Well, it’s 4am and I can’t sleep, so I figured I would have a look and see if I can make a list.
I have a feeling this will be even harder than the 60’s, but I’ll try.
1970 Black Sabbath - Paranoid
1971 Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
1972 Nick Drake - Pink Moon
1973 Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
1974 Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic
1975 Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
1976 Ramones - Ramones
1977 Steely Dan - Aja
1978 Wire - Chairs Missing
1979 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Well, that was pretty difficult! Good to see everyone’s lists too.
1970 Moondance
1971 Bryter Layter
1972 Ziggy Stardust/Imagine
1973 Dark Side of the Moon
1974 Crime of the Century/Living In The 70s
1975 Rocky Horror Picture Show OST/T.N.T
1976 Hotel California/Arrival/Oxygene
1977 Never Mind the Bollocks/The Stranger/Bat out of Hell
1978 Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds/Face to Face
1979 The Wall/Breakfast in America
Sorry, couldn’t follow the rules.
(You don’t really need me to list the artists, do you?)
70 Cosmo’s Factory - CCR
71 Led Zeppellin IV
72 Harvest - N.Young
73 Dark Side of the Moon - P.Floyd
74 Pretzel Logic - S.Dan
75 Zuma - N.Young
76 Wired - J.Beck
77 Five Times the Sun - Dingoes
78 Cold Chisel
79 Head Injuries - M.Oil
1970 The Stooges - Fun House
1971 David Bowie - Hunky Dory
1972 David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
1973 Can - Future Days
1974 Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets
1975 Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
1976 Ramones - Ramones
1977 Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express
1978 Wire - Chairs Missing
1979 The Clash - London Calling
If you asked me to list my fave albums of the 70s it would just be a list of stuff from 1979. Insanely good year, but I had to stay true to my avatar pic.
1970 Loaded - Velvet Underground / Let It Be - The Beatles (though this is a relatively weak album for them).
1971 Hunky Dory - David Bowie
1972 Superfly - Curtis Mayfield / Transformer - Lou Reed
1973 Raw Power - Iggy & The Stooges
1974 Marcus Garvey - Burning Spear
1975 Another Green World - Brian Eno
1976 The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
1977 Police and Thieves - Junior Murvin / Never Mind The Bollocks - Six Pistols
1978 This Years Model - Elvis Costello
1979 154 - Wire
Mid-70s a bit lean for my tastes.
77 / 78 / 79 - so much good punk, new wave, reggae, post-punk!
1970: John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
1971: David Bowie - Hunky Dory
1972: Black Sabbath - Vol. 4
1973: James Brown - The Payback
1974: The Meters - Rejuvenation
1975: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
1976: Rose Royce - Car Wash
1977: Iggy Pop - Lust For Life
1978: Jeff Wayne et al. - War of the Worlds. (otherwise Prince - For You.)
1979: Motorhead - Overkill
Turned 40 a couple of days ago and this master piece of an album deserves a special shoutout.
I got into VH when younger throughout the 1984/5150 era and Luv those albums.
However when I started going back through the catalogue I realised how brilliant this band really was.
The fire and brimstone this band possessed on those early albums still has me crankin’ the ■■■■ out of them today.
The 1st album to me as a debut record surely has to be ranked as one of the greatest ever recorded.
Grade 4 or 5, my English teacher played Eve of the War to the class, and asked us to draw how we saw the aliens.
At the end of the class I summoned up the courage to ask my teacher if I could borrow the tape.
It was a pretty big deal for him to trust me with it.
I listened to it that night, I mean…I want to say the whole thing…it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was to a ten year-old.
Just wrecked me.
You wanna talk about iconic albums…it certainly hasn’t been matched (although I continuously tell myself to give Operation: Mindcrime a go), and I don’t think anyone’s even attempted to match it.
Have been directed to Operation: Mindcrime, too many times not to finally make it a priority.
I could write pages about the terror WOTW caused my young mind. The seat of many circular anxiety issues. So far as concept/narrative albums, I loved King Diamond as a teenager, but I haven’t heard anything close to WOTW. (Why did my parents think it was ok to play that to me, as if it was Billy fking Joel? Seriously?)
70 Beatles Abbey Road, Deep Purple In Rock
71 Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells a Story, The Who Who’s Next
72 Fleetwood Mac Bare Trees, Lou Reed Transformer
73 Stones Goats Head Soup, Rare Earth Ma
74 The Dingoes, Lou Reed Rock & Roll Animal, Skyhooks Living In The 70’s
75 Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti, Born To Run The Boss
76 Eagles Hotel California, AC/DC Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
77 Little River Band Diamantina Cocktail, Never Mind The Bollocks here’s the Sex Pistols
78 Roy Buchanan You Are Not Alone, Kate Bush The Kick Inside
79 Les Dudek Ghost Town Parade, Ricky Lee Jones, Cold Chisel Breakfast at Sweethearts.
Not having a dig at you in any way…but it might be that by the time you got to listen to it, so many older people had probably told you how great it was that it was never going to be able to live up to their hype.
I was 12, going on 13 when it came out and it just blew me away…the music, the album art, the packaging…everything was brilliant (imo).
'70 All Things Must Pass - George Harrison
'71 L.A. Woman - The Doors
'72 Exile on Main St - Rolling Stones
'73 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
'74 Living in the 70’s - Skyhooks
'75 Atlantic Crossing - Rod Stewart
'76 High Voltage - AC-DC
'77 Footloose & Fancy Free - Rod Stewart
'78 Face to Face - The Angels
'79 Back in Black - AC-DC
Didn’t seem like a dig at all. I was also watching a video about how it was so innovative in a lot of ways such as how they spliced the tape and played some segments backwards and did all sorts of novel editing things that would obviously be 100 times less advanced than what your average Soundcloud artist does in his bedroom on his Mac today. So definitely one to try and transplant yourself to the time period for.
I think as well when I tried it I could never be fkd getting into the whole concept album idea and themes etc and just looked for some good tunes. Which I’ll admit is a bit of a cop out and would infuriate if someone did that to one of my favourites. I did like Money though.
