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1970s music draft- Link to google spreadsheet in first post (1 Viewer)

Interesting. I almost picked "The Letter" in the last DI Jukebox draft. I'm sad I didn't, actually. It's on a little folded up piece of paper, crossed out (no lie there). What a great song. The Box Tops and Chilton were probably a little more melodic and maybe memorable than The Chocolate Watchband, the band I selected in the end, though the Watchband was a later Rhino/Nuggets band, giving us a neat little symbiosis on all fronts. 

 
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11.xx - The Police - Roxanne - 1978 song

Of all the greatness of 1978, this song has never lost its soul, punk, disco emotion. This could easily be reggae, it could easily be punk, it could easily be classic rock, possibly soul. What category it is doesn't matter. The first album I owned was the Police's Synchronicity (I know this wasn't off of that - that album came later.) Did they save radio in the early '80s? It's possible. Regardless, I love this song. Drink when he says "Roxanne," folks, and we'll all be better off if we can hold our own.  

 
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11.01 Black Sabbath -  Master of Reality (1971 album) 

The beginning of doom metal. This album is an Iommi rifled fueled classic with hits Sweet Leaf & Children of the Grave. They were at their peak IMO with this release. 

 
11.01 Black Sabbath -  Master of Reality (1971 album) 

The beginning of doom metal. This album is an Iommi rifled fueled classic with hits Sweet Leaf & Children of the Grave. They were at their peak IMO with this release. 
I think most diehard fans would agree with you. I still like Paranoid a tiny bit better, but those two albums together pretty much sealed Sabbath's place in history and were (for better or worse) massively influential on what would happen down the road.

 
Would it be too much trouble to split the album portion of the draft and the singles on the tracking sheet? Since we're on a pick-a-day format now, order doesn't matter (though that could be kept, too, as a master list for reference and for judging). Might make it easier to not have duplicate picks as we get deeper into this thing.

 
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11.11 One More For The Road - Lynyrd Skynyrd (1976 album)
The only full live album the original lineup made. While I've seen better cut-and-paste pastiche performances of Skynyrd in concert, this album does a pretty good job of documenting how good they were live.

A lot of their rep these days is because of off-the-vinyl stuff - the plane crash, their "feud" with Neil Young, idiots at every concert by any artist yelling "Free Bird!" (Isaw a post on FB the other day of some ####### at a Dylan concert doing it) - but the music they made makes them, to me, one of the best self-contained bands this country has produced. They didn't have the jazzier leanings of the Allmans - at least, not on record - but they were more nimble than almost all of their contemporaries. Even when they were swinging their bludgeoning war hammer on stuff like "Gimme Back My Bullets", there was a looseness and airiness about their music that almost none of their contemporaries had. And they had what no other southern rock band had - not even the Allmans: a Front Man. Ronnie Van Zandt was 5-foot-nothing tall, but he had both the chops and swagger of immortals like James Brown, Elvis, and Jagger (and he smokes Jagger as a singer). 

It would have been interesting to see what they could have done in the 80s and beyond if tragedy (& a money-grubbing younger brother who can't sing) hadn't turned them into a redneck joke. 

 
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The only full live album the original lineup made. While I've seen better cut-and-paste pastiche performances of Skynyrd in concert, this album does a pretty good job of documenting how good they were live.

A lot of their rep these days is because of off-the-vinyl stuff - the plane crash, their "feud" with Neil Young, idiots at every concert by any artist yelling "Free Bird!" (Isaw a post on FB the other day of some ####### at a Dylan concert doing it) - but the music they made makes them, to me, one of the best self-contained bands this country has produced. They didn't have the jazzier leanings of the Allmans - at least, not on record - but they were more nimble than almost all of their contemporaries. Even when they were swinging their bludgeoning war hammer on stuff like "Gimme Back My Bullets", there was a looseness and airiness about their music that almost none of their contemporaries had. And they had what no other southern rock band had - not even the Allmans: a Front Man. Ronnie Van Zandt was 5-foot-nothing tall, but he had both the chops and swagger of immortals like James Brown, Elvis, and Jagger (and he smokes Jagger as a singer). 

It would have been interesting to see what they could have done in the 80s and beyond if tragedy (& a money-grubbing younger brother who can't sing) hadn't turned them into a redneck joke. 
Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zandt were a fan of each other's music, and Van Zandt was going to record Powderfinger from Neil, but was killed before it happened. They both wore t-shirts bearing the name of the other. Neil Young has said many times he thinks Sweet Home Alabama is a great song, and he loves that his name is in it. The feud has always been a myth that has carried on through the decades. 

I've never really understood the redneck label for the band. Maybe I'm a redneck so I don't get it.  :lol:  They were very talented musicians, they were great live, and Van Zandt, Rossington, and Collins wrote some really good music. I too would have liked to have seen how their music would have evolved had it not been for the plane crash. 

Anyway, listen to that live guitar solo on The Needle and the Spoon. I also love the piano rolling through in different parts of the song.  :headbang:

 
Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zandt were a fan of each other's music, and Van Zandt was going to record Powderfinger from Neil, but was killed before it happened. They both wore t-shirts bearing the name of the other. Neil Young has said many times he thinks Sweet Home Alabama is a great song, and he loves that his name is in it. The feud has always been a myth that has carried on through the decades. 

I've never really understood the redneck label for the band. Maybe I'm a redneck so I don't get it.  :lol:  They were very talented musicians, they were great live, and Van Zandt, Rossington, and Collins wrote some really good music. I too would have liked to have seen how their music would have evolved had it not been for the plane crash. 

Anyway, listen to that live guitar solo on The Needle and the Spoon. I also love the piano rolling through in different parts of the song.  :headbang:
That's why I put "feud" in quotes.

You make a great point about the piano. And it's not just "The Needle And The Spoon" where they use it; it's on almost every damned song - it's the secret weapon in "Sweet Home Alabama". 

I think the redneck label thing is more about some fans who misread what LS was doing (including Ronnie's brother; also, he's an awful singer - there are 20,000 members on this board alone who can sing better than that hack).

 
catching up with my rd.10 selection:

 Station to Station - David Bowie (1976 album)

from Earl Slick's ridiculously brilliant opening guitar virtuosity, to the glorious cover of "Wild is the Wind", this album delivers on every note.

the perfect bridge from the 'plastic soul' era to his more experimental 'Berlin Trilogy' which was soon to follow ...

plus it gave us my favorite Bowie persona in The Thin White Duke ... admittedly wired outta his gourd the whole session, existing on the (in)famous red peppers and milk diet.

the title track remains my favorite Bowie song of all time, it's a true masterpiece,  as epic a tune as has ever been laid down  :thumbup:

 
11.13 - Old No.1 - Guy Clark (singer-songwriter album)

Guy Clark was a great songwriter, and his debut album is my favorite of his. Every song on this album is good. Jerry Jeff Walker must have liked it since he covered three of the songs  (LA Freeway, Desperadoes Waiting for the Train, and Like a Coat from the Cold). I like to have glass of bourbon to this album. Guy passed a month ago, but he left behind some wonderful music that will be heard forever.

 
I have a love/hate relationship with Bowie (like he cared what I thought). For all that Jann Wenner and his band of merry idiots have tried to sell us on Bowie being a musical chameleon who flits from style-to-style successfully, I think Bowie was most at home as a soul singer (my own bias acknowledged). That's what most English kids his age wanted to be and the songs that I like the most of his reflect that. 

Anyway, I think Station To Station is his best album and applaud your choice, sir.

 
11.13 - Old No.1 - Guy Clark (singer-songwriter album)

Guy Clark was a great songwriter, and his debut album is my favorite of his. Every song on this album is good. Jerry Jeff Walker must have liked it since he covered three of the songs  (LA Freeway, Desperadoes Waiting for the Train, and Like a Coat from the Cold). I like to have glass of bourbon to this album. Guy passed a month ago, but he left behind some wonderful music that will be heard forever.
This is a GREAT record. I came to recognize Guy late (I knew a lot of his songs but didn't know it was him at the time), but his passing recently got me to digging. He's an icon in the Outlaw movement.

 
By the way (spotlighting be damned), I think Skynyrd's "oak tree, you're in my way" may be the best description ever of being inebriated and in places you shouldn't be

 
11.xx Ian Dury-New Boots and Panties!! Wild card album

Ian Dury was the least likely rock star to have even the slightest amount of success.  Polio disabled him as a child, withering his left arm and leg, and he never grew to normal size.  He barely topped five feet and with his atrophied body his head appeared too large for the rest of him.  It was an effort to simply walk on stage and he would grasp the microphone stand with his useless left hand both as a method of disguising its malformed state and giving it something to do to prevent Dr. Strangelove-like spasms.

His fame never really crossed the Atlantic as like The Kinks, figgy pudding and the name “Nigel,” some things are just too English to make sense here.  His lower-class cockney euphemisms were frequently undecipherable outside his home turf.

He also couldn’t really sing.  I mean not at all.

At the time of his debut effort in 1977, he was 35, not exactly prime age for pop stardom.  But in London at the height of the punk/new wave explosion and with his manager’s office in the same building as the fledgling Stiff Records it somehow happened. 

New Boots and Panties!! (so named because those were the only two items of clothing that Dury refused to purchase in secondhand shops) came onto the scene in time for Dury and his newly-named backing band The Blockheads to join the legendary Live Stiffs Tour with Elvis Costello and others from the label.  He became punk’s elder statesman in spite of the fact the album was more R & B and dancehall than punk.

The album has many charms, but is a classic mostly for Dury’s brilliant wit and bawdy lyrics.  He is rock-n-roll's greatest, most accomplished potty-mouth. 

Had a Love affair with Nina

In the back of my Cortina

A seasoned-up Hyena

Could not have been more obscener

The album is in my all-time top five albums simply for the fact that it makes me happy to listen to it.  Top tracks include Wake Up and Make Love with Me, Clever Trevor, Blockheads (from which his band would derive their name), My Old Man and Billericay Dickey.  Dury would never reach the heights of this album again, although many of his singles are worth looking up (Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll was released as a single at the same time as the album but did not appear on the original.  Subsequent issues have included it).  Other great tracks are his biggest English hit Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, The indescribably filthy This is What We Find, and There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards, which contains my all-time favorite Dury lyric:

Einstein can’t be classed as witless

He claimed atoms were the littlest

When he did a bit of splitness

Frightened everybody Sh@#less

 

 
11.xx - Squeeze – Cool For Cats (1979 album)

Was hopeful that a few others would have fallen to allow me to select those as my 1979 album here, but they didn't.  So, this one is a selection for the wife - I would have never gone to see them at Radio City in 2008 if it was not for her.  Never listened to them prior, but going through the back catalog in the years following, I liked this one the best (although my favorite songs Mussels and Coffee are not eligible for this draft).

 
11.xx - The Police - Roxanne - 1978 song

Of all the greatness of 1978, this song has never lost its soul, punk, disco emotion. This could easily be reggae, it could easily be punk, it could easily be classic rock, possibly soul. What category it is doesn't matter. The first album I owned was the Police's Synchronicity (I know this wasn't off of that - that album came later.) Did they save radio in the early '80s? It's possible. Regardless, I love this song. Drink when he says "Roxanne," folks, and we'll all be better off if we can hold our own.  
Was on my short list a few rounds back, but then I decided to complete the album run before picking songs. :rant: :rant: :rant: :rant: :rant:

Great pick.

 
11.xx  The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (1976)  1976 album

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6..........another classic album that I think would not sound out of place if released today.  

Full album

 
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11.xx  John Prine - John Prine (1971 album)

One of my final cuts in the singer songwriter category but I haven't been able to get Sam Stone and Angel from Montgomery out of my head.  Prine's debut is a snapshot of post-hippie America.  He was 24 at the time but it's the work of an old soul.
He was the headliner for the first night at Merlefest a couple months ago. He was good and fun.  His voice is a bit more weary now, but it fits his songs. He sang both the songs you mentioned. Sam Stone Merlefest 2016

 
I still owe my 11th, and since it is midnight here and I am working all day on Father's Day I am going to post my 12th too. (I doubt I am sniping anybody)

I was a tight race between this and the two albums that followed, but this one got the every so slight edge in the end:

11.xx:  CAN - Tago Mago (wildcard album)

Not sure when or how I stumbled on this one, but have been in love with it ever since.  (probably while doing research for a music draft several years ago).

12.xx: CAPTAIN BEYOND - Captain Beyond (1972 album)

 
12.x Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978 album)

My favorite Springsteen album. The follow up to Born to Run but it was three years later before Darkness was released due to legal battles with his former manager. The bitterness of the battle comes through with melancholy & brooding songs even by Springsteen's standards. Contains Badlands, Adam Raised a Cain, Prove it All Night & Racing in the Street (my favorite). 

 
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catching up with my rd. 11 pick here ...

Sheer Heart Attack - Queen (album 1974)

their third release, and the one that put them firmly on the map as a group with tremendous chops, a campy style, that could flat-out ####### rock ... arguably May's best work on this album, starting with the incredible "Brighton Rock", up through "Flick of the Wrist", "Now I'm Here", "Stone Cold Crazy" - dude was really flexing some serious skills up in here.  

Freddie's finest moment (did i mention 'campy'?) "Killer Queen"   :thumbup:

my two favorite tracks: the Roger Taylor opus Tenement Funster

the swirling, sweeping May penned/vocal She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettos)

not only is it my favorite Queen album, it is one of my favorite albums PERIOD. would say it's been a top 10 spinner for me since i first purchased it ... it was my introduction to their genius, and it's gripped me ever since.

 
A lot of the fun in these drafts comes from discovering new music (to me anyway) or rediscovering music forgotten.   Most of that comes from listening to what others draft, but every so often I'll find something I forgot.  One example of that will be my 12th round pick,  Elton John's captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy.  1975.

Simply a brilliant album that never got the fame it deserves.  

 
catching up with my rd. 11 pick here ...

Sheer Heart Attack - Queen (album 1974)

their third release, and the one that put them firmly on the map as a group with tremendous chops, a campy style, that could flat-out ####### rock ... arguably May's best work on this album, starting with the incredible "Brighton Rock", up through "Flick of the Wrist", "Now I'm Here", "Stone Cold Crazy" - dude was really flexing some serious skills up in here.  

Freddie's finest moment (did i mention 'campy'?) "Killer Queen"   :thumbup:

my two favorite tracks: the Roger Taylor opus Tenement Funster

the swirling, sweeping May penned/vocal She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettos)

not only is it my favorite Queen album, it is one of my favorite albums PERIOD. would say it's been a top 10 spinner for me since i first purchased it ... it was my introduction to their genius, and it's gripped me ever since.
Love Brighton Rock and Tenament Funster. Solid album. 

 
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers- 1976 album

debuted in a big way with the Byrds like "American Girl", "Breakdown", "Hometown Blues", "Anything that's Rock n Roll's Fine". Very strong album that I wore out listening to. 

 
The google sheet has the wrong album year for my Duke Ellington album. It is 1973, but the google sheet says 1977. I'd fix it myself if I could. Thanks.

 
Kansas- Point of Know Return-1977 album

Another album, like Boston's debut, that was owned by every white American teenage rock fan. Kansas, along with Styx,  took the progressive music of Yes and ELP and added more pop elements, and for this they were scorned by critics. Yet few pieces of 70s Classic Rock are any prettier than "Dust In the Wind" or "Nobody's Home", and for AOR it doesn't get much better that the title song (despite its pretentious use of "know") and "Portrait (He Knew)". These guys took themselves  way too seriously but the music was great. 

 
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Punk is my weakest category, as this pick probably illustrates. Not sure if Blondie is really "Punk" to the hardcore, but I know in some circles they are considered such. Based on the strength of "one way or another" on this, I'll pick it.

12.xx - Blondie - Parallel Lines - Punk/Post Punk

 
12.9 - Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons (1974 album)

I think my favorite country-rock song of all-time is Return of the Grievous Angel. Gram Parsons, and his singing partner Emmylou Harris, recorded this album in 1973. They had been on the road together for several months doing the GP tour, and the Grievous songs were written and practiced during that time. When they got to the studio they did the tracks in five days, and then did the vocals the remaining five days which were all first or second takes.  Some of the band members for the sessions consisted of Al Perkins on pedal steel, James Burton on lead guitar, Glen Hardin on piano, and Bernie Leadon, former Flying Burrito Brother and one of the founders of the Eagles, plays on three songs..  Emmylou said the album was basically "live." She said her and Gram complimented each other a lot, because she was the energy source and he was the visionary. He needed her energy, and she needed his direction. Sadly, Gram died in September of 1973 and never got to see the album released (January 1974). He was a visionary, and it is too bad his life was cut short.

Album trivia: Emmylou was supposed to be on the back cover of the album with Gram.  He had promised her he would put her photo on it. The album was finished and Gram had a picture picked out of the both of them for the back, but after he died the photo was scrapped by his wife before the album was released. Emmylou was very upset about it. She said she didn't really care if her picture was on the back, but she felt nobody had the right to mess with their finished album and change it.

 
Really don't want to use the wildcard slot early, but seems criminal to me that this one has fallen to the 12th round, so I'm gonna take the money and run...

12.xx - Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle (wildcard album)

Spun this one MANY times as a college student - both at Thursday late night party gigs and my Monday radio show.  Finally saw him two years ago at the local shed and he killed it.  

 
12.xx - Kiss - Kiss - 1974 album

This is the only album I have thought of that fits the bill. There will be more glam rock picks to come, but "Strutter," "Cold Gin," "Firehouse," and others are straight up rock classics, especially, "Strutter" and "Cold Gin," two tracks that seem to live on in my ever-decreasing musical vocabulary. 

The playlist gets shorter as the years get longer.  

Also, T. Rex's The Slider should be 1972 on the spreadsheet if there's any confusion. I'm not pushing, because it's a labor of love, especially in these first come first serve rounds. Peace. Oh, and Happy Father's Day to all you pops out there. (You know who you are.) 

-RA

 

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