Category: The 1970’s
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Lou Reed ‘Transformer’ (1972)
Few artists have embodied the essence of New York cool in the way Lou Reed did. With a deadpan delivery espoused subject matter which challenged society’s conventions at every turn, Reed’s brand of sex, drugs, and rock n roll always felt like a bit of an art project put on by a neurotic socially awkward…
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Elvin Bishop ‘Struttin’ My Stuff’ (1975)
Elvin Bishop has a long and storied history in the blues genre, sharing the stage with such icons such as The Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead. An original member of Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bishop was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 2015 class as a member of…
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Carole King ‘Tapestry’ (1971)
No list of the greatest songwriters of all-time is complete (or even worth reading) without a mention of Carole King. She is one of the most successful female songwriters in history, writing 118 hits that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 over her sixty-year career, earning her two separate inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall…
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Waylon Jennings ‘Honky Tonk Heroes’ (1973)
Waylon Jennings is an almost mythical force in the history of outlaw country, a sub-genre that bucked the norms of the Nashville establishment in the early 70’s. Disillusioned with both the artistic and sonic constraints of producers like Chet Atkins who favored slick production over a more organic and natural sound, artists like Jennings and…
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Stevie Wonder ‘Songs In The Key of Life’ (1976)
The word “beloved” gets tossed around too often when talking about musicians (guilty as charged on that front), but it’s the perfect word to use when describing Stevie Wonder. An American icon in every sense of the word, Wonder was born six weeks premature and developed retrolental fibroplasia which caused him to become blind shortly…
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David Allan Coe ‘Longhaired Redneck’ (1976)
David Allan Coe has always been country’s crazy old drunk uncle, a freewheeling individualist that stood out even in a genre that was filled to the brim with them. Like one of his country music icons Merle Haggard (whom he namedrops in the title track), Coe’s outlaw country bonafides were the real deal– the early…
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Nick Drake ‘Pink Moon’ (1972)
The voice of reclusive youth, Nick Drake’s music was woefully unappreciated during his short life. When he died at the age of 25 due to an overdose on antidepressants, Drake was a relatively unknown musician– just north of 50 people attended his funeral, a relatively close-knit affair. It was only after nearly a decade had…
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Billy Joel ‘The Stranger’ (1977)
Leading up to The Stranger Billy Joel’s career was on the rocks. After the massive success of 1973’s Piano Man (whose title track is Joel’s most famous song, and for good reason considering it’s a brilliant piece of storytelling), he was on the verge of being dropped by his record label Columbia Records due to…
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Marvin Gaye ‘What’s Going On’ (1971)
Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On stands today as one of the most important records in the history of recorded music in the United States. This is due to a variety of reasons, the primary one being it’s statements and reflections on American society during the 60’s and 70’s, which was fraught with social upheaval that…
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Brian Eno ‘Another Green World’ (1975)
Another Green World by Brian Eno is an eclectic collection of avant-garde pop vignettes. Calling them songs doesn’t really do the whole thing justice— these are emotions in audio form, a collection of feelings that were somehow transposed into music through the filter of Brian Eno’s astounding production capabilities. It’s often hard to listen to…
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Aerosmith ‘Toys in the Attic’ (1975)
Toys in the Attic features Aerosmith at their absolute best, a stellar album that takes you on a ride through the dirtiest and raunchiest of what rock and roll can offer. It’s raw as hell and features the band firing on all cylinders in a way they never really captured throughout the rest of their…
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Christopher Cross ‘Christopher Cross’ (1979)
Yacht rock holds an incredibly special place in my heart. The smooth production style, the gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies, the sultry smooth rhythm sections, the saxaphones and synths– it’s all just so wonderfully easy to listen to. This is a sub-genre of music I’ve loved forever, became relatively obsessed with when I got Sirius XM…
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Willie Nelson ‘Red Headed Stranger’ (1975)
Willie Nelson’s 1975 album Red Headed Stranger was a watermark moment for country music in that it moved the genre beyond a collection of singles pressed onto a 12-inch circular piece of polyvinyl chloride (i.e. a vinyl record) and into a singular world that had a common thematic structure. Put another way, the art of…
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Moe Bandy & Joe Stampley ‘Just Good Ol’ Boys’ (1979)
Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley were outlaw country stalwarts in the mid-70’s. Taking influence from the rough and tumble honky tonk of Hank Williams, their individual solo careers were filled with barroom ballads covering topics like lost love, cheating, and whiskey (three topics that are natural fits together) and helped drive redneck regalia to the…
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Alice Cooper ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ (1973)
As the original shock artist, Alice Cooper’s influence on rock and roll spans nearly five decades long. His live shows were legendary for their theatrics and featured elements like magical stage illusions, pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, and baby dolls. He was basically the Tim Burton of 70’s rock, and one of the first…
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Thin Lizzy ‘Jailbreak’ (1976)
Thin Lizzy is one of the most underrated bands in rock history in my opinion. Whether it’s the super smooth vocal stylings of Phil Lynott, the twin guitar harmonies of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson that remain to this day the sound of their generation, or the pulsating rhythm section of Brian Downey, there is…
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The Stooges ‘Funhouse’ (1970)
The Stooges were a band seemingly lost in time, a decade ahead of their peers in the late 60’s. Throwing elements of psychedelia, American garage rock, and British blues into a blender, Fun House is effectively the first seed of punk rock that caused legions of bands to follow in their footsteps. The Clash, Ramones,…
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Derek and the Dominos ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ (1970)
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is Eric Clapton’s finest career work in my opinion, which is truly saying something for a man who stands as probably the most influential and accomplished guitar player in rock history. Formed after the breakup of his previous supergroup Blind Faith and their excellent self-titled album in 1969, Clapton…
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Steve Miller Band ‘Greatest Hits 1974-78’ (1978)
When I made the decision at the beginning of this year to listen to one album per day I set up a handful of self-imposed guiding principles to guide the process. The primary one was (and remains) to avoid Greatest Hits compilations– the spirit of this whole experience is to focus on a greater appreciation…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ‘Damn The Torpedoes’ (1979)
For my money Tom Petty has and always will be the perfect encapsulation of American heartland rock. Throughout his career he showed an innate ability to combine the blues, traditional country, garage rock, British invasion, rock and roll, and folk songwriting sensibilities to create some of the finest works of art found in classic rock.…
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AC/DC ‘Highway to Hell’ (1979)
AC/DC’s history is split into two eras across two different absolutely legendary lead singers, Bon Scott and Brian Johnson. They both have this incredible rasp and grit to their voice that fits the sound of AC/DC perfectly in their own different ways. I’ve always felt Bon Scott was a little more unhinged and primal (both…
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The Allman Brothers Band ‘At Fillmore East’ (1971)
At Fillmore East is an iconic live album from one of the most iconic southern rock jam bands of all time. Recorded over the course of the three nights at the iconic Fillmore East in New York City, this was the album that put The Allman Brothers Band on the map in the United States…
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Bob Marley & The Wailers ‘Exodus’ (1977)
Exodus was recorded following an assassination attempt on Bob Marley’s life in 1976 at his home in Jamaica. The country was in the midst of significant societal upheaval, and Marley’s massive profile as a cultural icon at the time had drawn the attention of the conservative Jamaican Labour Party (backed by the CIA) and the…
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Wando ‘Wando’ (1975)
I’ve had somewhat of a personal revelation this year— I really enjoy samba music. It’s not something I really ever actively sought out before, but after listening to the stellar Samba Esquema Novo by Jorge Ben Jor in January I’ve begun to actively seek out those sweet syncopated patterns, classical guitars, and pandeiros on a…
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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ‘Deja Vu’ (1970)
From the opening moments of Deja Vu, when Stephen Stills’ iconic acoustic guitar kicks in and the three-piece harmony hits your eardrums, it’s evident you’re about to bear witness to musical greatness. Out of all the iconic protest folk rock that entered the American consciousness during the late 60’s and early 70’s, Deja Vu stands…
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Jerry Reed ‘East Bound and Down’ (1977)
Jerry Reed is the kind of guitarist that you listen to for the first time and it either inspires you to further dedicate yourself to the craft or causes you to give it all up and pivot your hobby to knitting quilts. The man is that good. Reed is a fingerstyle guitar player which is…
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Parliament ‘Mothership Connection’ (1975)
Welcome to the funk. With a loose and fun as hell mythology surrounding interstellar travel, spaceships, Thumpasorus people, and the ever-healing powers of the funk, 1975’s Mothership Connection is a concept album whose sole concept is to get your butt out of your seat and dance. I can sign up for that. I was first…
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Black Sabbath ‘Paranoid’ (1970)
Black Sabbath is the most important heavy metal band of all time, hard stop. It’s impossible to overstate just what they did for the genre. The fact a record as heavy as Paranoid came out in 1970 is sort of shocking. You almost don’t blame the parents of yesteryear for losing their shit over kids…
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The Clash ‘London Calling’ (1979)
There are three bands that stand alone in the Holy Trinity of punk rock. Those bands are the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash. All three have combined to inspired literally hundred of thousands of kids to pick up guitars, start their own bands, and express themselves musically. All three have had a massive…
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Ramones ‘Ramones’ (1976)
Largely considered the first punk rock group in history, the Ramones had it all– black shirts, leather jackets, ripped jeans, and a cool backstory where each member adopted the “Ramone” surname as a pseudonym. Their 1976 self-title debut was the very definition of New York cool. It was loud and fast as hell. Unlike their…
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Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ (1977)
There is a primal energy that permeates every second of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Raw. Visceral. Impossible to deny. Formed during a period of high unemployment and working class discontent that pervaded the U.K. in the mid-70’s, the Sex Pistols were a punk rock bomb that blew up in in the…
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Electric Light Orchestra ‘Out of the Blue’ (1977)
When Electric Light Orchestra first formed in 1970 they stated the mission of the band was to “pick up where The Beatles left off with ‘I Am The Walrus’”. That’s an incredibly ambitious statement for more reasons than one, but it’s safe to say ELO pretty much nailed what they said they were gonna do.…
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Linda Ronstadt ‘Simple Dreams’ (1977)
Linda Ronstadt is one of the most well-rounded singers in history, effortlessly spanning genres. Throughout her 45-year career she effortlessly put out pop, rock-n-roll, folk, opera, and ranchera albums, covering an incredible range of styles. Simple Dreams is the highest selling album of her career, and probably the one she is most recognized for as…
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Jim Croce ‘You Don’t Mess Around With Jim’ (1972)
Jim Croce’s tragic death in an airplane accident at the age of 30 years old tragically cut short the life of one of folk music’s most interesting artists. I’ve always felt that the swag Croce brought to his melodies, lyrics, and arrangements separated himself from his early 70’s folk contemporaries in a really unique way.…
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Grateful Dead ‘Cornell 5/8/77’ (1977)
As probably the greatest jam band of all-time, doing a live album listen of Grateful Dead (and nearly a three-hour experience at that) is pretty much a requirement if you’re listening to a full album each day for an entire year. The band is legendary for its extended live sets and Cornell 5/8/77 is no…
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Fela Kuti ‘Gentleman’ (1973)
Fela Kuti is the godfather of Afrobeat, and his 1973 record Gentleman is a must-listen for anyone getting into the genre. Combining elements of funk and jazz with traditional West African music is a helluva thing, and the frenetic ride that is “Gentleman” takes you on so many twists and turns throughout that it’s easy…
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