Setting the wayback machine to the 70s

[jon_chaisson]

Why have I been on a 70s kick lately?  Good question.  Over the past few years I've listened to a lot of 80s and 90s tunes and blogged endlessly about them -- after all, those were my teenage/college/post-college/record store/writing years.  But the 70s is sort of a blur for me musically.  Obviously, part of it is due to the fact I was a little bratty kid at the time, and whatever I listened to was informed by crackly AM radio and the same ten bands I hear on classic rock stations nowadays.  But as I mentioned on my music blog today, the fact that Player's "Baby Come Back" and Wire's "12XU" (sort-of love songs that couldn't be more polarized) both came out in November of 1977 fascinates me.

There's also the fact that, thanks to the way I've tagged my mp3 collection, I can listen listen to music chronologically down to the month if not the date of release.  I've listened to various years of music this way to get a better understanding of the state of popular music back then.  I'd like to look past those same ten Big Name Musicians (Springsteen, Elton, Joel, Aerosmith, Led Zep, etc) and find some of the stuff I'd forgotten or hadn't heard since I was that little kid.  Move past that expectation of feeling embarrassed when listening to Neil Diamond, Captain & Tennille or Barbra Streisand ('cuz y'know, they were the epitome of UNCOOL when I was growing up).  Sure, some of the pop during that decade was in fact quite milquetoast and/or horribly written, but there are some gems out there.  There's especially some great soul, R&B and album rock out there that I've overlooked for one reason or another.

This should be an interesting endeavor.

Comments

[msstacy13]

Along those lines, I was disappointed when I learned years ago that "album by year" was actually within artist. I might have liked going through the whole collection by year...