Bloodrock - Bloodrock

Artist: Bloodrock

Album: Bloodrock

Release: 1970

Genre: Psychedelic Rock

Bitrate: 256

File Size: 89.1MB

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Track List:



1. "Gotta Find a Way" – 6:34

2. "Castle of Thoughts" – 3:31

3. "Fatback" – 3:24

4. "Double Cross" – 5:19

5. "Timepiece" – 6:00

6. "Wicked Truth" – 4:48

7. "Gimmie Your Head" – 2:44

8. "Fantastic Piece of Architecture" – 8:49

9. "Melvin Laid an Egg" – 7:27

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Bloodrock is the self-titled debut from the Fort Worth, Texas hard rock band Bloodrock, released under Capitol Records in 1970. The cover art was designed by producer Terry Knight. The album is considered by some to be the band's most quintessential work.

The song "Gotta Find a Way" contains one of the earliest instances of hidden messages. Near the beginning of the song, the following message is played backwards, "Anyone who is stupid enough to play this record backwards deserves what he is about to hear," followed by an excerpt from the poem Jabberwocky.



The band was discovered in 1969 by Grand Funk Railroad record producer Terry Knight and signed to Capitol Records. Knight produced the first three, and most popular, Bloodrock albums. In fact, one gets the impression that Mr. Knight personally tuned the snare drum and decided on the stereo field and mix utilized because of the frequent similarity in sound with other bands produced by Knight, especially Grand Funk Railroad.



Bloodrock was best known for the song "D.O.A." (Dead On Arrival). D.O.A. was a graphic and mournful first person account of a mortally injured crash survivor and his dead girlfriend. Some think that the song refers to a car crash, and others think that the song refers to a plane crash. Both meanings are possible, because of nuances and phrasings in the lyrics, as well as the meaning of the lyrics themselves. The lyrics "we were flying along" may refer to kids joyriding because "flying low" is a metaphor for speeding. However given the era that the song was written in, and the popularity of drug use amongst rock musicians at that time, most people assumed the words "we were flying along and hit something in the air" refer to the car's occupants as being on drugs and barely aware of where they were and what happened to them. Another possibility is that the lyrics really mean, literally, flying in an airplane, presumably in the fog or bad weather or similar. Another lyric, "Then I looked straight at the attendant. His face is pale as it can be. He bends and whispers something softly. He says there's no chance for me." could refer to an ambulance attendant after a car crash, or a flight attendant after a plane crash. Only Bloodrock knows for sure. (Although there were very, very few male flight attendants in 1971 and they were still referred to as stewardesses at that time. The term "paramedics" was relatively unknown in 1971 and "attendant" was the most common noun applied to ambulance.)



This became their only hit single, reaching #36 on the music charts in January 1971. They were only marginally popular in the United States and were essentially a cult band, but reportedly became a favorite among troops in Vietnam.



The band was technically competent but offered little that was commercially viable and was unable to sustain any real success. The group was noted for occasionally over-mixed, often "fuzzy" distotred bass lines, unusual in bass-deficient recordings for the time, and a traditional and well done hard rock "B3" organ sound.



The early albums featured a heavy metal sound reminiscent of a few other hard rock bands at the time, such as Grand Funk Railroad. Some of the lyrics were unusually dark for the time, exploring such themes as alienation, death, and revenge. These lyrics are similar, but darker, to some lyrics in other songs of the time such as Spoonful by Cream, many Hendrix tunes, a few Grand Funk tunes such as Sin's A Good Man's Brother and Inside Looking Out. Many of the songs on Bloodrock 1, 2, 3 and Bloodrock USA are excellent rock tunes, and are largely underrated. The songs on their later albums are drastically different and seem to be from a completely different band who went from hard rock to attempts at an undefinable progressive stance. There is no comparison between early Bloodrock and later Bloodrock.



Before the late 1972 album Passage, their original lead vocalist (Jim Rutledge) and lead guitarist (Lee Pickens) had left and were replaced by vocalist Warren Ham (a born-again Christian who would later perform with Kerry Livgren's Christian rock band A.D. in the 1980s). Bloodrock took a major turn away from hard rock on the last two albums, turning toward progressive rock, pop, and jazz, reminiscent of such artists as Jethro Tull, Todd Rundgren, and Traffic. During live performances in the Warren Ham era, the band often refused to play their earlier songs with dark themes such as "Whiskey Vengeance" and "D.O.A.". Interestingly, though, the lyrics on the later albums often had leftist or even Marxist themes on songs like "The Power".



The 2000 CD release Triptych includes their last two albums (Passage & Whirlwind Tongues) plus an additional, previously unreleased album, Unspoken Words, recorded by the band in mid 1974 before their official breakup.



A reunion concert featuring five of the six original numbers (Jim Rutledge, Lee Pickens, Ed Grundy,Nick Taylor, *Chris Taylor (*in place of original drummer Rick Cobb III) was held on March 12, 2005 in Ft. Worth, for the benefit of their keyboardist Stevie Hill.

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