At risk of being insensitive or seeming to make light of it, no renowned music artist died this past week, that I’m aware of, at least as of Thursday night and Friday morning as I prep the show. So, unlike the past two Saturdays when I played songs from The Band (RIP Garth Hudson) and Marianne Faithfull, no tribute set for this Saturday. That is, unless one looks at this three-album play, delayed for three weeks, as tribute to the following artists’ 1970s excellence. We have Elton John’s Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy from 1975, Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals and Who Do We Think We Are by Deep Purple, released in 1973. A commentary on each album appears below each record’s track list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.

Elton John – Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy

1. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy
2. Tower Of Babel
3. Bitter Fingers
4. Tell Me When The Whistle Blows
5. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
6. (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket
7. Better Off Dead
8. Writing
9. We All Fall In Love Sometimes
10. Curtains

A concept album that traces the early careers of Elton John (Captain Fantastic) and lyricist Bernie Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) as they struggled to establish themselves in the music industry in late 1960s London. There’s loads of available literature on the album, which also works as a collection of individual songs, continuing the duo’s early to mid-1970s hot streak. And, like most EJ albums of that period – and many 1960s and ’70s albums – the so-called deep cuts are as strong as the singles. There was just one single released from the album, Someone Saved My Life Tonight. Two essential songs for me: Tell Me When The Whistle Blows and the title track.

Pink Floyd – Animals

1. Pigs On The Wing 1
2. Dogs
3. Pigs (Three Different Ones)
4. Sheep
5. Pigs On The Wing 2

A concept album about sociopolitical conditions in mid-1970s Great Britain, it doesn’t seem to get the universal critical acclaim of Pink Floyd albums like The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here or The Wall but it’s always been one of my favorites, and that of many fans, amid that run of albums that was predated by another winner, 1971’s Meddle. The album nicely brackets the three extended pieces with the opening and closing acoustic entries. The centrepiece for me is Pigs (Three Different Ones). It’s in part a diatribe against British morality crusader Mary Whitehouse, with aggressive musical accompaniment adding to the impact of the repeated refrain “ha ha, charade you are.”

Deep Purple – Who Do We Think We Are

1. Woman From Tokyo
2. Mary Long
3. Super Trouper
4. Smooth Dancer
5. Rat Bat Blue
6. Place In Line
7. Our Lady

The last album in the first go-around of the so-called Mark II version of Deep Purple that featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Ian Paice (drums) and Jon Lord (keyboards). The guys who did Smoke On The Water, on Machine Head. That lineup reunited for two albums – Perfect Strangers and The House Of Blue Light – and, after another breakup, another album in the 1990s – The Battle Rages On – before Blackmore took permanent leave. Music critics seem to denigrate it, but most Purple fans I know like Who Do We Think We Are and if the band was in tatters in interpersonal terms and supposedly in musical terms, more bands should use that creative formula. And, of course, there are instances where such push and pull in a group setting results in compelling art.

How can an album with songs like opener Woman From Tokyo, Mary Long – another assault on Mary Whitehouse and fellow morality campaigner Lord Longford, four years before Roger Waters/Pink Floyd had at her – and others be deemed so flawed and not rate with Mark II’s other ’70s stuff? I don’t get it, but everyone hears things differently. Another great track, certainly lyrically, is Smooth Dancer. Gillan and Blackmore never got along, at least for very long, which often fueled Mark II’s breakups. However, they did make musical magic together and Smooth Dancer stands out as lyrically, Gillan takes shots at his rival, called ‘black suede’ in a reference to Blackmore’s clothing preferences. Interesting how Blackmore could play so well – or even not apparently raise a stink over such a song being on the album – given the subject matter. Granted, they didn’t necessarily have to be in studio at the same time but Blackmore would have seen/heard the lyrics, so he probably just didn’t care, which would fit his mercurial nature.