Sunday, January 04, 2009

The 1970's Weren't Too Bad Were They?


As I wrote recently I've gone back to doing simple things that make me happy, that feelgood factor, I know that any women visiting these pages will just say it's a 'typical man thing', can't grow up etc but why shouldn't you indulge yourself occasionally?

Anyway what I'm on about costs very little apart from my time and a little electricity, I'm talking about updating the old mix tapes idea that seemed so popular in the 1970's and 1980's and making a mix (or compilation) CD for listening to in the car - see I told you it was simple!

I decided to make CD's of tracks from the 70's, 80's and 90's to brighten up journeys in the car rather than using the mp3 player or rely on the pretty poor state of music radio (during daylight hours at any rate). Now I know that each generation thinks that there particular era was the best, the most innovative and had the best bands/artists/ songs etc and I don't think I can lay claim to any particular era as 'mine'. That said the 70's were my formative years musically speaking because this was the time when I took control of what I was listening to, the records I bought with pocket money and later my first wages, the first gigs I went to, the radio stations I discovered for myself. The Heavy Metal legacy of the late 60's giving way to Glam Rock, then soul, prog rock, punk and post punk before the arrival of electronica.

Of course you can't just cut-off one era from another, ideas melt into each other in Daliesque fashion, the Led Zeppelin tracks from 1970 are not that different to those from twelve months earlier, although they are different from those that would follow twelve months later, the Rolling Stones of Let it Bleed (1969) are not that dissimilar to those on Sticky Fingers (1971) but there is a definite change by the time we reach the disco influenced Some Girls in 1978.

Out of the hundreds of albums and thousands of tracks from the 1970's I had to pick those which could appeal to all the family, the CD only has 80 minutes capacity which meant that there wasn't any room for anything taking more than five minutes, so no long winded guitar solos, if I was going to get 19 or so tracks recorded. Anyway I came up with these:

1. Freda Payne - Band of Gold

2. The Supremes - Up The Ladder To The Roof

3. T.Rex - Jeepster

4. Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song

5. David Bowie - Life on Mars?

6. Free - Wishing Well

7. Bruce Springsteen - Badlands

8. Candi Staton - Young Hearts Run Free

9. David Essex - Gonna Make You A Star

10. Donna Summer - Loves Unkind

11. Focus - Sylvia

12. Abba - Knowing Me, Knowing You.

13. The Damned - New Rose

14.The Jam - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

15. Public Image Limited - Public Image

16. Ian Dury and The Blockheads - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

17. Eddie and The Hot Rods - Do Anything You Wanna Do

18. Clout - Substitute

19. The Carpenters - Superstar

20. The Clash - London Calling

an eclectic collection if nothing else!

4 comments:

The Great Gildersleeve said...

I'd listen Paul :-)
I managed to wipe 10,000 songs from my pc because I was trying to install a new hard drive(so that would not happen)and I erased the wrong drive!

I have to re do some, some are lost and some that I had burned to DVD cannot be accessed. But I have managed to find 8,000 of them so far so it could have been worse.

If time allows I want even more, my range goes through all the stuff you mention as well as easy listening and as far back as the 1920's. Much of daytime radio is as you suggest poor wherever it comes from(Commercial or public)

It seems to improve overnight music wise. Often Mum asks is there any music to listen to on the radio and I often say "I'm afraid not" or "Not what you would like to hear" Or myself for that matter.

Paul said...

I'm glad you've managed to restore most of your music library Gildy, I experienced a problem with one of my back-ups last year when I discovered it wouldn't let me restore files, fortunately I managed to sort it out - nothing like what you went through.

I'm constantly disappointed when I listen to daytime radio, I wonder if its poor because the listening numbers are low - there's some great stuff on during the evening though.

Span Ows said...

Yep...a good listen, maybe change the order a bit to avoid a few 'jolts' :-)

Paul said...

Funny thing you should write that Span - the final order was wrong for some reason.