#desolation Boulevard album by sweet

[archive-of-music]

PT/Desolationboulevardalbumic/albu/end PT

Desolationboulevardalbumic/albu

🧡Gender based on the album Desolation Boulevard by Sweet 🧡 albumic/albu referring to album

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

that’s a form of dyslexia

i have it too

IS IT??

well i think my dad had a form of it, maybe i shouldn't be surprised

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

The Sweet - The Ballroom Blitz 1973

"The Ballroom Blitz" is a song by British glam rock band The Sweet, written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. The song reached number one in Canada, number two in the UK Singles Chart and the Australian Chart, and number five on the US Billboard Hot 100. It remains an enduring favourite, with more than 90 million streams on Spotify alone by the end of 2022. "The Ballroom Blitz" was inspired by an incident on 27 January 1973 when the band were performing at the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and were driven offstage by a bottling. The song appeared on the US and Canadian versions of Desolation Boulevard but never appeared on a Sweet album in the UK, other than hits compilations. The initial guitar and drum riff of the song has similarity to a 1963 song by Bobby Comstock called "Let's Stomp".

An early cover of "The Ballroom Blitz" was by the Les Humphries Singers in 1974, the first German single to reach #1 in New Zealand. The Damned covered it in 1979, which featured Lemmy from Motörhead on bass guitar, and Tia Carrere did a cover on the soundtrack to Wayne's World in 1992. In 2020, industrial metal band 3Teeth released Guns Akimbo, a two-track set that included a cover version of "The Ballroom Blitz", which was previously featured in the 2019 action comedy film Guns Akimbo.

"The Ballroom Blitz" received a total of 84,2% yes votes!

[germ-t-ripper]

10DEC24 Enjoying The Sweet’s album “Desolation Boulevard”.

[rastronomicals]

8:11 PM EST November 17, 2024:

Sweet - "The Ballroom Blitz" From the album Desolation Boulevard (November 1974)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★

File under: Glam

--

[greensparty]

This Month In History - November Part 2

This is quite a month for pop culture anniversaries. For Part 1 read here. Here is Part 2:

Nov. 10, 1969: Sesame Street premieres

In Nov. 1969, the children's educational TV institution known as Sesame Street premiered on public television. It was quite revolutionary. It was a show for kids with valuable life lessons, but told in a way that was also entertaining for grown-ups watching with the kids. Best of all it featured Jim Henson’s Muppets. More than anything, the show had and still has an important message about respect, decency and equality. A neighborhood where people and puppets of all different colors can play and work together. When I was growing up, I was a fan of the show. I especially liked Burt and Ernie, The Count and Kermit the Frog. Years after I outgrew Sesame Street, I would watch it as I babysat when I was a teen and realized some of their humor was really sharp, i.e. their Twin Peaks parody “Twin Beaks” or the Pearl Jam parody Fur Jam performing “Don’t Waste the Water”. In recent years I watched Sesame Street with my son, who liked the show too! How many TV shows began 55 years ago and are still just as good if not better than when they began? Happy 55th Sesame St!

Nov. 10, 2014: Sonic Highways released

In Nov. 2014, Foo Fighters' highly ambitious 8th album was released. The band went to eight different cities, studied the musical history of each city and recorded a song in each city with producer Butch Vig. There was an accompanying documentary series on HBO as well. The band remains themselves in each city and there's some serious bangers here and some cool guests like Scream's Pete Stahl. I included this in my Best Albums of 2014 list as well as my Best Albums of the 2010s. It's an album that doesn't get enough credit from them, but should. Happy 10 Sonic Highways!

Nov. 15, 1974: Desolation Boulevard released

In Nov. 1974, The Sweet's third and best album was released. I first discovered the British glam rock band through 80s glam metal, much of which was heavily influenced by them. As a teen, I checked this album out of the library, recorded it onto a blank tape and listened to it countless times. In addition to “Ballroom Blitz” (later covered by Tia Carrere for Wayne’s World, which also featured the original), the album had “The Six Teens”, “No You Don’t”, “Sweet F.A.”, and one of my favorites “Fox on the Run” (featured on the soundtracks to Dazed and Confused and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2). In 2021, I got to interview guitarist Andy Scott about the band's album Isolation Boulevard and he said "What better way than creating a similar path that our 1974 album, Desolation Boulevard produced. With that in mind Isolation Boulevard in 2020 was a piece of cake and the results speak for themselves." Happy 50th Desolation Blvd!

Nov. 16, 1979: Night in the Ruts released

In Nov. 1979, Aerosmith's 6th studio album was released. Here is my piece I wrote in 2019. Happy 45th NITR!

Nov. 16, 1984: Night of the Comet opens

In Nov. 1984 one of the best valley girl movies was released, this one a sci-fi horror movie. Here is my piece I wrote in 2019 and here is my brief interaction with star Kelli Maroney at the 2018 Rock and Shock. Happy 40th NOTC!

Nov. 16, 2009: Them Crooked Vultures released

In Nov. 2009 the debut album from supergroup Them Crooked Vultures was released. Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin came together for a rocker of an album. Even before this album was released, the band was announced and they did a mini-tour. I was lucky enough to see their 2009 show at Roseland in NYC and was highly impressed. The album sounds like Homme and his QOSTA tendencies took over much of the album which is too bad considering the other two, but it was a joy to hear these three playing and riffing off each other. Happy 15 TCV!

[bloodenjoyer]

tipsy ask: what's an album you'd recommend for someone trying to expand their music taste

Woah...in What direction>? and by expand are you trying to dig into more obscure stuff or do U just feel yr current music taste isnt as wide reaching as youd like?ummmm idk ill just rattle off some albums that i Really love. so the answer to this question really really depends on what mood im in so probably ill send you to the 60s and seventies..although today i listened to pretty.odd. (panic!at the disco Lol) over and over. electric warrior (t rex) is probs one of my all time favs ever ever ever....his n hers (pulp)... version 2.0 (garbage) Hmm. smiley smile + wild honey are my fav beach boys albums that really Arent about surfing like at all. some of their best stuff. like obviously theres pet sounds but everyone loves pet sounds. nasty gal (betty davis)...um...Idk im very fond of 60s/70s music.. Beyond the valley of the dolls soundtrack for a fake movie band with real music. if you can believe your eyes & ears (the mamas & the papas) electric ladyland (jimi hendrix) UM THE VELVET UNDERGROUND LOADED. umm sell out and a quick one are probably my fav who albums..fresh fruit for rotting vegetables (dead kennedys) ...CORAL FANG...!!!(the distillers) Ummmm hot mess and viva la cobra. cobra starship forever. Sorry im rattling off a bunch of shit. i know everyone know s about the beatles and theyre popular and so recommending them is silly but if you arent into them my fav albums of theirs are rubber soul and revolver..OHH my god um. Nancy and lee. ummmm. desolation boulevard (sweet). Okay i shut up now.this isnt coherent and im sure ill look back and go man that wasmessy and shit and i left out all the imprortant stuff.but its ALMOST FIVE AM????? help. how did that happen GOODNIGHT

[sidrial]

Pick 1 album and discuss.

If you don’t recognize any of these, listen to at least 2 first. I will add music 🎶 links in the comments.

#Alsmusiccafe

Episode 194

9 01 23

#Sweet #AestheticPerfection #metallica #Hocico

[blowery]

Ballroom Blitz By Sweet From the album Desolation Boulevard

[barefootjim]

[heartofawomanbutshesachild]

sweet discography ✨ studio albums:

1971 - funny how sweet co-co can be

1974 - sweet fanny adams

1974 - desolation boulevard

1976 - give us a wink

1977 - off the record

1978 - level headed

1979 - cut above the rest

1980 - waters edge

1982 - identity crisis

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

i'm gonna just answer the missing ask that mysteriously vanished like this because i can

because i already had some things typed out and when it gave me errors for saving/posting it, i copied everything into a notepad so i wouldn't have to retype it if i back out and try again

but then i couldn't anyway because the ask was just gone

@lil-melody-moon you sent in 2, 8 and 10 for the ask game and tumblr didn't like that apparently. (unless i read wrong, i can't go back and check now!!)

but anyway hello!!!!

so 2 wassss "what is your go-to karaoke song?"

i have never done karaoke in my life and i've never sang in front of anybody since i was a kid when my parents laughed at me because they thought it was cute but in my little kid brain i was like "if they're laughing at me then this must be an abnormal thing to do that draws unwanted attention and i will never do it again as long as i live" and that's been stuck with me forever even though i know better now. i hope to break out of it eventually. but if i DID do karaoke i would wannnnnt (me searching through my russ ballard playlist) all of these. no but wait. ummmmmm. 'a woman like you,' but instead of the original, i'd find a way to make this clip specifically my karaoke song, when he did it acapella for fun while switching out guitars:

i love him and how comfortable and happy he is

annnd 8 wasssss "what do you think is the best song to play during sexy times?" oh. WELL . wait. i. (me quickly scrolling back and forth throug my russ playlist probably looking very lost)

i. i. i. i. i. i,

i feel i may be tooooooo. i don't know how to word it properly. like. i . i mean like that's never really a thought in my mind when i'm listening to songs, or just about anything else for that matter. i mean i could probably say all of them and none of them at the same time. i don't know how to explain that. somehow it feels like this one doesn't really apply to me.

okay so 10 was "what band were you obsessed with as a child? do you still like them?"

YES my favorite childhood band was sweet! i used to play my dad's old cassette tape of them over and over and over and over and over. it was like a compilation one or something so it had songs like fox on the run and ballroom blitz and action and hell raiser and little willy and wig wam bam and teenage rampage and the six teens, it just had a lot of good songs and i would not stop listening to it every day all day for as long as i was allowed. i used to look at my dad's(now they're mine) old sweet record album covers too, my favorite one to look at was desolation boulevard because i liked steve priest's red hair and i remember trying to figure out who was who, like who was the main singer and everything. i never knew much about them back then but i was so addicted to their music. i was posting them here for a while a couple years ago when i decided to learn more about them. they'll always be one of my favorite bands ever.

[lyricallymnded]

fox on the run // sweet

[scotianostra]

Brian Connolly, lead singer with glam rock band The Sweet was born on October 5th 1945 in Govanhill.

Usually my disclaimers about dates and birthplace are for more historical posts but sometimes they throw ones like this at me, so the dates are either 45 or 49, some sources say he was born in Govanhill others tell me 20 odd miles away in Hamilton.

His mother was a teenage waitress, Frances Connolly, who left him in a Glasgow hospital as an infant whilst he was possibly suffering from meningitis. The identity of his father was never made public he was in care until he was two, when he was fostered by Jim and Helen McManus of Blantyre, South Lanarkshire who already had three born-to children. Brian was given the name McManus which he used until he was 18, when he discovered that he was adopted and changed his surname to his mother´s, Connolly.

In a radio interview, Connolly reported that singing was a large part of growing up since there was no television, and that he was regularly called upon to sing for family and friends. Connolly has credited the Everly Brothers as being his earliest musical influence.

At the age of twelve the family moved to Harefield, Greater London, where he attended the local Secondary Modern school. In his mid-teens he joined the Merchant Navy.

On his discharge from the Merchant Navy in 1963 he returned to Harefield and played in a number of local bands, including Generation X, from mid-1965 until about October 1966. The group recorded four tracks but these were not commercially released. The lineup featured Connolly on vocals, Chris Eldridge and Lee Mordecai on guitars, Mark Conway (bass) and drummer Martin Lass. Connolly eventually replaced singer Ian Gillan (later of Deep Purple fame) in a band called Wainwright’s Gentlemen, which included drummer Mick Tucker. Tucker and Connolly left Wainwright’s Gentlemen in late 1967 and recruited guitarist Frank Torpey, and bassist Steve Priest, naming their new band The Sweetshop.

On the eve of releasing their debut single, Slow Motion, in July 1968, the band shortened their name to The Sweet. They recorded a further three unsuccessful singles; Andy Scott joined the line-up in late 1970, just before the release of their first hit single “Funny, Funny”

Their second single “Co Co” reached number 2 on the charts and they released the albums Gimmee Dat Ding, Sweet Fanny Adams and Desolation Boulevard followed.

The Sweet had 15 top 40 hits between 1971 and 1978, including the aptly named number one Blockbuster! As well as that The Sweet reached number one with various songs all over Europe, two number ones in Australia and a handful of hits in the U.S.

Connolly announced that he had left the group in 1979. He pursued a solo career to get into country music, released the album “Let’s Go”, which was only semi successful.

During January 1997 Connolly had another heart attack and he was hospitalised in Slough, he discharged himself after a week but was readmitted before the fortnight was up. This time there was little more that could be done. Connolly died late on the evening on 9 February 1997, from renal failure, liver failure and repeated heart attacks, attributed to his previous chronic alcoholism. Connolly was 51 years old.

A wee add on is  that numerous sources have asserted that he was a half-brother of the late Taggart actor Mark McManus I must admit I have said this in previous posts, but I did further research and this is not the case. The confusion lies in the fact that his foster brother was named Mark, but there was also a cousin named Mark McManus - who grew up to become the actor who played Taggart in the Glasgow television police detective series.

[rastronomicals]

10:01 PM EST November 25, 2024:

Sweet - "The Ballroom Blitz" From the album Desolation Boulevard (November 1974)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★

File under: Glam

[brianconnollyandsweet]

Cover and article from Beat Instrumental Sept. 1975

(transcript after the cut)

ANDY SCOTT’S SWEET SOUND SECRETS

Sweet have come a long way since the pop days. Now guitarist Andy Scott is getting acclaim, but how does he get his sound?

THINGS are changing fast for Sweet. If you’d stopped any likely looking music lover in the street a couple of years ago and asked him what he thought of the band, you’d have got one of two very distinct reactions. If your sample of the record buying public was young, the Sweet would have been one of his favourite pop groups. Had he been an older and perhaps more sophisticated music freak, then Sweet would have been a dirty word. In the pop business though leopards can and do change their spots. David Cassidy gains a sudden credibility, somebody else “sells out,” and Sweet have become a respectable band who at last are getting the recognition they deserve from musicians and the more discerning buyers alike.

Any band that gets in that position must be doing something right, and when the talk gets round to Sweet, what people discuss is their ability to make hit singles and a dynamic stage act that would make many a heavy band sit up and take notice.

Another facet of the band that’s just beginning to catch the light is the work of guitarist Andy Scott. Scott is the man who throws in those fast solos and power effects on stage, and who adds so much to the band as both songwriter and producer. We met him in the band’s London offices to discuss what it was that went into his playing that was earning him so much respect.

To start with, the main factor in his success is work and experience. Andy has been, as he put it, “slogging away from 1962 to 1970 when I first met Sweet and Chinn and Chapman.” It was that meeting that led Andy on a path that was to result in a lot of success and, at the same time, more than his fair share of frustrations.

The point simply is that his background had been playing the colleges in support bands and carving out a career as a rock guitarist. Now he found himself (happily) in a successful pop group and although enjoying it, he admits that there were frustrations in the period before the band broke away from Chinn and Chapman and launched their career on their own.

“I’d never known pop music like that, and I quite enjoyed it because it was a bit of a refreshing change. Still, we should have made our break at the end of ‘73, when we first broke with Chinn and Chapman. This has come a year a half too late.”

Germany

However, America still seems a long way off to Andy, whose first love is Germany where Sweet are regarded as being one of the biggest bands since the Beatles.

“It’s because of Germany that we’re still around, because it gave us a place to work and a base. The audiences over there are far less fickle, not like over here where one minute they’re screaming for us and then the next minute the Bay City Rollers ... I’m glad to be out of that scene!” In Germany (and, in fact, in Scandinavia as well) Sweet were accepted right from the start as a live hard-working band. The support they were given by the German and Continental public has enabled them to slog away till they reached their present position of near respectability.

Yet Andy is still not over-happy about the current state of their single hits in Britain. He is strongly self-critical of his own work.

“On Action the production is perfect but there’s still too much there. I believe in rawness, though not so much that you don’t do yourself any favours like we did with Desolation Boulevard. Singles have to be commercial and there’s no point releasing them if they’re not going to sell. That’s why Fox on the Run was purely and simply a pop single for the purpose of giving us a hit in Britain.”

Before the new Munich album is released here, though, there is a live album on its way. The reasoning behind that is simple. America doesn’t want the new studio album to be released in Britain until things are ready for the band in the States. That means that the new album will be held up until January next year. Hence the live album which will contain some material recorded in 1973.

The subject of live recordings gets us onto the topic of Sweet’s reputation as a superbly exciting live outfit. There’s a further addition to that as well, because it is through live work that Andy has built his reputation as a guitarist. In terms of equipment, we asked, what went into his extraordinary style?

“At the moment I’ve got several guitars. A Les Paul and a couple of Strats, a Gibson 335, and some French pickup model Gherson guitars that I got from Jeff Gardner at Davoli.” Had the interview taken place a month or so earlier, there would have been another Strat to add to Andy’s list but that, as he explained, was the victim of an attack of frustration. “There are some things that you can play on stage and some things that you can play at home that just don’t seem to come in the studio. I’d spent two hours trying to get twenty bars right in a studio when I just picked up the Strat and threw it. It fell to pieces and then I just picked up my Les Paul and did it straight off.”

The Les Paul in question is one of the flat bodied models which Andy has had fitted with a Bigsby tremolo. It’s a nice guitar, he admits, but sometimes he uses Strats and at other times the Ghersons. Scott’s sentiments about the Fenders echo the thoughts of many guitarists. “I sometimes use my Gibson 335 on stage because I can play really fast on that and more accurately too. The Strat, though, is a bastard to play but once you get used to it, it can make you a better guitarist. To get a Strat to feedback properly, though, is difficult. You really have to do something to it otherwise it just whistles. The main problem with that 335 of mine is that it’s really too fragile for me. I’ve tried rubbing it against my speaker cabs and the nut comes off or I lose a fret. With a Strat you can belt hell out of it and it’ll stand up to it.”

Sounds

Strats also mean different amplification according to Andy. Normally he uses HH for his Gibsons but to get the sound he wants out of the Strat he has been using Acoustic amps. The Acoustic in question is one of the lead models with built-in effects (he wasn’t sure of the exact model), equipped with a graphic equaliser. The HH amps are a set of combination amps (three IC 100′s in all) plus an HH top and a couple of 4 x 12′s.

It is here that we really begin to get into the realms of fantasy though, because Andy has gone into a lot of experimentation to get the sound he wants in terms of effects. Without breaching too much of his official secrets, we did learn some of his tricks. 

Up until recently, he has been using two synthesisers for stage use: an ARP Odyssey and a Davoli guitar synthesiser. Due to the drop-off in attack when there is no guitar playing, the ARP has gone by the board and Andy is now sticking to the Davoli to give some of his strange stage sounds, which include getting three-part harmonies going with himself.

Adding to the list of equipment behind his strange sound lies a Revox tape recorder with pre-recorded cellos and what have you, and two echo units: one a standard Watkins Copicat; the other an HH tape echo with a special head added on to the back of the unit to give a possible two second delay. “What you’ve got to do is just hit the notes at the right time,” he explained. “That way you can play along in harmony with yourself. The trouble is that at the moment the first repeat is very strong and then as more goes into the unit it begins to fade out and distort. What I’d like to do is feed the output of the echo into another amp to keep the repeat strong.”

Yet another of Scott’s tricks is to set the tremolos of his amps out of phase with each other so that he can make use of the effects. All these units are controlled from two boards which he has made. One of the pedals here also controls the Revox and yet another is an instant cut-out switch that leaves a tasty echo effect when it is hit.

Perhaps Scott’s weirdest machine is a heavily modified Gherson which he refers to as his Frankenstein guitar. The instrument has had various bits and pieces carved away from its guts and tiny smoke generators installed in their place. The result is quite literally a fire-breathing guitar! Andy has only to hit a button and smoke billows out of the head and out of a pipe at the bottom of Frankenstein. It’s not only smoke that comes out of this strange creature either, because, as Scott throws it in the air, fire billows out from it and it falls to the stage in a shower of sparks! Quite impressive, but costly, as Sweet are forced to carry around a load of spares needed to repair Frankenstein’s injuries. 

Scott’s stage sounds aren’t at all represented on Sweet’s singles, so a large proportion of the band’s record audiences may have little idea of what they sound like live. Perhaps the new album will give us a taste of what they can do. Certainly they could get America alight, but will they ever slay their British image of being just another pop band?