Tuesday, December 7, 2010

50 Years Of MyTunes: 1975

1975 was the year I began taking those dive trips to Lake Superior with my dad. My garage band was thriving. I was still a virgin.

Blood On The Tracks ~ Bob Dylan. A former manager of mine at a sandwich shop turned me onto this album a few years after it came out. Of course I knew of Dylan's earlier work, but I wasn't old or hip enough to "get" the Dylan of the mid 1960s. This was already pretty "mature" work. At the time, I already thought Bob Dylan belonged to the older boomers. Born in 1960, I'm technically a tail-end Boomer. Dylan people were different and not the kind of people I wanted to be as a 15-year old.

Physical Graffiti ~ Led Zeppelin.  I was right smack in the middle of my teenaged garage band phase when this album came out. I spent many, many hours by myself, wearing a pair of headphones, drumming along to this one, learning Bonham's chops.

Born To Run ~ Bruce Springsteen.  Having been hip to Springsteen thanks to the DJs on Radio Free Madison, this album was already kind of over for me when it happened. My older brother however became a Springsteen fanatic.  He still has my copy of this album in his basement.

Night At The Opera ~ Queen.  I'd been a Queen fan since their first album. They came through Madison promoting this album and I went to see them.

Toys In The Attic ~ Aerosmith  This was the first concert I remember getting so close to the stage that I got inside the blast cone of sound coming from the speaker PA's. It's quieter in there. Ted Nugent and a band I'd never heard of called Rush opened up the show.

Wish You Were Here ~ Pink Floyd. I still recall the very first time I heard Wish You Were Here: the roadies were playing it through the PA system before a Ted Nugent show at the old Capital Theatre in Madison. That venue closed afterwards and became the Oscar Mayer Theater in Madison Civic Center. I'm pretty sure I was under the influence of something and so that was cool.

One Of These Nights ~ Eagles.  Chicks loved this band & that's initially why I liked them too. I didn't fully accept them until Hotel California the following year.

Blow By Blow ~ Jeff Beck.  I like the drumming on this album. Less rock 'n' roll and more jazz in that regard. I even took lessons around this time from a Madison jazz drummer.

Fleetwood Mac ~ Fleetwood Mac's debut album with their new line up including Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. What's not to like about this album, especially in retrospect?

1975 Singles

That's The Way (I Like It) ~ KC and the Sunshine Band  My dad (who also liked Country music) got into disco early on. I loathed it at the time but in retrospect, it was me who had the problem.

Low Rider ~ War

Jive Talkin' ~ Bee Gees [Added: Ok this song planted a lot of seeds (so to speak)]

Gloria ~ Patti Smith. I didn't like the entire album but this song got my attention. I was finally able to see Patti Smith when she gave her last concert in Florence Italy in 1979 before "retiring."

Stranglehold ~ Ted Nugent. I loved the Nuge. I stopped following him on Twitter though.

Cortez the Killer ~ Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Rockin' Chair ~ Gwen McCrae.  I'm including this here because I recently rediscovered this about a year or two ago and decided that I liked it.

3 comments:

  1. The paths of our past cross briefly.

    I was in 9th grade and had checked out a book from the school library about 60s rock groups - my recent purchases of the Beatles red and blue compilations had driven me in search of other music I could listen to and the 60s stuff just seemed more appealing. A slim book, as I recall, with only a page or two about the then hip groups and individuals as of the book's publication date: The Association, The Jefferson Airplane, you know, that kind of thing. There was a chapter on Bob Dylan, of course, and though I recognized some of his songs, I didn't really know who he was. To the record bins, then, at the local TG&Y (sort of an Oklahoma predecessor of Wal-Mart, now long gone out of business) and I picked up both volumes of his greatest hits. A little tough to like but there was something there and I wanted to hear more. Back to the bins and there was Blood on the Tracks. There. That's where my love of Dylan began. The songs on that album spoke to me more than any I'd ever heard, still do, though I admit I've heard them so many times that I'll sometimes skip over them when the come up on random shuffle play on my iPod. But when I stop to listen, the magic is still there.

    I don't much like recent Dylan - I find listening to him to be a labor of love, nowadays, but I still love Blood on the Tracks.

    Enough about that. This is your list, after all.

    But, hey, no comment about The Bee Gees Jive Talkin? A precursor of things to come!

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  2. Pete,
    I added a comment about the Bee Gees!

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  3. Oh and "Blood On The Tracks" has had the most lasting value for me. Always important to distinguish what you were thinking then from what you are think now. 20/20 hindsight and all.

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