Ten Wheel Drive: Eye of the Needle
[purchase]
I was busy discovering Germany during Discoveries Week and could have posted every day with ideas that came to me. This is my first Leftovers Week, too, and I can definitely see the attraction – it's pretty much guaranteed that I can match cool song to cool topic. And this song is especially cool.
I was lucky growing up with older siblings and cousins with pretty good taste. This song was hammered into my head at the tender age of 14 by my older cousin Carl, who was only in high school himself (he also introduced me to Tommy round about this time). Ten Wheel Drive was a late 60's jazz-rock group in the vein of early Blood Sweat and Tears, and with an utterly fabulous Joplin-esque vocalist—Genya Ravan. This group should've been bigger than it was, to be honest. It took several years before I got hold of a used LP of Construction #1 and managed to make a cassette tape with this wonderful song. Sadly, it went the way of most cassette tapes of the day, wrapped around the spindle, mutilated and unlistenable.
It took about 30 years for me to come across it once more. So I'm especially pleased to be able to share it with you.