12/24/2022 0 Comments Son of cactus albumShortly afterwards Rusty Day was fired from the group. Or Another ,was the final nail in the original lineup's coffin with virtuoso guitarist Jim McCarty exiting the band shortly thereafter. Despite this and a lack of chart success the album produced several notable rockers including the strorming title track.It's interesting to note that the recording engineer on this album as well as the followup was none other ex South African Eddie Kramer (who engineered and co-produced among others Hendrix and Led Zeppelin).The band's third album Restrictions,released a mere eight months after One Way. Or Another capitalised on the success of the the debut album and relentless touring but there was already trouble in the Cactus camp mainly due to out-of-control egos and Day's excessive drug use (even by early 70's rock band standards). I'll be playing tracks from the band's four classic albums plus a couple of tunes from their comeback album "Cactus IV".Ĭactus hit the road in support of the album and soon it became apparent that here was a live band to reckon with the telepathic rhythm section of Appice and Bogert proved to be the perfect springboard for the searing hard blues rock guitar of McCarty and the wailing vocals of Rusty Day.After their first tour the word out among the ranks of the rock elite was 'don't follow this band on stage' - even the mighty Led Zeppelin were very cautious about playing on the same bill as Cactus. However it is said by many early 70's classic rock fans that the moniker 'hard rock' was invented for Cactus. This week's special is a band that many of you may never have heard of, since they didn't really stick around for too long. I hope that you enjoyed the Ozzy Osbourne Special on Thursday, his new album " Black Rain" is a bone crunching record and well worth getting if you are a hard rock and metal fan. Dilana van Vuuren, a Sef Efrikan nogal!! She is now resident in the States and has a new album coming out in the US summer and if her rock chops are anything to go by then it's seems a cert to be played on Rock of Ages. Marq, who knows rock music like the back of his hand (although he may suggest another body part) informed me that the multi-coloured haired and multi-pierced female singer who blew me away (and just about everyone else) with her voice is none other than. Too bad the illustrious members of Cactus would quickly lose interest in this band project and deliver increasingly mediocre efforts in the years that followed.Quite a reaction to my little Rock Star Supernova blog last week most notably from rocker and fellow Jack Daniels aficiando Marq Vas. And we digress - for the blistering closing duo of "Oleo" and "Feel So Good" (complete with bass and drum solo slots) easily certifies the Cactus LP as one of the best hard rock albums of the then brand-new decade, bar none. The already quasi-legendary Vanilla Fudge rhythm section of Bogert and Appice may have provided the backbone of the band's business cards, and soulful, ex- Amboy Duke Rusty Day brought the voice, but it was arguably former Detroit Wheels guitarist Jim McCarty who was the true star in the Cactus galaxy, spraying notes and shredding solos all over album highlights such as "You Can't Judge a Book By the Cover," "Let Me Swim," and, most notably, a manic, turbocharged version of "Parchman Farm." The fact that Cactus chose to tackle this classic blues song just a year after it'd been blasted into the fuzz-distortion stratosphere by Blue Cheer betrays - at best - a healthy competitive spirit within the early-'70s hard rock milieu, and at worst it suggests something of a mercenary nature to Cactus' motives, but that's an issue for the surviving bandmembers to duke it out over in the retirement home. Cactus may have never amounted to anything more than a half-hearted, last-minute improvised supergroup, but that don't mean their eponymous 1970 debut didn't rock like a mofo.
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