This Ain't the Summer of Love

Journey in the 70s: No, Really, They Were Better Than You Think

Ok, I know this is gonna be a tough sell for a lot of you – maybe even all of you – but I want you to trust me when I say that the first couple of albums by Journey are Not That Bad. They’re really quite pleasant, in fact, if you have any sort of appreciation for prog/fusion. I’m not claiming that they’re the best example of the genre, or that they’ll change anyone’s mind about it. I like ‘em, anyway. That’s enough for me to drag you guys through the early Journey back catalog - kicking and screaming if it must be so, but this is really for your own good.

The Journey of 1975 was a very different animal indeed from the one infesting the airwaves of America ten years later. No Steve Perry, for one thing. You know, the guy who sings like a duck? He didn’t start lovin’, touchin’ and/or squeezin’ until ’77-‘78, so there was a time when the band made records with vocals that don’t make you want to pull your own ears off. Vox were originally handled by keyboardist Greg Rolie, who played that same role in the first line-up of Santana. Yep, that’s him singing “Black Magic Woman”.

Are you a little less frightened now?

Sucking in the Seventies

Editor's note: Anyone who’s spent any time in a car with me has by now heard my rant about the long downward slide of radio in America several times. Online streaming stations and satellite radio are but glimmers in a deep deep hole. Perhaps with the next change of administration we’ll get an FCC commissioner who’s not in the pocket of industry. And ponies. Everyone will get a magical pony, too, that poops Skittles. In the meantime, Lisa Iannucci provides a look at what radio meant to a lot of us back in the day. Thanks, Lisa, and welcome aboard!

What is it about 1970's radio? Lately I have been bombarded with those bastions of K-Tel Records, Jim Croce and Cher, and I have been reveling in it. And it's not just the insipid nostalgia involved (though that plays a part, I'll admit.) What is it about the music of this era that has such a powerful hold on me?

LIKE PUNK NEVER HAPPENED: Patti Smith and the Hall of Fame

Editor’s note: Hey! Look! A Collaborator! And a good one, too. I’m very happy to have Caryn on board here at TATSOL. She has written for Backstreets, Blogcritics (where I first met her) and at her own exquisite spot on the web, jukeboxgraduate.com. Y’all are in for a treat. Also, for the record: I have never set foot in NYC and have been a fan of Patti Smith from the first time I heard her. So there.

When I was younger, I felt like everything I liked was out of style - at least in my peer group. When I was listening to the Jackson Five, they were listening to the Osmonds. When I was discovering the Beatles and the Who, they were listening to Aerosmith and Foreigner and Tales From Topographic Oceans. And, when I discovered The Class of 1977, it was all of the above and more so. (I mean, Jean-Luc Ponty, for heaven's sake. Boston. Styx. And worse.)

There were exactly three people in my high school that listened to punk rock (or at least made the mistake of talking publicly about the fact that they did). In Stamford, Connecticut, one of the few windows into punk rock was Saturday Night Live.  I remember watching Patti on SNL, and holding my breath the entire time, not wanting to act like I liked it too much, but not wanting to appear so bored my father turned off the tv set. And I remember the next Monday in school, as usual, SNL being a breathless topic of discussion in the lunchroom. Except, this time, there was nothing to ridicule or cause amusement: instead, you heard the "L" word being whispered from table to table. The message was clear: if you were so foolish as to espouse favoritism for the wild-haired priestess glimpsed on Saturday evening, you too would be branded with a very different kind of scarlet letter. 

Spirit - The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus

Editor’s note: This is a fairly drastic reworking of a piece I wrote back in 2002. There are enough untouched phrases left that I thought I should mention it, in the interest of full disclosure.

The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is the album which I will happily proselytize to friends, relatives and complete strangers. “Good morning, m’am. I’m here today to share with you the good news about Spirit.” Having had one too many doors slammed in my face, I now turn to the intarweb.

The album, released in 1970, is the perfect blend of pop, jazz, and psychedelia, tight and focused and spacey all at the same time. Twelve songs, most of which clock in around the magic three-minute mark – as much as I love the more extended musings of, say, Can, it’s nice to see a little restraint employed every now and again. OK, there is “When I Touch You” (5:37), but it stays on topic, as it were, for the entire time. (I wouldn’t have known that it was that long if I hadn’t looked at the cover, and I’ve been listening to this album on a fairly regular basis since I was first turned on to it* in 1979.)

The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope

The time has come to re-assess, re-evaluate, re-examine, re-view – perhaps even rehabilitate – the underrated second album by The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope.

I’ve never been able to figure out why so many people are so quick to dismiss this album. Sure, there’s a bit of a drop-off after the full-on punk assault of The Clash (UK or US version* – and hey, CBS/Epic/whoever’s holding the copyright, when the hell are you gonna release those two on one disc?). So there’s no “White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)”, no “Complete Control”, no “Clash City Rockers”… well, that’s not entirely true; “Clash City Rockers" reappears here, in slightly slowed-down mode, as “Guns on the Roof”. Where “Clash City Rockers" was all brash punk braggadocio, “Guns on the Roof” is surly, menacing, downfall-of-western-civ. type stuff. Plus “CCR” was really just The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” dressed up in ripped shirt and spiky hair, so I guess it all evens out in the end.

I think a lot of scorn stems from the idea that for some (mostly those among the hyperbolic and impossibly fickle UK music press), this album was a “sellout”. If ever there was a band that nearly drowned in dogma and “correct ideology”, it was The Clash. How much was posturing and how much was philosophy? At times it seemed as if the rhetoric - the heavy-duty sloganeering (Sten Guns in Knightsbridge, Under Heavy Manners, etc.), the Brigate Rosse T-shirts, and so on – would eclipse the music.

Speaking as a child of the seventies

The 1970s are the Rodney Dangerfield of recent history; they get no respect, no respect at all. The eighties are fast becoming the runner-up in the go-to joke decade category, but the seventies are still way out in front. In some ways, deservedly so; there were some truly awful crimes committed in the name of fashion, although that’s one area in which the 80s may actually surpass them. Also, there were a lot of ideas about race, gender and culture which seemed pretty progressive at the time that now tend to induce heavy-duty wincing, however well-intended they may have been.

I think the seventies often get a bad rap, though. It was an awkward time – people were trying to process all that went on during the sixties, dealing with the fallout of all the cultural and political upheaval and getting on with their lives. Choices were made – some of them good, some less so.

Honestly now, has there ever been a time in which that last sentence wouldn’t be true?

More than you ever wanted to know about writing for This Ain't The Summer Of Love

In the interest of clarity, here are a few thoughts I've had regarding how I'd like things to run at This Ain't The Summer Of Love: