Entertainment For Lively Minds
SPOTIFY FRIDAY: By popular demand, it's back – and this week we're doing the best of 1975
Following the grand success of the marathon that was Spotify The Noughties, we have caved to popular demand and are carrying on with a random year every Friday. Today it's 1975. Click on this link to launch the Spotify playlist for that year and add your favourite songs from that year (WARNING: Spotify is worryingly light on Slade but we can't do anything about that, sadly).
The rules, as ever, are:
1] One track at a time. Don't dump whole albums on there. We will only delete them.
2] Keep it listener-friendly. This is not the place to add loads of obscure b-sides, 28-minute jams or challenging jazz odysseys.
The plan is to do a new, random year each week and build up a giant repository of quality music for the entire rock and roll era. God knows how we'll deal with 1956 but we'll deal with that when we come to it. Off you go!
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My analysis of the available data
My analysis of the available data suggests that 1975 is the greatest ever year in the history of the UK Top 40. I must stress that this conclusion has yet to be subjected to “peer review”.
It's certainly looking that way so far.
Sadly once again the "Spotify Mac" has died so we can't play the list. Grrrr.
It's not just that.
It's probably the best year for so-called classic albums as well.
Alternative Punk Rock theory
Greatest year ever for pop singles. Greatest year ever for “classic albums”. Yet it’s a widely held view that music was so rotten and boring in 1975 that “the kids” had to invent Punk Rock. I say the opposite is true: “the kids” were so besotted with all this fantastic music that they wanted to do it too. Even if they were rubbish at it: hence. .. Punk Rock.
Don't just leave it to our imagination...
...give us some examples (apart from "Born To Run"). I'm sure you're right, but I can't think of any others.
Just a few
I'm really not interested in whether people agree or not, the fact remains that all these records still loom large in the careers of their creators:
Brian Eno: Another Green World
Rod Stewart: Atlantic Crossing
Bob Dylan: The Basement Tapes/Blood On The Tracks
Jeff Beck: Blow By Blow
Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run
Supertramp: Crisis? What Crisis?
Burning Spear: Marcus Garvey
Bob Marley: Live At The Lyceum
Doctor Feelgood: Down By The Jetty
Fleetwood Mac
Joni Mitchell: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Patti Smith: Horses
Jackson Browne: Late For The Sky
Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffitti
That's enough to make the point. Over to you.
Not all from 1975
Spotted an error straight away! "Ballroom Blitz" is from 1973!!
Oops,
fixed
Runners & riders
http://www.top40charthits.com/1975/index.html
Bah. No Wide-Eyed & Legless by Andy Fairweather-Low on spotify.
Slade
Shame no "How Does It Feel" on Spotify. Probably my favourite song of 1975.
By the way, "Magic" by Pilot came out in late '74 but I guess it was still being played the following year.
Sing, Lofty!
Haha, come on own up, who put "Whispering Grass" on there?
Can't access it from work
so I would like to nominate Ian Hunter's Once Bitten Twice Shy if anyone fancies adding it, assuming it isn't on already.
How does...
...one get an invite to access Spotify?
Invite
I've just sent you one.
Brill!
Thank you.
10cc
Second Sitting For The Last Supper. Lovely stuff.
Missing
If they were on Spotify, I'd be selecting at least something from Dion's Born To Be With You, John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll, and Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks.
Bohemian Rhapsody? Who put that crap there?
I must be on the wrong internet.
A pedant writes...
Ace's How Long came out in 1974.
As did Soon by Yes.
I'm Mandy Fly Me was released in 1976.
I'm Mandy Fly Me
The release date aside, I listened to this track for the first time tonight, as opposed to hearing it on the radio in the background.
Great tune. Eric Stewart was clearly channelling Macca big time, and no bad thing either ;-)
First band I ever saw, 10cc...
I have a cousin called Mandy who is an air hostess.
I couldn't find
"I Can't Give You Anything But My Love" by The Stylistics, so I put "Little Johnny Jewel" by Television on instead; what a year! Maybe messrs Lowe & Hepworth are right...
Lose the “I’
and it’s there in all its glory. And added.
I rock
you rule.
spotify error
Lacking, severely are the following:
Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
Gong - Shamal
Eagles - One Of These Nights
John Howard - Kid In A Big World
John Lennon - Rock & Roll
Rick Wakeman - Myths and Legends of King Arthur...etc
Miles Davis - Agharta
seriously, how is that even possible?
And...
Wish You Were Here and Physical Graffiti.
Not an error
but a licensing impasse. I'm sure they'd love nothing more than to have the artists and material you mention available. Still, what they do have (for zero pence) is still staggering.
A question (or two) for all you Spotify old-timers...
I only logged on today for the first time (thanks Fraser) and although it's a cracking service with the potential to distract me to the point where I cease working altogether, there's a couple of questions I'd like to run past those in the know.
Every now and then the stream breaks and there's a pause of 10 or so seconds until the music starts again.
Question 1. Is this normal?
Question 2. Does this still happen on the Premium service?
Yes and yes, I think.
It's to do with the speed at which your machine pulls the data down from the "cloud". A faster or more stable internet connection may help. (NB I may be talking out of my hat here)
Bad Back
Off work with a bad back at the moment (Getting better, thanks for asking!) This has been a great fillip and has occupied the day nicely.
Ian
Another one missing
John Fogerty's first solo album - it rocks and it rolls!
And this is why
this forum is one of life's necessities. Good man, Frazer, for sorting out the Spotify access above.
Oh Thank you!
Whoever put Spencer the Rover on. It is a lovely counterpoint to the Cara Dillon version that I heard first!
That was me...
and I thank you for your thank you.
As a Dylan agnostic
I have to say that apart from Hissing of Summer Lawns, Blood on the Tracks is the best album of all time. It used to be on Spotify - but has been an' gorn innit?
Actually, if the real best album of all time - Station to Station had been released a year earlier and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts about 6 years earlier and Exile on Main Street three years later and Dusty in Memphis- like - quite a bit later - and Gaucho about 5 years earlier - then 1975 would - actually - have been the best year ever
So, what you're saying is
that 'as usual, the answer is David Bowie', except when the question is 'who made the greatest album of all time'?
Say it ain't so, Sheev!
as usual
it is so ain't it? I mean S to S is - no? Yes
Or does Bowie
'suffer' from the same phenomenon as The Beatles when it comes to 'best album' lists? Despite some revisionism, Pet Sounds is always going to come out as the pinnacle of the Beach Boys achievement, whereas with the fabs, any one of, oh I don't know, 4 or 5 at least, could be considered to be their best.
I wonder whether you feel the same about Bowie?
My order
of greatness of Bowie albums goes - top 5
Station to Station
Aladdin Sane
Young Americans
Low
Scary Monsters
Ziggy or Hunky tend to be his OK Computer or Revolver equivalent in polls
But then Surf's Up - or possibly Holland is my favourite Beach Boys album
Sheev, yes
Station To Station is clearly the best Bowie album.
My 5. Because I can.
Station To Station
Lodger
Let's Dance
Earthling
"Heroes"
Sadly "Labyrinth" doesn't count. But has some TUNES on it. Big shiny ones with choruses and everthing!
Sorry I'm Late..
1. Station to Station
2. Young Americans
3. Low
4. Hunky Dory
5. Diamond Dogs
'ISI' by Neu!...
a real toe-tapper. I think I might have to buy the album. Very good indeed.
:-)
"Of course, that was my album of the year - in 1975 I only really listened to Neu! while my friends were listening to 10cc and The Sweet..." (extract from "The Revisionist & Delusional Ramblings Of El Hombre Malo", Hodder & Stoughton, 12.99)
I did add it to the list - I caught up with Neu by moving backwards from Tortoise & Stereolab - good, innit!
I've got a couple of Can albums...
but I never investigated Neu!, despite having heard good things about them for years. As I firmly believe, music will find you when the time is right.
this is like sitting outside a really rockin party
sniffs from southern hemisphere
Ziggy
In 1975?!