4 Way Street Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young c
Acquiring the Taste Gentle Giant c
Al Green Gets Next to You Al Green c
Aqualung Jethro Tull c
At Fillmore East The Allman Brothers Band c
Blue Joni Mitchell c
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II Bob Dylan c
Every Picture Tells a Story Rod Stewart c
Fragile Yes c
Future Games Fleetwood Mac c
Hunky Dory David Bowie c
Imagine John Lennon c
Judee Sill Judee Sill c
Led Zeppelin IV Led Zeppelin c
Madman Across the Water Elton John c
Muswell Hillbillies The Kinks c
Nursery Cryme Genesis c
Ram Paul McCartneyandLinda McCartney c
Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones c
Surf’s Up The Beach Boys c
Tapestry Carole King c
Teaser and the Firecat Cat Stevens c
Teenage Head Flamin’ Groovies c
The Yes Album Yes c
There’s a Riot Goin’ On Sly & the Family Stone c
Tupelo Honey Van Morrison c
What’s Going On Marvin Gaye c
Who’s Next The Who c
Workin’ Together-Ike & Tina Turner c
America America d
American Pie Don McLean d
Black Oak Arkansas Black Oak Arkansas d
Bonnie Raitt Bonnie Raitt d
Carly Simon Carly Simon d
Crazy Horse Crazy Horse d
Danny O’Keefe–Danny O’Keefe d
Donny Hathaway Donny Hathaway d
Doug Kershaw–Doug Kershaw d
Earth, Wind & Fire Earth, Wind & Fire d
Faust–Faust d
Grin Grin d
Himself Gilbert O’Sullivan d
I Wrote a Simple Song Billy Preston d
Joe South–Joe South d
John Prine–John Prine d
Little Feat Little Feat d
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song Melvin Van Peebles d
The Doobie Brothers The Doobie Brothers d
The Electric Light Orchestra Electric Light Orchestra d
The Flying Burrito Brothers The Flying Burrito Brothers d
The Stylistics The Stylistics d
Thin Lizzy Thin Lizzy d
War War d
Weather Report Weather Report d
Wild Life Wings d
ZZ Top’s First Album ZZ Top d
Tony Joe White–Tony Joe White d
“Babbacombe” Lee Fairport Convention
200 Motels Frank Zappa
A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse Faces
A Space in Time Ten Years After
Aerial Pandemonium Ballet Harry Nilsson
All Day Music War
Aretha Live at Fillmore West Aretha Franklin
Back to the Roots John Mayall
Bark Jefferson Airplane
Beautiful Lies You Could Live In Pearls Before Swine
Boz Scaggs & Band Boz Scaggs
Brain Capers Mott the Hoople
Broken Barricades Procol Harum
Byrdmaniax The Byrds
Carpenters Carpenters
Church of Anthrax John CaleandTerry Riley
City of Gold Pearls Before Swine
Deuce Rory Gallagher
Fillmore East – June 1971 The Mothers of Invention
Fireball Deep Purple
Fourth Soft Machine
Gather Me Melanie
Gonna Take a Miracle Laura Nyro
Good Taste Is Timeless The Holy Modal Rounders
Grateful Dead Grateful Dead
Greatest Hits Kenny RogersandThe First Edition
Happy Just to Be Like I Am–Taj Mahal
High Time MC5
Hooker ‘n Heat John Lee HookerandCanned Heat
Hot Pants–James Brown
Hot Rocks 1964–1971 The Rolling Stones
If I Could Only Remember My Name David Crosby
Illusion–Renaissance
In Search of Space Hawkwind
Islands King Crimson
Jack Johnson Miles Davis
Killer Alice Cooper
L.A. Woman The Doors
Leon Russell and the Shelter People Leon Russell
Live at Carnegie Hall/What You Hear is What You Get Ike & Tina Turner
Long Player Faces
Love It to Death Alice Cooper
Maggot Brain Funkadelic
Master of Reality Black Sabbath
Maybe Tomorrow The Jackson 5
Meddle Pink Floyd
Message from a Drum Redbone
Message from the Country The Move
Mirror Man Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon James Taylor
Music Carole King
Nantucket Sleighride Mountain
Nazareth Nazareth
New Riders of the Purple Sage New Riders of the Purple Sage
Nilsson Schmilsson Harry Nilsson
‘Nuff Said Ike & Tina Turner
Pawn Hearts Van der Graaf Generator
Pearl Janis Joplin
Percy The Kinks
R.E.O. Speedwagon REO Speedwagon
Rainbow Bridge Jimi Hendrix
Reflection Pentangle
Relics Pink Floyd
Rory Gallagher Rory Gallagher
Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren Todd Rundgren
Shaft Isaac Hayes
Songs of Love and Hate Leonard Cohen
Straight Up Badfinger
Sunfighter Paul KantnerandGrace Slick
Tago Mago Can
The Concert for Bangladesh George Harrisonand Friends
The Cry of Love Jimi Hendrix
The Inner Mounting Flame Mahavishnu Orchestra
The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions Howlin’ Wolf
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys Traffic
The Point! Harry Nilsson
The Sun, Moon & Herbs Dr. John
The Taker/Tulsa Waylon Jennings
Where I’m Coming From Stevie Wonder
White Light Gene Clark
Soul Revolution–Bob Marley & The Wailers
Split–The Groundhogs
Stormcock–Roy Harper
Sun Ship–John Coltrane– recorded 1965
Super Bad–James Brown
The Silver Tongued Devil and I–Kris Kristofferson
Thembi–Pharoah Sanders
They Call Me Muddy Waters–Muddy Waters
Tom Jones Sings She’s a Lady–Tom Jones
Western Man–Mose Allison
Where’s the Money?–Dan Hicksand his Hot Licks (Live)
Why Black Man Dey Suffer?–Fela Kuti
Hey this all was released in 1971. all other generations are a pale followup. Long live the baby boomers.
Totally true. I have Sirius satellite radio in my car; on the 70s station on Saturdays, they play the original “American Top 40” broadcast, with Casey Kasem, from the current week, in a year of the 1970s (so, for instance, today, they would have been playing AT40 from the first week in May, from, say, 1973).
While it’s entertaining to hear some things like, “here’s a new artist named Billy Joel, with his first Top 40 hit, ‘Piano Man’”, it’s amazing to hear how much dreck was “top 40” material…songs that I haven’t heard in decades, and don’t miss one bit.
I’m 51 and agree radio is mostly crap, but I do mostly only listen to new music. My two main sources are a local college radio station, WERS (an exception to the crap), but I also go to a website called Metacritic, spot the albums scoring consistently high (say 75+), and listen to a song or two on YouTube before buying. About half the albums I find via Metacritic don’t work for me because of genre or some other reason, but I’ve found a lot of great music that way.
Al Green Gets Next to You Al Green c
At Fillmore East The Allman Brothers Band c
Blue Joni Mitchell c
Every Picture Tells a Story Rod Stewart c
Fragile Yes c
Future Games Fleetwood Mac c
Hunky Dory David Bowie c
Imagine John Lennon c
Judee Sill Judee Sill c
Led Zeppelin IV Led Zeppelin c
Madman Across the Water Elton John c
Muswell Hillbillies The Kinks c
Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones c
Surf’s Up The Beach Boys c
Tapestry Carole King c
The Yes Album Yes c
There’s a Riot Goin’ On Sly & the Family Stone c
Tupelo Honey Van Morrison c
What’s Going On Marvin Gaye c
Who’s Next The Who c
Not to guild the lily, but I just condensed 1971 to the cream, indisputable, even to Beethoven and Mozart.
What I have been thinking about recently is what role Londoners have had in the last 60 years of music.
The stones the kinks the who David Bowie, 1/2 of Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Yes?, Mayall clapton Winwood and Traffic Elton John, many others I’ll think of soon. It’s the greatest city for music ever. Even without the rest of their generation.
Looking at the Billboard Top 100 for 1971 I see multiple songs for Three Dog Night, The Osmonds, The Partridge Family, and Jerry Reed. Among other artists on the list were Tommy James, Daddy Dewdrop, Tom Jones, Ray Price, Henry Mancini and Perry Como:eek: You can’t pick and choose your way through that decade.
I could argue that the decade from 1913-1923 (premiere of Stravinsky’s* Rite of Spring*, publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, first Broadway productions of Eugene O’Neill, Picasso’s cubism period, Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography at the Ballets Russes, the Harlem Renaissance, Charlie Chaplin, the birth of radio, Coco Chanel’s fashion design, and, if you stretch it to 1924, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) – so revolutionized the arts as a whole, that nothing we’ve done in the last 90 years is even worth talking about.
Of course not. But you know how when teenagers talk like their generation has invented music and sex and rebellion, and how adults kind of laugh at them? It’s less funny when an adult talks that way about the era of their own adolescence.
The idea that the Beach Boys indisputably stands up to Mozart, for example. C’mon, really?
Why can’t we? I assume the OP is basing his proposition on the GOOD stuff from that period. Being only 43 he would not remember or (probably) care what was in the Top 100 of 1971.
Having not been born when either was at their peak, and having listened to plenty of stuff by both, I’d say that’s pretty indisputable. Neither are among my absolute favourites to listen to (I tend towards darker or heavier stuff) but both were among the absolute best at their chosen art form, made great use of the evolving technology of their time, and massively influenced both contemporary and later artists, whilst acknowledging their own influences in their works. Just as Mozart went from his juvenile Haydn imitations to mould-breaking, unprecedented symphonies the Beach Boys went from their early surf music to the mould breaking, unprecedented Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations. I consider it pure snobbery to say one art form is necessarily greater than the other.
There will never be pop or rock music as good or better than that from the late 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s because that level of musicianship takes a high level of inborn raw talent combined with focused commitment to craft. Lennon & McCartney were prodigies and the Beatles paid their pounds of flesh in Berlin and elsewhere to perfect their craft.
Musical prodigies will continue to be born (look at Evgeny Kissin), but artists self-motivated enough to practice 8-hours a day year after year to perfect their craft (as Valentina Lisitsa does) are getting fewer to find. People in general are getting lazier.
The greatest music of all (sorry, it’s not pop or rock) will never be surpassed by that produced in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. That level of musicianship took not only being born a musical prodigy and having laser-focused commitment to craft, but also a level of early age practice that will never again be seen or allowed.
If you tried to make your kid practice as long and hard as the musical giants parents made them practice (often to the point of bleeding fingers), CPS would swoop in and revoke your custody. Composers like Beethoven and Mozart and composer/performers like Chopin and Liszt didn’t just put down their I-phones and say, “I think I’ll crank out a few tunes today.”
It’s getting to the point where a modern musician will record a string of burps and farts and win a Grammy. And he’ll still need to use auto-tune!
But, then again, every once in a long while, the world is blessed with a flawless performance like this.
I’m not sure that’s really as accurate as it may have been when record stores and targeted, demographic focused television controlled popularity. Almost everyone now has their specific old bands and old genres, a lot of people have one or two bands nobody else has ever heard of they adore. I’m only 2015 and there were many people who were totally into Queen and The Beatles. Sure, you heard… uh… what the hell was even playing in 2008*? Whatever, but it wasn’t really as super defining as it feels like music once was. I doubt we’re going to see any more Disco Riots any time soon.
I’m 100% certain people who think Katy Perry is Peak Art™ exist, but having talked with plenty of young people, it doesn’t seem like they really deify current music as much as it seems like people did in the mid-late 1900s. It’s just too easy to look around and find tons of great stuff in your niche (or your current mood) nowadays. It’s not even hard. I looked at my phone’s 25 most recently played and almost none of them are remotely in the same genre. I have everything from orchestral to electronica to vapid bubblegum europop to rock to Kesha.
Oh… oh my. I just looked that year up. Low topped the charts? Really? I must have blocked that out.
This will be an unpopular pov but I’m not sure people who listen to US radio know much about modern music. Like network tv it serves a very specific demographic. But I’m only relating what many US musicians say when they come over here. US radio is generally very safe. Of course YMMV.
Imo, the truly fantastic thing about music today is the depth and diversity, and it’s really difficult to explain how great that is. It’s not chart music, it’s not fashionable and it can come from literally anywhere - if you ever watched Jools Holland on Youtube you may have got a glimpse of the breadth of what’s out there.
Fwiw, this is a good example of what I’m talking about - if you like good music, check it out for a week or so, different times of the day/week. Maybe try Popular Shows;
I’m not sure any given country’s radio is much more indicative of the state of music than any others’. The UK charts have had some amazing bands and hits, to be sure. On balance I’d say I like the stuff on their charts more than the US ones, but it’s no more or less representative of the state of modern music than Canada’s, Australia’s, Finland’s, or, yes, the US’s are.
