That one year in music

Thinking about the 70s scene and the last big gasp of top 40 - it's hard to pick one year - or even if my favorite year was in the 70s. I do think though that because I listened to a top 40 station as a kid back then it led me to enjoy all types of music from Earth Wind and Fire and The Gap Band to The Eagles and James Taylor to Skynyrd and Van Halen.

 

It definitely hasn't come in the last decade.

 

I don't think I could pick any single year to just listen to the songs from that year for the rest of my life.

There were lots of great years in music, but to pick one is nearly impossible.

Although I became a Bruce fan in '84 with Born in the USA and my tastes in music started to change that year, there's just way too much stuff I can't stand from that year mixed in with the good stuff. I base that on looking at the Billboard Top 100 Singles chart from that year that includes a list of the No.1 singles from that year:
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id223.htm

In 2000 there were some great releases that shifted my taste in music slightly from classic rock to the "Americana"/"alt-country" realm, but not enough good music that year to make me want to name it as my music year. Here's a small sample of the music that came out that year:
http://wfuv.org/music/best/bestof00_releases

Although some years in the 60s and 70s were tremendous, I can't see picking any of them either.

For a list of other releases from this decade - if you need to check the year something came out, look here:
http://wfuv.org/music/best

 

Tough to pick one year, so I'll go with two as several others have done.

1. For nostalgia, 1995 edges out the early 1990s for me. I was just out of college, recently married but no kids yet, so I had time to buy/listen to lots of music and attend plenty of concerts.

Great albums from that year, off the top of my head, included Neil Young with Pearl Jam (Mirrorball), Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness), Radiohead (The Bends), The Jayhawks (Tomorrow the Green Grass), Son Volt (Trace) and ... of course ... Supergrass (I Should Coco).

2. Best year for rock of all time? I'll second whoever voted for 1975.

Some all-time classics came out that year: Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here), Thin Lizzy (Fighting), Chicago's Greatest Hits (hey, if I'm stuck on a desert island ...), Rush (Fly By Night, Caress of Steel), KISS (Alive). And Sam Mills, I'd find a way to smuggle the previous year's Genesis album onto the island (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway).

 

My personal favorite year for music has to be 1973. In addition to what's been mentioned, you've got "My Maria" by B.W. Stevenson and "Shambala" (which was first recorded by Stevenson but a hit for Three Dog Night).

I have a soft spot in my heart for 1978 (ignoring the disco pablum on top 40 at the time), because it was the first time I got a steady on-air shift. Two students in the broadcasting department at UF got the idea to build a 10-watt FM transmitter out of a Band-aid box and started a radio station in their dorm room, using their own extensive record collections.

David Lowe IV (now an attorney and owner of a boat yard south of Stuart) somehow convinced Capitol Records and several other major labels to send him their new releases, so he had brand-new stuff before the AOR station in town played it.

The first record I ever cued up on air was Journey's "Lights." Some of the other stuff that readily comes to mind from that time period:

Load Out/Stay by Jackson Browne
Sweet Talkin' Woman by ELO
Run For Home by Lindesfarne
Don't Look Back by Boston
Heartbreaker by Nantucket
Street Corner Seranade by Wet Willie
Thunder Island by Jay Ferguson
Baby Hold On by Eddie Money
Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan
Cruel to be Kind by Nick Lowe
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon

Our official "fire alarm/bathroom break" album cut was "Do You Feel Like We Do" by Peter Frampton. It's nearly 14 minutes long, and we were instructed to put it on and leave if it was necessary to evacuate the building.

 

Could have gone with 'Dazed and Confused' from The Song Remains The Same album and picked up another 12 minutes of cushion time. That was the entire side 2 of the album--one song.

And clearly the apocalyse is imminent--we've now had a Nantucket mention twice on the board, in the space of a day or two.

 

I'm curious about this, Mizzou. Many of the albums you cited, especially Pearl Jam's Ten, didn't come into the public consciousness until 1992. This was true for Nirvana to a point too.

Ten kind of sat out there as a critic's darling record that got MTV airplay for Alive for several months before it really caught on. Alternative music itself didn't get anything but "college" airplay until '92 or even '93 in some markets.

Were you ahead of the curve? I know I was into Ten before the general public was, but not massively so. My record of choice in 1992 was the Black Crowes' Southern Harmony And Musical Companion.

Ten hasn't aged well. I'd actually say that Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, which hasn't aged perfectly either, still stands right with it and has maybe surpassed it in the long view.

 

Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth Mecca and the Soul Brother
Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
Whut? The Album Redman
Step in the Arena Gang Starr
Don't Sweat the Technique Eric B. and Rakim


Oh yeah, Wu-Tang was working on Return to the 36 Chambers.

That's how we do it in my hood.

 

Well, we also had "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie in reserve, although the program director requested we play it only on Thanksgiving Day.

 

I did misspeak earlier: 1979 was the My Sharona-Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar's) summer for me. Looking at the top 100 songs, certainly not in the league of 1966, but some good stuff:
--Do Ya Think I'm Sexy
--Heart of Glass
--Tragedy
--Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)
--My Life
--I Want You to Want Me
--Hold the Line
--Devil Went Down to Georgia
--Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy
--New York Groove (not fully appreciated for 12 years)
--Sultans of Swing
--Renegade (Pieces of Eight, actually released late in 1978, also had Sing for the Day, Blue Collar Man and Great White Hope)
--I Was Made for Lovin' You
--Time Passages
--Don't Bring Me Down (ELO)
--Promises (Criminally underappreciated Clapton song)
--How You Gonna See Me Now (Criminally underappreciated Alice Cooper song)
--Double Vision (not to mention Hot Blooded)
--Bad Case of Loving You
--Somewhere in the Night
--Dance the Night Away
And some of the better disco/disco-flavored songs
--I Will Survive
--YMCA (and In the Navy; not that there's anything wrong with that)
--A Little More Love
--Knock on Wood
--Heaven Knows
--We Are Family
--I Love the Night Life
--September

 

I'm not sure I agree with that statement. I think along with Nevermind and Dirt, it's one of the gold standards of the grunge era. Alive, Once, Black, Jeremy, Garden, Even Flow, Deep and Release were all great songs. How many times can you say eight songs off an album were home runs? At least for me they were.

Honestly, if I had to narrow down a year, it would be 89. But 91-early 95 probably had the best music. All the grunge bands had a unique sound, rock was solid, pop was okay and there was some great gangsta rap too. Tons of different stuff to choose from and a lot of the different genres were producing some great stuff. Hell, even Garth Brook's Low Places was released during that time.

 

As perhaps the biggest PJ fan on this board, I would say Ten has aged amazingly well, when you consider most casual rock fans say, "They haven't done anything good since Ten." (which is completely untrue). Still, as the Farmer put it, there are at least five top-notch songs that 20 years later, still get serious radio play.