rock songs I loved before my taste formed (1 of ??)

Which doesn't mean things I'm embarrassed about - not at all... just things that caught my ear before I was seriously following pop 'n' rock... not formative loves but pre-formative loves, maybe

This one, for instance, still sounds amazing to me

The dazzle of the sound enacts the title. It's like the "Digital Love' of its time, but without any irony, or nostalgia. Everything phased 'n' philtered, even the vocal (which is apparently why "wrapped up like a deuce" is heard by everyone as "wrapped up like a douche")

That Moog tremolo-ing a rocket streak up into the sky  - might that have been a formative electronic-thrill for young me?  A very different  deployment of Moog to, say, "I Feel Love" from that same year - much more rock, flashy rather than mechanistic-futuristic.

The face and look of the singer makes it all even more perfect.

The lines that leap out to me now - more than the "douche"  or the calliope crashing to the ground -  are:

"She said, 'I'll turn you on sonny to something strong / Play the song with the funky break'"

Written in '73, or even '72, by Springsteen - I'm surprised that the term "funky breaks" was in parlance then. 

(Update: another lyric I only just noticed - "Go-Kart Mozart" - clearly Lawrence of Felt / Denim was a fan of this single, or dug the echt-70sness of it).

Those lyrics felt like a frothing fountain of imagistic frolic to me then - and still override any kind of sequential mental picturing that would form them into a scenario / mise en scene / storyline. The language-romp approaches peak-Costello self-enraptured wordplay levels - the lyrics just become another element of the totality's shimmer-dazzle.

A classic example of radio rock - live-rocking energy, fed through a ton of production, oriented around HOOKS. 

It works through what I call asignifying craft  - tension and release, build up and breakdown - such that the single is ultimately "about" nothing but its own splendor, the structural thrill-ride of its movement through time. 

The full track / album version -  at once more epic in its extended form - yet slightly less majestic,  through being less concentrated. 

You know what, I am not sure I have ever listened to the Brooce original before 

'S okay...  lollops along amiably... somewhere between Dylan and KC & the Sunshine Band!

Utterly eclipsed by the cover version.

I have been meaning to check out the album discography of Manfred Mann's Earth Band

Greil Marcus reps for the debut in the back bit of Stranded, says it's progressive rock redeemed by a sense of humour... (is this really what progressive rock lacks?  After all A/ there's a fair amount of goofy, whimsical, plain daft prog...  but equally B/ the solemnity is the point, surely. Would Magma be improved by gags?)  

Another renowned critic who's a fan of Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Kodwo Eshun!

The band took one of the more interesting career paths

As Manfred Mann - no Earth Band yet -  they were one of the massive UK Beat Group era hit-makers, smash after smash after smash....   

One of those archetypal-Sixties, Carnaby-Street type groops that have been evacuated from memory to very large extent - like the Dave Clark Five, or the Move.

They carried on having large hits right through psychedelia....

I do like these two, indeed have a tendency to annoy family members by breaking out into an Alan Partridge style version of  the "ha, ha, said the clown" chorus

"The Mighty Quinn" (another cover - Dylan this time) surely has some relation to the Anthony Quinn film in which he plays an Inuit. 

Original singer Paul Jones was such a star (and being well-spoken and articulate, a frequent figure on chat shows as Representative of the Young Generation) that he got the lead role in the dystopian pop-culture-gone-totalitarian movie Privilege. 

He also starred in this "experimental satire"

Arthur Brown appearance at 35 minutes in !

Then, sans Jones and sans his replacement, the disconcertingly named Mike D'Abo, they reinvent themselves as a progressive rock group, adding Earth Band to the end of the name - and in accordance with that moniker,  doing eco-themed concept albums like The Good Earth.

Holst and roll!

Finally Manfred Mann's Earth Band have One Last Huge Hit with "Blinded By the Light"  -  a smash on both sides of the Atlantic - and even bigger in the States, where it got to #1.

D'Abo postscript: Phil points out he wrote this song, aka the Office theme tune albeit in Rod Stewart's version. 

The physical resemblance between Paul Jones and Mike D'Abo was commented upon at the time. 

Both went to Oxbridge - but neither completed their studies. D'Abo came away with a "first class jazz collection" but no degree. 

Jones (as Phil points out) did this Sex Pistols cover