1976

                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