Oh, yeah, yeah, there’s one. But otherwise, we’re solid…

I really enjoyed your 1971 Nuggets article [MOJO 339] and it certainly stirred some ghosts. I pored over many of those album sleeves in record shops weighing up whether to make a purchase. It also reminded me just how narrow the opportunity to hear new music was in 1971. It was either through the evening programmes on Radio 1, or you borrowed records from one of your mates. And if it hadn’t been on the radio, your mates probably didn’t have it anyway. The only other way was to take a chance based on a favourable review in one of the weekly magazines, a high-risk strategy as I recall. Anyway, off to investigate all that I missed the first time round. …In the summer of 1971 I was a long-haired 16-year-old lad with dodgy flares and bad acne, on holiday at my granny’s house in Coatbridge when Top Of The Pops came on the TV and Buffy Sainte-Marie appeared singing Soldier Blue. I was blown away and the next day I hopped on a Baxter’s bus to Airdrie, ran into John Menzies and snapped up this recentlyreleased LP. Excitedly I played it but winced when I heard the f-word. My shocked granny advised me to take it back to the shop, bless her, but that didn’t happen. One of the first albums I bought and it still plays frequently on my turntable. Consider yourselves admonished for not mentioning this classic piece of vinyl in your ace 1971 Nuggets piece. …Led Zeppelin weren’t the only band to release an untitled fourth LP in 1971. Slightly less celebrated is the fourth and final album by Worcester, Massachusetts soft-rockers Orpheus – in fact, I seem to be the only person who likes it. I gather they were initially part of an over-hyped “Bosstown Sound” movement (circa 1968) which may have raised suspicions at the time. For their fourth LP, Orpheus were down to a duo of founder member Bruce Arnold plus newcomer Steve Martin (disappointingly neither the Steve Martin from The Left Banke nor the future Hollywood comedian and sometime bluegrass guitarist). The great Bernard Purdie guests on drums. Martin seems to have staged something of a coup, but the LP didn’t sell and Orpheus broke up soon after.

Pete Rae, via e-mail