I admit that, in all the time Newstalgia has been up and alive, I haven't included any Led Zeppelin material in my posts. Why? Honestly, I overdosed on them around the time this concert was recorded. Led Zeppelin were probably one of the most visible, most hyped bands of the early 1970's. Their albums were played back to back non-stop on most FM stations in the country. Every Rock magazine had at least some kind of story regarding them in every issue. They toured almost constantly and, frankly I heard enough of them to last me a lifetime.

Not that they weren't a good band or anything, and not that I didn't like them. I just hit critical mass hearing about them and hearing Stairway To Heaven for the 2,000th time. That's all.

But my experience is probably not your experience - so when I ran across this concert I was looking at it as a historic document and not out of personal preference. So I decided to run it.

I am sure this concert has made the bootleg circles many times over, as practically everything they've ever done has, in one form or another. What's interesting about this particular concert, recorded at the BBC's Paris Theater in London in 1971, is how sedate the audience is. Evidence Led Zeppelin were much more popular in the States than they were in their native UK. A Led Zeppelin concert in the U.S. during their heyday was a stoner's paradise with massive quantities of drugs and alcohol ingested over the course of the concert to epidemic proportions. Attesting to that was the fact that, at one Zeppelin concert in Los Angeles, I was thrown up on not once, but twice in one night. Wretched excess is what they call it.

At any rate, in case you missed them the first time around, or never quite got into them in the first place, here is a taste of them live relatively early on.

Enjoy. I promise to grab something new and unknown next week.

By the time the 1970's rolled around, a new and experimental phase of Rock that began life as a hybrid between Psychedelia, Classical and Free-form Jazz in the 60's, burst on the scene and took Europe by storm. In the States, it took a while. Shrugged off in the American press as pretentious, sterile and overly-intellectual, the genre had to find its audience by almost by word-of-mouth.

With such bands as Yes, The Nice (in the later 60's) and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, inroads were made that bridged the gap between a skeptical press and an eager audience. But still, the overwhelming majority of bands in the Prog-Rock genre were the exclusive property of "that" side of the Atlantic.

Genesis had been around since the late 1960's. With one early album (From Genesis To Revelation) showing promise, but lacking that winning spark. They eventually signed with Charisma Records, founded by former Manager-turned Label owner Tony Stratton-Smith and their fortunes soon changed. Getting a word of mouth and popularity in England and all over Europe (especially in Italy), they secured a license deal with Dunhill Records in the U.S. - they had made one or two brief tours of the U.S., primarily in the Northeast and, almost unbeknownst to the U.S. record industry, Genesis were gaining a huge popularity. When Charisma struck a label deal with Atlantic, and their maiden album with the new arrangement, Selling England By The Pound was released in 1973, Genesis took the record industry big-wigs completely by surprise and sold out every venue they were booked in during their first cross-country U.S. tour. Word-of-mouth paid off with dividends.

Tonight it's the opening track from that milestone album, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight.

Maybe you remember it - and maybe you've never heard it before.

Pull up a chair and have a listen for the next seven minutes.

Coming along at the pinnacle of the Glam-Rock movement, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band cut a rather unique figure in the annals of 70's rock n' roll. Like many bands of the period, you really had to see them live in order to appreciate them.

Led by former Blues singer Alex Harvey, who already had a career in the early 1960's as a solo artist and later, as a member of Simon Dupree Big Sound, Harvey added a dose of the lunatic fringe to his stage persona and acquired a large a loyal following as the result.

Tonight it's a track off his 1973 album Next. The Faith Healer is a timeless bit of writing, just as apropos now as it was when it first came out.

And if you've never heard The Sensational Alex Harvey Band before tonight, I would take a little time and check them out if I were you. You might be missing something.

I admit, straight up, that I was never a fan of Disco. To me, it was when Pop Music took a bland turn. It felt over-produced, assembly-line and generic.

That said, there was a lot of talent that came out of that genre. And the one who kicked it all off was Donna Summer. Summer was a great singer, whose talent went a lot further than Disco, but became almost synonymous with the movement and, as is often the case with mainstream music, became pigeon-holed as a result.

That Summer became The Queen Of Disco was more of an accident than a plan. Her breakout hit Love To Love You Baby, the song that started everything, was initially a demo produced by Electronica whiz Giorgio Moroder, who was already established in Europe as a purveyor of Italian Power-Pop and had released an album and several singles here in the U.S., to not much success. In Europe he was another story, and when he tinkered with a sound that included elements of heavy strings, synthesizers, and a relentless metronomic beat, topped off with sexy lyrics, it became a natural for the dance clubs that were already popular throughout Europe. And what had been initially a demo track with American ex-Pat living in Berlin, Summer on vocals, got reworked, extended into a 16 minute magnum opus and got its initial release in Holland and Love To Love You Baby introduced the world to Donna Summer and never looked back.

Tonight it's the 7" long(er) version of the song, not the 16 minute full-on orgy.

But you still get an idea what the fuss was about. So as a tribute to the wonderful singer and artist who left us way too early, here is Donna Summer and a reminder of what 1975 sounded like.

I think, for a lot of people, Sparks is one of those "guilty pleasure" bands. You like them a lot, you've always liked them a lot, but you don't really know why.

Catchy, hook-laden, quirky, theatrical - a lot of words you could use to describe the music of the Mael Brothers. In a perpetual state of reinvention is another description. Having gone through the slog of establishing themselves from the late 60's to the early 70's, they became massive in Europe, briefly settling in London, where they signed with Island Records and their fortunes promptly changed with the release ofKimono My House. The album that took what was often described as a "band with an acquired taste" into a Powerpop Tour de Force in 1974, and established them as a band to be reckoned with for the rest of the decade.

Tonight it's Something For The Girl With Everything from their follow-up album Propaganda. Not a terribly familiar track if you don't own the album, but certainly one that shows them off nicely.

If you don't already know Sparks, here's a chance to get acquainted with some Rock history.

Every time I think of Simple Minds I immediately gravitate to their mega-hit Don't You Forget About Me, and that brings Pretty In Pink to mind and the flood of John Hughes films from the period. But Simple Minds were a lot more than a footnote in Popular Culture of the late 70's/early 80's. Most bands don't start off wanting to be associated with Teen Angst. But truths to tell, it wasn't anybody's fault that happened. It did amazing things for Simple Minds as a popular band, and the mega hit was highly evocative of a place and time, and I don't begrudge them any of the notoriety that came with that. Good on them, as they say.

But I wanted to go back a bit further, towards the beginnings of the band, just at the tipping point between Punk, Post-Punk and the evolving New Wave, to get an idea of what they sounded like early on.

So tonight it's a session Simple Minds cut for the John Peel Program at the BBC. Recorded December 19, 1979 the four numbers on the player are:

1. Changeling
2. Premonition
3. Citizen (Dance of Youth)
4. Room

A good and popular band who are still together who made some great music.

After leaving The Zombies, Rod Argent formed another band and continued the legacy of making memorable music. Argent came about in 1969, and by the time their first album came out in 1970 they had already become something of a household name with critics as well as audiences. Fueled by the advent and expansion of FM into an album-oriented format, Argent was a perfect fit with programmers and it paved the way for a string of successful albums to come out over the next several years.

Tonight it's 3 tracks recorded at the BBC between 1972 and 1973 and it offers further proof that, not only were the band making great records, they were also a great band to hear live.

So here's what's up:

1. Hold Your Head Up - 1972
2. Liar - 1973
3. It's Only Money (Part 2) - 1973

If you aren't familiar with them, by all means check them out. If you remember these tracks, you may not be all that familiar with these versions.

Since I ran some Selecter sessions a few days ago, I thought I would also include that other landmark band from the Two-Tone arsenal, The Specials. This batch of sessions from the BBC were recorded on May 29, 1979 and feature the band hitting their stride. They had already made a huge splash in the UK and were getting a wave of popularity going in the States, through a number of tours and club dates (including a rather memorable stint at The Whiskey A-go-go in Hollywood).

Here are three of their trademark songs from that period:

1. Gangsters
2. Too Much, Too Young
3. Concrete Jungle
4. Monkey Man

They recently (as of 2009) reformed and have been touring and recording.

Just goes to show you, you can't keep a good thing down.

Enjoy, and . . .play loud (obviously).

Continuing Guilty Pleasures Week with Hudson-Ford, a duo who were sadly underrated and largely ignored by the pop music buying public. Why? Couldn't tell you. Not any particular reason you could put your finger on.

Hudson-Ford were John Ford and Richard Hudson who were founding members of the band The Strawbs (from whom Rick Wakeman, later of Yes, was an alumnus) and departed in the early 70's to pursue a career as a duo. During their time together (as Hudson-Ford) they released three albums and a handful of singles, all to lukewarm response and very little, if any airplay here in the U.S.

Bear in mind this is the mid-1970's, a period rightly or wrongly cited as The Doldrums in Pop music, unless of course you were dabbling in Disco, West Coast (aka: Asylum Records) or Prog-rock, things just weren't all that exciting and the audience was going through a malaise period. So even though Hudson-Ford were a good and competent band, with good song writing skills and good production, they failed to click with an audience who were just getting tired of what was available, certainly in mainstream. And they went quietly unnoticed until they resurfaced again in 1979 as The Monks - but that's another story.

Tonight it's a track off their third album, When World's Collide which was released by A&M worldwide in 1975. Mechanics is the second track off the first side and, listening to it again after almost 35 years, still has a certain hook-drenched snap to it and, at least to these ears, has aged rather well.

But then, all the music magazines I wrote for at the time went out of business - so what do I know?