unmistakably affecting cry. If that isn’t enough to tickle the discerning fancy of the prog contingent, then included as a bonus track is the first, slightly uptempo, version of this song, clocking in at an equally pleasing 15 minutes.

Dog Soldier tentatively hands over its GCSE report card to reveal the legend: Must try harder. The A+ and attached gold star for ‘Looks Like Rain’ just about saves it from a term consigned to the corner of the class, sporting a less than fetching dunce’s hat.

Dog Soldier receives its first official CD release courtesy of Esoteric and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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For the most part it’s a straightforward rock album that incorporates some of the flourishes associated with prog rock, retaining a steadily pleasant ambience right up until the final track ‘Messages from Heaven’, which beams us skyward into the more HFoS-friendly stratospheres of space-flavoured progressive rock and leaves all that went before it back on planet Earth, struggling for elevation.

The eight tracks prior to this magnificent 10 minute closer are a showcase for the singing, writing and keyboard skills of Steve Swindells, and as such have a certain amount in common with Elton John’s output of the same era. They do the job for those who appreciate the singer-songwriter genre of 70′s rock, which is a feat in itself considering the turbulent recording process detailed in the reissue’s liner notes. With a psychotic, drunk, drug-addled and predatory manager/producer behind the mixing desk, the project was very nearly doomed from the off, and it was these factors that contributed to the album’s lack of success and torpedoing by RCA of the follow-up album Swallows (included on Esoteric’s reissue as a bonus disc).

But it’s ‘Messages from Heaven’, the full-on prog track, that makes it all worthwhile. Recorded at George Martin’s Air Studio 1 it features the key ingredients of many a space-prog masterpiece. Ethereal vocals, distant imagery, drifting melodies, orchestral passages and unearthly, weird and wonderful incidental sounds. Maybe not as abrasive as some of future compadres Hawkwind’s voyages through the solar systems, ‘Messages from Heaven ‘ is still a fine interplanetary excursion away from the more standard fare on here.

Overall, don’t be put off by the cover, this is a harmless enough offering, made all the more worthwhile by its closing track.

Messages by Steve Swindells is reissued on CD for the very first time by Esoteric Recordings, and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Unlike other bands that had blossomed out of late-1960s psychedelic Britain, only to fall dramatically by the wayside, Procol Harum had left the paisley shirts behind and continued to produce strong albums, clocking up number eight with the previous year’s Exotic Birds and Fruit. Even if, through all this, the spectre of the perennial ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ conspired to deny them wholesale global success.

This, the aptly titled Procol’s Ninth, arrived with a new production team and a straightforward, no-frills album cover, signalling a change in – if not the direction that Procol Harum were taking – the sound they were producing.

Procol’s Ninth was to be first album since 1969′s A Salty Dog not to utilise the services of producer Chris Thomas. It shows as well, with the quirkiness often associated with the Procol Harum sound dismissed in favour of a more polished, straightforward style. The men responsible for this were American songsmiths Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose writing partnership had clocked up hits for Elvis, The Coasters and many more. Their production style however, seems to have come directly from the Phil Spector school of thought, as they bury some of Brooker and Reid’s songs beneath layers of instrumentation, pretty much as Spector did with Lennon and McCartney’s material on Let it Be.

In doing so, it goes a little way to robbing the band of their soul. Nevertheless, Gary Brooker’s voice ensures it remains unmistakeably Procol Harum.

Despite these reservations there’s enough here to keep this writer happy. Procol’s Ninth is, after all, the album upon which ‘Pandora’s Box‘ appears, a song first written in 1967 but never released; here rejuvenated in all its mythical lyricism and marimba malleated glory.

Former majesty is also flirted with on grinding, piano-driven tracks such as ‘Fool’s Gold’, ‘Without a Doubt’ and on the highland-infused ‘Piper’s Tune’.

Interestingly, Procol’s Ninth is the first and last Procol Harum album to feature cover versions, two in fact, and it’s somewhat unfortunate that the original album finishes on one of these, a lacklustre version of The Beatles’ ‘Eight Days a Week’. Recorded for fun, it sounds unfinished and out of place, and was reputedly included by the producers against the band’s wishes. Not hard to see why.

But the question remains, in 1975 were Procol Harum still relevant?

On the strength of Procol’s Ninth, the answer is just about. But the crown was slipping, a fact supported by this being the penultimate album before Procol Harum took a 14 year break.

Still, presentation-wise, Salvo has once again come up trumps. The packaging, the booklet, the attention to detail, the bonus tracks and, of course, the sound quality are all top notch, cementing the label’s position as one of the best when it comes to reissues.

Procol’s Ninth (40th Anniversary Series) is released on 16th November 2009 and available from Amazon.co.uk

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The Idle Hands deliver the goods, firing on all cylinders to produce an album worthy of a band who enjoy a formidable reputation as a live act, injecting it with the same passion that I’m sure also stokes their stage shows.

All Night Sinnin’ draws on a mixture of influences, with a Zeppelin feel being noticably prevalent, particularly on ’40 Nights’ and ‘Honey Tree’. But there’s shades of Hendrix, Taste, Free, Jeff Beck, Blind Faith, early Cream and even AC-DC interweaved throughout the entire fabric, as well as a classic delta blues framework to songs such as ‘I Don’t Mind’ and ‘A Friend Like You’.

Rick Wakeman has featured the album on his Planet Rock FM show and in the world of British classic rock, such a recommendation is a seal of quality. HFoS agrees with the ex-Yes keyboard noodler and prog elder Statesman that All Night Sinnin’ is worth a listen and one to blow the frosty cobwebs away during the imminent autumnal and winter months.

All Night Sinnin’ is available to buy from the Idle Hands’ website.

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In 1970, between the releases of Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones, looking to go it alone and handle their own business affairs, finished with both their record company Decca and their manager Allen Klein. The contract with Decca required the band to deliver one more single.

‘Cocksucker Blues’ was the result.

The very deliberate decision to submit something that would have consigned Mary Whitehouse to an early grave, in some alternate universe where explicit first-person accounts of a rentboy’s misadventures in London could get airplay, was a vintage piece of Jagger mischief-making. They owed a single and so they delivered one. The fact that it was not only unfit for broadcast but also open to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act should Decca have taken leave of their senses and released it, was neither here nor there. The fact that it would’ve enraged the stuffed-shirt executives of the record company was everything.

The song was locked away until 1983 when it was issued on a West German Stones compilation The Rest of the Best, before being quickly withdrawn. It’s existed as a bootleg ever since.

The two versions of the song I have are markedly different. One is a longer, extremely rough take, possibly recorded further into the ’70s, with an extended slide guitar jam in the middle; the other a shorter, polished version, which I think is just Mick and Keith and is probably the one they gave Decca the option to put out.

The song itself – particularly the longer version – is a slow-burning blues number; the sort that should carry a health warning. Lyrically it’s completely childish and guaranteed to send your nan into an irreversible state of shock should she hear it prior to the Sunday roast being carved. Nevertheless, the little charm the song can muster resides in the overall sound – the Stones at their lowest, downest and sleaziest – not the puerile shock tactics.

Below is the shorter, ‘single’ version.

WARNING As can probably be surmised by the title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ is no ‘As Tears Go By’. If offended in anyway by explicit sexual references and the sort of language that would make an Irishman blush then don’t play it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFhuvg1SEA

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Oh well, I suppose if needs must.

Sticky Fingers represents the pinnacle of the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership and a band at the peak of their musical prowess, narrowly shaving Exile On Main Street to steal the hard-contested honour. It also came at a time when they could do no wrong. You have Their Satanic Majesties Request (much maligned, but loved for its psychedelic goodness by this reviewer), followed by Beggar’s Banquet, followed by Let It Bleed, then Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, and Goats Head Soup. Just one of those albums would be enough to cement the name of any lesser band in the halls of music immortality. But indeed, ‘the hardest working band in rock ‘n’ roll’ pumped them out in a space of five years and were never quite the same again.

The first Stones studio album without any input from the late Brian Jones, Stick Fingers unveiled his replacement, one time John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers guitarist, Mick Taylor.

From the all-too-familiar abrasive opening chords of ‘Brown Sugar’ to the closing crescendo and gentle peter out of ‘Moonlight Mile’, it is perfect in every sense. If there’s only one fault that can be picked from the ten tracks on offer, it’s that the jam at the end of ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ does drag on a little. This is a four minute song padded out to just over seven mins. Apart from that one, barely noticable quibble, it’s all good.

The highlight of Sticky Fingers has to be the final track, ‘Moonlight Mile’. Just shy of six minutes of bliss, it evokes a certain feeling of desperate loss in its telling disillusion with the sex and drugs lifestyle of rock ‘n’ roll, boasting an unforgettable, lilting guitar riff played by none other than Jagger himself. Other highlights (how can one pick highlights from what is as close to musical perfection as we’ll ever hear?) include the raw, gospel-tinged delta blues of ‘You Gotta Move’;  the harrowing drug-overdose hell of ‘Sister Morphine’, featuring Ry Cooder on slide guitar – listen and shiver; and the contemptuous  sneer of  ‘Dead Flowers’, a rather biting attack on an ex, delivered in a mock Country and Western accent and including the immortal line: “I’ll be in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon, and another girl to take my pain away.”

In fact, the album is riddled throughout with references to various illicit pharmaceuticals. ‘Brown Sugar’ is actually a raunchy slave-trade metaphor for heroin, whereas ‘Moonlight Mile’ includes the cocaine reference “… with a head full of snow” – Just in case you were wondering where the name of this blog came from. ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ mentions “… Ya’ll got cocaine eyes, Yeah you got speed-freak jive”. And ‘Sway’ has the rather abstract line: “Did you ever wake up to find, A day that broke up your mind, Destroyed your notion of circular time…” If it doesn’t reference drugs, it must be written as a result of their use.

Overall, there are worse things you could do than buy, borrow, or steal a copy of Sticky Fingers. Obviously, if you opt for the latter, don’t come crying to me when you get your collar felt.

My advice to you is get a copy now. Or if you already have one, bang it on the stereo and listen again to an album whose excellence will never be surpassed.

The Rolling Stones perform ‘Dead Flowers’ at the Marquee Club, 1971:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ3l8r2wgtg

Sticky Fingers is available from all record stores worth their salt on the Virgin record label. Buy it at Amazon.co.uk

See also:

The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request

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