1976 is
an odd one. Things are definitely
starting to pick up some in ’76, but mostly in the margins, with the debut of
the Ramones and the explosion of dub. The
mainstream is continuing the stagnation that’s been going on since ’74. Glam is dead, and prog, soul, and folk-rock
are all fading. There’s some decent hard
rock going on, but it’s increasingly metallic, focused more on virtuosic flash
and ornate and/or pummeling riffs. More
problematically, no matter how good it is, it’s not really anything we haven’t
already been hearing since ’68. Therefore,
it’s hard to overstate how exciting the Ramones sound in ’76. They’re building on pre-’67 rock traditions,
but in a genuinely fresh, minimalist approach that’s so effortlessly exciting,
catchy, and straight-up fun that it makes the more convoluted work of other
rock artists sound overworked and fussy.
And the
Ramones are pretty alone at this point.
By the end of the year, the Damned will be mining similar territory with
their early singles, but otherwise that’s about it. Blondie are fellow-travelers, but while they
similarly return to a simpler, more pop-rock sound, they sound a lot more trad
and less revolutionary than the Ramones.
Good stuff, but not revolutionary.
Comparable to what Big Star was doing a couple of years ago, I
suppose. Joe Strummer and his 101ers
sound even more trad, even if they’re doing a pretty credible job of it, esp.
on the lone single released while they were still together, “Keys To Your
Heart.” Who they actually sound a lot
like is Tom Petty. Like Petty, they’re
mining very similar territory; specifically, the circa ’65 British Invasion. Petty has better songs, but otherwise they
are very close sonically. But while I’ve
always heard Petty as a fairly backward-looking figure, listened to among his
contemporaries, he’s at least as forward looking as some of the acts that will
be key parts of punk & new wave.
Patti
Smith will also be a key part of that scene, but I still hear her in ’76 not as
a proto-punk, but fitting on an art-metal continuum from her to Blue Öyster
Cult to Boston, which I grant sounds kind of odd. But Smith is not so sonically removed from
BÖC, and in fact even appears on their breakthrough album, Agents of Fortune. In turn,
it’s not especially far to go from the fantastic experiment in guitar tone that
is “Don’t Fear The Reaper” to the similar sonic sheen of Boston’s debut. In fact, if it weren’t for the Ramones making
their brand of studio polish sound kinda fussy, Boston’s Boston would be probably the most exciting debut this year. They get slagged as calculated sometimes, but
these are some pretty great pop-rock tunes, and while I imagine they couldn’t
quite pull it off live, the production sounds great on record. If it sounds calculated, it’s not the
calculation of, say, Toto, crafting tunes to maximize their chart appeal. Rather, it’s the calculation of a studio rat
who has a perfect sound in his head, and wants every note perfect. If he’d been producing prog-rock tunes,
instead of pop-rock tunes, he’d probably get a lot more respect. In fact, when Boston stretches out a bit,
they sound a lot like Rush. See
“Foreplay/Long Time,” and compare it to the overture section of “2112.”
Front-line
prog rock, meanwhile, sounds pretty weak this year; a genre that, like glam
before it, sounds like it’s starting to fade.
Nothing from Yes this year. An OK
album from Genesis, who I don’t hate (as I hate ELP), but who I just can’t get
excited about. Tull, meanwhile, after a
return to form last year, are starting to abandon prog entirely. Too Old
To Rock & Roll sounds more like the Kinks’ theatrical retro-rock of the
last couple of years than prog. And like
the Kinks, while they turn out a good tune or two, the showtunes-rock fusion
doesn’t really do it for me.
A good
year, however, for what I suppose you might call “hard prog,” on the border of
prog and metal. A good year, but not a
tremendously diverse one. Everyone is
pretty much converging on the sound that Sabbath had been working with on Sabotage. They’d end up in much different places, but
Rush, Rainbow, and Judas Priest sound very close this year, sonically, and
heavily indebted to Sabbath. In fact,
although I’ll take first-four-album Sabbath over Priest any day, Priest
probably do the tighter hard (instead of heavy) sound better than the
always-a-little-sloppy Sabbath, a sloppiness that really works in their favor
on the early records, but not so much with their later sound. Rainbow, a Deep Purple spin-off featuring
Sabbaths’ future vocalist, sound pretty much exactly halfway between those two
bands. Rush, meanwhile, make their most
compelling case yet to be taken seriously as a prog-rock band, with the
sidelong epic “2112.” Not to be taken
seriously lyrically, though, being indebted to the work of sociopath/hack
sci-fi novelist Ayn Rand. Also,
undercutting whatever lyrical message there may be is that the “Temple of Syrinx”
theme kicks sufficient ass to make living in a totalitarian future sound
awesome. Neil Peart will become one of
the finest lyricists in prog in a couple of years, but “2112” should be taken
about as seriously as “By-Tor & The Snow Dog.”
Even
Zeppelin are drifting toward that hard-prog/metal sound. They’ve never sounded more like a
conventional metal band than on tracks like “Achilles’ Last Stand.” Elsewhere, though, they’re still doing their
Zep-style take on funk-rock, and the overall effect is very close to the new
tracks from last year’s Physical Graffiti. Speaking of funk-rock, last year I said
that I heard more Stones than Zeppelin in Aerosmith’s sound, but this year I
take it back. When Aerosmith try to play
funk, like they do this year, they sound a lot more like Zeppelin. I suppose it comes from, like Zeppelin,
having a rhythm section better suited to pounding like Zeppelin than swinging
like the Stones.
The
Stones, meanwhile, really seem like they’re showing off their rhythm section
this year, where they try their hands quite successfully at funk and pretty
miserably at reggae. Black & Blue has been described by
Keith as their guitarist-tryout album, and it shows. This is a collection of grooves and jams,
rather than songs. The Stones certainly
can swing, but their strength has never been jamming, but rather
songcraft. Still, they sound more
energized but also slighter than on It’s
Only Rock & Roll. That one felt
like product; this one feels unfinished, but like it’s the product of a band
that’s engaged in making creative music.
So I guess the album it’s most like is the studio-jam trifle Jamming With Edward.
One of
the guitarists the Stones considered, although not appearing on Black & Blue, was apparently Jeff
Beck. It’s interesting to listen to Beck’s
Wired in that context, but not
especially enlightening. For what it’s
worth, I think the hard-rocking Beck replacing Brian Jones in ’68 would have
been fascinating, but trying to put fusion-jamming Beck in as Mick Taylor’s
replacement in ’76 would have failed.
They just had developed too different sounds. Although the Stones ultimately chose the
safest option, basically calling up a player from their minor-league affiliate,
the Faces. Beck, meanwhile, continues
his fusion work, but in a harder, less compelling fashion. Honestly, it recalls more than anything Frank
Zappa’s fusion stuff; well-played and slightly metallic, instead of the
smoother fusion of Stevie Wonder. Zappa,
meanwhile, sounds almost shockingly like a conventional metal band on Zoot Allures. “Conventional” is relative with Zappa, of
course, but this stuff (esp. the instrumental stuff) sounds appropriate next to
circa-76 metal.
Sounding
considerably less conventional, meanwhile, is David Bowie, who’s mashing
together his soul experiments of the last couple of years with a more
mechanical sound borrowing heavily from Neu! and Kraftwerk. In a sense, this is Bowie’s big turn from
glam/pop-star to art-rocker, although it also sounds like he’s finally
following up his proggier inclinations from way back on The Man Who Sold The World, an album that I keep returning to in
evaluating Bowie’s path. Still, without
this record and its Berlin follow-ups, I suspect Bowie would be remembered as
an entertaining but slight figure, about on par with T. Rex. Speaking of T. Rex, they’re another band that
sound irrelevant post-Ramones. Their
last big single, “I Love To Boogie,” is perfectly credible glam, but just
sounds slight compared to the Ramones’ full-bore assault. Not sounding slight, & in fact remarkably
ahead of their time are Devo, who like Bowie are mixing a mechanical
German-influenced sound into their music.
The difference, I suppose, is that Bowie’s basic material is soul at
this point, while Devo’s is garage rock.
On the
folk-rock end of things, it’s kind of a mixed bag, but also a genre that’s
starting to sound like it’s winding down.
Dylan continues his comeback with Desire,
which is probably as sonically innovative as he ever got. His early folk sound was borrowed from Woody
Guthrie, his ‘60s rock sound was garage-rock, and his sound since then had been
very close to his roots-rock contemporaries.
Here, though, he’s got some manner of gypsy-folk sound that’s distinctly
his own. So that’s for the good. For the bad, we’ve got an aborted CSNY
reunion and the Crosby-Nash and Stills-Young albums that follow from it. I don’t have a lot to say about Crosby &
Nash, except that they’re sounding somewhat more like folk-rock than the
soft-rock of last year. Stills-Young,
however, is pretty disappointing. Apart
from Young’s “Long May You Run,” this is some weak, forgettable stuff, with a
mellow ocean-centric focus that recalls an uninspired Jimmy Buffett as much as
anything. Tropical, but in a Florida
Keys way rather than anywhere further south.
Especially disappointing from Young, who last year released two
excellent records, and this year puts out half an album of throwaways. To my pleasant surprise, though, Still’s solo
record this year is pretty solid. It
didn’t blow me away, but unlike last year’s, it’s a record I’ll pull out to
listen to outside of the scope of this project.
He definitely rocks harder than on the oh-so-mellow Stills-Young record,
if not as hard as solo Young can.
Stills, for what it’s worth, is starting to show a bit of hero worship
for his old Buffalo Springfield partner, covering Young on last year’s record
and this one (a credibly rockin’ “The Loner”).
Overall, a mellower and more layered sound than Young’s more primitive
rocking. At times it puts me in the mood
of Steely Dan, who this year are also kind of a disappointment. Sonically, they’re still working the
jazz-rock sound of Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied, but those records had great
pop songs, while The Royal Scam
sounds good, but doesn’t have the melodies of earlier Dan records. A transitional record, I suppose, to their
more abstract stuff later on.
As I
said in the intro, the two big sounds this year were the birth of punk and
developments in reggae. Roots-reggae has
a solid year this year, sounding less like it is treading water than it had in
the last couple of years. Toots is
continuing to push his soul-reggae sound, and at this point is doing an evolved
version of the Stax sound more credibly than Al Green, who’s been infected with
that awful smooth-sax sound like the solo Beatles were last year. Meanwhile, all three original Wailers release
solo records this year, and they’re all excellent. Interestingly, contrary to the conventional
images of them, Marley is the more stridently political & angry one on Rastaman Vibration, while Peter Tosh is
the mellower, calmer one on Legalize It. Bunny Wailer, however, puts out the best
record of the three with his dubwise career high, Blackheart Man. If Marley is
strident and Tosh is mellow, Bunny is getting mystical, which fits well with
the spacier sonics of dub.
Dub has
been floating around the margins for a few years, but at least in my
collection, this is the year that dub really explodes, in a way I can only
compare to how psychedelia broke in rock in ’67. Not to get all lit-crit about it, but it’s a
downright post-modern genre, breaking down a song to its most basic elements
and playing around with building it back up.
Not too different, theoretically, I suppose, from the minimalism of the
Ramones and (especially, but later) Wire.
But pretentious critical theory aside, there are some great dub records
out this year. I already mentioned Bunny
Wailer’s Blackheart Man, but Augustus
Pablo & King Tubby’s King Tubby Meets
Rockers Uptown might be the best record in the whole genre. Apparently this album took years to make, and
it’s clearly the product of meticulous craftsmanship. Awhile ago in this project, I talked about
the importance of knowing your craft and building a foundation before you start
breaking it down, and this is another great example of that. Both Pablo & Tubby had been active for
years in reggae, and knew exactly what they were doing. Similarly, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry had been
showing up as a producer since the late ‘60s, but this year really begins, in
his own words, his dub revolution.
What’s really interesting to note is the range of style he works with,
from the deep dup of the Upsetters (his band) to the more roots sound of Junior
Murvin to the downright retro rocksteady of the Heptones. It’s a nice reminder of the diversity of the
Jamaican scene.
Finally,
it’s another strong year for funk. The
harder funk of James Brown is mostly absent, but the sprawling P-Funk sound
probably reaches its peak here, with Parliament’s masterpiece Mothership Connection (which, I now
realize, iTunes dated wrong, but I missed that last year, so I’ll talk about it
now). I’ve mentioned the glam-funk
similarities, but they’ve probably never been clearer than on this record,
funk’s own Ziggy Stardust. Elsewhere, funk is starting to reach an
accord with disco, bringing the more metronomic beat into a more rubbery funk
sound. At this point, it’s pretty compelling,
regardless of what it may develop into.
Song of the
Year: The Ramones – “Blitzkrieg
Bop.” But of course. When the Ramones are playing, it’s hard not
to convince me that they’re the greatest band in the world, and they emerged
fully-formed on their debut single.
Album of
the Year: Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life. It’s not Stevie’s best album, as at 2 lps
plus an ep, it’s got room for filler (to my ears, most of side one except “Sir
Duke” and the extended codas of some of the stuff on LP 2), but it’s
magnificent in its sprawl, touching on all the various shades of funk, soul,
fusion, Latin, and whatever other genres you can think of. In a sense even more impressive than the
White Album, for being all the product of a single artist. Of course, The Ramones has virtually none of those virtues, with all the songs
sounding very similar and barely half an hour long, but is still my runner-up.
Artist Most
Benefiting from Reevaluation:
AC/DC. Obviously I was aware of
how great AC/DC were, but they’re the most Ramones-like in their position of
any band in ’76. More trad than the
Ramones, obviously, but similarly a welcome return to simple, straight-ahead
rocking after the virtuosic complexity of prog and the distracting theatrics of
glam.
Artist Most
Diminished in Reevaluation: I’m
cheating slightly here by picking a comp, Wanted!
The Outlaws, by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall
Glaser. But it’s held up as a triumph
for a return to basics from the countrypolitan sounds of mainstream country,
and it’s nothing that wasn’t already being done by country-rockers like the
Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as Jennings and Nelson themselves. A popularization rather than a breakthrough,
therefore, and not so much a leap forward for country, as much as country
realizing that country-rockers were doing it better at this point…
Album List
ABBA - Gold
AC/DC - AC/DC
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
AC/DC - High Voltage
Aerosmith - Aerosmith's Greatest Hits
Al Green - The Absolute Best
Augustus Pablo - King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown [Bonus
Tracks]
Blondie - Best Of Blondie
Blue Öyster Cult – Agents of Fortune
Bob Dylan - Desire
Bob Dylan - Hard Rain
Bob Dylan - Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great
Concert Performances
Bob Dylan - Vol. 3: Rare And Unreleased, 1974-1991
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Rastaman Vibration
Boston – Boston
Bunny Wailer - Blackheart Man Remastered & Extended
Count Basie - Basie Jam 2
Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On
David Bowie - Best Of Bowie
David Bowie - Changesbowie
David Bowie – Station To Station
Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology
Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic: The Best Of
Electric Light Orchestra
Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002
Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac
Frank Zappa - Zoot Allures
Genesis – Wind & Wuthering
George Harrison - Best Of Dark Horse 1976-1989
Goblin - Goblin
J.J. Cale - Very Best Of
James Brown - 20 All Time Greatest Hits!
Jeff Beck – Wired
Jethro Tull - Original Masters
Jethro Tull - Songs From The Wood
Joe Strummer - Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited (The
101'ers)
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Beserkley
Years: The Best Of Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers
Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny
Led Zeppelin - Presence
Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains The Same
Lou Reed - Collections
Max Romeo - Arkology I: Dub Organiser
Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson
Neil Young - Decade
Nick Lowe - Basher: The Best Of Nick Lowe
Old & In The Way – Old & In The Way
Parliament - Tear The Roof Off 1974-1980
Patti Smith - Outside Society
Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits
Peter Tosh – Legalize It
Queen - Greatest Hits
Rainbow – Rising
Ringo Starr - Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr
Rush – All The World’s A Stage
Rush - Chronicles
Steely Dan – The Royal Scam
Stephen Stills – Illegal Stills
Stevie Wonder - At The Close Of A Century [Disc 3]
Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life
T. Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection
The Damned - Misc.
The Ethiopians - Everything Crash: The Best of The
Ethiopians
The Grateful Dead – Steal Your Face
The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
The Ramones - Mania
The Ramones - Ramones
The Rolling Stones – Black & Blue
The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks
The Stills-Young Band – Long May You Run
The Upsetters - Arkology II: Dub Shepherd
The Upsetters - Arkology III: Dub Adventurer
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback I: The Big
Jangle
Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough - The Anthology
V/A - Back In The Day Jamz
V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1
V/A - Children Of Nuggets
V/A - Pure Funk
V/A - Russ's Punk Mix
V/A - Samba Soul 70!
V/A - Saturday Night Fever
V/A - Trojan Dub Massive Chapter I
V/A – Wanted! The Outlaws
Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings
Willie Nelson - The Sound In Your Mind
