"Sure The Boy Was Green" Horslips (1977)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!,

Today, I thought I'd dig up something from an Irish rock band just about most rock fans in the US have never heard of. But in the pantheon of '70s Irish rock, if Thin Lizzy was on top, then Horslips were in a sound second place.

Horslips (yeah, weird name I know. According to Wikipedia, the name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse"), while huge in Ireland, were criminally overlooked in America. They only had one LP released in the US in 1977 called Aliens. 

Aliens came right on the heels of Thin Lizzy's 1976 album Jailbreak album, which went multi-platinum (I'm sensing somebody thought with the Thin Lizzy craze that Irish rock was The Next Big Thing) and while Aliens was Horslips most accessible album commercially, it was largely unheard of in the US. "Sure The Boy Was Green" was the only single from it.

Horslips disbanded in 1980.

"A Message To Khomeini" Roger Hallmark & The Thrasher Brothers (1979)

In the diplomatic faux pas of the last week, I was reminded of this little gem from the days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

You'd swear it was the same people who signed off on this letter who came up with this tune.

Eric Crapton?

South Korean pressing (Creato Records, 1980)

Apparently, this is a pirated copy.....

This wouldn't be Mr. Clapton's only problem album in South Korea....

The Hollywood Palace starring Diana Ross & The Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr. and The Jackson Five (1969)

Let's drop everything and go back to 1969. This is an episode of The Hollywood Palace, a popular TV variety show in the 1960s. This originally broadcast on October 18, 1969 and starred Diana Ross & The Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr. and The Jackson Five. It's also complete with original commercials!

More episodes of The Hollywood Palace and more great Classic TV can be found at Internet Archive

Japanese 8-Track Tapes

If there was one place on earth you probably never thought you would ever see the 8-Track tape, it's Japan.

What would a country as technologically advanced as Japan even do with this clunky, inefficient American import? Cassette tapes were dominant in Japan for pop music recordings long before America seriously caught on in the 1980s.

I'm not sure when these were released, but I'm guessing somewhere in the mid 1970s, yet there is literally nothing on Japanese 8-Tracks anywhere online. But when I found these at Goodwill today, I had to pounce on them. Not a bad deal either - 40 cents for all four of them.

I don't have an 8-Track player, but I'm not ruling out getting one, just out of curiosity of hearing what these sound like.