September by Earth, Wind & Fire
It’s already Easter Sunday in New Zealand today, so it seems appropriate to cover a piece of music that I associate with Church. As soon as Church is over each Sunday, the vicar likes to hook his phone up to…
Category 1970s
Read MoreSeptember by Earth, Wind & Fire
Paul Simon Albums: Ranked from Worst to Best
Paul Simon has enjoyed a long, worthwhile solo career since Simon and Garfunkel‘s breakup in 1970. A musical chameleon, he launched his post-duo career with an acoustic record that fitted into the singer-songwriter movement of 1972, then moved into jazz-inflected…
Revolution Blues by Neil Young
It sucks to be me, but I’ve just spent most of the last week at a work conference at a Thailand beach resort. This week’s selection is from Neil Young’s 1974 album On The Beach, while it’s also a commentary…
The Moody Blues Core Seven Albums: Ranked from Worst to Best
Between 1967 and 1972, Birmingham’s The Moody Blues released seven studio albums, commonly referred to as the core seven. They stayed in step with the times, transitioning from richly orchestrated psychedelic pop to more stripped-down albums in the 1970s. At…
Christmas Must Be Tonight by The Band
I spent my time at University working in a supermarket part time, and it only served to deepen my apathy to Christmas pop songs. The supermarket played music on a four hour cycle, with the songs in the same order…
King Crimson: Five Best Albums
King Crimson aren’t so much a band as a series of bands, all featuring idiosyncratic guitarist Robert Fripp. With a demeanour that resembles a University professor more than a rock star, Fripp’s plotted an erratic course for his band. The…
Elvis Costello Albums: Ranked from Worst To Best (The First Ten Years)
He scored a recording contract in 1977, as the punk and new wave movements opened the doors for fresh artists. Elvis Costello, however, was actually a highly literate and sophisticated songwriter who had little in common with punk’s untrained approach.…
Jesus Was A Cross Maker by Judee Sill
California’s Judee Sill had a troubled childhood, losing her father to pneumonia at eight years old. Her mother’s second marriage was often violent, and as a teenager Sill spent time in reform school after committing armed robbery. At reform school…
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…
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 Let There Be Rock – AC/DC 1977, 7.5/10Usually, I’m stringent about listening to albums many times before rating and reviewing them, but I’m on a long haul flight with a…
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…
