This is something of an oddity but yet is entirely consistent with Roy Wood’s oeuvre.

Very unMove-like and far too restrained for Wizzard – which he had formed at around the same time as this – it could still be an outtake from The Electric Light Orchestra, the band’s
eponymous first album, which did contain quite a lot of acoustic plucked strings in its arrangements.

This is perhaps the most abiding legacy of the Allman Brothers band, whose member, Gregg, died earlier this week.

I might have included it in this series before if it had not had the (mis)fortune to have become the theme tune to Top Gear. Still that’s not the Allmans’ fault and it was chosen long before the programme was hi-jacked by the play-to-the-lowest-common-denominator tendency.

Gregory LeNoir “Gregg” Allman: 8/12/1947- 27/5/2017. So it goes.

This almost forgotten song (it hardly gets any retrospective airplay) was oddly, given the perennial appeal of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, Wizzard’s only no 1 hit apart from See My Baby Jive.

In some senses it’s not strange that posterity has deemed this less memorable. It’s slower in tempo and arguably too long.

That siren sound announced the change from the Sweet’s previously bubble-gummy sound to something more hard-edged. It gave them their only UK no 1.

Surprisingly it wasn’t as big a hit in the US as the totally bland Little Willy had been.

A guitar heavy one from 1970.

Delaney and Bonnie – under whose name along with their friends – this song was released formed a rotating ensemble using many musicians among whom was Eric Clapton who features on this recording.

Following last week’s offering from Black Sabbath here’s a more famous Changes – the Bowie song, here taken from BBC sessions. To my mind there’s a lot more energy in this live version than the LP track.

A most un-Black Sabbath-like Black Sabbath song, I include this not only for the mellotron but the similarity of the piano chords to those in Birth by The Peddlers and Elton John’s Border Song.

I discovered two sad departures this week, both Peters, though one of them actually occurred in January.

Peter Skellern’s affection for the brass band sound made him stand out as a bit old fashioned in the early 1970s.

His biggest hit was You’re a Lady, no 3 in 1972.

I remembered his revival of Frank Noble’s song Love is the Sweetest Thing as being a bigger hit than in fact it was. It apparently only reached no 60. It has a brilliant lyric, though.

Peter Overend Watts was Mott the Hoople’s bass player and is seen quite prominently in this clip:-

Peter Skellern: 14/3/1947 – 17/2/2017. So it goes.

Peter Overend Watts: 13/5/1948-22/1/2017. So it goes.

As I mentioned last week DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman championed Emitt Rhodes (once of the Merry-Go-Round) when his first solo album came out in 1970, but that still didn’t make for much success in the UK.

On that self-titled LP there’s a strong feel of the Beatles feel to most of Rhodes’s songs, with a hint of Gerry Rafferty in the vocals.

Here are Live Till You Die and the more “pop”py Fresh as a Daisy.

I know I marked Greg Lake’s passing a fortnight ago but it is Christmas time and this is his best known song.

We need its sentiments this year more than for some in the recent past. (More than for in most of my lifetime.)