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Led Zeppelin: In Through the Out Door
I know this was supposed to be ten albums but I decided to make a bonus, especially because it doesn’t fit neatly in with the others on the list.
I’ve liked the music of Led Zeppelin music pretty much as far as I can remember. But I’ve not really gone looking for it because for most of my memory, it was always there. When I was a teenager expanding my musical tastes more into the realm of rock music, this band was played all the time on the rock and album station I used to listen to. They even played full albums of their music at times since they were an album station. I never actually bought any of the albums until more recently. To be honest, I thought the Scientist had several of them in his collection. But on cd that’s not the case. And the vinyl we have is in a box at the back of our closet, not to mention there’s the lack of a turntable.
When I moved to Australia there was the distinct lack of a rock station in Perth. I’m not sure what the situation was in other areas but here the closest we got were a couple of stations that seemed to want to please everyone by covering a wider variety of music. That all changed for us several months ago when we got digital radio in our car. I discovered there was a classic rock station and access to music got much better. I was finally hearing music that I’d missed for the better part of 25 years. Of course they do play a lot of Led Zeppelin so it reignited my interest in the band.
Around the same time, I started streaming music on my phone while cycling. My phone provider gives free data for the music provider and I took advantage. I went out riding one day and chose a compilation of Led Zeppelin music and it was a brilliant experience. These songs were more of the well-known rocking songs that made me want to pedal just a bit harder. I had no idea it would work so well.
After listening to that collection, I was no longer satisfied and started listening to the full albums. This helped me file songs into the right compartments as I went along. I found a lot of music I didn’t know. But surprisingly, I found a whole lot that I did know. I’d been hearing them all my life but couldn’t tell you the titles of songs or which album they came from. With a few exceptions, of course. I actually knew the entire album of the Untitled IV, which probably shouldn’t be too surprising since that had got a lot of attention over the years.
Anyway, I’m not sure where my favoritism lies in the catalogue except to say that “Kashmir” from Physical Graffiti has been my favorite song for quite a few years after seeing a video of them playing it live. But as for albums, it’s too hard to choose right now.
So how did I settle on this record? Well it’s the only one of theirs that I became acquainted with in real time. When I revisited the album it all came rushing back to me that I knew this as a teenager. And aside from a couple of songs, I knew them all. I imagine that I must have heard this played on radio a few times during that time. It was quite a huge thing when the album was released. It was much like hearing The Wall by Pink Floyd or Some Girls by the Rolling Stones or Queen’s The Game because it was part of the memory of growing up.
In Through the Out Door isn’t exactly a fan favorite but I argue it does have some merit and for me it is associated with that time of my life when I was still in junior high and nearly ready to start high school.
Compared to other tracks on the record, “In the Evening” is a bit more like a standard Led Zeppelin track. It has an exotic sounding opening leading into a rocking track that goes on for a while.
“Fool in the Rain” is an enjoyable song that incorporates a bit of a Latin sound into the rock context. I remember this being played a lot back when it was released and it still stands up for me these days.
“All of My Love” is a ballad written in memory of Robert Plant’s son Karac who died a couple years earlier at age five from a stomach virus. I was aware of this back when it came out but I’d forgotten over the years. It’s a beautiful song but listening again, I can feel the love and pain for a lost child when I hear it.
“I’m Gonna Crawl” closes out the album and it harkens back to the bluesy sound of their earlier work. It’s not a song I remember well but I do recall hearing sometimes when the album was released.
I think part of the reason I remember this album is because it was the last studio album by the band before drummer John Bonham died in 1980. I do remember hearing about his death but it didn’t really affect me so much, particularly as it seemed mixed in with various other deaths in rockdom due to drugs and alcohol. I was far more affected a bit later when John Lennon was gunned down in New York.
The other part of this album that brings back memories is the packaging which was meant to appear like a bootleg, wrapped in brown paper to hide its identity. It was kind of cool looking in its way but I hadn’t thought of that package for a long time until I saw the deluxe release of it in the shops a while back.
While this will likely never be my favorite album by the band, I think it will always have some nostalgia for me and its part of the development of my musical tastes in real time is quite relevant to my interest today.
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Peter Gabriel: Us
My first memories of Peter Gabriel are mostly connected with mentions of his previous association with the band Genesis, and then with some of his early solo work, like “Solsbury Hill” and “Games without Frontiers”. Most of what I heard was was good but it’s not like I sought out his music. Then in the mid-80s he put out his most successful album, So, and became more of a mainstream star, partly thanks to that legendary video animation for “Sledgehammer”. I was listening right along with his music at this time and I did like it a lot although it wasn’t one of my priorities when it came to the record store.
It was 1992 and I’d been out of college and working for a few years and I guess you could say I was out in the real world by now. No it wasn’t my ideal plan to work in a call center, but it was a full-time job and I was pretty good at it and it did allow me a bit of space to indulge myself in my own interests. The Scientist and I were sharing an apartment and sometimes we would travel off together. We’d made three trips to Florida to Disney World within a few years. The Scientist’s parents were in Maryland and I would drive us to visit occasionally.
There was one instance when the Scientist went to Maryland separately and I joined them later on. I’d had to work so the plan was for me to drive up after my shift. I can’t recall specifics on the occasion but maybe it was around Christmas time. It was definitely winter time. My hours went until around 1am but I was a night owl and so I took off after work one night and drove. It just happened that there had been ice and snow on the roads going up through the top end of North Carolina and into Virginia. I particular recall getting close to Lynchburg and the roads being really slick and slippery. A truck had jackknifed along the way and traffic was held up. It was slow going the whole way. I didn’t have a car phone and I was on my own. Not an ideal time to be driving.
My only company was the radio and I remember hearing a few songs during that drive. One of them was the Spin Doctors’ “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” which I really liked. I think there was also a U2 song in there and then there was “Digging in the Dirt” by Peter Gabriel. I already knew the song but it has stuck in my mind that it played that night/morning. It was a song I really liked and the video for it was pretty cool too and it came to mind when it played, evoking thoughts of Peter Gabriel being buried alive and then covered with foliage and so on. The song kept me going in the middle of that night. I obviously did make it to my destination with great relief on my part and for those waiting for me.
At some point I came to own the album and it was an oft listened to cd. The song “Steam” became another big hit single and had another popular video. This song was more reminiscent in sound of “Sledgehammer” and I think was more successful than “Digging in the Dirt”. For my part I prefer “Digging in the Dirt” for the video and the song although I do like this song too.
“Kiss that Frog” is another interesting song that was released as a single. I don’t remember the video for that one but the song sticks in my mind as being one of my favorites from the album. It’s mainly a pop song with catchy tune and lyrics, obviously taking some inspiration from the fairy tale frog prince.
A lot of songs on this album are about relationships with others. “Come Talk to Me” is about a difficult time Gabriel had with the relationship with his daughter. It’s one of only a couple songs I know that features bagpipes. Another favorite for me is “Love to be Loved” which is kind of straightforward in its meaning. It’s filled with that very human longing for love and need.
I listened to this album again before writing and I remember why I liked this so much. I don’t have a lot of Peter Gabriel music in my collection but I like his music and this one is surely my favorite. I think the feelings expressed are kind of universal to people and their relationships. The music is also filled with nice little touches like the bagpipes and chill rhythms that you can relax into.
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The Eagles: Hotel California
I spent a long time deciding on whether to include Hotel California on this list. I don’t actually own a physical copy of the album and my only album by the group is a compilation I bought a few years ago and it’s not even the best-selling one from the 1970s. Still this group and album are very much part of my musical life so I am going to put this here. One of these days I will definitely get a proper copy but meanwhile I listen on streaming services.
When I think of the Eagles, I think of my growing up years spent near Atlanta. We lived there for about a decade from the time I was a toddler until we moved away at the end of 1976. The songs by this group were well-played throughout the early 1970s and I remember hearing their country-rock melodies regularly. There was a period of time in the mid-’70s when my parents were part of a bowling league as were the parents of our closest friends. While the parents bowled we kids would roam around the premises doing whatever we did. Music was always playing and I remember hearing a lot of Eagles songs there.
To go off on a bit of a tangent, one of the songs I remember hearing at the bowling alley wasn’t anything related to the Eagles but the song “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players. The reason I recall this is the urban legend associated with the song about a scream in the song being that of someone being murdered. It’s kind of interesting to think of how quickly that rumor spread, well before the internet came along. If not for the urban legend, I imagine this song wouldn’t be more than a blip in my memory. But it was in there along with lots of other popular music from that time.
Around that time the Eagles put out their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975) compilation and it got a lot of play. It’s one of the few greatest hits albums that’s so iconic in my memory. I’d grown up hearing most of these songs but they all became big again and my musical memory is of re-engaging with these songs. Not in in any conscious way but I think it primed me for what was coming.
I was eleven years old when we moved from the Atlanta area to Charlotte, NC on December 10, 1976. Three days before that the song “New Kid in Town” was released. Back then I wasn’t playing very close attention the lyrics but the title of it definitely hooked me seeing that I was a new kid. It wasn’t until I was much older I came to understand the song for what it really was. This song still has a bit of the country-rock feel but it’s definitely moving away from the country part of it. It’s another one of those sentimental favorites that takes me back to a place and time.
By the time “Hotel California” was released early the next year, we were a bit more established in North Carolina. This song was something totally different and the imagery evoked was amazing. Even now when I hear the tune begin, I feel taken to another place. It’s an alien place which is kind of surreal, much like it must have seemed to be, going into that scene of Hollywood at the time and even now. It’s a mixture of Twilight Zone and horror movie, made especially clear by the final lyrics:
“Relax”, said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave”“Life in the Fast Lane” is sort of a continuation on the theme of Hotel California and Hollywood excess but taking on a harder, rockier edge for me. When I think of this song, I think of the opening guitar riff and it really does embrace that feeling of living to excess and on the edge.
The final song on this album is “Last Resort” and it’s one of my favorite songs by the Eagles. It’s still related to the theme of excess but it targets the way humans seem happy to pillage and plunder the earth and warns of running out of spaces to destroy. It’s very much a song of activism and is just as relevant today as it was then.
Again I find myself in the year 1977 when there was so much amazing music coming out. I find it really fascinating that Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was released during this time and yet it doesn’t figure into my memory of that year much. But “Hotel California” is firmly down in my mind as one of many essential parts of that musical year.
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The Police: Synchronicity
I first heard the band as a teenager. I’m not sure which songs were the first on local radio playlists but I know the first album I bought by them was Ghost in the Machine mostly because I really liked “Everything She Does is Magic” when it came out. I think I probably bought that from Grapevine records and tapes in Charlotte where I bought most of my music during my teenage years. I wasn’t a die-hard fan but I really liked the band. I think I eventually owned four of their five albums. For some reason I never bought the first one, which included Roxanne, one of the best songs. One of the albums disappeared “mysteriously” at one point so I only had three in the end. Actually these days I don’t think I have any of them as they were all vinyl and I got rid of most of those when I came to Australia. It’s on my to-buy list to replace some of those with cd versions.
I graduated high school on June 3rd, 1983. A few days later I boarded a plane for Europe for my high school graduation present. I spent about five weeks there, visiting pen pals in France, Germany and the UK. It was in the middle of this trip that Synchronicity was released but I will admit that it doesn’t form a part of my European memories. It was after I returned home in July and during those weeks before I started college that I mostly remember it becoming a part of my summer. But mostly I remember this from my early days as a college student.
There are a few songs that often remind me of those hot August days when I moved into the dorm. I remember having to clean the blinds and standing on the window sill to reach the top. They were pretty tall windows so there was a lot to clean. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler was on the radio along with “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. This was the era of watching Friday Night Videos on the dorm television. I remember the black and white video of the band playing this song with Sting playing an upright bass.
“Every Breath You Take” is essentially a ballad and I love the song but it’s not exactly the comforting love song it sounds like at first. I mean, really, it’s rather dark and sinister when you think about it. Even Sting admits it’s not a gentle love song but thoughts of an obsessed person on the one “loved”.
“Wrapped Around Your Finger” is another classic ballad that wasn’t quite the love song it sounds like at first. The mythological references of this song are the highlights for me.
“Synchronicity II” (yes, there is a Synchronicity I to start the album) is a pop-new wave song that speaks of some of the domesticities of life as they become too much. The music does well to reflect the impending crisis one reaches, building and building till ready to burst.
“King of Pain” is a somewhat reflective song for Sting, about his feelings after separating from his first wife. Like so many of his songs, it’s filled with metaphor and the music is a sort of slow and reflective song.
“Walking in Your Footsteps” is a strongly percussive ode to the dinosaur while “Miss Gradenko” is a catchy tune about forbidden love in a military regime written by Stewart Copeland. Then there’s “Murder by Numbers”, a jazzy number about the evil deeds of politicians. There are a lot of good songs on this album and it’s great to sit back and listen with earphones.
This brings me back again to early 1984 and going to see the band on the tour for this album in February. I went with a friend and her boyfriend at the time and it was a great show. In hindsight, I think I was lucky to have been able to go as the flu had rapidly spread through the dorm and I was one of the few who hadn’t got it at that time. Alas, I did finally succumb to the illness after this show. It was my first time having the flu so I guess I had a good run before then.
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Duran Duran: Rio
I’ll be honest and admit I don’t remember when I first heard Duran Duran’s music. I’m guessing it was near the end of high school but at the time it didn’t make a solid impression in the way it later did. I do recall that I first heard the Culture Club song “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” on BBC’s World Service radio, probably my junior or senior year of high school. I thought it was a woman singing at the time I heard it first. Boy was I in for a surprise when I finally saw the video months or maybe even a year or so later. :D
Duran Duran was part of the movement referred to as new romantics, a sort of off-shoot of new wave and featured mostly pop songs, many lending themselves towards dance mixes. Kind of funny since I was not much of a dance person and felt pretty self-conscious dancing in public, something that hasn’t changed much.
Rio isn’t the first album released by Duran Duran but I think it was the first to get much traction in the US and the one that came to my notice first. I suspect this may have had as much to do with their video releases as the music at the time. I think this was near the beginning of video as an art form and this band took advantage. The band did a video version of the album although I don’t remember ever seeing it. I’m going to include links to the videos on this one since they form an essential part of my fandom.
The first song that caught my interest was “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the video almost always comes to mind when I hear the song. I later came to know the video was filmed in Sri Lanka, birthplace of the Scientist. I didn’t know him then but I was able to make that association with the video later on. The video is done in a sort of Indiana Jones theme and features members of the band searching for Simon LeBon (lead singer) while Simon LeBon was hunting an exotic, tiger-like woman through the jungle. It’s very much a dance song and I recall there were quite a few different mixes available for purchase back in the day.
Rio was the second song I remember and I also associate this to some extent with its video. There’s a yacht with the band members dressed in suits and there are lots of beautiful women, some painted in bright colors, presumably referencing carnivale? The song is about Rio, a beautiful woman with a smile too difficult to resist.
Save a Prayer was Duran Duran’s first ballad of sorts. It features a strong electronic presence and the persuasive voice of Simon LeBon. I think even this song had some alternate mixes, I guess for the extended slow dance? The video is another I saw quite a lot back in the day. It was also filmed in Sri Lanka and is very much worth a look for the beautiful scenery of the country as much as the “story” of the song.
The Chauffeur is the last song on the album and it’s a song I could listen to repeatedly, given the right mood. Apparently the lyrics to this song were written by Simon LeBon as a poem many years before he joined the band and supposedly were a key to him being hired as the singer. It’s a slow number that feels a bit dark and haunted at times. I’m not sure if there’s a definite meaning to the song but I’ve found some amusement reading various interpretations online while looking up information. I should advise the video for this has a bit of nudity near the end but it’s kind of an artsy sort of video. Nothing at all like the band’s famous Girls on Film video from their first album which has a totally different feel.
Writing about this really takes me back to my first year at college when I started buying a lot more music, thanks to the Record Exchange on Tate St. Back when vinyl was still mostly king if you wanted to seriously listen to music. Early in 1984, I found myself camping out for concert tickets on a bitterly cold night. I was with two friends and another girl who I only knew briefly due to that experience. It was the only time I’ve ever camped out for tickets and it’s a fond memory. It can be fond now when I am sitting in my warm house but it really was cold that night. Our tickets weren’t too shabby and one of my friends even caught a bunny rabbit that had been thrown on stage, picked up by a band member and then thrown back out into the audience. He gave that to me and I still have it all these years later. I only saw them once but I still enjoy their music and this is an album I revisit every once in a while. The Scientist even gave me a dvd of one of their concerts, which was a big thing seeing that he is definitely NOT a fan. :D
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Billy Joel: Glass Houses
I was going to start by saying it was another vacation in Pennsylvania but I might be wrong on that, seeing this was released in March 1980. It happens that we were in Pennsylvania a bit early that year as my grandfather had died and we’d gone for the funeral. It was early June and my brothers and I missed out on the last few days of school for the year.
Some time during that visit I had a sleepover with my cousin, who was three years older than me. The next day, we went with my aunt to “town” which was Clarion and we stopped at Jamesway, the only discount department store in the town. Well, as far as I know it was since I didn’t live there and didn’t know all the places very well.
Anyway, for some reason, we were there so I could choose a belated birthday gift. I’m not really sure what this was innate of because my aunt and uncle (who were my godparents) weren’t in the habit of doing birthday gifts for me before or after that year. I guess it counts as a notable gift in that way.
So there we were in the music department and I made the choice of Glass Houses by Billy Joel. I don’t know if there were any other contenders for my choice but I think I was pretty keen on this record due to the radio play it was getting at the time.
That was the first Billy Joel album I owned so it holds a special place in my heart even if it’s not anywhere near the best of his albums. It’s kind of weird to think the album is now forty years old. How did that happen? It doesn’t seem so long ago and yet, it was another lifetime ago.
I think the opening song, “You May Be Right”, is the one that I most identify with this record. That breaking of glass at the beginning of the song always alerts me to the memory of getting the album and the great, catchy song that would follow.
I adore the lovely, Latin sound of “Don’t Ask Me Why”. Without paying too much attention to lyrics, it’s rather a soothing listen late at night when you’re nearly asleep. That is, unless the excitement of hearing it wakes you up.
“Still Rock and Roll” is maybe the best known of the songs on this album and it still stands up well forty years later. It’s a catchy look at a rock and roller’s fame in decline due to the changing attitude of the public.
There were quite a few songs I’d forgotten from this album since I hadn’t listened in quite a long time. The most notable is “C’etait Toi (You Were the One)” another smooth ballad with some verses in French. Maybe it spoke to the French student in me but I really loved this then and it still works for me now. I would add the final song, “Through the Long Night” which is another almost lullaby for me. Good stuff!
Again, this is definitely not my favorite Billy Joel album but it fills a place in my memories and has much nostalgia for those days when I was a teenager in junior high school. In fact, it was on the cusp of my high school experience so very much a period of transition and growing up just a bit more.
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Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
It was the summer of 1978 and our family was on our usual vacation to Pennsylvania, travelling from North Carolina where we lived. My mom’s younger sister had just graduated high school and she was getting married to her high school sweetheart. The reception was where my knowing of this album started.
The album was actually released over a year earlier but it was so popular that the radio was still playing a lot of music from this album over a year later. It was enough that by the time I was at that reception and hearing it yet again, I was kind of sick of it. I don’t know if songs were played more than once at the reception but it sure felt that way to me and that’s one of my strongest memories of that particular event.
My feelings toward this album mellowed just a bit over the next several years. I’m not really sure at what point I changed my mind but I know by the mid-80s I had begun to really enjoy this album. It was a few more years before I saw the band in concert the first time. This wasn’t with the classic line-up since Lindsey Buckingham had left the band by this time and Rick Vito and Billy Burnett had taken his place. I will be honest and say their parts in that performance haven’t really stayed with me over the years and didn’t come anywhere near a Lindsey Buckingham performance. Even so, I really did enjoy the concert and from that point I got into Fleetwood Mac in a much bigger way, buying their albums and also becoming a big Stevie Nicks fan too.
But this is really the album to start it all and these days I can appreciate it much more than the preteen I was in the summer of 1978. It was a tumultuous time for the band with two members divorcing each other, two breaking up a relationship and the other having his own relationship woes. As awful as it must have been for them, this work of art emerged and is for me what represents the band despite the fact the band has evolved again and again over the years.
The album includes some absolutely brilliant songs but one part of the record that appeals to me most is the harmonies of Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. The song “The Chain” seems to be the best example of this and in some ways is the standout song for me. It’s an angry song that draws you in from the first notes and makes you a part of it. It became the first of many sing-alongs when we saw the band play last year.
“Songbird” is a song that didn’t really appeal to me when I was younger but I now hear it and I’m in awe of the beautiful way Christine plays and sings it. I also really like the hopefulness of “Don’t Stop” in amongst the anger and angst of many of the other songs. This one’s another one with great harmonies too.
“Dreams” is a song that is great to hear with the headphones on. It’s got a magical and mystical feel to it that I liked from early on, well before I paid any attention to the lyrics. Stevie’s voice on this is fragile and delicate and takes you to another place while you are listening.
Lastly I want to mention “Gold Dust Woman”, which is another Stevie classic I adore. Not so much the fragile voice here but a firm narrative of someone going through a rough time in life and using “gold dust” to deal with things. The performance of this song was an absolute highlight of the concert we saw last year. It was dark and scary and full of that mysticism that goes well with so many Stevie Nicks songs.
I can’t leave this without mention of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the constants throughout the history of the band. They make a brilliant team and it’s their rhythm work that makes this album truly sparkle musically. With some great guitar work by Buckingham and keyboards by Christine McVie, it adds to an amazing team effort.
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1977
I bought my first music in 1975 with money of my own. That was just four 45rpm records and I don’t recall my next purchase. I just remember I bought the second Captain and Tenille album and maybe that was my first one? I’m not totally sure.
It was probably more like 1977 when I started to become a more proper music fan. By this time I was doing a bit of babysitting and earning my own money so control of my listening habits was shifting to what might be expected when one is nearly a teenager.
Another thing that may or may not have any influence is that we moved from Atlanta to Charlotte at the end of 1976. I think my understanding of the world really increased during this time period so it may be a by-product of my recognition of what was happening in the world. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence due to my age at the time.
I return to The Eagles again thanks to the song New Kid in Town, which I think must have resonated with me. Not that I was really listening closely to lyrics then but I was a new kid so it seemed an apt song. Another song that I strongly remember was Year of the Cat by Al Stewart.
Weirdly I got really attached to the song You Light up My Life by Debby Boone. It was hugely popular for many weeks so it was easy to get a bit obsessed. This was one of those songs that I liked then but I am rather indifferent to now. I wasn’t a religious person then so I guess it didn’t really have lasting power. I didn’t see it as religious at the time though, so I guess something about it reached me.
It was in 1977 I was listening to a local pop music station. That summer they sponsored a reading program where if you read a certain number of books they would give you six singles. I don’t recall the reading but I was taken to the station to get my records and I have a vague memory of standing in line with all the other teens. I got my records and I think I still have them today. I can’t recall all of them but I think one was Low Down by Boz Scaggs and Best of my Love by the Emotions. The one I remember the best was Undercover Angel by Alan O’Day. When I find my old records I will have to figure out the other three songs. Everyone got a different set of singles so it was all a random sort of thing.
I carried on doing babysitting jobs in the neighborhood and so continued to have some spending money. It was around this time I bought the first album that influenced me in any big way and it was not even a regular album but a compilation. Love Songs by the Beatles was released in late 1977 and I bought it because I liked some of the Beatles songs I heard on the radio. This was my entry point to becoming a Beatles fan. I used to listen that album all the time and it still is a sentimental favorite of mine even though it’s not one of their proper records. I think I must have the album still for that reason. Well, I think I brought it to Australia but those records are packed away in the closet at the moment. It would still be a few years before I came to know the proper albums by the group in any way.
The Bee Gees hit it big in 1977 too, with the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, a movie I still have never seen even though it’s supposed to be a good one. I have seen a few bits here and there when it’s replayed on tv but just have never watched it. The music, on the other hand is still pretty prominent in my memory. I already liked some of the Bee Gees music at this time although their shift to disco music was a bit of a surprise as it was a quite different from songs from their early days. That said I think they had a couple records before this that were already moving into this style. I have never owned this album but I do have the songs that were popular on a compilation album somewhere. Well, I don’t think I still have the vinyl so maybe I don’t own it now.
This was also the year that Billy Joel became a big thing. The album The Stranger was everywhere and these songs were also being played constantly. Just the Way You Are was the biggest song but I latched onto She’s Always a Woman at the time instead. I think some of the songs got played so much I was a bit tired of it. These days I can appreciate it all much more than I did then, and maybe I will actually buy a copy of the album one day. It almost came to pass that I saw him in concert that year but for some reason I didn’t go. I later became a big Billy Joel fan so I do regret that I didn’t go then since it’s unlikely I will be able to afford a ticket even if I am in the right place at the right time.
Which leads me to considering my first concert, Shaun Cassidy. To be honest I don’t recall much of his music but I think the concert was that year and he was popular and my mom took me and I enjoyed it. Most of his music was cover songs and I did like the songs a lot. But Shaun Cassidy wasn’t my main teen idol. Instead it was Andy Gibb, who I loved and I would have seen a concert by him had the opportunity happened. His album Flowing Rivers was really good and I think even now it stands up a bit on the few occasions when I’ve tried to listen to it. Of course, some of the songs were written or co-written by his older brother Barry, who was able to pen a popular song himself. I will point out that the other idol from that time period was Leif Garret and I never liked his music and I didn’t care much for him either.
I should also add the album Frampton Comes Alive at this point. While I wasn’t a huge fan at the time, I did like some of the songs and I have come to appreciate how great the music was on that record. Funnily enough that’s the only record I know Frampton for and I’d guess that’s the case for many of us. This was a record that was popular with the neighbor girls I hung out with early on when we lived in NC. They were also big fans of Kiss, a band that I’ve never liked much although there are a couple of songs that are okay. I was just never a fan and most of the time these days I am as likely to change the radio station when they are on. I can’t recall if they had an album that year or not but there was a lot of fandom right then so I guess there must have been. Maybe I will look it up. Well it seem there was an album plus a live album that year so it makes sense they were so popular.
There was one other album that was really big that year which I will write about separately as it is a major album with major influence in my musical tastes.
I’m sure there’s heaps more from that year I’m forgetting right now. Until I started putting all this down, I don’t think I realised how much of the music of that year had been such a part of my life.
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Music in the early years
I was thinking about how I might write about influences on my musical tastes and I will do the album thing but it seems useful to think about the beginnings of my musical tastes.
I don’t really recall having much interest in music when I was very young. That said, I was a big fan of Glen Campbell when I was quite young. I don’t even know what songs I liked at the time as the ones that I mostly recall are some from the mid-70s or so.
I imagine a lot of my music knowledge was centered around what my parents listened to at the time. There was a lot of Charley Pride at my house. My mom was a big fan of it so we heard a lot of his records playing. Olivia Newton John was also quite popular although it was a bit later. I suppose we heard a lot more country music back then. But I did hear pop music too. When I was in third grade I remember the “song” The Streak by Ray Stevens was a thing. Of course I guess that was more from the country side of things too. That song reminds me of a girl named Paris in my class at school who used to sing that a lot for a time. Hmm…I just know there’s a lot of pop music I know when I hear it on the radio. At the very least we heard it in the car.
It wasn’t until the mid-70s I started to take a more active interest in music. I guess it was probably 1975 to be exact. That summer my cousins and grandfather came down to visit us for a week or so. This was when my aunt had the baby she gave up for adoption (even though we were all told it had died)…the one who I connected with a year ago on Ancestry.
Some where along this time I bought my first 45 rpm records. There were four of them at the time although I don’t know if I recall all of them. I still have them somewhere in the house but have nothing to play them on. The big one is Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tenille. It was hugely popular during that summer and my cousin and I both loved the song a lot and sang it all the time while she visited. Even after she’d gone we started writing letters to each other and quoting lines from the song. I think sometimes before this I’d been to Pennsylvania and the big song was Donny Osmond singing Go Away Little Girl. Not sure which year but probably the year before, I guess. I didn’t have the record though. That song is still a favorite, mainly for sentimental reasons. It still reminds me of my cousin, who died many years ago from ovarian cancer.
Another of those records was Calypso by John Denver. I just liked the sound of the song and that has always been my favorite song by John Denver. But I was a fan of some of his other music too. I guess country music played a bigger role than I realized before.
The third single was Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band…which upon reflection was a country group, I think. Funny, I never thought I liked country music all that much but I guess I did have some roots in that area for a while.
I can’t remember what the fourth single was right now. I will have to figure it out later.
To carry on the country theme, I used to like a lot of Eagles songs from their earlier years. I know they were more country rock but it’s still connected. I have pretty much always liked their music but it was only a few years ago that I bought a collection of their music. I guess that’s one of those groups I liked to listen to but I wasn’t compelled to have my own copy. There were lots of groups like that. I guess the reason this came to me was my parents were in a bowling league sometime in the mid-70s and these songs were playing a lot in the background there. We kids used to run around while the adults bowled. I do have ideas of getting a couple of proper albums one day in the future.
Elton John was another artist I heard a lot of back in those days. My parents had the single Daniel which got played a lot in our house. Funnily enough that’s not one that I heard very often these days but it does take me back to those years. But I also remember the era when he sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart with Kiki Dee really well. That was a radio play thing so I guess I must have heard it in the car a lot. I don’t have any of his albums either although I do hope to get a couple of them one day. Or maybe a compilation.
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold is my favorite song by him and I know it’s almost completely a nostalgic choice. Oddly I remember hearing this played across the street at our neighbor’s house. They had a son who was a year or two older than me and a daughter who was quite a bit younger. My brothers and I were playing there one day and that song was on. I honestly don’t remember much else about that day aside from the song and the fact we were in the son’s bedroom for a time.
I was also just reminded of Helen Reddy from that era too. My parents had at least one of here albums and it was played a lot. Funny to thing we were listening to an Australian at the time (not to mentioned Olivia Newton John). I remember the song I am Woman being really big for a long time. Kind of funny also to think this feminist song got played so much back then considering how non-feminist my mom has become in more recent years.
I was just reminded of The Association as a group from my earlier years. My family had best friends from when we lived in Pennsylvania. They moved to Atlanta around the same time as a us and we lived in the same apartments. Back in PA were were neighbors in an upstairs/downstairs apartment or duplex so of thing. Anyway, we were close with their family all the years I was growing up. I spent the night there many times and I remember hearing the Association music being played. I think Never My Love was the most prominent but I am sure there were plenty of others.
I guess the last music I will mention is probably one of the earlier records I knew. My parents had a copy of the first Beatles album released in the US. It didn’t have a cover from the point I recall it and I think it was mentioned at some time that we kids destroyed it. It may well have been me, in fact. The Beatles will get a look-in at some point of sharing although I haven’t quite worked out which album. So there is definitely some pop music I remember from way back although I wouldn’t say it made me a Beatles fan at a young age.
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Problem solved
Back in August or maybe September, I bought an iPhone. I’d been waiting for prices to drop on old models when the new ones were announced so I grabbed the model I wanted when this happened. For the most part I’ve been really happy with the phone. I went back to Apple due to my past investment. (I wanted to stick with Windows but there has been less and less support in the past year so I decided to jump back sooner than later.)
There was one problem that happened right from the start when I transferred my data from the old iPhone to the new one. My music did not sync properly and some albums had tracks missing and some tracks played other songs, even for those few tracks I have from the iTunes store. I’d been trying to fix the problem for some time but had had no success. I finally did some real searching on it and found a fix and tried that but it didn’t work. In the midst of this I reset my desktop os due to ongoing problems which may or may not have contributed (I know now this didn’t have any connection). I also deleted all the music I’d been keeping on the hard drive. Over the years music directory had become quite a mess and I thought somewhere in there was yet another iTunes file that I had overlooked. Getting rid of all of it seemed a good idea no matter what. Well the reset didn’t make any difference and the deletion of songs didn’t effect any changes when I added music back again.
I went back to my searching and found so-called fixes on the Apple discussion boards. I again tried all the steps included and reset my phone one more time. This time it worked so I was able to stop pulling out my hair over this issue. Plus my music directory is nice and tidy now that everything is consistent. I still have a lot of music to add back to the directory and then to my phone but I can actually listen to full albums without a problem now.