Original zine introduction:
"It actually started with a 1986 cover article in BAM music magazine, ‘THE 70’S: In Search Of The Lost Decade’ and it was offered as, more or less, irony….nostalgic irony to the irony obsessed. For the layman, it was re-evaluating the past, the past in question that most everybody was trying to understand from a safe distance to protect their self-consciousness. For the even less obsessed or the ‘could not care less’ mob, it was a certain level of fun in looking back on what we survived and see how far we came enough to understand and tolerate those 10 years of god knows what.
The article in question was using the decade’s music as a compass to a pop culture map on what has survived as if it was to teach us through the past to learn about the future….minus the future part. (help those irony obsessed if they ever found out about that Steely Dan reunion five years after the publication of that article)
Me? I’ve been ruminating about this musical “past” for some time and the article jump started my lazy ass to get moving on what would turn out to be the biggest mix tape project I ever attempted: a multi tape collection of my time in the 70’s called The Lost Decade. So mindlessly big that it barely survived the format changes from tape to CDR to digital. I still got the scares from the last turn over.
A small warning: as I was not into many fads from this era, disco was the closest I came to being “hep” and THAT was even more questionable. When I first heard it, I was afraid it as I though it all came from porn films and Playboy magazine; I suspect some smart-ass relative or classmate fed me that line and got me all worked up over that urban legend. Once that fake paranoia wore off and just before puberty kicked in (hmmm…maybe it was all true after all), I was listening to it like everybody else, though I was too much of a road weary social nerd to wear and dance the part like the “normal” popular kids (a.k.a. the dancin’ fools Frank Zappa once sang out).
This random set of LP/CD/albums you’re about to read are just some of titles I grew up with or ones I would later bump into, all mixed in to get all of this mess out of my system and on to paper and NOW on the web.
Enjoy the whiplash and c-ya in the 80’s!
Don-O"
The Endless Summer Soundtrack by The Sandals
As I’m not planning a 60s music list anytime soon, I figured I might sneak in a little something from that era has carried over and survived the incoming decades intact, Bruce Brown’s classic surfing documentary Endless Summer. Call it what you will these days: horky, out-dated, sllllllightly un-PC, whatever, but there’s no doubt that there is a durable charm to this flick that has endured all these decades.
When I first saw this on one of channel 9’s movie matinees, I was drawn to its casual charm from Brown’s own narration, globetrotting, cast of characters to its music, mainly its theme; a calm yet thematic tone that takes its presents known almost through the film, from the orchestra/big band/MOR arrangement to the original surf combo where the tune came from, The Sandals.
From that point on, it would become a personal main event whenever it popped up on local TV, revisiting the early days of Brown and his buddies traveling around and to have the theme imbedded into my head for the next few days. Even though the uniqueness of this ‘event’ is spoiled a bit with the current state of the media going far beyond the omnipresent level, it’s still a special event whenever I pop the DVD in the player.
It wasn’t until the early 90’s when I found and bought the actual soundtrack on vinyl. Hell, I didn’t know it existed in the first place!! It’s basically twelve tracks of film’s surf instrumentals. It might not have all the BGM, but it still packs the casual from the movie in spades….and the theme music can be easily revisited on my stereo and MP3 player whenever I want it, without the wait between showings of yore.
Now this was the first record I do remember by name! El Monte, CA, 1973, Clemens School. My homeroom teacher use to have little activities and distractions to tie us brats over between lessons and before our regular classes and one of them was a turntable with some records on the side. I don’t remember exactly what the choices were, I do know there was one by The Carpenters and this Moog record from the Walter (now Wendy) Carlos.
What made me return to this sucker over and over was that it sounded goofy and interesting. It had nothing to do with being a snob as I was too young to have ANY opinion about anything except for my Peanuts obsession. It was just interesting. Thanks to a severe lack of musical knowledge, I didn’t know Carlos was covering a part of the Nutcracker Suite, the Beatles and Burt Bacharach (a real hyper cover of What’s New Pussycat?), doing a nutty arrangement of Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstances called Pompous Circumstances and a few original numbers, it all just blended together from one end of the record to another.
It is too bad that Ms. Carlos is spending these days suing many people to uphold her reputation these days than actually creating new music, much less upholding her musical catalog.
By Request
by Wendy Carlos
Harold & Maude
soundtrack
I might have been too young when I first saw this movie at the age of 8, or maybe not as I suspect I was also too young to have any deep enough sense of subconscious to be seriously emotionally affected by it. I do remember I was first impressed by three things; the beautiful Bay Area scenery, many of Harold’s funny suicide pranks and the songs of Cat Stevens. Adding to the fact that all but one song wasn’t available on any album or single, it just added to the mystic of the whole package.
Steven’s light but deep songs provided a good representation to the sounds of the early part of the decade, right up there with Gordon Lightfoot..and you’ll read more on him later. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that writer/director Carmon Crow commercially released the soundtrack with bonus tracks and extensive liner note. Unfortunately, ‘commercial’ may not be a good word for it as he only released on vinyl in a limited run and a copy is currently going for a few hundred dollars. I'm afraid that a 2021 Record Store Day edition will be the same fate.....damnit!
Jungle Book soundtrack
I have absolutely zero knowledge of this record; how it originally landed into my hands, where it came from and/nor remember whither I saw the damned movie or not. The only piece of god knows what I have on this one was it planted the seed of my OCD record listening habit; first, I’d played a record, then my ears would pick up on a favorite track and I proceeded to play the crap out that track until the vinyl groove curled away like apple skin. Just ask my sister….
It was on the day of the 4000th play of the track ‘The Bear Necessities’ that my sister got her revenge. She got me excited over something and told me it was in the other room and while I was looking for that ‘something’, she took a bobby pin and proceeded to scratch the record like a brillo pad. When I came out, she told me that she JUST discovered an additional grove in the record! I cried, she laughed and that was that….until a few years later when I was able to buy my own sides and “borrowed” my brother’s player and the OCD crap started all over again.
Years later, I finally saw the movie in Bakersfield and it was okay. Eons later, I discovered that this particular track was arranged by Van Dyke Parks, which unknowingly lead to many of his solo records crawling into my record collection….or maybe it’s the other way around. Aw, screw it, the damage is done. Not need to be OCD about this, too….
The Electric Company
soundtrack
There’s not much pop culture from my early days that I look back with fondness…well, stuff that was aimed AT me like Saturday morning cartoons, that is. I look back on some of that stuff on YouTube and Boomerang and it doesn’t hold anymore, not even for nostalgic reasons.
A small fraction of that kiddie phase I can still tolerate includes The Electric Company, Sesame Street’s answer to grammar education. Yup, it was educational programming, but it was also fun and funny. I recently got a copy of the DVD box set and had quite a giddy good old time.
After two albums through Disneyland Records, Warner Bros. took over and release a fully realized set that included actual songs and cast members from the TV show! A major bonus!
Much like The Electric Company, this animated TV show still resonates with me, though not as much in comparison, but then pretty much anything produced by Hanna-Barbara usually falls apart in the long run. My cynical side of my brain continues to boast that Daria and Beavis & Butthead will have longer shelf life than a large chunk of their catalog. From this point on, you’ll have to go to my unfinished Josie web site, ‘Jozine’ to get my connection with this series and, more so, the comic book that started it all!
It wasn’t until the early 80’s that I discovered that there was actually an album of tunes from the show and I managed to get the single ‘I Just Wanna Make You Happy’ from an action in Goldmine magazine. There was much rejoicing and happy dancing. The record was simple, happy with no pretense and unlike many of those TV show tunes, it wasn’t too sappy. It only got better when one of the readers of my old Jozine sent me the album on tape in the early 90’s…it was more of the same, they even covered ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You’! This album was a prime example of the ‘bubble gum’ era that briefly flourished in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I preferred these Cats over the Partridge Family and their ilk anytime.
In 2001, Rhino Records, through their specialty internet-only label Handmade, released ‘Stop Look & Listen: The Complete Capitol Records Recordings’. It was not only the original ‘Josie’ album that was getting the digital treatment, but a slew of alternative mixes, bonus tracks and unreleased material. You can easily imagine the near euphoria when I suddenly felt when I first read the announcement and my nerves burning raw from waiting for the damned thing to arrive in my mailbox and CD player! I play this CD more often than the DVD of the show, but that’s okay with me, you have to take the questionable with the good.
(PS: dispute the title, this set is not THAT complete as the track ‘Clock On The Wall’ is not found anywhere here! Hey, I’m just glad the damned thing was released!!)
Josie &
The Pussycats
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This might be stretching, but I personally feel that you can’t get more into the 70’s vibe o’ the Christmas holidays than the standards being played on old outdated analog equipment from the 70’s and the relic of choice here is Mattel’s answer to the Moog, the Optigan. Instead of circuits, the Optigan uses flexi records of pre-recorded sound.
This might sound clunky in the worse analog way (as this instrument was known for), but Johnny Largo and his flexible fingers manages to handle this friendly beast and pulls off a fine smooth instrumental performances with a few interesting arrangements to boot: I’ll Be Home For Christmas has an exotica feel (thanks to the bird calls in the rhythm section disc), What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? In a cha-cha mode and the Medley track is delivered as a march.
A curious side note is the way this was recorded; the left channel has the rhythm section and the right is the keyboard so you get to hear how the Optigan operated, scratches and all! This 1974 promotional record is so steeped of the times that George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord is covered.
THE JOYUS SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS by Johnny Largo at the Optigan
Live At The Whitney by Duke Ellington
This was Duke Ellington’s third and last solo piano performance, but, luckily, someone had a tape machine and preserved it. Usually, Duke didn’t stray from his full-time big band orchestra, which had served as his instrument and shied away from the spotlight. Yet, on the night of April 10, 1972 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, he made a rare exception as part of a public series of composers playing and talking about their music.
With this setting, Duke lets his music do talking as he plays through his extensive catalog like Sophisticated Lady, Mood Indigo, Satin Doll, and Black & Tan Fantasy. He does step out from behind the keyboard a bit to play around with the audience for a couple of numbers; a sing along to I’m Beginning To See The Light and some finger snapping with Dancers In Love.
I have a few of Duke’s works in my collection but this is the most intimate recording I’ve heard of all, of Duke and otherwise. Nothing fancy, just a one on one with the reclusive Duke and his keys. He really doesn’t have to say much, just press play and hear the fingers do their job.
FM & AM by
George Carlin
As with all my brother’s Cheech & Chong records, a bulk of the material here flew over my underaged head, but not as much compared to my first encounter with the Firesign Theatre as they were four creative smart-asses in a recording studio with a multi-track tape recorder while this title only had a mike and an audience.
This was one comedy LP where I understood and laughed at 75% of the time. This set rolled out sharp yet whimsical jabs at daytime television, Ed Sullivan and TV news where he rolls out Al Sleet the Hippy Dippy Weatherman for the final time (the AM side) and digs a little deeper on drugs dependency in mainstream America, abortion pills and people who have trouble with the word ‘shit’ (FM side).
Before all the crap from his 7 Dirty Words piece in the next LP would hit the fan, I got more than the joke in the opening lines to the ‘shit’ track called ‘Shoot’: “I got fired last year from the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas for saying shit, where the big game is called crap”, and later in this same piece, “Sometimes they say ‘shoot’. They can’t kid me, man. Shoot is shit with two ‘o’s.” Nope, ya don’t learn important life lessons like that in school.
Big Bambu & Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album by Cheech & Chong
….and while we’re on the subject….
So what were the parts of Cheech & Chong I didn’t understand in those days? The drugs! I didn’t take them, nor did my brother (I think). However, C & C’s humor was so basic that the drug references never got in the way much, only adding the bumbling swagger to their whole package. The Big Bambu and this side were the two big records my brother and I played and remembered often.
The Bambu might have the classic earsplitting Sister Mary Elephant (I dare you to blast this on your speakers! Your neighbors will think there’s a drug bust going on), but the Wedding Album noses out thanks to the much louder chaotic Earache My Eye and a few more stand out tracks like The Other Tapes, Wake Up America and Hey Margaret, the character in the later track sounds like piano playing dog Ralph from the Muppets if they served stronger hooch at the bar.
Car Wash soundtrack
I remember the ordeal seeing the movie. I was still living in Roy, Utah and, thanks to the state’s conservative climate, you have to go to selected theaters in larger urban areas to see R-rated movies…and, as Roy was pretty small, we had to drive over 90 minutes to accomplish this task. The main reason we went the distance was that it had George Carlin and Richard Pryor and it was my brother’s movie selection for that month.
Outside of Carlin and Pryor, what I remembered most about this was its self-titled hit single and the funky score, provided by Norman Whitfield, who produced many of The Temptation hits from the early 70’s. When I moved to the urbanopolis called the San Fernando Valley in 1978, it was one of four records I got as a birthday present.
I instantly knew it was going to be one funky 2-record set; a ton of instrumentals, a couple of songs from Rose Royce, whom provided the two hit singles and a audio track from that movie featuring Pryor as a flamboyant preacher stopping by the car wash and getting into a fight with a skeptical employee.
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC & THE BROWN DIRT COWBOY & GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD by Elton John
You really can’t have a good 70’s pop music list without the two words Elton and John in it and this sucker is no different! My first real Sir John exposure with the audiobio title Capt. Fantastic as, well….my brother talked me into pooling our allowance together so he can get this LP package…literally, as it had a poster and two 20 page booklets stuffed inside. Background aside, tracks like Better Off Dead, Writing and the title were great pop titles that didn’t come off too pretentious.
The bigger slice of the Elton pie was the 2 LP ‘Yellow Brick Road! Any set that starts off with a 10 minute piece called Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding is a warning shoot of the elaborate trip you’re going to take with Elton! Ballads like Harmony, finger poppin’ Bennie & The Jets, moody I’ve Seen That Movie, Too…this title kept me busy for years! Honorable mention: 1976’s Rock Of The Westies.
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I picked this up in the early 90’s when I was finally catching up with Waits extensive catalog. It’s the 2 LP live set that was recorded in the midst of his beatnik days. It’s a very good set with Tom storytelling capacity in full, though there are parts where he dose stretch it a little too thin and I usually start to doze off a bit, mainly with Putnam County and Big Joe And Phantom 309. Emotional Weather Report is a great opener that actually references L.A.’s old TV weatherman Dr. George Fishback….any of you old bastards remember THAT S.O.B.?!
I like to fantasize that he’s performing this at a Vegas lounge, which is not surprising as he visited this motif during his concert movie, Big Time, a movie that’s LONG overdue for an official DVD reissue.
Nighthawks At The Dinner by
Tom Waits
Where was all of this coming from? What was behind it? Who the hell IS this guy?! These were the questions that was bouncing around my little head whenever anything by Burt Bacharach popped up….and it didn’t matter where it was coming from; the man and his music was everywhere; radio stations, elevators, offices, shopping malls, television, Disneyland. It was the early 70’s and that man’s music, well as Hal David’s lyrics, were pouring through ears like Niagara Falls….they even sneaked into a couple of Monty Python’s Flying Circus episodes!
This infiltration wasn’t so bad, it depended on who was covering Burt; there was the good, Dionne Warwick obviously topped this list, and a lot of the bad, and that was largely done by anyone who watered down Bacharach complex yet charming arrangements. It’s little wonder that he and David quickly began to produce their own material out of self-defense.
It wasn’t until a visit to Tower Records in Westwood in the early 90’s when this CD was played that all those answers finally filled my head. About half way through the CD, a wave of 1970’s warmth and joy overcame me and I became one of the many who helped revive Bacharach’s career by buying up and hoarding many of his solo albums like discovering a very bad drug habit. There have been many compilations of his man’s solo recordings for A&M Records since this first one from 1974 came out and if you’re feeling brave, REALLY brave!, hunt down the 5-CD set, Something Big: The Complete A&M Years (And More). Sniff sniff, the sweet smell of musical crack!!
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Burt Bacharach's Greatest Hits
Monty Python's Previous Album by.....
Out of all the audio Python output, the Previous LP is a much fuller production. It has its share of their greatest hits like the other titles, but the production and assembly is much more through and deeper density, as if they actually took their time putting everything together.
There’s also a bigger mass of original material to be found here as well, there’s a Python take of a Fractured Fairy Tale in the fine tradition of Jay Ward and a hyperactive Wonder World Of Sound that spills all over your speakers (or headphones). It would soon after their next LP, the Holy Grail soundtrack that the production quality would go downhill as if these records would soon become an afterthought.
WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN or SOMEONE LIKES HIM and EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG by The Firesign Theatre
This was the LP that exposed me to this multi-layered comedy troupe. Making this even more surreal was that I was not in the position to “get” anything of this group and their complex material as I was 8 years old at the time and too young to understand 94% of the jokes, but I heard this through my sister, who didn’t understand 98% of this same set. I think she got this through one of her friends who was more into recreational drugs than she was.
Broadsided material aside, I did like this record a lot because of the other 6% that I did understand, the unique voices and characters that sounded right out Looney Tunes and the old radio style of it. I liked it so much that I tried to steal it when my brother and I had to leave mom to live with our dad, only to have my sister snatch it from my hands from the back seat from the car at the last possible minute. It’s would be ten years until I would see and hear that album again only with more mature ears.
It would be until the 80’s before I began to catch up on The Firesign Theater and this was the second title I got. This maybe not as heavily complex as their earlier works but it’s still dense and just as goofy and funny, if not more!
The very basic plot starts off with a UFO investigator diving into your standard lists of current conspiracies that leads to a crater left behind by a meteor that leads to the center of the earth. Meanwhile, in a parody of Evil Kenevil, one Revis Kenivus attempts to jump into the crater with his rocket sneakers to reach Katmandu. Littered beneath this main vine of a plot are twisted sub-plots and parodies galore; Beer Wizz Beer, a travelogue film that ends with an UFO abduction, a educational film about our fore fathers taking drugs, a nudist trailer park, A Funny-Name Association, etc., etc.,
ROXY & ELSEWHERE & LIVE IN NEW YORK by Frank Zappa
Hyper creative noise maker that is Frank Zappa, especially when he’s live on stage torturing a new group of top musicians with his hyperactive music and strange inspirations.
In the midst of pile of studio albums, Frank had time to dish out two live albums where anything was up for grabs on stage, in front of an audience. In Roxy, Frank jams through songs about his old stomping grounds, old bad monster films, the uselessness of a high school diploma and tricky yet funky instrumentals like Echidna’s Aft (Of You).
The New York set has Frank fronting a much bigger band all of whom go mano-a-mano play with TWO versions of Black Page, telling the uncensored version of Tittes & Beer and the criminal story of the Illinois Enema Bandit. There’s even more in the CD re-issue where, in the bonus tracks, he torments his drummer, future Missing Persons member, Terry Bozzio. Zappa is not an easy guy to listen to and he’s very demanding, but he does put on an entertaining show.
Don't Stop Believin'
by Olivia Newton-John
Like any pop cultural obsession worth its blood sweat and tears, there was little darkness larking just around the edges of my little Xanadu preoccupation and it came in the form of Olivia Newton-John’s early records. To the point, it started with her covers: her bulging yet deep glossy eyes, pouty lips, the waving blonde hair, sweet innocent face, etc. THIS was the reason why I checked her albums out from the local library when I had no turntable to play them on. It was your typical media puppy love crush with a pinch of innocent angst that teenage boys and girls go through when they have too much time on their hands and in their heads.
It was when I got around playing those records that I began to slowly wig out. It really wasn’t so much the music as over half the songs she sang either depressed or freaked the hell out of me as all that bloody angst washed over my young under developed inexperienced moody heart. An example of this is her cover version of Banks Of The Ohio. It’s a country ballad about one lover murdering her one true love because he didn’t her love back; proclaiming the excuse that if she couldn’t have him, nobody will, she knives him and lets him bleed to death on the banks of the Ohio. Johnny Cash would later do a great take of this but Olivia’s version still creeps me out to this very day! While she sang her heart out of agony, the background singers actually chirp like happy dizzy birds of spring as if to celebrate her lover’s murder during the chorus. Why retro Goths who worship post-anorexia Karen Carpenter didn’t pick up on this record beats me.
Don’t Stop Believin’ is ONJ’s quintessential pre-Grease LP. All but three tracks follow this happy angst path, catchy up-beat sugary tunes about doomed relationships and related anguish on various level of hell. A lot of people have loudly complained how bland her music from this period was, but they all miss the point. Lurking underneath the weathering angelic look panted on the covers was her unrecognized rich talent of ampping up the conventional depressing country music subjects to 11 and delivering it seamlessly, smoothly and, more importantly, innocently with the best of them. Like all classic country downers, you either want to drink your kidneys away to make the depression stop or bitchslap the singer upside the head and order them to get a life and, looking back, I didn’t know I didn’t have one until I heard this one.
Something/Anything by
Todd Rundgren
If there were one artist who breathed pop music through his lung and through his vanes in this decade, it would have to be Rundgren and you need no further evidence than this 2 LP/CD set! Three out of the four sides of songs on this set are all written sung and performed by Todd himself.
The original liner notes lets you in on the process; I Saw The Light was meant to be a catchy single (it is!), so Todd placed it as the first track, he writes a popish Viking song, gets all cerebral with ‘I Went To The Mirror’ years before MJ’s Man In The Mirror, you play ‘Sounds Of The Studio’ with Todd with the track ‘Breathless’ and, like good pop record, there’s a moody little title using the carousel motif.
Side conceptualized four (well, according to the liner notes) is all played live with actual musicians! Outside of the albums second hit single, Hello, It’s Me, Todd’s song selection gets a little rough with Piss Aaron, Some Folks Is Even Whiter Than Me and, the album closer, Slut. And then our musical hero passes out from exhaustion…..again, according to the liner notes.
Repeat When Necessary by Dave Edmunds
My first exposure to Edmunds was his first hit in the earlier in this decade, a foot stompin’ version of I Hear You Knockin’ and it wasn’t until I heard this 1979 title that I got the full Edmunds treatment.
This one starts off with a ripping arrangement of Elvis Costello’s Girl’s Talk and it’s pretty much rockin’ afterwards: Crawling From The Wreckage and the funny Black Lagoon (as in ‘The Creature Of The…’). Even the album’s lone ballad, ‘Take Me For A Little While’, has a nifty Everley Brothers dynamic twist. The musicians behind this title would end up on Pockpile’s 1980 ‘Seconds Of Pleasure’, which rocks even more! This would be just the start of a short series of rockin’ Edmunds records that would populate my collection and walkman.
Hell, this rock train would even survive Jell Lynne’s electronic onslaught in the 1984 LP Information!
Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot
The genre ‘easy listening’ became a dicey affair in the 70’s. Say what you will about this genre in the previous decade, at least you knew what you were getting and there was some experimentation going on, like the influence of Bossa Nova thanks to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Sergio Mendes. This time, this decade, things got a little mushy and a bit wimpy. For example, The Carpenters’ sound leaned a bit much on the multi-tracked-layered do-wah vocals that it turned your brain into unbalanced mush. It went past the relaxation mode and put you well into a numbing NyQuil induced sleep.
This is not to say that Gordon Lightfoot is strictly “e-z” as his sound is firmly rooted in folk music and his delivery and subject matter is far more mature than, say, John freakin’ Denver. Lightfoot relaxed you but kept you awake and attentive with hits like Rainy Day People, Carefree Highway and Sundown. The latter two tracks is the reason why this album is on the list.
Those two great hits and the albums opener, Somewhere USA, and tracks like Is There Any Home and The List features Gordon’s folk and e-z mixture on even keel. A little bit of that Canadian sailor vibe is mixed in thanks to the 6 minute Seven Island Suite; this and his strong storytelling sense would be knock up a few notches with his 1976 7 ½ minute hit, The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Now listen to THAT slab with caution!
Ambient 1: Music For Airports by Brian Eno
The only reason I listened into this strange record in the first place was that it had the word ‘Airport’ in its instructional title. It was around 1979 and I was nose deep into airports, airlines and the rest of the old fading glamour of air travel, and was driven to make too many day-trips to the local Los Angeles International Airport. Much like my experience with the ‘By Request’ record, it was odd, strange and I didn’t care…it was interesting….and it had THAT word in the title, so that took care of both the intellectual and fanboy obsession all at once.
In one of my LAX trips, I had this title on tape and was playing it in my old boom box (‘Why did you bring a boom box to the airport?’ you might ask. It was the decades before iPods and THAT’S all this level of obnoxious stupidity I’m wiling to publicly admit). While walking between terminals through the hideously long narrow underground corridors, I noticed the acoustics provided an additional level of echo and bass to the already creepy tones Eno had already provided….and it only got worse when some of the lights in these same corridors were out.
Yup, one can easily imagine the creep factor in this Haunted Hallway scenario….and some did…and a select few reported this to security. As I was becoming known as a regular visitor around these parts (an airport version of a Mallrat), I figured I better cut this audio cheap thrill experimentation short before the real trouble starts.
All Day Music & The World Is A Ghetto by War
The combination of top 40 and the popularity of the TV dance show Soul Train were all good for R&B/soul music for this decade. A major benefactor of this explosion was ‘Philadelphia soul’ with their own individual sound and style. One other group I can think with their own individual sound was the SoCal group, War.
During the groups popularity, I lived in El Monte and the radio station of choice was KRLA with their combination of current faves and oldies and War was on top of everybody’s lists. They were funky jammin’ and all but the two main ingredients that separated War’s sound from everybody else was heavy use of Latin rhythms and the unpolished organic garage band vibe. Earlier bands like Malco and El Chicano had a similar sound, but it was War that managed to perfect it to the point it sounded so easy like a good New Orleans band.
The two big choices here are their biggest; All Day Music has the great title song, ‘Get Down’ is the protest song that got them in trouble in most clubs, the first and better version of Me & My Baby Brother and That’s What Love Will Do is guaranteed to send shivers up and down the spine. The Ghetto album has fewer tracks but the jams are longer with the fine City Country City topping off near 14 minutes!....and as always, its’ all good.
Superstarts of the 70's Vol. 4: Silver Bullets by various artists
‘Superstars’ was a series of compilations Warner Bros. Records sold on TV and this volume was a more varied set…I ought to know as I insanely bugged my dad for it whenever the commercial popped up. Well, they finally shut me up by getting it, which was a rare occurrence as they usually cut out the middle man and just tell me to shut up and change the channel. The odd thing about this set was that they were boasting its ‘superstar’ status and it was 1974! Talk about setting the bar so damned high so soon.
Whatever the case maybe, I look back on this set as the first to plant the seed for many musical discoveries and long term faves to come: Grateful Dead’s hit Casey Jones, AWB’s Pick Up The Pieces, I Saw The Light’ by Todd Rungrend and Such A Night by Dr. John were highlights but it was Van Morrison’s Blue Money stayed in my head like a sour memory for decades until I finally got a copy decades later!
The biggest discovery was the biggest genre chunk of this set: Philadelphia Soul: Love Train by The O’Jays, The Love I Lost by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and The Spinners chuggernut Mighty Love lead this pack with a few other soul of this decade taking up the end. BTW, ABBA is represented here with Waterloo, but that never registered in my ears…..thank god….
Double Time by Leon Redbone
You can hear his singing voice as part of the theme to the TV series Mr. Belvedere, he was seen in TV spots for Budweiser in the late 80’s, performed at Adam Sandler’s wedding and was last seen...well, heard as the snowman in Will Ferrell’s frantic holiday movie Elf. Beyond all that, not much is known of the enigma that is Leon Redbone, even if you’re like me and have heard enough of him and his records, he’s still one low-key cat!
Noting his longevity well into this double zero millennium, this mysterious pattern seems to be working for him just fine. Supposedly discovered and praised by Bob Dylan in the early 70’s, Leon has made a musical career of singing through the treasure trove of old classic Americana songs from the 20’s and 30’s with a little old Hank Williams mixed in. His subtle vocals and acoustic guitar playing (with the occasional “throat trumpet”) is the root of his acclaimed relaxed style that fans have loved for years.
In this, his second LP, tracks like Diddy Wah Diddy shows off his humorous side and Shine On Harvest Moon really adds a lever of dreaminess thanks to a smooth barber shop quartet are just some of the highlights. BTW, this record just edges out his next side, Champagne Charlie, thanks to his wonderfully giddy performance of Sheik Of Araby.
I had bumped into this one years before I became a full fledged ELO fanboy. It was 1975, in the middle of my Roy, Utah days and I needed a record as part of an introduction all us music class students had to do at the start of a semester and I didn’t have one piece of vinyl to show for it. So I asked my brother for some help through his record collection. He whipped out Face The Music and suggested the hit single track ‘Evil Woman’ just to get me out of his hair.
Came the day of the introductions and after a few classical and Led Zeppelin tracks, it was my turn and I mumbled something and qued the teacher. Within ten seconds of Evil Women, the record skipped over and over and over, so I suggested another track, the needle dropped and the skipping (and this process) persistently continued for about 5 minutes: needle randomly dropped with the skipping sure to follow until the teacher gave up, hastily handed the record back to me and called for the next student.
In an order of this odd screwed-up sequence, it was my brother’s copy of A New World Record that got my ELO jones started in the first place and then it was Discovery that got the blood pumping, but it was the single Mr. Blue Sky that finally had me all officially geeked out! Imagine the sound of my heart hitting rock bottom when I found out that Sky was from this ELO album I didn’t have…and couldn’t get as it was a double LP with a price tag I couldn’t touch.
This missing piece of the puzzle was the group’s commercial magnum opus. They always had a grandiose sound, but it was this record…hell, the whole package, flying saucer cover included….that they dared for rock gusto. They even had the balls to include a ‘Concerto For A Rain Day’ (which concluded with Mr. Blue Sky). It was such raw nerve on a grand scale that the critics’ biggest and only compliant was the rugburn they got from this spectacle.
It would be months, maybe a year, before I finally experienced this rugburn for myself when a local record store was unloading cassette copies of OOTB for two bucks. Did the burn hurt? You damned right it did, bubbah!!!!
Face The Music & Out Of The Blue by
Electric Light Orchestra
On Stage by (or with) Lily Tomlin
“I worry that the person who thought up Muzak maybe was thinking of something else.” I first heard this important music lesson from this record of Lily Tomlin’s 1976 Broadway show, “Appearing Nightly”. Don’t know where or why I got this, maybe seeing Tomlin on the old Saturday Night Live show must of did the trick.
Whatever the case might be, I played the crap out of it, along side Monty Python’s Live At City Center at the time. Some of Tomlin’s characters make their stage début like Judith Beastley warning us about the increasingly diminishing supply of “unnatural resources” (“Tupperware parties will be the thing of the past!”) and good old cocky Ernestine rubbing the old Ma Bell in your face.
More original material has Lily portraying her parents (Lud & Marie Meets Dracula’s Daughter), a teachers pet story (Tell Miss Sweeney Goodbye) and the bag lady terrorizing Mr. Theater Goer with a bulk of side two with a longer piece about a life about a hippy haphazardly growing up (Glenna – A Child Of The 60’s). Funny and humane, a couple of cornerstones Tomlin does very well.
A Great Gift Idea & Floats! by
The Credibility Gap
At its core, the Gap’s rotating membership consisted of Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and David Lander, who’s résumé before during and after this comedy groups existence includes: two parts Spinal Tap, all of Lenny & Squiggy and one providing voices for well over half of The Simpsons. Despite this, their little group barely made a blip on the radar.
This 1979 2-LP set contains the Gap’s last gasps. The ‘Gift’ LP is similar to The Firesign Theatre, though not as complex material wise, but no less intelligent and funny. They take satirical aim at such cultural sign posts like Johnny Carson, exploitation films (a radio spot on MLK blacksploitaion called ‘Kingpin!’ and another for a soft porn version of ‘I, Othello!’), sex education films and Rod McKeun.
The real gem here is the second disc! Los Angeles rock station KMET hired the group to broadcast live color commentary to the Pasadena Rose Parade and a lot of fun was had (Shearer on a incoming float sponsored by Kodak: “Hey, if you’re into amyl nitrates, I’d say this is the time for your first popper!...”). Maybe too much as the Parade Committee caught wind of the Gap’s brand of satirical fun and pulled the plug to that party. Nevertheless, Shearer saved the tapes and edited a best of collection. Nice antidote to the whole New Years Eve shindig!
As a side note, be sure to hunt down Lenny & The Squigtones Live LP McKean and Lander made for Casablanca Records. The boys take over these characters from the TV series Laverne & Shirley and into more satisfying and funnier shtick, thanks to a live rock band that contains “future” Spinal Tap member, Nigel Tufnel, A. K. A. Christopher Guest.
1941 soundtrack by John Williams
Not many may not remember, but there were many films in the very late 70’s that were becoming noisier and bolder. The Blues Brothers, Xanadu, Flash Gordon, Superman and Popeye were prime examples of Hollywood’s giddy excess that crowded the theaters just before the 80’s fully came about. Leading this pack is Steve Spielberg’s 1941, his reckless bombastic comedic WW2 epic….it was also his worst movie in terms of critical reaction and box office response.
Being too young to be THAT snotty about such things, I loved 1941 for all the reasons stated in the above paragraph. It also helped that it was written by the same guys who also did another underrated classic, Used Cars. The one thing that stuck into my skull after first seeing the movie was its awesome theme march; loud and filled with insane swagger, all courtesy of composer John Williams, who also composed the Empire Theme that, I’m sure, crowded many Star Wars fan’s heads as well. Fortunately, the rest of the album continued this mad march into gusto insanity.
BTW: if you, like me, feel that the original 1978 soundtrack didn’t have enough bombard-ness for your hypertension, hunt down the 2-CD expanded edition from a few years ago on La La Land Records. Not only do you get the album, but you get the actual movie cues and many more rare material. Can you dig it!?
Pop Muzik by M & Stomp! by Brothers Johnson
Pop Muzik still fills my head with head-boppin’ joy. Leader Robin Scott might be straight from the Gary Neuman’s School of Vocals, but he manages to exude some energy praising the gospel of pop music with those background singers backing him up in full force (“Bop Bop Shoo Whop!!!). Plus, the synthesizers riffs just pops along without sounding stiff, much like they would in the 80’s.
Stomp! earns its exclamation point for its elaborate joy and I’m sure if Scott’s hadn’t been so comparatively stiff, he’d probably sound like this. Only Earth Wind & Fire sounded this jovial, thanks to jazz legend Quincy Jones production skills.
Aja by
Steely Dan
My first real exposure to Steely Dan was discovering this LP in the late 80’s. I was doing a little search for some of the Top 40 songs I heard from my days of the San Fernando Valley and Platterpus Records had this on sale for two bucks (hmmm…guess there was SOME benefits with the CD format explosion…cheaper vinyl).
I ended up enjoying all of this short album (5 tacks, 40 minutes), despite the stigma attached to this and the band itself; I remember reading an angry Ben Is Dead Magazine review of a Dan concert in the 90’s, comparing them to Jimmy Buffett. Seems the critic wasn’t paying attention to Dan’s William S. Burroughs-influenced lyrics. If Buffett encourages you to get dunk and screw during his songs, Dan would have you get drunk and suicidal.
Anyways, Deacon Blues is a good moody travelogue piece, Aja is the closest Dan will get to anything deeply conceptual and…well, the rest is pretty damn good. A short write up for a short little side. Honorable mentions: 1975’s Katy Lied and the 1978 single FM (No Static At All).
I Am by Earth Wind & Fire
If there were an R&B/soul counterpart to ELO’s elaborate majestic sound, it would have to be Earth Wind & Fire. Just as ELO was reaching for the stars in the late 70’s so were the The Fire, only with a crisper and diverse sound, and much like Out Of The Blue, I Am was the group’s gusto brass ring.
The track Boogie Wonderland was the group’s sole disco offering, but there are many tracks of panoramic pop/R&B goodness that didn’t need disco to get the job done and your butt to dance. The opener, ‘In The Stone’, lays out a percussive heavy blast that will put a smile in your face along other slides like Star and Let Your Feelings Show continuing this cosmic jam while After the Love Has Gone should take care of your ballad needs.
The 2004 CD re-issue includes a few bonus cutting room floor tracks, one of which is a funky blues number call Dirty, a sound and jam a little more raw most would expect from The Fire, but they weren’t afraid to surprise you. Much like ELO’s Jeff Lynne, the group’s leader, Maurice White is The MAN! Honorable mention: the 1978 single September!
.....and now a word about The Bee Gees
The other two words you have to bring up in the world of 70’s pop is Bee Gees, yet unlike the consistency of Elton John, there is an pre and post version of this group and that dividing line is Saturday Night Fever. The pre Bee Gees had already racked up a fair amount of notable songs like Lonely Days and How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? The album of choice reflecting this end of their career is Main Course which contains Jive Talking, Fanny (Be Tender With My Love) and Nights On Broadway.
Two albums later, they dropped Saturday Night Fever and all hell broke loose, both for good and bad. The good was that, underneath all the hype and stigma, this is a good album; a stack of fine instrumentals (though Night on Disco Mountain almost spoils the whole thing), a fine Kool & The Gang track and the only time you’ll hear KC & The Sunshine Band not drenched in that glittery disco shellac they’re better known for.
Then there’s the Bee Gee tracks and a few of their older track thrown in like You Should Be Dancing and Jive Talking. While most fell for Staying Alive, I’ve always liked Night Fever. The bad part was that the mainstream discovered disco with this package and, among other things, took this group down with them and “it”. After 1979, the group suffered greatly and the hits stopped until 1989 with ‘One’.
Hot Stuff by
Donna Summer
I never been that much of a fan of Donna Summer’s early recorded output. Too much on the techno and too much filler for fill up those 6 to 8 minute songs. Sure, Love To Love You Baby is an important record for many reasons, for good and ill, but with the repetitive beats and that orgasmic action is a little too campy for my ears. Four Seasons Of Love is where I got into Donna, thanks to its lush and vibrant orchestration, which also partially explains why I like ELO.
This 1979 record, her commercial opus, is a return to form, only without the orchestra, striped down beats that bridges many of the albums tracks together, but, unlike that past sides, there’s stronger material and more maturity. It’s believed that Donna came up with the album’s concept from the prostitutes she saw on Sunset Blvd. and it takes an unpolished view of the Sunset scene.
There are the hit singles that made this title a blockbuster, title track and Hot Stuff, but there’s Sunset People, Walk Away and Dim All The Lights that are more than just filler for this 2 LP set. Some of that old techno cheese creeps in of course, but that’s part of her old sound and I can tolerate it here.
MAD Disco
As with any pop fad that was paraded down Main Street and into your head, you needed something to help you understand it and get the reside out of you system and Mad Magazine has been doing that for over 60 years! One of the more elaborate plans of attack Mad had unleashed was this special issue called Mad Disco; all new material especially created to take down and tone down The Disco with precision and glee (anybody ready for a disco mortuary, Disco Gardens?)
Adding the insult to the injury to both the target and reader, they even snuck in a plastic EP of six tunes of disco demolition and what better way to start this slaughter fest than ‘Disco Suicide’, a not so tender recount of the end of a dance floor romance. A festive ‘This Time, This Night’ declares the physical injuries of the disco floor and, yes, the Bee Gees take a hit with Barely Alive. The only time this set really pushes its luck is a disco version of the magazines audio masterpiece ‘It’s A Gas’. I remember some fans sent Dr. Demento a petition asking him to only play the original. Still, I can’t bark on MAD too much as they never gone half-ass on elaborate jokes like this one.
Village People
There was a brief time in 1981/82 that I had to live with my grandmother for some stupid reason and, making this arrangement more “interesting”, she had a little trouble dealing with my nebbish nerdness as she was more use to the aggressive reckless Virginia redneck variety she dealt with through her sons and the rest of the family. We got along okay, but her stubborn Virginian streak would pop up like a hungry shark either by her nature or trying to force my nerd-ass to grow a backbone, thus the endless speed bumps in our relationship.
One semi-successful jab to “connect” with me was The Village People’s first LP for my birthday. I was a bit shocked as her musical taste wouldn’t even go near THIS; Hank Williams and Boots Randolph, sure, but disco?....with a subtle suggestion of a culture far beyond her scope that if she ever found out, it would have given a stroke?!?! I think I played this record twice on my Uncle Henry’s old stereo system. getting down the great track San Francisco/Hollywood each time, before he took it away from me and only gave it back when I moved out. He tried to cut my joy in half by barking that the only reason my grandmother gave me the LP was she through, due to my nerdness, I was gay. Ummmm….thanks?
Let's Get Small by
Steve Martin
This was a decade that NOBODY was immune to its fads and one of my VERY few absolute submissions was Steve Martin; the arrow through the head, the banjo and the bull-dada humor. I was one of many in school who scared teachers by exchanging Martin quotes like it was some sort of a secret code being blatantly exchanged in public as some sort of bravado dare.
Despite all that hype, this is actually a good funny record. Martin took the material and its delivery very seriously and the audience and us more hyper fans ate it all up. We all scratched our collective heads when Martin left stand up around 1981. It wasn’t until his 2009 book, Born Standing Up, that we all got the full picture of his discipline to his craft and sacrificing levels of his personal and emotional well being just to plaster a smile on our faces and arrows through our own heads. The things we do for a “fad” that covered a fine album.
Back To The Egg by Wings
After years of feeling the backlash of Silly Love Songs, Paul McCartney switched record labels and recorded this goofy back to basics LP, hence the title. The opening track, the found sound collage instrumental ‘Reception’ followed by the rocking ‘Getting Closer’ gets things off the right way. Many interesting tracks for many moods, but the only track that’s closest the Paul’s patent sappy love song is Arrow Through Me which very little ‘sap’ if any, though 40’s style, Baby’s Request, is where he pushes his luck.
The real goofy part swings when McCartney employs almost 40 rock musicians and stuffs them all into a studio to play a couple of tracks and he uses more of that sound collage deal in side two. This would have to be my favorite McCartney record; a lot of variety without following too far into the ‘sap’.
However, this new found liberation was tempered when Paul’s disco contribution was released JUST before this LP, ‘Goodnight Tonight’. At least, he didn’t include it in here….until the 90’s CD re-issue where it was placed next to his other 1979 stand lone single, ‘Wonderful Christmastime’. That boy’s too hyper for his own good, I guess.
Ramones
The Ramones. The first four albums….but if there’s a loaded gun involved, it has to be the first one. Raw, Funny, Reckless. There. Review Over.
Les Plus Grands Succes De Chic: Chic's Greatest Hits by Chic
Many have chanted ‘Disco Sucks!’ by the time this single disc package was released in late 1979 and even though some of that echo may have been warranted thanks the mainstream exploitation of disco that produced many weak sides and were shoved them down many throats, it was also a tragedy as all that noise also eclipsed many of the finest dance pop recordings that reached far beyond the disco label and this title is a perfect example!
The masterminds of Chic, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, offered a more elegant and sophisticate mix of dance music than most on the disco hit list. You tend to glide a bit more than stomp like say the campy sounds of The Village People. ‘I Want Your Love’ is such a gliding dance number and then there’s Good Times, a simple yet grand ode. This album offers some choice cuts from their thirst three albums, though some of them are single edits, so I recently re-contracted this with album track versions and added My Forbidden Lover to complete the hits collection.
SOUL TRAIN: The Sound of Philadelphia and A ONE OF A KIND LOVE AFFAIR by The Spinners
I’m including the 2009 Soul Train box set as, unlike their competition over at Stax Records, Philadelphia International Records, the home of the previously mentioned Philly Soul, never did a label greatest hits vinyl package until the early 80’s. I listened to a LOT of this sound and how could any not have?! Those lush smooth and funky sounds that was described by James Brown band leader as “funk with a tuxedo” was everywhere on the radio! The Hits! The Artists! Too many to mention here and a good chuck of them can be found in here and the only minus mark is that it only has one Spinners track.
….and that’s where the 1991 set A ONE OF A KIND AFFAIR, a 2 CD Spinners anthology comes in. Philly producer and arranger Thom Bell took this singing group from the bottom of Atlantic Records rooster and used the same Philly Soul formula that he co-founded back at the P.I.R. label to produce even more of that lush funky sound.
Luckily, there have been a lot of P.I.R. reissues and collections coming out (mainly from the UK!) on CDs over the past ten years, including a 2 disc set of the label’s original 12 inch remixed singles! Don-O says ‘Hunt ‘em down and pick ‘em up!’