Skip to main content

Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen – Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites

Commander Cody
Back in 1980 my dad and I were sitting downstairs watching TV while we were playing Monopoly (a game I seldom won, and I never got to be the dog) and I think it was on PBS or something, and it was about music or something. I don't know what it was, but it was on. I can't remember what it was about, but there was a segment that stood out that was likely talking about music and television. Then they talked about something or other and then played a song that stopped me in my tracks: The hook was infectious, "Two triple cheese, side order of fries." The song played, and frankly I don't remember much about the video, but I remembered the name ... Commander Cody, and the segment went on and talked about his early work with his old band the Lost Planet Airmen. It stuck with me. What always struck me was I never sought out the record, or anything else by Commander Cody.

But, I never forgot.

Then a while back I found the wicked We've Got a Live One Here! the band's double live album from 1976. This was my real introduction to the band, and it was a good one. The band was far from being the novelty act I had assumed them to be based on my lone exposure all those years ago. This was turbo charged country swing that was more at home in the rock and roll world than they were in the country camp.

record
Of course I cannot claim to be all that knowledgeable, I mean I have the internet and can look up the basic stuff. The band seemed to skirt the edge of commercial success. All of the band's albums in the States between 1971 and 1976 would break the top 200. They went as high as number 58, and on the low side managed to hit 170. They never had a gold record, but they were probably selling enough to warrant keeping them on the roster.

Then I found Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites which was chock full of songs about trucks and the truck drivin' life, except for the two minutes at the end where the band throws in a live version of "Tutti Frutti" that may have felt out of place but wasn't. This was the band's second album, and was released in 1972 on Paramount Records. If you didn't know there was a Paramount label, you aren't alone ... this was new to me too.

This was a lot of fun, and while country isn't really my thing, Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen were more like a raucous bar band ripping it up and daring you not to grin and tap your feet. There were quite a few songs that really stood out here. I'd normally make a little list, and to those who know the record would go, "Yeah, that's right!" Or more likely ask, "Hey what about ..." so to avoid that, and because I'm feeling a bit lazy I'll just say there were more songs here that stood out than I expected.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...
Post a Comment
Read more

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...
5 comments
Read more