ITT: /mu/ in 1976
SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE YOUR BOOTY YEAH
>>129076211oh my fucking science is that a 4/4 beat with the cheesiest fucking strings you've ever heard? they really our better than us, timmy's...
THEY SAY WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF SILLY LOVE SONGS
This has been denounced by the pure-at-heart as a racist vulgarization and while I'll accept the argument that the real hook in "Play That Funky Music" is the phrase "white boy" rather than the instrumental track, I'll also argue that it's real hard to vulgarize Graham Central Station. The performance is admirably crude, but even so its relationships is more akin to that of Grand Funk and Cream than, say, Graham Parker and Sly Stone. C
Holy shithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EBvXpjudf8
>>129076708thought that was ABBA at first
Fuck you, Peter Frampton. Just...just fuck you.
As Joel's craft improves--I can now recall four or five of these songs by name, he becomes more obnoxious. The anti-idealism of "Angry Young Man" isn't any more appealing in tandem with the pseudo-ironic sybaritism of "I've Loved These Days." I do however catch myself in moments of identification with the three place-name songs on side two, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" moreso than the overrated "New York State of Mind." C+
YOOOOOOO
>>129076211Anyone else heard about these guys? They're really cool
>>129076759>IT'S NOT THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE COCAINE>it was the side effects of the cocaine
>>129076751Fuck Billy Joel, man.
I'm voting for Carter this fall, not gonna vote for the guy who pardoned N*xon.
I AM AN ANTICHRIST
What's John Lennon doing these days anyway? Are the Beatles ever gonna reunite? Who knows?
Alright, Peter, you win. I'll review your stupid album--it's only been in the top 20 all year. Now will you please go away? C-
>>1290768332/10 album
Like most hard (not heavy) groups wildly favored by young teens (cf. Alice Cooper, BTO) these guys have always rocked harder than adults were willing to admit. But pro producer Bob Ezrin merely adds bombast and melodrama. Their least interesting record. C
they're washed
>>129076733Now say it through a talkbox
>>129076898Millenials might not realize it but Sabbath were not yet regarded as rock legends back then, in the late 70s they were just a washed up joke and you'd be bullied for listening to them.
Dave Hickey compares the teen crossover of the year to a Buick Roadmaster, and he's right--they've retooled Led Zeppelin till the English warhorse is all glitz and flow, beating the shit out of Boston and Ted Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult in the process. Wish there were a lyric sheet--I'd like to know what that bit about J. Paul Getty's ear is about--but (as Hickey says) the secret is the music, complex song structures that don't sacrifice the basic 4/4 and I-IV-V. A warning, though: Zep's fourth represented a songmaking peak, before the band began to outgrow itself, and the same may prove true for this lesser group, so get it while you can. A-
Reminder that Uli Jon Roth-era Scorpions mogs your favorite rock band.
>>129076927Dave Mustaine said this was the album that made him start a band--he was listening to it one day and his brother-in-law punched him in the head so he decided oh well I'll show him.
Speaking strictly as a nonfan, I'd grant that this is their most substantial if not their most enjoyable LP--they couldn't have written any of the songs on side one, or even the pretentious and condescending "The Last Resort," without caring about their California theme down deep. But though one strength of these lyrics is that they don't exclude the Eagles from purgatory-on-earth, Don Henley is incapable of conveying a mental state as complex as self-criticism--he'll probably sound smug croaking out his famous last words ("Where's the Coke?"). I'd also be curious to know what Mexican-Americans think of the title tune's Spanish accent. B
>>129076998wait why did he punch Dave in the head again?
>>129077031Early Priest was seen as faggy (jokes aside) Goth rock and not the jock rock they were in the 80s. Normies back then were bumping Zeppelin, Nugent, Aerosmith, REO Speedwagon etc.
Admirers of pop nostalgia and readymades should find this one a sly and authentic commentary on the evolving dilemma of Harold Teen. The songs are cute, the vocals attractively phlegmy, and the riffs executed with more dynamism than usual. And so, as they say at the end of certain cartoons, that's all, folks. B
>>129077085oh most of his audience were girls, dudes didn't really have his albums
>>129076879Fuck this band.
Let's talk retirement, Al.
Their closed-system commitment to a robotic aura renders embarrassing questions about whether they mean what they're singing irrelevant, which is good. Too bad the pleasure in artifice doesn't wholly irradiate the patchy material. Best hook: Blue Weaver's organ on "Subway." B-
>>129077218both him and BB had to try pop to find out why they couldn't
>>129076959classic
In the great tradition of Grand Funk, Dylan has created an album much beloved by tour groupies, including those who were shut out of Rolling Thunder's pseudo-communitarian grooviness except via the press. It is not beloved by me. Although I was impressed for the longest time with the candid musicality and wily propagands of "Hurricane", the deceitful bathos of its companion piece "Joey" is enough to make me question the unsullied innocence of Rubin Carter himself. These are not little people songs in the great tradition of "Hattie Mae", their heroes ordinary joes and janies, they're theoretically wronged over-heroes not unlike our beleaugered superstar. And indeed, our superstar may be feeling a bit oppressed himself--the voice is viscuous, the rhymes lazy, while sisters Emmylou and Ronnie merely hold onto his finger. Far better are the pained, passioned marriage tributes "Sara" and "Isis." B-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVZ6nE1lRTg
The proof of how desperate people are for new Springsteen is in how they'll settle for this, even. Songs such as "The Boys Are Back in Town" are the sort of thing that ends up in Bruce's wastebasket. If Irish teen traumas are as boring as Phil Lynott's descriptions of them, then it's no wonder the Irish have trouble keeping their birthrates up. And if they're as secondhand as Scott Gorham's guitar lines, the Irish will probably end up preferring Springsteen, too. C
I love this record--love it, even though I know it flirts with brutality, much like how "Midnight Rambler" flirts with rape. It's also true that the references to Nazism do make me feel uneasy, but then it's always been my theory that good rock-and-roll had damn well better make you uneasy. Not that these boys condone any nasties, mind you--merely hint that their music has some fairly ominous sources they tap into. It's clean the way the Dolls weren't, sprightly the way the Stooges weren't, and just plain listenable like Black Sabbath never was. And I hear it cost $6,800 to put on plastic. A
>almost every album posted so far is rockslopSure is white boys in here.
>>129077572You don't want to read Cuckgau's reviews of soul albums
Holy FUCK
>>129077572There, you happy?
>>129077579especially not what he said about Roberta Flack
The first side is well-wrought heavy metal--fast, tensile, and clean with a minimum of myopthea and bombast. Side two is fraught with the usual frantic melodrama. C+
Honestly his best after ATMP
>>129077572The bad old days of buying a $7 album that usually had 2 good songs and 8 filler tracks and no way of knowing if it was good or not outside Cuckgay or Marsh's chickenscratch reviews in a magazine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8plQdob4JP8
New York's dangerous these days, man. I never go there unless I carry a switchblade in my coat.
The only substantial talent in this group is bassist-producer Paul McCartney, and he's at full strength only on the impassioned "Beware My Love," although "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" are charming if lightweight singles, and "She's My Baby" sounds like an outtake from the "white" double-LP by McCartney's former group, the Beatles. In any case, the supporting cast is disgracefully third-rate. The vocals of guitarist Denny Laine are even lamer than those of McCartney's wife and keyboard player, Linda. B-
It says something that Peter Yarrow's only success of the decade is an Olivia Newton-John clone, albeit one willing to admit she fucks around. C+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ab7tIZNplM
None of the few rockers on this impossibly weepy, impossibly excessive four-sided LP match any on the first side of Yellow Brick Road or Rock of the Westies. Or, as my wife, in total innocence of who was on, exclaimed, "What is this tripe?" C
>>129077815title cut was her only hit and she reportedly hated it
>>129076708If I want to hear screeching whores I can just go down the street to the rowhouse. The fuck is the big deal with this?
>>129077852Just a front for Kim Fowley to do sex trafficking, pay it no mind.
Just when I figured they were doomed to repeat themselves until the breakup, they come up with the Fleetwood Mac of heavy metal, not as fast as Tyranny and Mutation but longer on momentum, with MOR tongue-in-cheek replacing the black-leather posturing and future games. I wonder how long it took them to do the la-la-las on "Debbie Denise" without cracking up. B+
>>129077885>track 1Eventually Judas Priest will steal that riff to make "Rapid Fire."
>>129077902>>129077885And it just wouldn't be BOC without a huge chunk of the album being soft rock filler.
>>129077840Bernie was almost out of ideas and Elton was too coked and boozed up to care. It has its moments though.
>>129077929they always averaged 2 proper rockers per album and the rest was filler
>>129077929>>129077965>if i keep repeating this it will become true
This new group The Fall is great.
Like its accompanying tour, this album, set and recorded in Miami, is a profit-taking throwaway but that is not necessarily a bad thing--Neil Young is always wise to wing it and the less that Steve Stills expresses himself the better. Also hearing Steve only sing lead vocal every other track is an exponential bonus. His "Make Love To You" sets up "Moonlight On The Bay", Neil's stupidest song in many a moon. But Neil's in a droll mood most of the time--title song's a riot. Not bad for California rock. B
>>129077885I've never been a huge fan of the hit single here tbqh.
Fuck KISS. Rock officially died the day they showed up.
>>129078023>We're from the Midwest and want you to know it
Those who dismiss them as unlistenable miss the point altogether--they write tough, catchy songs and if they had a sly, Jagger-like singer up front they'd be a menace. But they're not a menace--as my sister, nephew, and niece assure me, the kids get off on the burlesque. I mean, when the cartoon superhero commands the audience to reach into their pocket and whip out their rocket, don't they know this is a caricature of sex and macho sex at that? Maybe so, but I'm not getting down on my knees to find out. C
>>129078023>track 4Getting there, guys. All it takes is one more album.
Aretha vamping over competent-plus Curtis Mayfield tracks is sexy at worst, mixing rhythmic and emotional frisson, soul product as it should be, albeit deplorably post-verbal. Good late-night listening, I suppose--but not as good as Spirit in the Dark, or Super Fly. B
>>129078068the only good album she made in this sorry period and really only thanks to her collaborator
Still lame AC and hasn't discovered disco bounce yet.
>>129076898figures it was the same guys who will do the I, Robot cover next year
>>129076998Who the fuck is Dave Mustaine? Are you a time traveler?
>>129077980Buy an ad.
"I'm Black, I'm Back?" is how JB begins the commercial message on the jacket, and the title track is his biggest single in a year and a half. "I can see the disco now," he emphasizes, and even the blues and the ballad cultivate a groove designed to reintroduce him to that alien world he founded. But he sounds defensive because he has a reason to be--he can't hit the soft grooves the way he can the hard ones. When he starts equating himself with Elvis Presley (just before the fade on "I Refuse to Lose"), you know the identity problems are getting critical. B-
It's priggish if not stupid to complain that Radio Ethiopia's "four chords are not well played." If they were executed with the precise attack of an Aerosmith, then they would not be well played. For although there's no such thing as an unkempt heavy metal record--technocratic assurance is the soul of such music--unkempt rock and roll records have been helping people feel alive for twenty years. When it works, which is just about everywhere but the (eleven-minute) title track, this delivers the charge of heavy metal without the depressing predictability; its riff power--and the riffs are even better than the lyrics on this rockpoet experiment--has the human elan of a band that is still learning to play. A-
>>129081537I tried, this album just didn't take for me and I could especially do without the poetry reading bullshit.
Rosie's back from the looney bin, but it's been so long the world forgot about her and she hasn't attempted pop since she was a kid so this didn't go much of anywhere. Also her sister went kaput this summer. RIP Betty, gone too soon.
Miller's eccentricity--James Cotton harp amid the Sam Cooke amid the technologized ditties--has no center or even epicenter except for the pastoral antimaterialism so common among exurbanite rock tycoons. But in the end his borrowed hooks and woozy vocal charm are an irresistible formula. Finds good covers, too--"Mercury Blues" (copyright 1970 by K.C. Douglas, whoever he is) fits right in. B+
I don't know how many KC albums the record lover need own. One may well be enough, but zero is certainly too few. This is less consistent than the second and more predictable than the first, but it's a close question: Casey and Finch are remarkably inventive within their unique little ambit. Like the others, this sounds so samey you think the riffs will never kick in--and then they do. B+
>>129077616whoa, slow down and drop the moonshine jug there, Billy Bob
Don't let misguided notions of feminist, creative convolutions, or the idea that punk rock should transcend ordinary musical ideas tempt you--this is Kim Fowley's project, which means it is tuneless and wooden as well as exploitative. How on Earth the man can hang around El Lay for this long without copping a lick or two defies comprehension. The answer must lay in sheer perversity, which in of itself makes for the one truly perverse thing about the man. C-
>>129081843Really big of Kim to resist naming them Jailbait
>>129081843Yeah this album is hilariously terrible.>The answer must lay in sheer perversity, which in of itself makes for the one truly perverse thing about the manAcually there was a whole lot more perverse about KF but nobody knew that back then.
>>129081843>The answer must lay in sheer perversity, which in of itself makes for the one truly perverse thing about the man.aside from all the raping
Goodnight sweet princess.
>>129077769Nobody but Eddie Trunk has ever listened to a UFO album, I'm sure of it.
Crazy that christgau poster has his own reply guys
>>129081897The dyke queen of jazz.
>>129081897Bing Crosby went less than a year after he, maybe he was saddened at the passing of an old friend of his and decided it was time to go.
>>129082016>Bing Crosby went less than a year after he*after she died, I meantI mangled the post, sorry.
>>129076211Holy Fuck! I just saw this band at Gazzarri's on Sunset Blvd. They were in-fucking-sane. Surely will be the next big thing. The guitar player was from outter space.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXCaK4_awPQ
>>129077014He's right. This is where they start to get even remotely decent. The Long Run was another step in the right direction… and then they broke up!
>>129077877This cover is so good. Feels too sophisticated for Accadacca.
>>129078056Is this the album the members of the band like the best? I think every track has been on a comp or a box set.
This fellow sounds as if he could use a band. Do you think Leon Russell can drum one up? C
>>129082408AKA the one where John, Paul and George hang Ringo out to dry
No truth-in-packaging awards here--you'd never know from the label that most of this has been heard before in other configurations--but how about a cheer-and-a-half for the programming? Me, I often find Waylon and Willie (and Tompall and Jessi) a little tedious over a whole side. This never gets boring. B+
F
>>129082152wow. that shit slaps. why didnt they ever record that song?
Although the rumors of a major new artist that began after the success of "Poetry Man"--still her sappiest song, although the lyrics here aren't what they call creative writing--originated with fuzzy-minded mongers, I'm pleased to report that her trademark melismatic quaver hasn't degenerated into a gimmick, and I acknowledge that this is a good record of its type. I just have my doubts about how good a jazz-folk mood-music record can be. Money isn't all that's "worthless/When your music's mirthless"--sometimes the music is as well. B
>>129077488You suck, Bob. Fuck you, faggot.
Hey...guys...remember me? I used to be somebody once. Anyone?
>>129077851There's no way they can top this one
>>129082847Roy, man, you have a gig at the county fair in Topeka to get ready for. You'll be late.
>>129082885are Jay and the Americans the opening act? lol.
EW&F are the real black MOR, equivalent in their catchy way to the oh-so-expert Carpenters, though of course they're much better because they're black--that is, because the post-Sly and harmony-group usages they've had to master are so rich and resilient. Most of these songs are fun to listen to. But they're still MOR--the only risk they take is running headlong into somebody coming down the middle of the road in the opposite direction. Like the Carpenters. B
The biggest-selling record albums of all time are Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Sound of Music, and Tapestry. Proof of how un-monolithic mass culture truly is is in how few consumers are likely to own all three. And as proof of how numbing Jane Olivor truly is, it's a safe bet that she not only owns all three but would put them in her top albums of all time. She may as yet find success but if so it will be by discarding the part of Barbra Streisand that Bette Midler put in the garbage. C
>>129077373Oh no, Zimmy said a naughty word on this album.
Originals and influentials they obviously are, but too often individual pieces of their unprecedented music aren't _necessary_. They didn't have time to get really silly here, so this is unusually consistent, but "Hots on for Nowhere" is as close as it comes to a commanding cut, and I prefer "Whole Lotta Love" and "Rock and Roll" and "Dancing Days." Nu? B
Except for "Mercy on Those," a quite remarkably tedious profession of self-righteousness that occupies the last 6:06 of side one, Snow's gifts as a singer and lyricist are finally channeled. The silly mystical ideas are way down below her overriding good sense; up above we find a fairly strong, direct, and happy woman who is by no means vegetating in her contentment, perhaps because she's too insecure ever to become complacent. She's rocking a lot more, correct practice for a content but uncomplacent person, and when her voice wavers it no longer sounds as though it wants to disappear altogether. And the three non-originals--"Teach Me Tonight," "Don't Let Me Down," and "Shakey Ground"--make quite a combo. B+
>>129083478some Jewish lesbian slop i think
Miraculously, Bowie's attraction to black music has matured; even more miraculously, the new relationship seems to have left his hard-and-heavy side untouched. Ziggyphiles can call it robotoid if they want--I admire the mechanical, fragmented, rather secondhand elegance of Aladdin Sane, and this adds soul. All of the six cuts are too long, I suppose, including the one that originated with Johnny Mathis, and David sounds like he's singing to us via satellite. But spaceyness has always been part of his shtick, and anybody who can merge Lou Reed, disco, and Huey Smith--the best I can do with the irresistible "TVC 15"--deserves to keep doing it for 5:29. A
>>129083478So she can turn "Teach Me Tonight" into 70s lounge music, big deal. I'm not trading Dinah Washington for this version. Still not as bad as Mike Love's though.
>>129083881she's trying hard to sound black but not exactly succeeding at it
Oh dear. Fortunately this was the last time she tried contemporary pop.
RIP
On being told that someone had achieved an American synthesis of Yes and Led Zeppelin, all I could do was hold my ears and say "Gosh!" C
>>129084038>>129082527damn, two in one year
This isn't as worldly as George wants you to think--or as he thinks himself, for all I know--but it ain't fulla shit either. "Crackerbox Palace" is the best thing he's written since "Here Comes the Sun" (not counting "Deep Blue," hidden away on the B side of "Bangla-Desh," or--naughty, naughty--"My Sweet Lord"), and if "This Song" were on side two I might actually play the record again. B-
>>129084137I was going to post this yesterday but it’s really not amazing, so I decided not to, it’s probably his weakest 70’s album.Except Black Napkins of course.
https://youtu.be/dAP1xRvFr-Y
>>129081605>Unlike her sister, Betty did not make a full-time career out of music. She recorded only occasionally and devoted most of her time to raising a family. A reviewer who wrote about her performance in a nightclub in 1954 said "She had a warm and engaging stage presence, moreso than her much more famous sister." Clooney died tragically in her Las Vegas home of a brain aneurysm on August 6, 1976 at only 45. Her sister would go on to sponsor charities benefiting stroke and aneurysm victims.[9]
>>129076494What did he mean by this?
>>129084630Kiki had a good voice but she was a turbo dyke and posed as Elton's beard for a time. Also she was never really much of a thing over here compared to the UK.
>>129076703Nobody's ever going to convince me they wrote that song themselves.
Scaggs is criticized for his detachment, but I say it's subtlety and I say thank god for it. In the past, he's sometimes bought (not to mention sold) his own lushness, but this collection is cooled by droll undercurrents--white soul with a sense of humor that isn't consumed in self-parody. Inspirational Verse: "Gotta have a jones for this/Jones for that/This runnin' with the joneses, boy/Just ain't where it's at." A-
Their third or fourth live double of the decade is the first one to contain all the sorry earmarks of the genre, namely a lot of stretched-out remakes. And believe me, the Dead can rilly stretch 'em out. C-
