No One Here Gets Out Alive

In each of the six decades since the birth of rock and roll, you can find some magic, and you can shake your head and wonder how anybody could listen to such rubbish. 

But for me, the 70’s is the big enigma.  Some of the best rock, much of it indelibly stamped into the concrete of our collective consciousness, was made in that decade.  And I couldn’t do without it.  But it was a confusing decade, one with little or no direction, a time of extremes and excesses.

Hard rock, prog rock, power pop, funk, metal, disco, jazz fusion, punk, folk-rock, singer-songwriter … and the leisure suits.  Brother.

The 70’s were not kind to a lot of 60’s icons.  The Stones, Clapton, and The Who, for example, all had their moments, but really they drifted through with mixed results.  Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd triumphantly pushed through, and then collapsed at the finish line.  Deep Purple didn’t make it.  The Beatles and Hendrix didn’t even get out of the starting block.

The energy that began as punk and coalesced into New Wave was certainly welcome.  It brought some much-needed focus to all that aimless thrashing about.  To borrow from Rossini’s invective against Wagner, the 70’s had wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour.

Sounds Like …

Here’s an obvious truth: although they covered a lot of ground over many years (not enough, in the case of The Beatles), The Beatles always sound like The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones always sound like The Rolling Stones.

But here’s the thing:  what made them so darn good is that they could do anybody else.  The Beatles do Roy Orbison and come up with Please Please Me.  They do Dylan and come up with You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.  They start jamming Fleetwood Mac’s Green Manalishi and arrive at Sun King.

Same thing with The Stones.  While always true to their blues roots, they’ve absorbed and played back: Rock and Roll, British Invasion, Country, Folk Rock, Psychedelic, Hard Rock, Jazz Fusion – and just about everything that ever came out of Motown, Memphis and Muscle Shoals.  I know some cynics who think The Stones sold out and became silly by trying to stay relevant in the late 70’s as the world shifted into Disco and then 80’s R&B, but I disagree.

What I hear is a great band saying, “Yeah, we can do that.  Listen!”  And then they prove it by serving up a classic example of the style.  But even as the do that, they remind you they’re still The Stones.  The riffs, the grit, the guitar bi-play, the self-caricaturing vocals – they’re all there.  Miss You is both vintage Disco and vintage Stones.  Rock and A Hard Place sounds like it could have been recorded by Robert Palmer, but the presence of Keith and Ronnie make it better.  And just to drive the point home, they give us Sad Sad Sad on the same album.  “So much for this ‘new’ R&B thing.  Now here’s some rock and roll.”

Paul McCartney’s solo career proves that if The Beatles had lasted longer, they too would have remained relevant by continuing to listen to the new music around them, absorbing it, and the giving it back to us as fresh magic.

The Beatles and The Stones prove that you develop your own style by absorbing the music around you, and you evolve that style by continuing to listen.

Arena Rock

The 70’s was (were?) a good time to be a young rock fan, so says the Rolling Stone Readers Poll on the 10 Best Metal/Hard Rock Albums of the 1970s.

Sure.  Until things got a little excessive.  Then again, it was better than disco.

Anyway, here’s the list:

  1. Zeppelin - IV

  2. Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti

  3. Sabbath - Paranoid

  4. Deep Purple – Machine Head

  5. Van Halen

  6. AC/DC – Highway to Hell

  7. Aerosmith - Rocks

  8. Kiss - Alive

  9. Sabbath – Master of Reality

10. Montrose

I know I’m in the minority in my inability to adore Black Sabbath and Kiss, but it certainly isn’t a surprise to find them on the list.  At least Zep and Deep Purple are well represented.

Then again, a strong case could be made for a top ten list than only had Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple albums.  OK, ok, we’d need a couple of AC/DC albums to get to 10, and that wouldn’t hurt one bit.  But you know, Houses of the Holy, Deep Purple in Rock, Made in Japan … these were big records.

Not complaining, just sayin’.

This Ain’t No Disco

Are we sure David Byrne wasn’t born in Detroit?  Just asking.

We Got The Beat

The Rolling Stone Top 10 Dance Songs of All Time list should get your juices flowing and your feet bouncing.  Here’s the list:

 1. Daft Punk – One More Time

 2. New Order – Blue Monday

 3. The Beatles – Twist and Shout

 4. Justice – D.A.N.C.E.

 5. Madonna - Vogue

 6. The Isley Brothers - Shout

 7.  Michael Jackson - Thriller

 8.  Deee-Lite – Groove Is In The Heart

 9.  Chic – Le Freak

10. Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive

Not a lot of surprises here, though I would have preferred more 60’s rock ‘n’ roll and R&B, but no matter.  We’d all be shocked if Madonna and MJ didn’t have at least one song each, right?

And good for the Isley Brothers for getting one of their songs and a cover of one of their covers on the list.  Actually, the endurance of Shout is more than curious; it wasn’t even that big a hit when it was first released.  I mean, it’s fun to dance to and DJ’s seem to love it, but …

Speaking of having the beat, spandex and mullets aside, the 80’s produced a lot of great dance numbers.  Surprised there wasn’t more New Wave and Europop on the list.  Life was good during wartime.

Tired of Waiting

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Why have I taken so long to write something about The Kinks?

Maybe that’s my pattern.  I noticed them during the first British Invasion, of course.  And they seemed to hold their own during the transition from rock ‘n’ roll to psychedelic.  I remember playing Well Respected Man in my band when I was in Grade 8.

But then they got pushed aside during the second invasion, displaced by the likes of Cream, Zeppelin, Hendrix and Deep Purple.  Yes, I know Hendrix was American, but he arrived from England, didn’t he?

Like so many others, The Kinks just didn’t register on the new hard rock scale.  After Lola, they were gone and forgotten.

Ah, but they weren’t gone.  While everyone was dicking around with Prog Rock and Metal and Disco, they were out there, staying (mostly) true to their rock ‘ n’ roll roots.  And somewhere in the late-ish 70’s, when Punk had said “enough!” and radio stations began giving airtime to the likes of Steve Miller, Linda Ronstadt and Tom Petty, The Kinks resurfaced.

And, longing as I was for something less pompous and silly.  I finally, really noticed them.  A string of great albums, beginning with Misfits, helped them ride the New Wave well into the 80’s when, along with rock ‘n’ roll, they faded again.  Having finally become a fan, I hoped they might resurface one more time during the all-too-brief Garage Band thing in the early 90’s, but to no avail.  That wish turned out to be a rock & roll fantasy.

Now they’re gone, un-rescued by the local village green preservation societies.  Maybe that’s a good thing, ‘cause at least we’re being spared one more fossilized group out on tour.  I dunno.

Listen: I know I’m doing some revisionist history here, suggesting The Kinks were fabulous from start to finish.  They disappeared from most of our radars in the late 60’s and early 70’s because their dabbling in the emerging styles was unsuccessful.  But when they went back to what they did well, they gave us a big batch of terrific music.

They may have been surpassed by others in terms of both impact and longevity, but there are times when I could listen to their music all day and all of the night.

Attack Of The Killer Mirror Balls

In the 10 Songs That Prove Disco Didn't Suck article, posted a while back by Gibson, we are invited to entertain the notion that Disco didn’t almost kill contemporary pop music and culture.

To quote: “No genre in the history of contemporary music has been more thoroughly maligned than disco has. But the music – and its impact – shouldn’t be dismissed in one fell swoop. Many terrific artists dabbled in or even embraced the genre, and emerged with their musical integrity intact. Below are 10 songs that give credence to that assertion.”

Well, here’s the list: Good Times (Chic), Hot Stuff (Donna Summer), I Was Made For Lovin’ You (Kiss), Miss You (Rolling Stones), Heart Of Glass (Blondie), Tears Are Not Enough (ABC), Rock With You (Michael Jackson), Stay (David Bowie), Fire (Ohio Players), Goodnight Tonight (Wings).

Listen: I’m wary of generalizations, and I don’t like the phrase “such-and-such sucks.”  But disco was awful, and this list does not prove the article’s point.

For example:

1)    As much as I adore The Stones and Paul McCartney, and respect Messrs. Bowie and Jackson, these songs are hardly their best efforts.

2)    Yes, it got played in discos, and in hindsight sounds like disco, but Blondie was viewed as a New Wave act.  On second thought, was Blondie copying the disco that came before or presaging the resurrected 80’s synth pop rubbish that was to come afterwards?  Nevermind.

Don’t get me wrong.  Dancing is fun.  A great beat and an infectious, upbeat tune is the stuff of happiness.  But for rockers like me, disco was hard to take.  And the list just proves the point.