CoronaVinyl Day 364 (D): Dr. Hook Live by Dr. Hook

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Today's CoronaVinyl category is "D," and I went with Dr. Hook's 1981 live album, the appropriately titled Dr. Hook Live (or, in the UK, Live in the UK).

Now you might be saying, "Hey there GMYH, now you just wait a darn second.  Shouldn't Dr. Hook be under 'H' and not 'D'?"  Well there, fair reader, you're right to question me, but like Pablo Cruise and Mr. Mister, Dr. Hook is just the name of a band, and not a person's name.

Dr. Hook was originally called Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show, and they formed in New Jersey the late '60s, putting out their debut album in 1972 and releasing eleven studio albums in total between 1972 and 1983.  In 1975, they shortened their name to Dr. Hook.

Though none of the band's albums charted higher than #41 on the Billboard album chart, they had ten Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including six Top 10 songs.  Their music spanned a lot of genres, as they started out as more of a folk rock, blues rock, and country rock band, and then changed in the late '70s towards more of a soft rock sound.  Early on in their career, the band had a relationship with famed author Shel Silverstein, who was also a pretty damn good songwriter, and he wrote the band's first two albums, which included their first two Top 10 hits, "Sylvia's Mother" (#5) and "The Cover of Rolling Stone" (#6).

The latter was written satirically about how the band hadn't been on the cover of Rolling Stone.  The band's producer told Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner about the song, and Wenner then sent a 16-year-old Cameron Crowe to interview Dr. Hook, who appeared as caricatures on a March 1973 issue of Rolling Stone.  Crowe, of course, would go on to be a celebrated screenwriter and director, and the wonderful 2000 film Almost Famous is based on his experiences as a teenage journalist for Rolling Stone.  The movie features the fake band Stillwater joyously singing "The Cover of Rolling Stone" when the Crowe-based character William Miller tells the band they're going to be on the next cover of Rolling Stone.

Anyway, in the late '70s, as I mentioned above, the band's sound turned more to soft rock, and they still had success with songs like 1978's "Sharing the Night Together" (#6), 1979's disco soul song "When You're In Love With a Beautiful Woman" (#6), and 1980's yacht rocky "Sexy Eyes" (#5).

The live album, released in 1981, has many of their big hits, and it's generally enjoyable, although there are a few moments of self-indulgence, as rock bands are wont to employ in concert.  It's not available on Spotify, and I couldn't find it on YouTube, so I'm just embedding a greatest hits album.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "The Cover of Rolling Stone"
This is a great song, and I love Almost Famous, so it reminds me of that.  To quote Jeff Bebe, they don't put just any band on the cover of Rolling Stone fucking magazine.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "I Got Stoned and I Missed It"
Another Silverstein-penned tongue-in-cheek song, this one is a country folk song that we can all relate to.