Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Headband, "The Laws Must Change" (1971) - EDIT


Okay well I guess I missed NZ Music Month 2011 (AKA "May") by about a hundred and thirty years, but I've had this one waiting in the wings for a while so I figured I better just fire it out there before New Zealand itself finally succumbs to entropy.

Headband were an Auckland-based group that basically started out as a John Mayall tribute band playing in a club down on Durham Lane where I think there is a noodle house now. Like many bands in the '70s, on their first album they found themselves trying to spread twenty minutes worth of songs over forty minutes worth of plastic. To their credit, rather than throwing a perfunctory ten minute drum solo into their least favourite song, they went back to their roots and jammed out a cover of John Mayall's ode to politely-achieved marijuana reform: "The Laws Must Change"

As a live recording, this has a lot more slap to it than everything else on the album and is considerably more energetic than the original (albeit sloppier I'll confess). I've edited out eleven minutes of soloing to get it down to just the "song part" and Dick Hopp's incredible flute solo. Enjoy.



Headband - The Laws Must Change (edit) by doggziller

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