The Giant Panther

I don't know why I'm filing this one under Guilty Pleasures because I don't feel guilty. Most people know Magic Carpet Ride or Born To Be Wild and that is the extent of their Steppenwolf education. Too bad for them. I had these 45's when I was a kid, make no mistake, but Steppenwolf was a great band and one of Canada's finest rock exports. Formed in 1967, this band sold over 25 million records. Sounds like nothing next to sales of say, U2, but in those days people didn't buy records, they bought singles. The Beatles and The Stones might have sold actual albums, but after that not too many bands were selling a lot of albums. Album Oriented Rock (AOR) radio was just getting started. Before that all you got was the 45 rpm single with an "A" side and "B" side.

One of my very first singles was The Box Tops version of Wayne Carson Thompson's The Letter. The "B" side, Happy Times, I couldn't tell you a thing about. Sometimes the "B" song was terrible. Another early single in my collection was The Rolling Stones' Honky Tonk Woman. The "B" side was "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Wow. Now there's a double whammy for your 99 cents or whatever I paid in 1969. Still other singles, like The Shocking Blue's "Venus" has an obscure "B" side like "Hot Sand." Hot Sand was a great track I still love to this day, but nobody I know has ever heard of it. As much as I loved Venus, I never came anywhere close to buying the whole album. It just wasn't done in those days. Today you have iPod Nation focusing on singles and mixed track play lists. It's really the same thing except we had crappy portable Close and Play turntables for our 45's. I may have mentioned in this space in the past that I held a yard sale and dumped all my Beatles 45's for pennies so I could buy bubblegum and baseball cards. Fool. Anyway...

Steppenwolf had several radio friendly hits besides the two mentioned above like Rock Me, but they were a blues band first and foremost in my opinion. Anybody who has heard their cover of Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher" from their first album and made famous by its inclusion on The Easy Rider Soundtrack knows what I'm talking about. What's ironic about this band is that they basically were given credit for coining the phrase "Heavy Metal" as it was used in the song "Born To Be Wild" to describe a Motorcycle's noise quotient. They were too heavy for the AM radio dial where they first made their bones, but they were not heavy metal. I could go on and on about why I loved this band or which songs were my favorites, but from 1968-1976 Steppenwolf was one of the biggest names in rock. Motorcycle clubs still gravitate to their music to this day. The record I'm taking the song I'm posting from is called Steppenwolf The Second. People will probably laugh and The Giant Panther will have yet another chuckle at my old wrinkly expense, but there isn't a bad cut on this record (nor the first record for that matter). I'm leaving you with one of my all time favorite Steppenwolf tracks called Don't Step On The Grass Sam. It's essentially a call for the legalization of marijuana, but it's more about telling the government to find more important things to worry about. It's got some great imagery and sound effects and it's bluesy as all get out. Truly a guilty pleasure as defined by me. Happy Memorial Day to everyone. This one's for the Veterans of the 60's. THANK YOU!