Hallelujah!
Get your hands on an old issue of NME or CREEM from 1975, and you will find writers expressing a common belief that the popular music of the early 70Âs was embarrassingly inferior to that of the 60Âs. A more recent critical appraisal of that era holds that, in the early 70Âs, we were actually in the midst of an under appreciated golden age.
This revisionist history is absolutely correct. I donÂt know where to begin. David Bowie was making the best music of his life. Marc Bolan was churning out records that were just as good, if not better, that BowieÂs. For the love of Jehovah folks Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges! Need I mention the first few Roxy Music albums, King Crimson, or the astonishingly great first four albums by Blue Oyster Cult (because BOC later became such a thoroughly crap band, these fine early albums are now largely forgotten.)
While I am on the subject, how about the birth of Heavy Metal? Has anybody really made better mindless hard rock albums than Black Sabbath did in the 70Âs?
Remember folks; this was a time when Nashville made music with soul...before it became an assembly line churning out bland muzak for ReaganÂs brain-dead America.
The early 70Âs were also primetime for Soul and Funk. Curtis Mayfield began his solo career. In Philadelphia, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were producing some the greatest pop singles IÂve ever heard (the output of Gamble and Huff is well represented on Rhino Records outstanding ÂDidnÂt it Blow Your Mind! compilation series). The outrageous records released by George Clinton & his cohorts are legendary among collectors and music lovers.
In Jamaica, there was the rise of ÂRoots music (still, unfortunately, the only music from Jamaica to sell big to white boys in the US), and also the birth of dub, and the ascendancy of Lee Perry and his Black Ark studio.
Did I mention Tom Waits? For that matter, the records released by Van Morrison during this period were, as we have come to expect from the man, totally brilliant.
Now that I think of it, the Mick Taylor era Rolling Stones put out some albums that werenÂt half bad either.
Put it this way: IÂd trade the entire musical output of the 1980Âs for that of just one year, I donÂt care which, of the early 70Âs.
1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975: I raise my overflowing glass of 100 proof Springbank to each and every one of you.
