Rockin' In The Not-So-Free World: The Best Albums of the Early Seventies

When he wasn't waging war on underdeveloped nations
or destroying a generation's faith in democracy,
Dick liked to rock out with his little Republican cock out. 

I've never really been all that nostalgic.  I don't buy souvenirs when I travel, or try to keep the panties of the women I've had sex with.  I toss Christmas and birthday cards in the garbage immediately after reading them and believe that interrupting an experience so you can photograph it and look at it later, kind of spoils the here and now.  I've never even owned a camera.  For me, life is not a series of fucking photo ops.

My high school days in particular are not a time I get all misty-eyed about.  Not that I have no pleasant memories.  Like most guys, I recall my first taste of beer and pussy with a certain fondness, but when I think back Summer of 69-style, I rarely delude myself that those were "the best days of my life."  They weren't.

Veronica later dropped the charges,
not wanting to spoil Riverdale's chances
in the big game.

The Riverdale of my youth was a place of almost impenetrable darkness, a gloomy swathe of burbage whose dank vapours seemed to blot out all warmth and light.  Some creatures thrive in this sort of nocturnal environment.  I just wasn't one of them.  While the Archies and Reggies of the night were chugging brewskis, doing doughnuts in their camaros in the mall parking lot, and tag-teaming Veronica behind the Chocklit Shop, I was sitting in my room, smoking cigarettes, jerking off, or seething with misanthropic pretension like the protagonist in some Smiths song.  I was a frightened, angry little shit.  I possessed neither the ability nor the energy to seek out others of like mind and would have had no idea how to connect with them even if I did.  To say I was a lone wolf would be a bullshit romanticization.  I was just alone.

I don't spend a lot of time snivelling or even thinking about it anymore.  I feel no ill-will, no Nietzschean resentment toward Archie and Reggie.  I have no desire for revenge, nothing to prove to anyone, and very few regrets.  If anything, I'm retrospectively thankful for this long, dark, and lonesome night of the soul.  It gave me time to think.

Later, back at the Dojo,
Sensai would show Johnny
what he really means by "sweep the leg
and finish him."

Perhaps most importantly, it prevented me from having any delusional expectations about what the future might hold.  I learned the truth at seventeen that life, perhaps sadly, is largely devoid of Karate Kid moments.  Mr. Miyagi may get you to paint his fence and wax his car, but if he does, he's exploiting you, not imparting oriental wisdom.  The lesson learned here may make you less naive, but it will not make you a better fighter or a better lover.  You will never kick Johnny's ass.  You will never get to fuck Elizabeth Shue.  Life, as the Buddha teaches us, is suffering - a Cobra Kai boot driving its heel down into Ralph Macchio's face forever.

Okay, maybe not quite so bad as that.  The truth is, we suffer because we cling to our hatred of Johnny, to our lust for Elizabeth Shue.  We suffer because we want to live in a world where retards kick winning field goals like they do at the end of Disney movies.  Where anyone can be a rock star, or a professional athlete, or a millionaire if they work hard enough.

But we don't.  Besides the retards, the world has little in common with a Disney movie.  

This can be a terrible truth and it's not surprising that lots of people don't want to face it.  As such, nostalgia remains a totally understandable impulse, a temporary escape from meaninglessness, and a holding out of hope that maybe one day, someday, life will always be as sweet as it was in our sweetest moments.

Adam: This is all your fault.
Eve: Whatever, dumb-ass.

This seems to be an almost universal human desire.  Almost all cultures are at least partially nostalgic, although they talk about it in somewhat more cosmic terms.  The Jews and Christians have Eden before the fall.  The Germans have their pre-Gotterdammerung Valhalla.  The Greeks speek of a Golden Age before Zeus cut his father's cock and balls off and banished him to Tartarus.

And the rest of us have our youth.  After Reggie and Veronica leave for Princeton, Archie and Jughead will no doubt hit the pub after a hard day at the meat rendering plant, get drunk, play some Springsteen on the jukebox, and reminisce about the touchdowns and blowjobs of their own glory days.

And who can blame them?  I mean, fuck, you do what you gotta do to keep doing what you gotta do.  Not everyone can walk the path of the Boddhisattva.  I sure as fuck can't.  That's why God created drugs and television and organized religion.

And music.

20 years later and still "killin' your brain
like a poisonous mushroom.  Deadly!"

Like I said before, I'm not all that nostalgic.  I love music, but I try to be objective about it, and to separate my assessments of its quality from my own biography as much as possible.  For me, "Ice Ice Baby" is neither good nor bad because I was happy or sad the first time I heard it.  It's just bad.  Really, really, really fucking bad.  Many would disagree with me here.  To them it's great because of that time they fingerbanged Molly Stinkysnapper in the back of her dad's Suburu while Vanilla "worked the mic like a vandal, lit up the stage and burned a chump like a candle."  Try as I might, I can no more convince them otherwise than I could those who think the world is controlled by a cabal of malevolent Jews.  Some people are simply immune to appeals to reason, common sense, and evidence.

But if I had to pick an Eden, a Valhalla, a Golden Age of pop music, some period of time worth waxing nostalgic over, I'd go with the 70s.  Again, many would disagree with me.  For lots of people, it was the fifties and sixties that were pop culture's Friday and Saturday nights, the seventies being more like the Sunday morning hangover.

And as far as the mainstream goes, this is no doubt true.  Much of the dewy youthfulness and idealistic sheen that briefly characterized the culture was sullied by the end of the sixties.  Many blame it on the war, on Nixon, on the drugs, but I think a lot of it had to do with a particular portion of the baby boom just growing up, getting jobs, and not really giving a fuck anymore.  The true believers stuck around, but most of them went underground and/or got more radical, and thus escaped the notice of those who like their shit light, happy, and on the surface.

Marx: I'm gonna expropriate your punk ass.
Smith: Whatever.  Laissez-faire, bitch.

As far as the music went, though, these developments were all good things.  A laissez-faire approach has many dangers, but there's no doubt that people do interesting things when you leave them the fuck alone.

Anyways, I'm going to break up the 70s into three parts: 1970-73, 74-76, and 77-79.

Here are the best albums of the early seventies.

Enjoy.

10.  New York Dolls: New York Dolls (1973)

Song Selected: "Personality Crisis."

Good things often have unforeseen negative consequences.  For example, say you meet some sexy such-and-such at your local drink and stink.  You get drunk, go home with them and, much to your surprise, they take you on a wild, mind-blowing magic carpet ride of the flesh.  I'm talking crazy-ass shit, here.  The ceiling cracks open.  The clouds part.  The moon behind them explodes.  Jesus appears, sparkling like a Twilight vampire.  And just as you do the old grunt and shiver, he winks at you and gives you the thumbs up.

Then a few weeks later you find out you've got the clap.

The music of the New York Dolls is kind of like this.  On the good side, they provided the ferocious stomp and swagger that would prove to be a central sonic ingredient in the punk rock that came later.  Then again, their penchant for mindless debauchery and women's fashion lingered in the cultural bloodstream like an infectious agent, spawning musical STDs like Poison, Warrant, and Motley Crue.  This is not the Dolls' fault, though they would not have given a shit even if it was.

9.  Doris Duke: I'm A Loser (1970)

Song Selected: "I Can't Do Without You."

As the title suggests, this Swamp Dogg-produced album is no happy affair.  Songs called "He's Gone," "I Don't Care Anymore," and the above-mentioned "I Can't Do Without You" should give you a pretty good idea of its overarching themes are.  Need a hint?  We're talking full-on failure and soul-destroying heartbreak, kids.  Of heartbreak one can only assume, but of failure, she was certainly no stranger.  Before recording this album, she floundered in nowheresville for most of the 1960s.  Afterwards, not much changed.  Like most things associated with Swamp Dogg, I'm a Loser was artistically great, but commercially, well...  There was a very minor hit ("To The Other Woman, I'm the Other Woman"), but the label soon failed and she sank once again into the quicksand pit of obscurity.  In fact, no one seems to even know where she is anymore or if she's even still alive.  History, however, has been kinder to Doris Duke than the marketplace.  I'm a Loser is now often regarded as a deep-soul masterpiece.  And those who regard it so are right.

8.  Donny Hathaway: Donny Hathaway Live (1972)

Song Selected: "The Ghetto"

Donny Hathaway probably isn't the first name that comes to mind when you're putting together a list of R&B greats, but maybe he should be.  His albums were always well-received critically throughout his career.  He even had some hits (particularly his Grammy-winning work with Roberta Flack which, frankly, I'm not all that crazy about).  And like Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, and Otis Redding, he died tragically and too soon, killing himself by jumping from his 15th floor balcony in 1979.  This alone, given our culture's necrophiliac tendencies, should have made him a legend.  But it didn't.  Which is too bad.  Almost all his albums are great, although Donny Hathaway Live is both my favourite, and my all-time favourite live album.  Like Curtis Live by Curtis Mayfield, Root Down by Jimmy Smith, and Live at the Club Mozambique by Dr. Lonnie Smith, it has this very particular gritty, sweaty, intimate, small-club R&B feel that's rarely even captured in a live venue and never ever ever in the studio.  When the audience sings along with Donny to "You've Got A Friend," it almost makes you like James Taylor.  Almost.

7.  Waylon Jennings: Honky Tonk Heroes (1973)

Song Selected: "Black Rose"

February 3, 1959 may have been the day the music died, but not for Waylon Jennings.  At the time, he was a guitar player in Buddy Holly's band and, being less of an outlaw than one might think, he gave up his seat on the plane to The Big Bopper, who, apparently had a really bad cold.  Few moments in the history of rock 'n' roll, with the possible exceptions of the deaths of Michael Hutchence and Shannon Hoon, provide such compelling evidence for the existence of a just and loving god.  And not many have done more following such a brush with the reaper.  Besides Johnny Cash and maybe Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe, no one in the history of country music has as large and consistently excellent a body of work as Waylon Jennings and this very well may the best of it.  If you're curious about Outlaw Country (and you should be) this is a good place to start.

6.  Swamp Dogg: Total Destruction To Your Mind (1970)

Song Selected: "Total Destruction To Your Mind"

Today, its commonplace for African American artists to claim they "don't give a shit."  It almost goes without saying.  Personally, I don't believe many of them.  But if you want to meet a motherfucker who really didn't give a shit, meet Swamp Dogg.  During the sixties heyday of Atlantic Records, he was a successful producer, engineer, and songwriter there.  Did Swamp Dogg give a shit?  No fucking way.  He bailed and started making his own crazy-ass brand of funky R&B.  Did Swamp Dogg give a shit about marketing to the mainstream and making a big pile of cash?  No fucking way.  He sang about fucking whatever and liked to feature his short, chubby, swamp-doggedy self on his album covers, lying on a pile of garbage in his underwear, riding a giant rat, or surfing in Harlem.  This brand of confrontational apathy may lead you to believe that his albums are sloppy, ramshackle affairs.  Again, no fucking way.  They're all great.  But this one's the best.  

5.  Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters (1973)

Song Selected: "Chameleon"

This classic fusion of jazz, funk, and African music is deservingly one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time, and a perfect example of what is possible when artists of high calibre put aside notions of genre supremacy and attempt to preach to people other than the converted.  Only idiots only like one kind of music, and Head Hunters will appeal to everyone everyone with a pulse, a three-digit I.Q., and even the most rudimentary capacity for distinguishing between truffles and turds.  A funky masterpiece.

4.  Can: Tago Mago (1971)

Song Selected: "Halleluwah"

When people think of the music of the 70s, too often what comes to mind is either the jammy soft-cock noodlings of the Steve Miller Band, the Eagles, and others of their pestilential ilk, or the decade spanning works of arena-rock rape gangs like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.  In terms of consistent quality of output, though, the best band of the 70s was none of the above.  From 1969 until 1979, these Krautrock fuhrers released 10 albums that are all better than anything you're likely to hear on classic rock radio.  Though Soon Over Babaluma, Future Days, and Ege Bamyasi are all equally heil-worthy, in terms of instrumental excellence, jackboot-stomping groove, and experimental weirdness, Tago Mago is just a goose-step above.

3. Sly & The Family Stone: There's A Riot Goin' On (1971)

Song Selected: "Family Affair"

It's too bad Sly Stone couldn't keep his sht together.  For a few years in the late sixties and early seventies, Sly and his Family Stone were, perhaps even more than the Beatles, the most universally loved band in the world.  Everyone dug these cats: hippies, rock fans, the R&B audience, even jazz musicians listened to, appreciated, and were influenced by them.  Like many from this generation, however, the drugs eventually took their toll, and while they didn't kill Sly, they pretty much incapacitated him from about 1975 onwards.  The band's earlier work was, like the Beatles, distinctly utopian - a kind of groovy interracial orgy.  Here the band's music, like the culture as a whole, takes a darker, funkier, angrier, more exclusive, and more dystopian turn.  The band was still interracial but, be forewarned whitey, this album has way more of a Black Panther growl to it than its predecessors.  

2.  Marvin Gaye: What's Goin' On? (1971)

Song Selected: "What's Goin' On?"

Marvin Gaye was probably the sexiest motherfucker who ever lived.  When Marvin was a kid and the kids made fun of him about his last name, he would respond with, "Hey, say hi to your mom for me." And he meant it.  Because he had actually fucked their moms.  Even when singing about God, the children, and impending environmental catastrophe as he does here, he can still get your honey's cunny runny like you never will.  The man was smooth with a capital OO.  His own father shot him to death because his bitch wanted Marvin, not him.  Anyways, Marvin's the best R&B artist.  Ever.  And this is the best R&B album.  Ever.  But hey, don't take my word for it.  Put it on.  Kick back.  Unwind.  But watch out dudes, best keep your ladyfriend in check cuz Marvin's about to blow her fucking mind.

1.  The Stooges: Fun House (1970)

Song selected: "T.V. Eye"

The last and greatest album of the rock 'n' roll era.  The fusion of small-town angst, electric amplification, and rhythm and blues that produced rock 'n' roll is here taken to its inevitable and, ultimately, illogical conclusion.  The moment when the saxophone kicks in toward the end of "1970" is the musical equivalent of the Manson murders and the massacre at Altamont.  In the Ornette Coleman-inspired free jazzy freakout that follows, all the ridiculous and delusional notions of rock 'n' roll as a utopian force for positive social change are completely fucking obliterated.  Unlike Coleman's stuff, there are no theoretical underpinnings here that justify this violation of conventional notions of harmony and song structure - no suggestion of new beginnings.  This is the sound of the toilet of the 60s being flushed and a million screaming hippies going down the drain.