Aug. 30, 1975 record review: A conversation at dawn with Jethro T. Megahertz
Every once in a while, an imaginary friend dropped into my record reviews. Any resemblance to rock radio deejay Jim Santella is strictly coincidental.
Aug. 30, 1975
What’s Happening in the World of Music?
ALL SUMMER I’D BEEN DIALING up Jethro T. Megahertz to see if the old music biz
philosopher could make sense out of the record scene, but all I’d get was his
answering service.
They said he’d been keeping odd hours of late. He never
called back.
Curiosity finally led me to stake out the wizened
curmudgeon’s home base one hot August night. It was about 5 a.m. and I’d lapsed
into a sweaty doze when a rhythmic shuffle of footsteps brought me abruptly to
my senses.
* * *
“MEGAHERTZ,
is that you?” I wasn’t so sure. In place of his trademark – the cowboy Stetson
– was a floppy patchwork cap. The jeans had become tailored beige satin. The
boots had been traded for dancing pumps.
“Ah, good morning, my boy,” he grinned through his beard.
“You look terrible. You really should get out more. Come on in and have some
lemonade.”
“OK, Megahertz, I’ll have some lemonade. But I didn’t come
around for small talk. This is serious business. Something’s happening out
there in music and nobody knows what it is.”
“What it is, what it is,” he half-sang, dancing over to the
refrigerator. “I’ll never understand you writers. You’re blind to the most
obvious things. What have you been listening to lately?”
* * *
“WELL, THERE
hasn’t been too much that’s been WORTH listening to. Elton John peaked a year ago, now he’s just jiving.
“The Eagles
album is nice and lush and deserves to be a hit, but it’s kinda weak after ‘Take
It to the Limit’ on side two. The
Outlaws have just one good song on their record and the rest is a bore.
“They’re calling the Ohio
Players ‘mature’ on ‘Honey,’ but that’s just another way of saying
unexciting. Even War’s ‘Why Can’t We
Be Friends’ is better, and that’s a far cry from ‘The World Is a Ghetto.’
“And the Spinners’
‘Pick of the Litter’ sounds like the runt of the litter. I don’t know if it’s
me or them, but it sounds like everybody’s lost it.”
“Sounds like you’ve had a pretty miserable summer,
“The Grateful Dead’s
‘Blues for Allah.’ It seems like they’ve finally found a new direction in that
drifty atonality. It really came around for me on the third or fourth listening
and it just gets better and better.
* * *
“‘
“Then there’s Fleetwood Mac. The new album. Have you heard them since they added Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks?
“There’s such great dimensions in that group now. Great
production too. Stevie Nicks doing ‘Rhiannon’ sends chills down my spine.”
“Good choices, son. But I don’t see you discovering
anything that half the country doesn’t know about already.”
“OK, Megahertz, here’s one. The Rowans. On Asylum. Sweet cosmic cowboy stuff with great lyrics
and easygoing tunes.
“You know Peter Rowan. Wrote ‘Panama Red’ for the New
Riders of the Purple Sage and played on ‘Old and In the Way’ with Jerry Garcia.”
“Yes, yes, all right,” he sighed, tugging his cap up from
his eyes. “It’s about as mellow as you can get. But you know Rowan’s line in ‘Beggar
in Blue Jeans’ about being over 30?
“It’s the same with the Dead and all of them. They’re
middle-aged. They’re tired. They’re over the hill.”
“Megahertz, that’s about as ridiculous as that outfit you’ve
got on. Are we supposed to bubble-gum out with the Captain & Tennille? Or sell our souls like Quincy Jones to a disco beat that’s
been stamped from a machine?”
* * *
“NOW, NOW,
now, let’s not get abusive. Times are changing. If you want to cling to the
past, that’s your problem.
“Let me tell you what I’ve learned from the 11-year-old
daughter of one of my friends.”
“Now I know you’ve flipped.”
“My friend, have you never heard that a little child shall
lead them? This girl has just gotten into Top 40 radio.
“Listens all the time. Drives her parents daffy and her
parents are into Pink Floyd, the Dead and the Stones.
“This is the new generation gap. Not so bad or big or broad
as the old one, but it’s there. And for these new kids, everything old is new
again.
“It’s yesterday once more, except the kids of yesterday are
old people now.
“Have you heard Top 40 lately? ‘Run, Joey, Run’ by David Geddes? Pure teen morbidity, just
like ‘Tell Laura I Love Her.’ Or ‘Mr. Jaws’ by that old record-splicer Dickie Goodman. He’s as funny as he was
20 years ago.
“Like Wolfman Jack says, it’s old-fashioned fun and romance
coming back again. Which means watch out for Amherst Records here in
* * *
“THEIR FIRST DJM record – ‘Backbreaker’ by the
Grimms – is going to be a killer. About a guy in love with a lady wrestler.
It’ll be out next month.
“Then
“Producer Donnie Elbert, who’s also in
“I should’ve known you’d bring it back to disco, Megahertz.
Anybody can take a disco beat and get a cheap hit. It’s the scourge of 1975.”
“Come off it, man. Disco is fun. It’s a bright, happy,
disposable sound and you can have a good time to it. Some of the music isn’t
bad at all.
“The Isley Brothers’
‘The Heat Is On.’ Go listen to ‘Fight the Power’ and tell me that isn’t one of
the best records of 1975.
“Disco has inspired the
Bee Gees to make ‘Main Course,’ their first great album in years. And the
Black groups are doing wonderful things with white material – especially Ace Spectrum in ‘Low Rent Rendezvous.’”
“Sure, Megahertz, but that’s all mind candy. There’s no
great rock poets to challenge the facts of being alive. No Chuck Berry. No Bob
Dylan.”
“
“Now finish your lemonade and go home. I’ve gotta rest up
for tonight.”
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO:
Fleetwood Mac in a 1975 publicity shot. Notice how Stevie Nicks is in the
center of the picture.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE:
This was not the first time Jethro T. Megahertz made a guest appearance in my record reviews.
I summoned him up whenever I got tired of the usual format.
It’s not the first appearance
by Jessie Key and Sylvester Cleary on the Pause page, either. I first wrote
about them in October 1974.
Meanwhile, Donnie Elbert, who was inducted into the Buffalo
Music Hall of Fame in 2020, is one of those talents who flashed on and off the
R&B charts from the 1950s to the 1970s. He grew up in
In
1975, Elbert had started his own label, Elbert Records, and in the 1980s became
head of A&R for Polygram in
“To say that Donnie Elbert isn’t a household name is an
understatement. I’m guessing you’re either someone who has a very deep
understanding of ‘60s and ‘70s American R&B music or you’re a fan of what’s
known in
* * * * *
FURTHER NOTE: All of these transcripts of old reviews and feature
articles about the
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