Almanac Music: ‘100 x 100, 1954 to 1977’: 91-100

Twenty years of fulsome creativity, the mid 1970s weren’t as crammed with great songs as the mid 1960s but styles abounded.

 

91 – ‘Guilty’, Randy Newman, September 1974
Writing music for classic movies was the family job. Orchestration was in Randy’s blood. People that admit to liking this song love James Ellroy. It’s ugly and stupid and messed up and beautiful, a sloppy man rings his ex-girlfriend, he has nowhere else to go, hopes she might take him in, for just one night, please. Cos she’s the one that knows, “it takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I’m somebody else”

 

92 – ‘Take Me To The River’, Al Green, 1974
Glorious gospel. Al was one of the great singers, Jimmy Mitchell one of the great producers, they were a great team and had one of the great bands. Listen to the three guitars combining for rhythm and harmony, experts at creating movement and space and sly melodies, listen to the smooth groove of bass and drums and organ and the lyrical mix of sacred and profane, listen to Al glide effortlessly around the song, such a voice.

 

93 – ‘I’m Not In Love’, 10CC, May 1975
The cream of British songwriter and session players, with scads of hits behind them, formed a band, on this track recorded multiple chromatic scaled vocals, mixed to a sixteen-track then played that like a keyboard, overdriven pre-amps and saturated tape made a haunting ethereal sound, perfect backing for the lyrics of someone trying to lie to themself. “Be quiet, be quiet” was the studio recepionist, details like that are a key part of the secret history of rock and roll.

 

94 – ‘Born To Run’, Bruce Springsteen, August 1975
Ernest Carter was a drummer, played on one Springsteen song. Bruce captured a nostalgia in his lyrics, a rock and roll tradition in his music, reinvented and presented it and it would never have worked without his total belief in the healing power of rock and roll. Skinny Bruce and Boom’s drumming, magic.

 

95 – ‘Cherry Bomb’, Runaways, March 1976
Teenage girls, mommy and daddy might have given up on their sons but held hope for their daughters, until the Runaways, hip LA schoolgirls, came along and said, “Fuck You Mom and Dad, you lost us too.” The first punk band of the 1970s.

 

96 – ‘Shake Some Action’, Flaming Groovies 1976
“Let me bust out at full speed”, boogie and power pop and one of the very best songs to dance around yr loungeroom and sing along with.

 

97 – ‘American Girl’, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, February 1977
Guitars and drums and Byrds fans, Tom’s Heartbreakers broke open with this sublime song and a thousand kids grabbed a guitar and got to thinking about harmonies and arrangements.

 

98 – ‘Descent Into The Maelstrom’, Radio Birdman, July 1977
Rock and Roll as Furious Art. Edgar Allen Poe, drumming and bassplaying, an hi-octane soul rhythm that drives this song beyond anything else in the world. The rhythm carries the slick licks and howling vox thru a tale of despair, hopelessness and a life-affirming redemption.

 

99 – ‘Pretty Vacant’, Sex Pistols, July 1977
Weirdos, petty criminals, music fans, a group that was too young and crazy and too good to last. Steven, Paul, Glen, John – oh, perfect names – met at a boutique named Sex, on Kings Rd, Chelsea, the heart of hip London since Mary Quant opened a shop there in 1959. 19 or 20 yrs old, they loved the music they’d heard on the radio when they were kids, they were Londoners with their own young attitude, a new style of gear, Chris Spedding let ‘em learn how to record, they knew pop, like adapting the intro to an Abba song to this fantastic blast, stuff your cheap comments cos we know what we feel.
Rebellion w pop smarts

 

100 – ‘Rockaway Beach’, Ramones, 1977
‘Chewing out a rhythm on my bubblegum’, you can almost hear Elvis singing this. Rock and roll came full circle, back to the simple joy of dancing and laughing tho, by then, such joys were looked down upon by many who thought that prog rock was the future. Not that Ramones was the future, like many another listed, it was a band too perfect in and of itself. Nonetheless, influenced thousands of youngsters to play pop songs with a buzzsaw guitar, many a great song came out of that. Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, you had style and attitude, you were the last of the first and the first of the new generation.

 

Sometimes there’s gross reality and sometimes there’s an heroic tale. By 1977, rock and roll was looking back at itself, getting back to basics, independent labels sprouted in poor soil, weeds ran wild. The beautiful historic arc smashed down and a million bands exploded out of it.

 

 

To read more by Earl O’Neill click HERE.

 

 

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