Spontaneous rock! Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs at Melbourne Town Hall, June 1971
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
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(Apologies – text didn’t post above…)
This is terrific… 50 years ago next week, Australian rock sensation Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs performed at Melbourne Town Hall. Their pianist Warren Morgan was allowed to open the show on the grandiose pipe organ in the place and legend has it that the song that grew out of it, ‘Somebody Left Me Crying’, with the rest of the band joining in, was completely improvised. It’s a fabulous vocal performance – and the ‘spontaneous composition’ legend is backed up by Billy taking 30 seconds to find the key when he starts playing guitar from 3:42 in đ It’s all captured in this exciting film… plus their second song of the night, ‘Time to Live’.
Blimey!
Surely what you meant to say was âfair dinkumâ?
Got the original album.
Time To Live and Momma featuring Gil Matthews on drums are the highlight.
Thorpie still learning to play back then.
The GTK Mama / Momma / Mumma is sensational.
A few of the American boogie bands are huge fans of that song. Endless Boogie for starters.
On one of his YouTube clips, the wonderful Lee Sklar talks about his time in Billy Thorpe’s band (late 70s?) and the live bass rig he used. At many venues his rig was mistaken for the entire stadium PA. He had it mothballed in storage until he sold it recently.
Billy liked things very loud.
They were seriously loud. Played a venue in Sydney and killed the fish in the tank.