Bloodrock: Here and gone like a comet in the sky

1972: Cobb, Hill, Taylor in front; Pickens, Rutledge, Grundy in back

Have you ever seen a shooting star? Look at that picture at the top of this page. That's a photo of a shooting star.

Bloodrock appeared in early 1970 with a debut album that became iconic among hard-rocking high-school kids. They issued three more successful albums and had a Top 40 single by the end of the following year. And then, just like that, by summer 1972, poof, Bloodrock was gone, kaput, vanished, retreated back to the obscurity from whence they came.

Some things about 'D.O.A.' just can't be explained

1970: Grundy, Pickens, Hill in back; Taylor, Rutledge, Cobb in front

Kind of a funny thing happened the other day when I was preparing to write a piece about the weird song that made Bloodrock a one-hit wonder.

I had my Pandora shuffle station going for awhile when "D.O.A." suddenly appeared. It was the first time in awhile that I had heard that song, and it got me to reminiscing. Bloodrock when I was in high school a half-century ago had become the one band not called The Doors that I most obsessed over. These guys from Forth Worth, TX, knocked out four really good hard-rock albums in 1970 and 1971, and I got down with them a lot on the air guitar I had secretly stashed in my bedroom.