Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for April 13th

Bowie: Classic! -- Wings: Chart-topper! -- Little Feat: Birthday Hero!

4/13/1973 (45 years ago today) - It was really more like the unofficial "Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Part Two": David Bowie releases one of his very, very best albums, the extremely raucous and totally perfect "Aladdin Sane", a pseudo-pun on the term "A lad insane". Ah! This was absolutely a deliberately louder and more high-octane/high-intensity experience than any of his previous records: "The Jean Genie", "Watch That Man", "Drive-In Saturday" (one of his Top 5 best songs without a doubt!), "Cracked Actor" and a nuclear-blast-cover of The Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together". Guitarist Mick Ronson was (arguably) at his peak -- This is our favorite Bowie album, hands down...

4/13/1974 (44 years ago today) - Everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong, and he still ended up making a masterpiece!: Beyond horrific recording studio conditions in a foreign land with stormy and dangerous weather plus all the band members quitting...it's unbelievable that Paul McCartney completed the "Band On The Run" album at all -- On this date it goes to No. 1 on the Billboard chart, selling over 8 million copies worldwide. That Macca brain and soul are really something else when put to the test; there's not a weak track on this one!

4/13/1945 - We miss him dearly: Born on this date, the real genius behind Little Feat, singer-songwriter-producer-and-slide-guitarist-par-excellence, the totally incomparable Lowell George. Those early 1970's Little Feat albums still don't sound like anyone else -- "Dixie Chicken", "Feat's Don't Fail Me Now", the double LP set that just about sets the standard for live recordings "Waiting For Columbus" -- all superb and smoky and hypnotic, like they were beamed in from another planet you never knew existed! Lowell died from a heart attack on June 29, 1979; he was only 34 years old. This footage is insane, they were sooooooooooooooooooo good!!!:

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"I hear you moan...", xoxo!