Neil Young: Five Best Albums
Neil Young has enjoyed a long and erratic music career. His first brush with fame came with Buffalo Springfield in the 1960s. He released his first solo album in 1969, and he also teamed up with Crosby, Stills, and Nash…
Category 1970s
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Cool in the Pool – Holger Czukay
We’re reaching peak rock star death era – many of the musicians active during rock music’s formative years are reaching their seventies. This week we lost Walter Becker of Steely Dan, who was an integral part of one of the…
The Band: Albums Ranked from Worst to Best
After years of playing live, The Band recorded the Basement Tapes with Bob Dylan, where they developed their unique melding of rock with traditional folk, country and blues forms. The organic harmonies, the virtuoso but unassuming musicianship, and songs that seemed to…
I Wanna Be By Your Side – Syreeta
Not content with merely creating some of the greatest albums ever made (and winning a bucket-load of Grammy Awards) during the 1970s, Stevie Wonder also produced a couple of albums for his ex-wife Syreeta Wright. He wrote most of the…
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft – The Carpenters
The Carpenters, from Downey California, released some transcendent songs in the early 1970s. Karen Carpenter’s beautiful voice showcased beautiful melodies with dark undertows, on songs like ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ and ‘Superstar’. But the brother and sister duo’s career was…
Tom Waits Albums: Ranked from Worst to Best
California’s Tom Waits has enjoyed a remarkable career. Emerging in the early 1970s as a whisky-soaked, piano-playing balladeer, his career was seemingly petering out in the early 1980s. But he reinvented himself with the junkyard clang of 1983’s excellent Swordfishtrombones,…
Richard and Linda Thompson Albums: Ranked from Worst to Best
English folk-rock duo Richard and Linda Thompson’s career resembled a soap opera. Active as recording artists between 1974 and 1982, they married, released three albums in quick succession, then spent three years in a Sufi Muslim commune where Richard’s religious…
Halleluwah by Can
Germany’s Can were too ahead of their time, and too weird, to enjoy a hit record, but they were hugely influential; for instance, when Radiohead ditched guitar rock in favour of more experimental work, Can were one of the bands…
Van Morrison: Five Best Albums
The best albums from Van Morrison's catalogue.
John Cale Album Reviews
While his former Velvet Underground bandmate Lou Reed enjoyed a larger public profile, John Cale has always been like an invisible hand guiding the alternative music scene. Cale started his career in the early 1960s in the contemporary classical scene.…
1970s Miscellany
This page collects odds and ends from the 1970s: AC/DC | Aerosmith | Bread | The Carpenters | Eric Clapton | The Doobie Brothers | Roy Harper | Janis Joplin | John Lennon | The Modern Lovers | John Phillips | Rush | Carly Simon | Rick Wakeman AC/DC Let There Be Rock – AC/DC 1977, 7.5/10Usually, I’m stringent about listening…
Gram Parsons (and The Flying Burrito Brothers) Album Reviews
Gram Parsons, or as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die describes him, “Keith Richards’ citrus-heir drug-buddy”, is remembered as a country-rock pioneer. While this description is certainly apt, I was taken aback by his music initially. It’s not…
