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The Seventies...

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Regrettable Juvenilia

22:33 / 13.10.01

The 1970s was the best decade for music to date. Hip-hop was invented. Sp was punk. And disco. Bowie. Exile On Main Street. Um... loads of other stuff (can you tell I'm drunk and hve just watched Almost Famous?).

Discuss, or refute.

23:28 / 13.10.01

i refute.

the best music comes from me!

Ronald Thomas Clontle

00:13 / 14.10.01

Though it sounds cliched, I will maintain that the 1960s was the most amazing ten years of music in history.

Not only do we get the commonly regarded achievements of that era (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Hendrix et al), we get psychedelia, mods, the birth of the 'concept album', a golden era of bubblegum, Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, communal stoner jam rock in the Grateful Dead, a strong sense of community and a mainstreamed subculture that has since been steadily co-opted and manipulated by labels and commerce, pioneering electronic rock via The Silver Apples, early rumblings of punk rock in The Monks, The MC5 and The Stooges.
The sixties is also the golden era of Motown and soul.

Then, you have to take into account the massive progress in jazz during the 60s...this is the beginning of the fourth great era of jazz, the avant garde period...we're talking the glory days of Sun Ra, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the birth of 'free jazz'...

The sixties were also a great time of radical change in the world of contempory composition, and saw major progress in electronic experimentation and composing. This is the time of Reich, Stockhausen, Cage, Young, Riley... truly amazing leaps foward in terms of expanding the conceptual boundaries of music, as well as what could even be CONSIDERED 'musical'.

The seventies is a great time for music as well, but I think the seventies mostly makes good on the promise of the pioneering of the sixties. Same goes for the 80s...

I think the 90s and the present will likely be seen as period of steady subtle change leading up to another more radical period of change and progress, sorta like the 40s and 50s...

06:44 / 14.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Flux = VVX232:
The Stooges....

I don't know if I'd call them a sixties band, Iggy wanted to destroy the sixties, so he says. Also, Funtime and Raw Power, their best album, according to me, were put out in the seventies.
I'm finding it extremely hard to disagree with Flyboy on this one. The eighties were extremely good to music too, hip-hop and punk were expanded on and almost perfected. The whole "new wave" thing produced some of the oddest stuff out there and indie rock and psychobilly were birthed.

06:46 / 14.10.01

...and I just remembered, G 'n' Fucking R came from the eighties.

07:14 / 14.10.01

I'm in the 60s camp on this one for all the reasons Flux mentioned and:

The birth of Garage Rock.

Folk music goes electric.

The Velvet Underground (I'm sure they were part of "et al" but they deserve their name on the list.

And Eastern influences began to make their way into Western pop.

[ 14-10-2001: Message edited by: Bio K-9 hates your stupid story ]

10:16 / 14.10.01

The 1970s was the best decade for music to date?

Oooh yes. Glam rock, Genesis, ELO, Yes, the triple-disc live album... I think not.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

12:45 / 14.10.01

Ah, I knew I was forgetting something important, and it was the Velvet Underground... there you go.

13:44 / 14.10.01

In my opinion, the 70s was unquestionably the best decade for innovation and general goodness in terms of underground music, but the mainstream was almost completely shit throughout the decade.

If you were to go back through time counting the number of good records that actually charted, the 70s would probably emerge as the worst decade.

Actually, watching the recent Old Grey Whistle Test nostalgia shows kind of brought this paradox into focus;
On the one hand - Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Tim Buckley, New York Dolls, Captain Beefheart, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley .. well you don't get much better than that frankly..
But on the Other Hand - Fat Old John Lennon, Little Feat, endless impossibly shit blues-rock wankers, Average White Band, Elton John -AARRGGGHHH!!
And the most worrying thing is that even in this day and age, the programmes gave loads more praise and attension to those in the latter category.

14:54 / 14.10.01

So is anyone going to stand up for the 80's ?

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

16:03 / 14.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Not Me Again:
The 1970s was the best decade for music to date?

Oooh yes. Glam rock, Genesis, ELO, Yes, the triple-disc live album... I think not.

Although I agree with most of the above, Glam did have it's moments: The aforementioned Bowie, fer instance, T rex/Marx Bolan, and Queen, who seem to have been 'the first rock band I ever liked' for a hell of a lot of people who make up the current rock scene...
I mean sure, I agree that all the old gits who they wheel out on Christmas Special TOTP2 aren't up to much, the sweet, gary glitter, et al, but glam did produce some good music. And to paraphrase what somebody (i forget who, apologies) here said long ago in a slightly different context '70s/Glam/prog bands were crap because they tried too hard. 90s bands were crap because they didn't try hard enough'.
The 70s also gave us early metal, Zep, Sabbath, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, etc...
Also, didn't hip hop start out in the late 70s?
Also: Kraftwerk. And Suicide. And Joy Division.
And... loads of other stuff, no doubt...
And the star wars theme tune!

16:10 / 14.10.01

Roger Moore as James Bond.

For that alone, the seventies cannot be forgiven.

19:25 / 14.10.01

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
So is anyone going to stand up for the 80's ?

A while back I found a copy of the Rolling Stone Rock'n'Roll Encyclopedia while perusing the second hand book stalls.
As it looked pretty interesting, I picked it up and asked the guy there if there was any further discount on the exposed price of the thing (yes, I'm cheap).
"Why should I take something off?" he asks.
"This one goes only up to 1981", I say.
"That's right. It was no longer Rock'n'roll afterwards".
I had to pay the price as exposed.

So was there something actually good in the '80s?
Everything good that comes to me was either started in the '70s (the Pretenders, The Mekons etc) or was a clone of something from the '70s (Tori Amos being a clne of Kate Bush, for instance).

Scary.
But still, the best decade was the '50s - Buddy Holly, guys.
We would not be here had not been for Holly and his contemporaries.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

09:02 / 15.10.01

Um, I'd actually like to suggest that the 80s was the great time for the underground, not the 70s. Most of the things yr citing as 'underground' from the 70s weren't so much underground as they were relatively unpopular. The 80s saw the big boom in DIY and creating indie networks of touring and doing business that really was in no relation to what was going on in the mainstream, whereas punk actually was a pretty well known phenomenon, and the NY scene was pretty famous and had its hit makers. The reason why no one thinks of the 80s for its music is exactly why that era was so important--- most of it actually was localized, fragmented, and thoroughly 'underground'.

09:19 / 15.10.01

But what will be said about the 90s? That the 80s underground bubbled to the surface? That real rock briefly re-emerged in the mainstream? The underground was bought out/ sold out? That it sucked? Was the primary event the cultural dominance of hip-hop? What?

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:19 / 15.10.01

If I defend early Elton John, will I lose whatever facade of cool I may have accidentally engineered?

Oh, and I'd second Flux's view that the 80s was the decade best for underground, with lots of bad stuff in the mainstream. The 80s is probably the most misunderstood decade, too...

Jack: I'm talking about music, not film, you grumpy Walter Matthau-esque rocking-chair-on-the-porch fucker.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

09:19 / 15.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Flyboy:
If I defend early Elton John, will I lose whatever facade of cool I may have accidentally engineered?

Absolutely not! You just beat me to the defense...I adore early Elton John, and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is one of my all time favorite LPs. Elton John is really great up until the late 70s...then he starts descending into schlock, with occasional decent tunes shining through the gloss. Apparently his new record is an attempt at a return to the good old days, but I've not heard it yet, so I can't really say much about it...

there's no denying the greatness of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" "Levon" "Bennie & The Jets" "Your Song" "Rocket Man" etc...

Give me Elton over Dylan or Hendrix or (shudder) Joplin any day of the fucking week, man. He stomps all over Bowie too, as far as I'm concerned.

[ 15-10-2001: Message edited by: Flux = VVX232 ]

09:19 / 15.10.01

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
So is anyone going to stand up for the 80's ?

That's what I was doing earlier...And whoever said that the good bands from the eighties either started in the seventies or ripped someone off that did, is extremely wrong. The Replacements, Husker Du, Big Black, Pussy Galore, the Minutemen were all bands from the eighties that sounded like no one before them, and sure, people can try to ape their style, but no one's sounded like them since. And let's not forget about one of the most underrated musical genres out there, hair metal, was a thing of the eighties as well.
And early Elton John kicks major fucking ass..."Saturday Nights Alrite For Fighting" is one of the fucking best songs ever!

09:19 / 15.10.01

Johnny Haiku:
"And to paraphrase what somebody (i forget who, apologies) here said long ago in a slightly different context '70s/Glam/prog bands were crap because they tried too hard. 90s bands were crap because they didn't try hard enough'."

It's a very 90s view that something can be ruined by 'trying too hard', isn't it? Probably explains why 90s bands didn't try hard enough! I mean, what is the "correct" amount of effort to put into pop or rock? Music should at the very least be entertaining in some way, and what can be more entertaining than seeing someone make an arse of themselves going ott?

Jack Fear:
"Roger Moore as James Bond.
For that alone, the seventies cannot be forgiven."

The man was dapper! Surely you don't prefer that potato-faced lump Connery?

11:41 / 15.10.01

"90s bands were crap because they didn't try hard enough."

and

It's a very 90s view that something can be ruined by 'trying too hard', isn't it? Probably explains why 90s bands didn't try hard enough! I mean, what is the "correct" amount of effort to put into pop or rock?

This is so wrong. Most of the bands in Seattle (I'm assuming that the "grunge scene" is what you're refering to here) were good bands. What they didn't put effort into was becomming "the next big thing" because "the next big thing" had never really come from here before. Bing Crosby, the Wailers, the Kingsmen, the Sonics (who are far more famous now than ever before), and the Young Fresh Fellows were the only bands from the northwest to ever make it "big". Hendrix only headlined four shows in Seattle. The first was in 1968. Duff McKagan moved to L.A. for his shot at the bigtime (then he moved back to re-form 10 Minute Warning in the 90s

). If you wanted to be a star you left for L.A. or looked like a complete asshole. The bands by and large played for each other in shithole hotel bars. It was a totally underground scene. And then Sub Pop suckered, er, convinced a British rock critic to tell the world how great the scene here (the Sub Pop bands featured on limited edition & soon to be highpriced 7" singles anyway) was and the rest in history. I wish I had a scanner; I'd show you a picture of "Alice 'N Chainz" (complete with big hair, tight jeans, and cowboy boots). A bit simplified but thats the basic history of "grunge": a bunch of bands (none of which sounded alike) playing in hotel bars get sucked into the music media machine and the next thing you know they're selling "grunge shampoo" and $500 flannel jackets in Milan.

As for the grunge sounding bands (Bush, Seven Mary Three, et al) I think they had to try even harder. Its easy to be origional. Its not easy to ripoff someones sound and wear it as your own on such short notice.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

12:22 / 15.10.01

The Replacements, Husker Du, Big Black, Pussy Galore, the Minutemen were all bands from the eighties that sounded like no one before them, and sure, people can try to ape their style, but no one's sounded like them since. [/QUOTE]

oh, i wouldn't agree with this at all. certainly not The Replacements...what are they other than an ridiculous caricature of 60s and 70s garage rock? Minutemen and Pussy Galore had their own things going on, don't get me wrong, but they were on well-tread ground by that time... I can hear a lot of the weirder Faust songs in The Minutemen, for example. Husker Du is more or less just a power pop band gone punk, which had certainly been done before they hit the scene.

Now don't get me wrong: these bands are all great examples of 80s achievements, I just would never pin the concept of 'groundbreaking originality' on any of them save for maybe Big Black.

In defense of the 80s: college jangle pop, hardcore, synthpop, goth, new wave, no wave, industrial, Detroit techno, rave, baggy, several early developmental stages of hip hop, etc etc.

Not a good time for: mainstream pop in general, jazz hits the beginning of its continuing decline, avant garde composition hits a wall, heavy metal, hair on any one in general.

The 80s are more about large splintered movements, whereas the 90s are simultaneously about those movements coming together in people going mad trying to recombine as many styles and genres as they can, while everything (some might say artificially thanks to economic forces) became more ghettoized and splintered further and further...

I would say that the 90s is easily the great era for hip hop, and not the 'old school' period in the 80s, it's a bit analogous to 50s and 60s rock and roll. We're now entering the 70s for hip hop, if you can think of it that way...

90s: great time for electronic music of all stripes.

12:26 / 15.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Jack Fear:
Roger Moore as James Bond.

For that alone, the seventies cannot be forgiven.

Ahaha, but "Live & Let Die" came out during the 70s, and that is a fantastic Bond film.

Plus Carly Simon wrote that fab "The Spy Who Loved Me" later in the decade...

12:39 / 15.10.01

Also I don't really know how anyone can single out any one decade as "the best" for rock music. There have been good periods in all decades since the birth and rock n' roll.

Old r & b/doo-wop/early rock n'roll records from the 50s still swing today. "Shake Rattle & Roll" has to be one of the best rock n' roll songs of all time, "The Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry)" is ultrasexy in spite of its apprearance during one of the most repressive decades. And of course there's Elvis. "I Want You I Need You I Love You..." Yum!

The 60s laid the groundwork for a lot of music that came later. I'll admit that from like 60 - 63 rock n' roll did seem kind of tepid. But then along came the Beatles, and even if I personally think early Beatles is kinda lame boy-band stuff, they really shook things up, and paved the way for the British Invasion, which happily gave us The Kinks (who can deny the guitar riff from "Ya Really Got Me" doesn't still rock?), The Who (who sound as fresh today as they did back then, on some of their songs at least), the Stones (I think the first rock band in what we know today as rock).

Later on of course got Hendrix, and Janis, and the Beatles started taking drugs (really, thank god for the drugs in the 60s - they changed everything), and there was Dylan, and there was folk music, etc. And of course at the end of the 60s there was the birth of the mighty Led Zeppelin (who really I consider a 70s band, but whatever)

The 70s brought us a couple things that changed music - FM radio for one helped bands such as Zep and Pink Floyd gain popularity. We saw the true rising of Heavy Metal (groundwork for which laid in the 60s), and the birth of punk (again, the groundwork for which was laid in the 60s). Disco set the stage for techno, house, etc.

I could go on, but I'm starting to get bored with myself now...

Oh, and "Benny and the Jets" fucking ROCKS!!

[ 15-10-2001: Message edited by: Cherry Bomb ]

12:41 / 15.10.01

"This is so wrong.... (I'm assuming that the "grunge scene" is what you're refering to here)"

Nope! I wasn't refering to them at all. Nice mini-essay on the Seattle scene though. I was thinking more of the underacheiving, low-ambition British indie scene, and the general, bloke-ish fear of pretension, of being seen to be ambitious (artistically, not career-wise) that was prevalent in the 90s.

17:04 / 15.10.01

The Seventies? Hmmm...

Roxy Music.
And again,
Roxy Music.
Which gave us all
Brian Eno.
As well as
Bryan Ferry.

Without that lot the Eighties & Nineties would have sounded very different...

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:47 / 16.10.01

Here's looking at you, Ierne.

Locust No longer

09:47 / 16.10.01

I'll defend the '80s. Sure, the mainstream music of the '80s was pretty shit, but you can say that about any decade generally. However, one band made the '80s worth while in my book- Minor Threat, my favorite band ever. The '80s also spawned the best hardcore punk ever, like:

SSD-USA
Urban Waste-USA
The Neos-USA
Black Flag-USA
Negative Approach-USA
Millions of Dead Cops-USA
Deep Wound-USA
Dead Kennedys-USA
The Dicks-USA
Bad Brains-USA
Youth Brigade-USA
Crass-UK
Thatcher On Acid-UK
Conflict-UK
Icons of Filth-UK
Napalm Death-UK
Electro Hippies-UK
Carcass-UK
Larm-Denmark
BGK-Denmark
Anti Cimex-Sweden
Moderat Likvidation-Sweden
Skit lickers-Sweden
Mob 47-Sweden
Lip Cream-Japan
GISM-Japan
Systematic Death-Japan
Bastard-Japan
Gauze-Japan
Bastards-Finland
Appendix-Finland
Kaaos-Finland
Tampere SS-Finland
Riistyet-Finland
Oi Polloi-Scotland
Raw Power-Italy
Cheetah Chrome Mother Fuckers-Italy
Negazione-Italy

And that's just a small list.... fuck the '70s, punk rock flourished in the '80s.

09:47 / 16.10.01

Well Flux,
You had me with the 60's but you lost me on the Elton John being better than Bowie...I think not!!!

Ronald Thomas Clontle

09:47 / 16.10.01

I'll happily make a case for a wide range of artists being a lot better than Bowie...I've got no love for that guy or his catalog...there's a few great Bowie tunes ("Oh! You Pretty Things" comes to mind) here and there, but man, there's so much crap in there it is just unbelievable...even the records that people consider his best bore me to tears. For me, personally, Bowie is only eclipsed by Bob Dylan in terms of being severely overrated, and still, I like Dylan a lot more...

No star here laces

09:47 / 16.10.01

Word.

I wish he'd fuck off back to mars or whatever...

Now, I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree that the 70s was easily the greatest decade for popular music this century. Why? Because the 70s was the decade that black music became confident.

Of course a lot of this depends how you define 'the 70s'. For me, they ran from about '68-'77 in music and cultural terms.

Anyway, doesn't matter overly much: 1966 is the year James Brown went into overdrive and funk became a new musical force. Up until then soul had been a distinctive sound, but wasn't a million miles away from what a lot of white pop artists were doing.

But by 1971 everything had changed. You had crazy outfits, weird sounds, musical conventions miles away from white rock sounds (flutes, for example). You had the beginnings of the Philly sound, you had afrobeat.

And over in Jamaica you had reggae. The 60s were the era of ska and rocksteady, emergent musical forms that owed a lot to swing. But by the 70s the pace had slowed, the dub sound had arrived, the basslines were bigger.

The 70s is a kaleidoscopic whirl of creativity in dance/black forms of music. It is probably the last time new rhythms were invented and such radically different new styles of music emerged. It's the era that saw electronics become an acceptable part of music, the era when jazz combined with dance forms, the era when music became truly international.

You can't touch the 70s....

11:00 / 16.10.01

Yeah but thats all black music. We're here to talk about the white boys.

A

12:44 / 16.10.01

i'm going to have to say that the the 70's were the worst decade for music in the last half-century.

before i go any further i would like to add that i am obsessed with the Ramones to the point of organising annual tribute shows to them and i even like ELO. also, i'm presently kinda drunk, so this may not make too much sense.

anyway, as far as i can tell, 1970 was the year that music came crashing to a hault.

just before then you had the Beatles, Kinks, Beach Boys, Donovan and a shiteload of others making fantastic records. come the 70's, everyone from the 60's either split up or started making terrible records.

in their place was, well, nothing.

the primary reason that punk came about was that popular music in the 70's was fundamentally awful.

in the 60's good music was popular and popular music was good (for the most part). this stopped as soon as the 70's started.

underground music didn't really come into it's own until the 80's, when punk bands who weren't interested in "hitting it big" started coming about.

there was quite a bit of good rock'n'roll in the last 3 or 4 years of the 70's, but the reast of it seems almost entirely crap to me.

i have a feeling that this post was just a series of unrelated paragraphs.

13:07 / 16.10.01

there were some good records being made throughout the 70s:

Bowie in '71, The Stones in '72, Stooges in '73 .. dunno about 74 .. Patti Smith in '75, then into punk & new wave..

There were just VERY FEW good records around in the first half of the decade.

15:30 / 16.10.01

quote:Originally posted by count adam:
underground music didn't really come into it's own until the 80's, when punk bands who weren't interested in "hitting it big" started coming about.

That's not entirely true, there's been underground music ever since there was mainstream music. The underground music of the 60's is incredible, just check out any of the Back From the Grave compilations that Crypt records puts out of 60's punk, much of which puts 70's and 80's punk to shame. The 60's also had a huge influx of one hit wonders, most of whom did not stop playing after their hit fizzled, but rather kept playing on in the underground scene; ? & the Mysterians (who had one hit with "96 Tears") still play and release records today.

18:28 / 16.10.01

Now, I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree that the 70s was easily the greatest decade for popular music this century. Why? Because the 70s was the decade that black music became confident.

Of course a lot of this depends how you define 'the 70s'. For me, they ran from about '68-'77 in music and cultural terms. – Tyrone Mushylaces

I'm with you. I can't help but notice, however, that this particular period was also the heyday of P-Funk!

Rickey Vincent (aka Uhuru Maggot) wrote a kickass book about the sacred music we like to call Funk.

[ 16-10-2001: Message edited by: Ierne ]

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