Jump, S/T (early '70s?)

This is one of those albums that winds up in the dollar bin because, in all honesty, ain't nobody want to buy an album with a big old shoe on the cover.

BUT WAIT A MOMENT MY CHILD, WHAT'S THIS???

Why, it's the four disembodied heads of  "Jump", flying out of the shoe on a rainbow!

This catastrophic design decision is probably the reason why an allmusic.com search for Jump contains no mention of this band whatsoever (and instead reads like a team of brain-stormers with lexical constipation were trying to come up with the name for a Christian music aerobics festival).

My initial guess was the the long-hair rockers from Jump never saw this cover until it was too late, and that shortly after they emerged stinking from the studio, someone in the Janus label art department was sent home bloody-faced and weeping to their family. But then I noticed a detail in this posse shot:

Jump: just a fun bunch of guys.

LOOK CLOSER AT THE FEETS

Digitally enhanced image.

Yep, I do believe that's lead guitarist Dennis Tracy sporting the ever-so-distinctive shoe from the cover, and its twin. I think "Jump" were doomed from the first - just imagine if the cover for "Appetite for Destruction" featured Axl Rose's head flying out of one of his nasty old Chuck Taylors and ask yourself whether you'd know the name "Guns'n'Roses" today.

(You would not).

As this is ostensibly a music blog and not a dang old design blog, I should point out that the quality of music on this LP is far better than that ghastly glam-rock-looking foot apparatus would suggest - my fave on here is "Bank of Love", which is about one time when a lowly teller from the Bank of  Love decided to rob the Bank of Love (OMG alert!)

Jump - Bank of Love by doggziller

Hard Stuff, "Bulletproof" (1972)

I was thinking about writing up an '80s slow jam today when I glanced down and noticed the hairs on my fore-arm quivering as they slowly retracted into their follicles at glacial speeds... this little understood depilatory effect is thought to be a consequence of listening to too much music like this. If unchecked it can leave a man completely smooth and shiny with all of his hair pointing inwards, curling into fanciful shapes such as love-hearts or stylized flamingos and saxophones.

The most effective antidote is tough 70s rock, so, time for some of that.

Hard Stuff - Time Gambler by doggziller

Hard Stuff were refugees from Atomic Rooster and Quatermass who fled those bands' increasingly fruity prog inclinations to devote themselves to strictly the whiskey-gargling real deal. The album title "Bulletproof" is a reference to their earlier band name, "Bullet", which they abandoned under threat of litigation from an American band of the same name. Prior to that they were also called "Daemon" for a while, which leads me to conjecture that they ultimately settled with the questionable though evocative name "Hard Stuff" out of exasperation.

Smith "A Group Called Smith" (1969)

Okay so the simple reason why I'm posting this track today is because it is hot as shit - tough drums, heavy bass, burbling Hammond, wailing fuzz guitar, and a woman yelling that she wants to sex you, while four stern men emerge from shack and silently observe.

Basically everything I hope for in rock music from this era.

Smith - I Just Wanna Make Love To You

BONUS JOINT: Etta James' version set to a photo montage of the bloke from "Draculas" and "Draculas 2: Oh No, Werewolves" - strickly 4 the ladiez / homo draculas.