What, the decade during which I came of age? There was some damned good music at the time, and I have fond memories of screwing and/or getting stoned while listening to it. Lots of good, lots of bad, same as any decade I guess.
You must be easily amused. I’m arguing they’re two of the best albums of the 70s as opposed to two of the worst albums of the 70s or two of the most mediocre albums of the 70s.
How about some Grand Funk (Railroad)?
Maybe some Fifth Dimension? (Marilyn McCoo has the best woman’s singing voice in history IMHO. And yes, I know they started in the '60s, but they had one of those “stupid” variety shows in the '70s. Along with Jim Stafford, Bobby Darin and Richard Pryor)
I’m going to go out on a limb.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Yes, I liked them. A lot. Not just the hits. They turned out some good album cuts like “Blue Collar,” “Not Fragile,” and “Lookin’ Out for #1.” Some of my favorite music.
Battle of the Network Stars?
Yes, I’m afraid that song about muskrats is the main problem with the Captain & Tenille. As “Muskrat Candlelight” it was a forgiveable novelty number on Willis Alan Ramsey’s one & only album. Others covered every song on that highly influential set–one of the best of the whole Texas Singer Songwriter/Cosmic Cowboy scene. (Although Willlis came from Oklahoma.) He’s alive & well & still singing–think he spent a lot of time in the British Isles. No stories of tragic debauchery or anything–but the royalties never stopped…
^Bridget, I could kiss you. VERY well put post. I owe you a brew, and since we’re in the same town, you could actually collect. Let me know. 
LOVED it. Especially how serious Robert Conrad was.
Really??
There was Barry McGuire doing war protest/folk. You maligned Neil Young, but no song today has ever brought an age group together like Ohio.
There was metal. REO Speedwagon & Alice Cooper, started in the 70s.
There were the psychodelics, like Pink Floyd and The Moody Blues, Jimi Hendrix.
There was the hated Disco, and Bubble gum, Brian Hyland and Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, and the purple people eater. There was the dead girlfriend laments. But Country came into the main stream. Waylon, Willie and the Boys?
Then there were the women. Bette Midler, Janis Joplin, Heart,
In my opinion, it was actually the most diverse decade. Much of todays’ music grew out of those sounds.
Motown.
picunurse, are you talking about the '60s or '70s? Almost everything on the list of what you like is from the '60s, and some of the stuff you don’t like as well.
Including the tail end of the 60s in the discussion is a bit of a cheat, and for the change in the country’s zeitgeist, I’d start no earlier than Nixon’s reelection. For pop culture purposes, the 70s thus really probably spanned from around 1973 to 1980. E.g., the Beatles broke up in 1970, but you wouldn’t call them a 70s band. But Wings, you would.
As someone pointed out in a thread about the “creepy Seventies”:
I would think it depends a lot on the listener’s developmental age. I grew up during the 70s, so I recognized a lot of the top 100 hits for 1975. I recognized a fair amount of 1985 hits, but not as much as I did the previous decade. I recognized maybe 10 of the 1995 hits. Top 40 appealed to me as a kid, then as I got older, not so much.
As far as “a small percentage have staying power,” it appears Madonna is part of that elite group. She had hits in both 1985 and 1995.
Could explain why she hasn’t known enough to quit. Hubris. Just a sad old cow now.
Umm, no, you weren’t. Billy Joel was not previously mentioned in the thread.
Your premise, mildly re-stated, is this:
The 70s couldn’t have been that bad; two of the best 70s albums were from the 70s.
May not have been what you meant, but that’s how it reads.
mmm
So? Thats why I mentioned him. He became popular in the 1970s.
It would have been ludicrous for me to mention two albums from the 80s as being among the best of the 70s. No matter what you read, I don’t see my post as redundant. I didn’t think it required restating.
Mother-Fucking Boston.
OK. No hard feelings.
mmm
Hardly anything after 1960 worth the effort of listening to it. WWII and shortly thereafter was the best time for music.
Also, I believe dropzone’s reference to radio in the early and mid 70s being “not as splintered” refers to the move starting in the late 70s towards programming formats that meant in most stations the playlist would represent strictly only one genre [hard rock, classic rock, charts pop, “Adult Contemporary”, “urban”, etc.]. Which did away with picunurse’s radio world that included a little bit of everything (and yes, the examples are from different time periods).
Ding, baby, ding. The songs that broke through and got radio play - and therefore became hits - in the 1970s were the most diverse bunch there’d even been. It was also the final real heyday of novelty songs being played on mainstream radio and that’s a big win, IMHO.
Even the songs that drop derides early in the thread - Afternoon Delight, Mohammed Ali, and so forth - are tremendously fun to listen to and sing along with. Goofiness has its place and shouldn’t be brought down.