pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

huh no shit

Ber buh beh dum, ber buhdeh bum bum.
PROVE IT

i do love some of his vox especially in venus when ritchie hell wants to dress up like cops thinks about what we could do

TIZZZZZ A FACT!

This case is closed.

BROADWAY it's SO MEDIEVAL

good list! seems way less controversial than the 1980s list from last year. maybe if our generation were teens in the 1970s we'd have more to argue about.

I guess my main complaint would be that it seems like most of the soul picks are determined by the popularity of the recent rap songs that sampled them. No Smokey for
Instance when he owned the 70s

yea i'd swap out a ton of the boring CBGB shit and put in more soul, jazz, and reggae in general

i mean like any list of 200 songs can't convey a whole decade you could easily do 200 songs of any one genre of the 70s and have plenty left out

on consideration it's less interesting and leftfield than the list of the 250 or so billboard #1 songs of the 1970s. honey cone's "want ads", for instance, is more leftfield and surprising than anything on their list.

it doesn't really matter. lots of good stuff on there. people might check some of it out. or not. it doesn't really matter. - emil cioran

seems way less controversial than the 1980s list from last year. maybe if our generation were teens in the 1970s we'd have more to argue about.

It's weird. I was born in 74, does that make me an 80s baby or not? I don't know, but I think I was way more into finding stuff on their 80s list that I wasn't familiar with because I always want to hear MORE MORE MORE 80s music. Because so much 70s music is embedded in my core, I found myself irritated both by things that were chosen AND things that were left out of the 70s list.

But yet, even though my personal 80s list would've looked different, I was happy to read through theirs.

My personal 70s list would also have looked different, but instead I was grumpy yesterday that this one came out the way it did.

No Sylvester
No Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band

where art thou dan fogelberg

nazerath
poco
swamp dogg
glen campbell
au pairs

Obviously ZZ Top is on the list. I don't even need to check---WHHHHHAATTTTTT!!?

So it's ok to post notable omissions now?

Emitt Rhodes "Somebody Made For Me"
King Crimson "One More Red Nightmare"
Jefferson Starship "Miracles"
Carole King "It's Too Late"

i thought we were just naming acts from the 70s

jesse winchester
kc & the sunshine band
999

tony orlando and dawn- knock three times

seems like most of the soul picks are determined by the popularity of the recent rap songs that sampled them.

ha yea this seems very weird

melanie - brand new key

/seems like most of the soul picks are determined by the popularity of the recent rap songs that sampled them. /

ha yea this seems very weird
--marcos

I love that one of them is Will Smith's "Miami"

was surprised that the Isaac Hayes pick wasn't "Walk on By" for that very reason

that's bc it came out in 1969

i was also upset that "tears of a clown" was disqualified bc even though it was a hit in 1970 it was an album track in 1967

Two lists, for balance:

Things I really liked seeing that weren’t necessarily automatic:

Germs: “Lexicon Devil”
Siouxsie and the Banshees: “Hong Kong Garden”
Karen Dalton: “Something on Your Mind”
Donnie & Joe Emerson: “Baby”
Black Flag: “Nervous Breakdown”
Five Stairsteps: “O-o-h Child”
Kool & the Gang: “Summer Madness”
Neil Young: “After the Gold Rush”

(I realize Neil Young himself is automatic, but there’s a core of songs I would have considered inevitable, and “After the Gold Rush” isn’t one of them.)

Some things I would liked to have seen, ditto--one song per year:

Jethro Tull: “The Witch’s Promise”
Undisputed Truth: “Smiling Faces Sometimes”
Hot Tuna: “Sea Child”
Slade: “Merry X'mas Everybody”
Grand Funk: “Bad Time”
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)”
Maxine Nightingale: “Right Back Where We Started From”
KC & the Sunshine Band: “Keep It Comin’ Love”
Walter Egan: “Magnet and Steel”
Shoes: “Too Late”

I said Rod Stewart was absent--missed the Faces song, although that's a bit of a stretch. Anyway, I'll change the most egregious omission to CCR.

the Five Stairsteps is in there cos of Guardians of the Galaxy of course

Maxine Nightingale: “Right Back Where We Started From”

This is quite possibly the most annoying song ever recorded.

i walked outside to smoke a cigarette today and a guy drove by on a motorcycle blasting "year of the cat".

(xpost) Loved it when I was 15, love it today. Possibly my favourite disco song, even though it predates the explosion (and I don't think was marketed as such initially).

rock the boat was probably my fave early disco song when i was a kid. 1974. though it originally came out in 1973. (one of those weird cases where its on their first album but it gets so big that they put it on their second album too. that doesn't happen every day.)

and a guy drove by on a motorcycle blasting "year of the cat".

I feel like I'm had dreams about this.

the donnie and joe emerson track was the one that made my eyes roll more than anything else. i like private press records, but they do not belong on a "best 200 of the decade" list.

Fine Art were robbed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_cjMG21Io

idris muhammed track is very cool but u have to ask if it's there bc of the jamie xx sample

yes

Donnie and Joe Emerson are no different for me than Jackson C. Frank or Creme Soda or Manuel Göttsching or the Charlatans (San Francisco version) or countless other things I never found out about until long after the fact because someone else listed them or wrote about them and got me interested enough to listen. If I'd been voting, my list would have been 100% in the present moment, whatever I love most right now.

i was also upset that "tears of a clown" was disqualified bc even though it was a hit in 1970 it was an album track in 1967

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson

oh man – this explains why the track doesn't sound like 1970 at all.

Donnie and Joe Emerson are no different for me than Jackson C. Frank or Creme Soda or Manuel Göttsching or the Charlatans (San Francisco version) or countless other things I never found out about until long after the fact because someone else listed them or wrote about them and got me interested enough to listen. If I'd been voting, my list would have been 100% in the present moment, whatever I love most right now.

― clemenza

idk i think comparing donnie & joe emerson to manuel gottsching is a poor comparison. gottsching was underground, and the emersons were (talented) nonentities, nonentities who have yet to gain significant cultural resonance from their rediscovery (in contrast to say the shaggs). i'm not necessarily saying that '70s musical criticism needs to be historically informed (though there's an argument to be made for that) but if you're going to engage in revisionist history you ought to be able to look beyond the present moment. ultimately a list like this says so much about 2016 that it winds up saying nothing at all about the 1970s - or about any time _other_ than 2016.

donnie and joe emerson had the fortune to be reissued in the past couple years and not ten years ago, which is why they're on this list. tbh the albums LITA reissued *are* good but still...

I don't know anything about Manuel Gottsching except that I love "Quiet Nervousness," so I won't even try to bluff my way through that. I think the list strikes an okay balance between this-was-the-'70s and this-is-how-we-view-the-'70s today. If a balance was their stated goal, I'd say they did a little worse than what they were after; if it's just a bunch of random individual ballots tallied up and whatever happens, happens, I'd say they did a little better.

donnie & joe emerson is pretty ridiculous tbh, that song is fine but we could go hit a dollar bin any day and pick out random shit and get songs as good as that. edd hurt just hipped us to artful dodger in the big star thread and their big single is way fucking better than donnie and joe emerson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBEoNzGQEFI

I saw Artful Dodger open for Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult in 1976. Thrilling. But I like "Baby" better.

damn that was a sweet show

my dream is to time travel to see the late period byrds/blue oyster cult/mahavishnu orchestra tour :(

did "sentimental lady" by bob welch make the list? that's a better soft rock ballad than emersons

best chillwave eagles song should have made it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faik2GobaXw

ripe for reappraisal imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Wpn3dFrEs

man, that is one unfortunate album cover