Fifty Years of Music • February-March 1974 • Goodbye the 60's, hello the 70's

Musically, the 1960's died in 1971, okay let's stretch it to 1972. In 1969 I entered high school, and by 1973 when I graduated from high school, a new iteration of rock 'n' roll was well underway. In 1974 as I started college, many of the bands that I call, "Tier 1 bands" were either gone (e.g. The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix), or bands still going like The Rolling Stones and The Who, were sharing radio time with a whole slew of new bands that I call "Tier 2 and 3 bands."

Music is such a personal preference, even akin to a religious experience. Like religion or faith, I would never get into anybody's grill about their "taste" in music. The popular music of one's time in middle school and high school will often be the defining years that shapes one's taste in music for a lifetime.

For example, my brother and sister are twins and just 2-1/2 years younger than me, and my other sister is 10 years younger than me. My whole musical experience of being a 6th-12th grader in the 60's-early 70's I feel was much different than my siblings.

I'm certainly not going to knock them if they like Aerosmith, Kansas or Rush, it was simply the music more in their grade school years, than mine.

Believe me, there were tons of crappy bands and artists in the 1960's, but I found my groove with folk and "jingle-jangle" bands like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield that really shaped my musical tastes.

By 1974, there's slicker and smoother versions of rock 'n' roll being produced in my opinion, and in looking through Wikipedia's 1974 in Music for February and March, you may see the transition too. (Note- I have pasted these Wikipedia lists at the bottom of this post.)

I want to also mention a couple of other events that shaped how I looked at artist's as once heroes, to now-not so much, or not at all. The first example actually happens in February, 1974 with the release of Seals and Crofts, Unborn Child. This is where Seals and Crofts crosses that line between their religious beliefs and telling others how to live their lives as they think you should. Unborn Child is a song told from the perspective of an aborted fetus, really? Here's the 1974 album cover of I guess, a sad embryo? Well they not only lost me as a fan, but I guess a whole generation of Roe v. Wade young people. The duo never recovered from this song and this album, and their future albums would never put them back in the limelight. 

For this record, Seals and Crofts won the "Keep Her in Her Place" award from the National Organization for Women (tying with Paul Anka for his recording of "(You're) Having My Baby") during "its annual putdown of male chauvinism" in the media on Women's Equality Day. Wikipedia

The second event that rocked me with a musical hero was in 1989. Here is a clip from the New York Times. LONDON, May 22 -- The musician known as Cat Stevens said in a British television program to be broadcast next week that rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, ''I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.''

The singer, who adopted the name Yusuf Islam when he converted to Islam, made the remark during a panel discussion of British reactions to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's call for Mr. Rushdie to be killed for allegedly blaspheming Islam in his best-selling novel ''The Satanic Verses.'' He also said that if Mr. Rushdie turned up at his doorstep looking for help, ''I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like.''

''I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is,'' said Mr. Islam, who watched a preview of the program today and said in an interview that he stood by his comments. Craig R. Whitney, May 23, 1989, New York Times.

In the playlist this week, I include Cat Steven's, Budda and the Chocolate Box, an album I simply loved and played all the time in 1974. When this news came out, I was incensed, and I guess both Seals and Crofts and Cat Stevens were the first artists I could say that I "cancelled" in the 20th century. 

But please, enjoy the many spiritually influenced 1974 songs from Budda and the Chocolate Box, as I guess Steven's Peace Train vibe was all a ruse, and his message of love and peace had left the station.

Let's move on to something more positive, and a band that like so many other people, we didn't discover when we needed to in 1974, Big Star. I personally found Big Star a couple of years ago through the 2012 documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me  (Here is the link on Amazon Prime.)

Radio City is their second album. Rolling Stone has included their first three albums in their Top 500 Albums of All-Time. I'm not going to get into their backstory here but I highly recommend you watch the documentary and check out these three albums - 

• #1 Record (Ardent/Stax, 1972)
• Radio City (Ardent/Stax, 1974)
• Third/Sister Lovers (PVC, 1978)

Enjoy the playlist my friends, and I didn't even mention the Eagles and Steely Dan, touring together 50 years later on the Eagles, The Long Goodbye Final Tour.

Wikipedia's 1974 in Music, February and March album release listings

Fifty Years of Music • July, 1973

Fifty years later, what holds up? Maybe by the summer of 1973, the albums coming out were a red flag that rock 'n' roll and R&B were morphing into slicker versions of their former selves from the 1960's.

In listing my rejection bullet points for this blog from July, 1973 in Music, it's kind of a bellwether for what's to come from my both sides now perspective as an 18 year old and 68 year old. 

• 18+ minute songs from Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. Sure artists are allowed to grow, but sometimes you miss their former hooks.
• Elvis. Teenagers in 1973 were not listening to Elvis Presley. C'mon, pictures with Nixon, WTF.
• New York Dolls. Only a few bands could really pull off glam.
• Styx. The rock 'n' rock slick stuff, that just kept growing. So why do I like Queen here and not Styx? I don't know, I just always liked Queen, maybe a little more originality, creativity?
• Barry Manilow. 1970's pop is getting so infected with these types of viruses.
• 10cc. Clever little name for a rock 'n' roll band, that ended there.
• Grand Funk Railroad. C'mon man, are you serious? Kiss is lurking too in 1973. My God, the horror!
• Jim Croce. Folk has always had cornball singer-songwriters, I just didn't get into most of his songs.
• Funkadelic. What's happening to R&B here?
• West, Bruce, and Laing. They shoot horses don't they? 50 years later, it was hard to listen to their last album.

My more experienced ear is now more accepting to say the collaboration between John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana in Love Devotion Surrender.

The late 60's and early 70's had some wonderful western movies. In April 1973, the Eagles jump on that with Desperado, and I just loved Bob Dylan's soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Bob's big hit, Knockin' On Heaven's Door has always been a favorite of mine, and I just got into the soundtrack again this past week.

And I'll tell what really holds up 50 years later, Steely Dan.  A band that would help define the best of music in the 1970's and help carry the rock 'n' roll torch forward with their own unique sound.

Enjoy my friends.