Ten stone cold 1970s bangers that time has forgotten

“HARD RAIN FALLIN’” – Sir Lord Baltimore (1970)

I was disappointed when, as a kid, I learned that Sir Lord Baltimore did not hail from the biggest city in Maryland, about a half hour from where I was growing up. They were from Brooklyn – like most everything else. But I forgave them because they were among the first American bands to play genuinely hard rock and roll.

Sir Lord Baltimore is famous for being in on the ground floor of metal music. “Hard Rain Fallin’” is from their debut album, Kingdom Come, notable for being the first ever described as “heavy metal” in print. During their brief run, Sir Lord Baltimore opened for rockers the likes of Black Sabbath and J. Geils. Essentially a power trio with a second guitar often chiming in, they were built on Louis Dambra’s lightning guitar and Gary Justin’s punishing bass runs.

Drummer John Guarneri (AKA John Garner), had a prototypical metal voice, deep and growling enough to stand up to the guitar assault, while just melodious enough to carry a song. After a second album in 1971, SLB pretty much faded into obscurity. But they live on in the hearts of metal fans to this day.

”STRANGER IN BLUE SUEDE SHOES” – Kevin Ayers (1971)

If, as some claimed, Sir Lord Baltimore was an Americanized version of Led Zeppelin, then Kevin Ayers could well be the British Lou Reed. That’s not merely because he went on to record with erstwhile Reed collaborators John Cale and Nico. Ayers was in on the formation of Soft Machine, a seminal English fusion band whose influence proved more far-reaching than their success. Their style of music may not have been the same as Reed’s Velvet Underground, but their mythic rep was similar.

After Ayers went solo, he continued his explorations of fusion. On “Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes,” he adopts a chugging rhythm reminiscent of Reed’s “I’m Waiting for My Man” to tell the story of a hippie outcast stuck in the corporate machine. And vocally, he sounds just like a lower-pitched, British Lou Reed, albeit with a more overt sense of humor.

Musically, he lets classically trained pianist David Bedford go wild over the second half of the song with constant runs that blend music hall with boogie-woogie. Mike Oldfield, a few years before “Tubular Bells,” is there on guitar, but it’s really that piano that dominates the sound. The one major difference between Ayers and Reed was in their passion to succeed.

Where Reed was relentlessly driven, Ayers admitted he was far too laid back to ever seriously pursue rock stardom. Most of his solo work reflects that laid-back attitude. But on “Stranger…,” we do get a glimpse of the more relentless Kevin Ayers.