ILM's Now For Something Completely Different... 70s Album Poll Results! Top 100 Countdown! (Part 2)

LOL just reading the RS review for Paranoid. Who the fuck is Kip Treavor?

Boom here we go! Greatest album ever right above me!

lol Kip Treavor was the lead singer of Black WIDOW... lol Rolling Stone sux.

*bowing my knee in fealty to the antichrist*

not a very good rep of the counter-culture is it

It's becoming obvious why RS never put out that glossy coffee table book of original reviews! Some of these reviews are indeed inexcusable (I particularly hate Dave Marsh, Anthony DeCurtis and others). But the reason I wouldn't always completely write off every critic for the bad reviews they've done is that some, like Christgau, sorted through dozens of albums every week, thousands a year, and wrote hundreds of reviews, many on artists he's hearing for the very first time, most of which had not been reviewed anywhere else. So he was listening to stuff isolated from any cultural or critical context and restricted by massive volumes and limited time, responding with his initial gut reaction. The results were sometimes witty, often stupid, sometimes brilliant. The past 15+ years critics have a much different experience. By the time they hear an album there's usually already a deep knowledge base about the artist available in forums and blogs. Writers now have the option to consider a wide range of other popular and critical opinions while forming theirs. Even if they want to avoid that input, it's hard to avoid. Even back in the 80s there were more sources to draw from, with more magazines and fanzines than ever. And as of the mid-80s, there was already early e-mail based discussion forums.

I dunno most of the lyrics on Paranoid are pretty obvious... War Pigs is pretty obv. antiwar, its hard to miss it... the rest are mostly just horror movie plots turned into songs without any clear moral message, but that's kinda what created Metal with a capital m. No songs about girls and cars, just weird and scary stuff. I think Iron Maiden did this to the extreme with their lyrics, but its clear to me the album is supposed to be scary like a Hammer movie, maybe it was just too good.

unimpeachable run, that last three, and all got votes from me. Think I need to give Pink Fairies another listen as well...

54. ROXY MUSIC Roxy Music (2836 Points, 20 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #37 for 1972 , #835 overall | Acclaimed: #203
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/038/MI0000038422.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/4KjUgJn22cmBRQC0AHcjI3
spotify:album:4KjUgJn22cmBRQC0AHcjI3

From the drag queen on the cover to the fop finery in the centerfold to the polished deformity of the music on the record, this celebrates the kind of artifice that could come to seem as unhealthy as the sheen on a piece of rotten meat. Right now, though, it's decorated with enough weird hooks to earn an A for side one. Side two leans a little too heavily on the synthesizer (played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno) without the saving grace of drums and bassline. B+ -- R. Christgau

With the release of their first LP (produced by King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield after the departure of original Roxy guitarist Davy O'List, formerly of the Nice), the fledgling sextet revolutionized rock — trashing concepts of melodic conservatism, ignoring the prevalence of blues-based and otherwise derivative idioms and denying the need for technical virtuosity, either vocally or instrumentally. The flamboyantly bedecked poseurs presaged such low couture iconoclasts as the New York Dolls and all the glamsters who followed; the music mixed all sorts of elements into a newly filtered original sound that set the stylish pace. The tracks — Ferry-penned fantasies like "Re-make/Re-model," "2 H.B.," "If There Is Something" and the group's monumental debut, "Virginia Plain" (a 45 not on the original album, but added to later editions) — are at once amateurish and highly developed, brilliant blunders that took some acclimation to fully appreciate. As much as the music, the album's kitsch graphics were also widely imitated. -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination -- Brian Eno's synthesized "treatments" exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts rock & roll clichés by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs, whether it's the free-form, structure-bending "Remake/Remodel" or the sleek glam of "Virginia Plain," the debut single added to later editions of the album. That was the trick that elevated Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous rock band of the early '70s.

(played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno)

more Poxy Muzak...

That is right on (about Sabbath). On top of that, while the members weren't exactly good church-going boys at the time, heh, they certainly still held Christian beliefs and actually wore those crosses because they were genuinely freaked out by a Satanic cult they refused to play for, and threatened to curse the band.

Interesting piece, Black Sabbath: The First Christian Rock Band.

A reminder about Martin Popoff's reviews from The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal - Volume 1: The Seventies, the first number is the heaviness number. The second is how good Popoff thinks the album is on a scale of 10.

later lyrical concerns leant more towards cocaine, lawsuits

awww

Roxy Music s/t was top in my top 10, was kinda hoping itd get top 20, even maybe beat out Marquee Moon (lol talk about wishful thinking)

anyone think KISS will make it into the top 50?

ugh hope not

sorry KISS ARMY members

excuse me I was in the KISS NAVY!

Rear Lieutenant Gene Simmons in command!

Ewww

Cocaine and lawsuits, lol, too true! Here's what I posted on an old thread:

It's pretty well known these days that the band are not really into the occult despite their image. Dio once scoffed at the idea of them being satanists and said they're "just a bunch of good Catholic boys."

Good might be a stretch, but in their early days, some satanists and head witch of England Alec Sanders starting taking an interest in Black Sabbath by showing up at gigs and stalking them at hotels. After Sabbath refused to play their satanic mass, they put a hex on the band. Ozzy asked his father make them those large silver (actually aluminum) crosses they've been known to wear thereafter. Iommi and Geezer were both Catholic (Geezer actually almost became a priest!), Ozzy with Church of England, Ward agnostic. They may not have being church-going guys after forming Sabbath, but they certainly had a healthy fear of the satanists and a belief in the power of the cross symbol!

funnily enough...

Ewww

― today's tom soy yum, mean mean thai (Spectrist), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 16:57 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know, v sorry

53. KING CRIMSON Starless and Bible Black (2857 Points, 19 Votes, 2 #1s)
RYM: #50 for 1974 , #1807 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/263/MI0002263031.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

This is as close as this chronically interesting group has ever come to a good album, or maybe it's as close as Robert Fripp has ever come to dominating this chronically interesting group. As usual, things improve markedly when nobody's singing. The lyrics are relatively sharp, but there must be better ways of proving you're not a wimp than casting invective at a "health-food faggot." Unless you are a wimp, that is. B -- R. Christgau

Just as they were about to be classed among the living relics, Robert Fripp and friends have returned from a lengthy creative hiatus with an inventive new album. They've taken the disjointed pieces of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, infused them with some life, and woven them into a package as stunningly powerful as In the Court of the Crimson King, the LP that launched "mellotron rock."

Crimson displays a certain confidence here that hasn't before graced its efforts. William Bruford's multifaceted percussive offerings are particularly impressive in this light -- he's finally mastered his distinctively eclectic style. David Cross's violin and viola are woven into the Crimson tapestry far more effectively than before, adding the counter-soloist that Fripp needed to give variety to the band's sound.

The material relies on instrumental interaction, with Crimson now intent on exploring some of the frontiers charted by Yes. "The Great Deceiver" rocks out almost as maniacally as did "21st Century Schizoid Man," showing that where Yes would marvel at the world, Crimson prefers to grab it by the balls. But with "Trio" Crimson demonstrates that it's capable of maintaining the balace between aggression and introspection, using the juxtaposition of viola and mellotron-flute tape to evoke a hauntingly blissful serenity.

The two lengthy instrumental passages that comprise Side Two of Starless and Bible Black show Crimson at its best, relaxing into lengthy improvisational patterns that spotlight the virtuosity of each member. The ease with which these moves are carried off indicates that Fripp has finally assembled the band of his dreams -- hopefully it'll stay together long enough to continue producing albums as excellent as this one. -- Gordon Fletcher, RS

Bob Fripp and his band know more ways to be intelligent, dead serious, and fairly boring than anybody I know save for the Master of Musical Monotony himself, John McLaughlin. David Cross may well be the outstanding member of this group as he's the least competent on his instrument (violin), but all the others play their instruments with a same degree of technical proficiency. "The Great Deceiver" is the best and most interesting track on the album; in fact it may be the only listenable song produced by this King Crimson to date, but one good apple don't spoil the whole bunch. -- Jon Tiven, Circus Rave

The majority of the record was based on live improvisational recordings from a concert recorded the previous fall in Amsterdam. It's no wonder, as Crimson spent the better part of March through November 1973 on the road with only a few weeks in the summer to rest. The first side contains shorter snippets, as well as a few (more or less) songs. Both "The Great Deceiver" and "We'll Let You Know" rely on fury to get their point across (which they do), while the gentler "The Night Watch" is simply resplendent. ...Again, the key is the rhythm section of John Wetton and Bill Bruford; as Fripp would later comment, they were "terrible to play over." Indeed. With only twelve minutes of studio recordings, the album is a little short on new material, but taken as a live record it's another matter.-- C. Snider, The Strawberry Bricks Guide To Progressive Rock

Fripp and the boys were busy in 1974, later in the year came the storming Red album, but before that came this offering. King Crimson are usually lumped in with the lumbering prog-rock likes of Yes and ELP, but while they share a certain number of starting points (and band members), since their debut in 1969, they have always been that bit more closer to the edge (as well as that more technically proficient!). This can still be seen to this day with recent offerings such as Thrak and The ConstruKction Of Light, both being contemporary masterpieces.

Starless... opens in fine speedridin' form with 'The Great Deceiver', which begins at full pace, slows briefly for a short Zepp-esque riff, then grinds down to a few staccato bass notes for the first verse. As usual with Crimson there are many rhythm, riff and tempo changes. Blistering. 'Lament' begins as a vocal-led ballad, but then unexpectedly dissolves and rebuilds into a freaked-out funk monster of a song - John Wetton's vocals ranging from soulful to fiery.

'We'll Let You Know' takes the form of a studio jam, and is about as loose and bluesy as Crimson get. Bill Bruford's syncopated percussion linking the free wheeling bass and guitar. 'The Night Watch' opens with a wall of cymbals and chorused guitars, to give an almost oriental feel - David Cross' violin picking up on this, while Wetton shares the story of what appears to be an old painting. Fripp, meanwhile, paints his own picture with some beautifully intricate harmonics.

'Trio' is almost complete silence for a whole minute, eventually Cross' violin emerging, accompanied by some gentle bass-stroking from Wetton - before Fripp joins in with his best viola impersonation. Eerie, again quite oriental, and very soothing. 5 minutes 41 seconds just isn't enough - I put this track on repeat play during moments of quiet contemplation. 'The Mincer' is the strangest track on offer, and possesses some excellent unexpected, 'catch you by surprise', snare work from Bruford. The title track begins with some quiet feedback and Bruford beating some kind of heart beat. Tambourines join in, the whole thing builds. The song title is beautifully evoked through the 9-minute soundscape. Challenging, but never unlistenable, the whole thing turns more jazzy toward the end once Wetton and Bruford fall into step.

The closing track 'Fracture', strangely enough sees a return to the more structured Frippery and bizarre chord progressions. The fingerwork is quite mind boggling at times - and a lot of people criticize Fripp for his 'over-complication', but you'll usually find that's just jealous guitarists! - but huge funky islands appear all over the place, and the whole thing rides out on a high.

One of King Crimson's best albums, certainly one of their funkiest, from arguably their strongest line-up. A classic which I heartily recommend - especially as an accompaniment to its sister album, Red (which is reviewed elsewhere here by Squid Tempest).  -- fwump bungle, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Bruce Eder

Starless and Bible Black is even more powerful and daring than its predecessor, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, with jarring tempo shifts, explosive guitar riffs, and soaring, elegant, and delicate violin and Mellotron parts scattered throughout its 41 minutes, often all in the same songs. The album was on the outer fringes of accessible progressive rock, with enough musical ideas explored to make Starless and Bible Black more than background for tripping the way Emerson, Lake & Palmer's albums were used. "The Night Watch," a song about a Rembrandt painting, was, incredibly, a single release, although it was much more representative of the sound that Crimson was abandoning than where it was going in 1973-1974. More to that point were the contents of side two of the original LP, a pair of instrumentals that threw the group's hardest sounds right in the face of the listener, and gained some converts in the process. [Starless and Bible Black was remastered again for CD in the summer of 2000, in significantly improved sound that brought out the details (and surprising lyricism) of much of the material in far greater detail. The booklet included with the remastered version is not as impressive as some of the rest of the series entries in terms of information, but has great photos.]

Then Ozzy found a leaf sweater than the stevia which sweetened the coffee after Anglican mass...

I wonder how many albums Fripp was involved in, no matter how tangentially, that placed in this poll.

Look at the face of 70s rock and you will see the face of Fripp staring back!!

You mean the face of Bob Fripp, International Lover PhD

from Toyah Wilcox University

I can't believe how tight they played during this time period, the live recordings of Fracture for instance are nightmarish

52. AEROSMITH Rocks (2882 Points, 20 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #38 for 1976 , #2097 overall | Acclaimed: #396 | RS: #176
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/596/MI0000596839.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/5Uv5LmSKTT9okGkr3l9MjR
spotify:album:5Uv5LmSKTT9okGkr3l9MjR

http://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_aerosmith2.jpg

Dave Hickey compares the teen crossover of the year to a Buick Roadmaster, and he's right -- they've retooled Led Zeppelin till the English warhorse is all glitz and flow, beating the shit out of Boston and Ted Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult in the process. Wish there were a lyric sheet -- I'd like to know what that bit about J. Paul Getty's ear is about -- but (as Hickey says) the secret is the music, complex song structures and that don't sacrifice the basic 4/4 and I-IV-V. A warning, though: Zep's fourth represented a songwriting peak, before the band began to outgrow itself, and the same may prove true for this lesser group, so get it while you can. A- -- R. Christgau

Whether or not Rocks is hot depends on your vantage point. If your hard-rock tastes were honed in the Sixties, as this band's obviously were, Aerosmith is a polished echo of Yardbirds' guitar rock liberally spiced with the Stones' sexual swagger. If you're a teen of the Seventies, they are likely to be the flashiest hard-rock band you've ever seen. While the band has achieved phenomenal commercial success, their fourth album fails to prove that they can grow and innovate as their models did.

The most winning aspect of Rocks is that ace metal prducer Jack Douglas and the band (listed as coproducers for the first time) have returned to the ear-boxing sound that made their second album, Get Your Wings, their best. The guitar riffs and Steven Tyler's catlike voice fairly jump out of the speakers. This initially hides the fact that the best performances here -- "Lick and a Promise," "Sick as a Dog" and "Rats in the Cellar" -- are essentially remakes of the highlights of the relatively flat Toys in the Attic. The songs have all the band's trademarks and while they can be accused of neither profundity nor originality, Aerosmith's stylized hard-rock image and sound pack a high-energy punch most other heavy metal bands lack.

Steven Tyler is the band's obvious focal point, a distinction earned primarily by his adaptation of the sexual stance that missed the young Jack Flash. On the rockers, his delivery is polished and commanding and sufficiently enthusiastic to disguise the general innnocuousness of the lyrics. On the riff-dominated songs, though, such as "Last Child" or "Back in the Saddle," he is prone to shrieks that don't bear repetition. Unlike Jagger, his vocal performance cannot save otherwise mediocre material.

The material is Rocks' major flaw, mostly pale remakes of their earlier hits, notably "Dream On," a first-album ballad that helped make the complete Aerosmith catalog gold. Aerosmith may have their hard-rock wings, but they won't truly fly until their inventiveness catches up to their fast-maturing professionalism. – John Milward, RS

Another band RS had little love for during their mid-70s heyday, and then reappraised after they had sold millions of records. (Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that Aerosmith were a group that RS reviled in the '70s almost as a consequence of their success, and later put on a pedestal for the very same reason.) Wayne Robbins provided this predictable critique in the 1983 guide: "Lead vocalist Steven Tyler, with his puffy, pouty lips and salacious eyes, had the manner of his lookalike, Mick Jagger, but none of his command of song or movement."

I would imagine Aerosmith seemed pretty laughable - almost like a cartoon version of the Stones - when they first appeared in 1973. But their timing couldn't have been better: Aerosmith's rise perfectly coincided with the Stones' decline. In recent years, the Stones actually seem to be imitating Aerosmith, and not the other way around: the descending chorus on A Bigger Bang's "Let Me Down Slow," for example, sounds almost identical to Rocks' "Lick and a Promise."

Rocks was #176 on RS's 500 greatest albums list; Toys in the Attics was #228. – schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time

Flushed with the success of Toys In The Attic, Aerosmith wasted no time or momentum in returning to the studio to cut what for many is their magnum opus. Rocks, recorded partly at their Wherehouse rehearsal space and at the Record Plant in New York, was fueled by the excesses that would prove to be their near-undoing. But with the help of Jack Douglas, theband managed to focus their talents like never before, creating an aptly titled package of gems.

More cohesive than Toys..., Rocks also features a richer, tougher sound -- the downright dangerous guitar combination of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford is spurred on by the sleazy rhythm section of Tom Hamilton and Joy Kramer, making tracks like "Rats In The Cellar" and "Back In The Saddle" send sparks.

At the center of it all is Steven Tyler's determined, devilish howl -- a vocal style that earned him the moniker "The Demon of Screamin'." On "Get The Lead Out," Tyler requested the support of a singer from the Metropolitan Opera on the refrain (making one wonder what happened to the singer's career after a session that must have shredded a once-fine voice).

The lyrics deal with extremes, whether it is sex ("Back In The Saddle"), drugs ("Combination"), or fame ("A Lick And A Promise") -- there is either too much or too little, typically at the same time. The subject matter is fitting for a band whose predilections scared the most drug-addled musicians in the business, leading them to dub Tyler and Perry the Toxic Twins. -- Tim Sheridan, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Few albums have been so appropriately named as Aerosmith's 1976 classic Rocks. Despite hard drug use escalating among bandmembers, Aerosmith produced a superb follow-up to their masterwork Toys in the Attic, nearly topping it in the process. Many Aero fans will point to Toys as the band's quintessential album (it contained two radio/concert standards after all, "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion"), but out of all their albums, Rocks did the best job of capturing Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking. Like its predecessor, a pair of songs have become their most renowned -- the menacing, hard rock, cowboy-stomper "Back in the Saddle," as well as the downright viscous funk groove of "Last Child." Again, even the lesser-known tracks prove essential to the makeup of the album, such as the stimulated "Rats in the Cellar" (a response of sorts to "Toys in the Attic"), the Stonesy "Combination," and the forgotten riff-rocker "Get the Lead Out." Also included is the apocalyptic "Nobody's Fault," the up-and-coming rock star tale of "Lick and a Promise," and the album-closing ballad "Home Tonight." With Rocks, Aerosmith appeared to be indestructible.

Why did Kiss outsell Aerosmith in the 70s? Aerosmith were so superior

So ZZ Top is gonna play Cleveland on August 24 at...Tiger Stadium.

Hehe I was gonna post that gig poster on FB and ask Chuck if he was going

Woah, Epitaph (the one by Judas Preist) is playing now and it totally sounds like a Queen song. I wonder if they threw that in there on purpose with all the harmonies and piano just in case no one cottoned to the whole face-melting riff thing and needed to switch up styles again later.

That's my theory about JP -- they were always far more concerned with commercial success than most other metal bands, and far more studio oriented. It seemed like they were always there to capture the sound of the cutting-edge hard rock zeitgeist, not really be trendsetters.

yes Rocks! one of the albums I can point to whenever I make my argument that "Aerosmith did indeed once rock and not suck!"

KISS had a better stage show, obviously!! You weren't going to a concert, you were going to an EVENT!

did the merch table exist in the 70s? That would explain everything.

You didn'y get Gentle Giant lunchboxes off your dad?

lol

51. THROBBING GRISTLE 20 Jazz funk Greats (2917 Points, 25 Votes)
RYM: #135 for 1979 | Acclaimed: #1804
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/497/MI0002497530.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Twenty Jazz Funk Greats breaks away from D.o.A.'s stark bleakness in an attempted truce between the group's radical attitudes and pop music, removing the cutting edge from their calculated chaos but offering more accessibility. -- Trouser Press

review
by John Bush

It's a break in the clouds from Throbbing Gristle's pummeling noise and a first glimpse at the continuing pop influence on the TG/PTV axis, but 20 Jazz Funk Greats still isn't best described by its title. If there is such a thing as a funky Throbbing Gristle LP, however, this could well be it. "Hot on the Heels of Love," "Still Walking" and "Six Six Sixties" add only occasional bits of distortion between the rigid sequencer lines. 20 Jazz Funk Greats is the best compromise between TG's early industrial aesthetic and the reams of industrial-dance and dark synth-pop groups that used the album as a stepping stone to crossover appeal.

xp Kiss were marketed to a much younger demographic than Aerosmith

pre-teens?

Who were Throbbing Gristle marketed to?

a much more pretentious demographic than Aerosmith

True, when I was in 4th grade, I knew at least two kids who were KISS fanatics (9-10 year-olds in 1978-9), and I probably didn't know who Aerosmith were yet.

Who were Throbbing Gristle marketed to?

jazz-funksters obv

Can't believe that album isn't available on spotify. GET IT TOGETHER PEOPLE!

I've thought for a while that Kiss may have been the worst musicians to achieve that level of success.