1977

          1977!  A year I’ve been looking forward to since this project began, but especially as I made my way through the doldrums of 1973-76, as rock got steadily less and less exciting and entire genres petered out and died.  But 1977!  There were signs of life in ’76, especially from the Ramones, but there hasn’t been this good a year for pop-rock since 1966 (although the ’68-’72 period was good for rock with less of an emphasis on catchy 3 minute singles).  The Ramones were, of course, almost alone in ’76 (apart from Blondie, Petty, and at the very end of the year the Damned).  This year, though, we’re all of a sudden awash in new bands doing all sorts of new exciting things under the punk banner.

                At this point, punk is basically concentrated in London and New York, so I’ll start with the UK stuff.  It’s certainly closer to what I grew up thinking punk was all about: all strummed chords, growly vocals, and fast tempos.  Even at this point, there’s some differentiating here.  Obviously, it’s hard to escape the Sex Pistols and the Clash, as they’re clearly the two big leading lights of Class of ’77 Brit-Punk, and (along with Wire) put out the only really great album-length UK punk this year.  The Pistols, as befitting their origins as ex-New York Dolls manager Malcolm MacLaren’s pet project, have much more of a Dolls influence (read: second-hand Stooges influence) than others, but do a lot more with their Stooges homage than the Dolls ever did.  This they do largely by a much more compelling front man, who actually has something to say lyrically.  The fact that they care more about the Stooges than the Ramones means that they’re more mid-tempo and less catchy than others, for better or worse.

                The Clash, on the other hand, are working something approximating a Ramones-Mott The Hoople fusion, with the uptempo catchiness of the former mixing with the backing vocals and soaring lead guitar parts of the latter, all with just a hint of the emphasis on the R&B backbeat that Joe Strummer’s 101ers journeyman work brought in.  I gotta give the edge to the US version of the first album, though.  Outside of the absolutely magnificent “Police & Thieves” cover, the UK version songs start to blur together, while the US version has a bit more variety that works better at album length.  “Police & Thieves,” though, man, that’s a good song.  As Strummer himself said, not just white reggae, but punks attempting to fuse what they do honestly with the reggae music they love.  Any other year, it would be my clear song of the year.  One thing I didn’t realize until doing 1976 for this project, though, was that the Clash were basically covering contemporaries.  This just doesn’t happen anymore.  Outside of Cee-Lo Green covering Band of Horses, I can’t remember the last cross-genre cover of a contemporary song that wasn’t essentially intended as a joke.

                Outside of the Clash and the Pistols, it’s surprisingly thin going for UK punk.  There are some great singles in ’77, but most of the bands that will stick around for longer than a single aren’t anywhere near their peak.  The Jam, Joy Division (still going by Warsaw), and even the Buzzcocks bark like hyperactive pups, and are fun enough, but will get a lot better in the next few years.  It’s not just the Clash, Pistols, and singles, though.  The Stranglers put out a pair of albums, but look & sound more like 60’s garage rock than punk.  Elvis Costello does release his debut, which is really about as punk as Tom Petty’s was last year (insofar as it’s similarly focused on retro-minded pop-rock with a more aggressive edge), but is nevertheless outstanding.  But Costello got retroactively dubbed a punk after he got rawer on his later albums.  Maybe (probably) the best UK album of ’77, though, is by Wire, a band that is already like 2 or 3 years ahead of the rest of the punks, and is already deconstructing pop songs in a wholly unique way.  Not since Neu!’s debut has there been as singular and innovative new sound.  And catchy as all hell.

                In the US, meanwhile, punk is much more a loosely ideologically affiliated scene than a coherent genre.  The Ramones don’t, at least as of yet, have a lot of followers or imitators in the States (although Blondie, who sit out this year, are similarly focused on a more agro version of pre-67 rock).  The Ramones do, however, release another couple of impeccable releases.  Leave Home suffers a little from following the debut, but could have just as easily jump-started punk if it had been the first one released.  Rocket To Russia, meanwhile, is the first serious attempt by the Ramones to deepen their formula (just a little, with a touch more pop in their assault), and it’s probably the best album they’ll ever release. 

                The rest of the NYC punk scene, though, is all over the place.  I’ve talked before about how little Patti Smith sounds like punk, but is nevertheless quite good with her BÖC-reggae-beat-poetry fusion.  Talking Heads sound somewhat less like Roxy Music on their proper debut, and a touch more like keyboardist Jerry Harrison’s old Modern Lovers, although you’d not be entirely inaccurate to try to describe them as Roxy Music fronted by a less naïve Jonathan Richman.  Otherwise, things get even further away from punk as it’s thought of today.  Suicide go for a Kraftwerk-rockabilly sound that’s great in small doses but starts to irritate at album length, lacking as it does the hooks of rockabilly or the compositional ambition of Krautrock.  Fun at single length, though.  And Television get described as the “punk-rock Grateful Dead,” which is actually surprisingly accurate on the second half of the equation.  They honestly probably sound closer to a more uptempo verison of the Dead circa ’77 (i.e on Dead rockers like “Passenger”) as fronted by Patti Smith than to the Ramones, or certainly the Pistols.  If they hadn’t been a CBGB band, I could really see the jam-rockers having adopted them instead.  As is, they’re probably one of the few bands I would unreservedly recommend to both punks & jam-rock fans, and honestly expect the jam-rockers to like them better than the punks.

                The Dead, incidentally, put out one of their most interesting, if not necessarily best, records.  It’s as engaged as they’ve sounded in what’s going on around them since ’71, with nods to reggae (“Estimated Prophet”), prog-rock (“Terrapin Station”), and the disco that would more fully captivate them next year (“Dancing In The Streets”).  Also, they sound like Television on “Passenger,” but I’m guessing that’s more or less accidental; otherwise there’s no reason to think the Dead were listening to the CBGB bands…

                The other really exciting stuff going on in music is, like last year, in reggae.  This connection was not missed by either the punks or the Rastas.  The Clash, in addition to covering “Police & Thieves,” get Lee Perry to produce their non-album single “Complete Control.”  One of their finest straight-punk songs, although apart from an echo on the drums, Scratch’s influence isn’t really felt.  Marley, meanwhile, releases the (also Perry-produced) “Punky Reggae Party,” a fantasia of punks and reggae artists coming together for the mother of all musical parties.  Marley also releases what’s probably his best album as a solo artist, Exodus.  Listened to in context I hear a heavy Al Green influence, especially in the horn charts.  Tosh also hits what’s (to me at least) his unquestionable high point as a solo artist.  Equal Rights is more the militant Tosh he’s remembered as, as opposed to the mellow artist behind Legalize It.  I can’t help but wonder if the angry polemics of bands like the Pistols and the Clash pulled him in this direction.  (Incidentally, I keep qualifying all of these Marley, Bunny, and Tosh records as my favorites of them as solo artists because I think that for all of them, the finest record they were involved in was Soul Rebels).  One thing is clear: the Wailers are functioning at this point as something like the Beatles (or Zeppelin) of reggae: artists who are both dominant figures in their own right and listening to everything going on around them and incorporating it readily into their own work. 

                Outside of former Wailers, reggae is having probably its best year as an album-length medium (versus the singles and albums of singles slapped together that dominated before this).  You get two other albums mentioned repeatedly as contenders for “best reggae album (not counting The Harder They Come).”  Culture lean more toward the roots end of things with their Two Sevens Clash, which recalls the early Wailers’ stripped, folk-y sound and was the UK punks’ favorite reggae album of the year.  Elsewhere, Lee Perry surfaces again, producing the Congos’ Heart of the Congos.  Given their producer, it’s unsurprisingly much more dubby, and the mix of the Congos’ ethereal harmonies and Perry’s rumbling dread make it a really excellent and spooky album.  The religious subject matter on top of the harmonies and sense of dread also weirdly makes me think of the Louvin Brothers’ Satan Is Real, but that’s probably just me…

                Outside of punk and reggae, it’s actually a surprisingly strong year in the mainstream as well.  Not as good as ’73 (which wasn’t as good as ’72), but probably the best year in the mainstream since then.  As of yet, not a great deal of punk influence.  The newish genre with the strongest influence is probably disco, which probably reaches its high point here.  Much like early reggae, a compilation soundtrack is usually held up as the best album of disco, Saturday Night Fever in this case.  It does demonstrate, at a minimum, how you can graft that disco beat onto just about any style of music you chose, whether it’s funk (Kool & The Gang), salsa (“Salsation”) or even classical (the kinda-goofily-awesome “Fifth of Beethoven” and the as-dreadful-as-you-might-fear “Night On Disco Mountain”).  Best of all, though is disco-pop/rock, as exemplified by the Bee-Gees.  ELO also dabble in this stuff, but their strongest song this year (and probably in their entire career) is the not-at-all disco but incredibly Beatles-eque “Mr. Blue Sky,” aka that song from the Volkswagen ad.  I have virtually no interest, though, in pure (uncut) disco, at least as music for listening instead of dancing.  If you want music for dancing, though, you could do a lot worse than funk this year.  Parliament are consistent enough that it’s hard to say new things about them, but there’s also a bunch of good pop-funk out there. 

                Outside of the dancier realms, 1977 was a surprisingly good year for prog rock, a genre I’d basically written off as dying the last couple of years.  But this year we get pretty outstanding records from four major prog acts, even if none of them is a career peak.  As elsewhere in the mainstream, mostly not a lot of punk influence felt here either.  Yes and Rush both continue to work within the structures of conventional prog rock.  For Yes, this ends up sounding like a comeback record: Rick Wakeman is back and they’ve abandoned the metallic fusion sound of Relayer (which I loved, but evidently a lot of other people didn’t…).  So they’re definitely revisiting their classic Yes Album through Close TO The Edge sound, complete with an (almost side-long) epic, but with enough changes to keep things interesting (i.e. more concise song lengths elsewhere, some rockin’ slide guitar on the opener).  Rush also are sticking to the world of conventional prog, in what might be the peak of their prog period, A Farewell to Kings (versus their earlier Zep-homage period or later New Wave-influenced peak).  A bit softer than on last year’s 2112, and certainly now nothing like Judas Priest, who’ve basically abandoned their earlier prog leanings in favor of a more straight metal sound.  At this point, they may be the hardest band on the planet…

                Elsewhere, the proggers are branching out a bit more.  Jethro Tull, for instance, begin their brief folk-rock period, a point where they sound more like Fairport Convention (which also dabbled in long-form songs) than the more typical prog-rock bands.  It works well for Tull, and is sort of a natural evolution, given the way that folk melodies and instrumentation had been cropping up in their songs almost from the beginning (and certainly by, say, Aqualung).  Certainly a better fit than the showtune glam of Too Old To Rock & Roll.  More surprisingly, Pink Floyd are the first of the prog-rockers to apparently notice punk.  Animals certainly doesn’t sound punk at all.  If anything, there are some hints of funk-rock in there, especially on “Pigs (Three Different Ones).”  Waters’ lyrical concerns, however, are much more simpatico with the punks’ discontent than the abstract fancies of Yes or the esoteric concerns of a Tull or Rush.  I’ve always kind of heard it as Waters listening to Johnny Rotten, and deciding that he could out-bleak the Pistols.  And he does a pretty credible job, too.  Animals doesn’t get the press of Dark Side, or Wish You Were Here, or The Wall, but I’ll stake my claim that it’s Floyd’s best.  Certianly “Dogs” is their most impressive composition: a 17-minute piece that’s neither an extended jam a la “Echoes” or a series of shorter pieces strung together a la Tull or Yes; rather, it’s an actual single shifting piece of music that you really can’t conceive of taking an edit out of and calling a single, as it would fatally weaken its impact.

                On the more outré realms of prog, Kraftwerk are probably reaching their peak.  Although they’re still working with mechanical pulses and steady rhythms, they’ve definitely moved into much different territory than anything Neu! had staked out, and are almost danceable at times.  Also shorter song lengths, although the overall effect of Trans Europe Express is definitely that of a single song suite.  Kraftwerk are also really starting to show up as a major influence.  I mentioned Suicide earlier, but this is even more important in the David Bowie/Iggy Pop Berlin records.  For Bowie, this is a natural (though still remarkable) evolution from the work he was doing on Station To Station.  Working with Eno is also a natural fit for him, as they both were always on the artier end of glam rock back in the day.  In that light, it’s especially interesting to listen to “V-2 Schneider” from Heroes, which really does sound like a glam-Kraftwerk fusion.  Really interesting stuff, and clearly Bowie’s creative peak, even if I think I actually prefer the Iggy Pop albums overall.  This sound is much less of a natural fit for Pop than Bowie & Eno, and it’s probably not entirely unfair to hear The Idiot and Lust For Life as almost Bowie albums with Pop as frontman, but there are definitely elements that Pop brings to his records that are missing from Bowie’s.  Mostly it’s a greater focus on rock elements, but also the inherent differences between Pop and Bowie.  Pop captures much more of a raw menace, recalling his Stooges days, while Bowie goes for much more of a detached air, making the raw emotions of a song like “Heroes” or “Joe The Lion” all the more stunning.  Also, for what it’s worth, Wire got tagged as “Punk Floyd,” but they sound a lot more like this than Floyd.  Still, not so much of a punk influence here, or an influence on punk, although the New Wavers would take a lot from this.

                Someone working a similar synth-heavy sound that does sound in tune with the punks, however is Pete Townshend.  The last Who release with Keith Moon, Who Are You, basically is just a continuation of the heavy-guitars-and-synth patterns formula they’d been working on Who’s Next, but both lyrically and guitar-wise, Pete seems pretty interested in the punks’ concern with a return to simpler rocking virtues and the importance of moving music forward.  It actually makes me look back and reevaluate the Who not only as punk progenitors, but also as precursors to not only New Wave, but also the programmed synth experiments of Bowie and Kraftwerk. 

                On his other records, Iggy Pop sounds also more simpatico with the punks, even if both his third LP of ‘77 and last Stooges single were both recorded years earlier.  Kill City, a collaboration with ex-Stooges guitarist James Williamson was actually recorded in ’75.  If it had been released then, it might well have been the most exciting thing that year, sounding remarkably like a fusion of the Stooges and the Stones (who are again silent this year).  Not a missing link to the Berlin period, certainly, but pointing the way perhaps to Iggy’s post-Bowie solo career.  Released in ’77, though, it’s not nearly as ear-catchingly raw as the Pistols or the like, though. 

                Even further outside of the punk realm, we’ve got a couple of developments in the realm of folk-rock.  Fleetwood Mac have their commercial peak with Rumors, an album that basically revives and puts a production sheen on the old LA folk-rock sound of the late-60s/early-70s.  As much as Rumors was one of the iconic records of mainstream music in 1977, it sounds ultimately like a throwback.  There’s (thankfully) no disco here, but a lot of polished versions of older sounds: especially the harmonies of the Band or CSNY.  Speaking of CSNY, the CSN 3/4 finally reunite, and the results are…ok.  It sounds like classic CSN, and not (thankfully) the soft-rock sound of those Crosby-Nash records, but neither is it half as interesting as, say, Still’s record from ’76.  Maybe if they’d managed to keep Young around as well.   Young, incidentally, rebounds nicely from the mediocrity of Long May You Run, with American Stars n’ Bars.  This is a record I realize I’d undervalued for a long time, writing off as a minor hodgepodge.  It is, in my defense, a collection of songs recorded from as long back as ’75 in some cases, and it does feature not only Young’s ugliest album cover, but a strong contender for ugliest album cover of them all…  However, it plays like a natural follow-up to Zuma, right down to the sprawling epic penultimate track (“Like A Hurricane” this time) followed by a slight but pretty acoustic ditty.  Not an essential record, but a very good one.  And while the punks may have loved Neil (especially for his Time Fades Away through Tonight’s The Night run), he’s not returning the love yet…

                Oh, and a couple of live albums from late-60s heroes.  Santana’s Moonflower is technically half-live/half-studio, and the playing is good but undercut by the generic soul-man vocals of the latest of a long line of revolving-door new lead vocalists.  Still, a nice but not radically reinterpreted cover of the Zombies’ “She’s Not There” and Santana’s last commercial hit album and single until (*sigh*) Supernatural and “Smooth.”  If Santana’s live record is the end of an era, Marvin Gaye’s suggests that he’s on the verge of a major comeback.  Some really nice stuff, the heart of which is a half-hour medley covering virtually his entire career.  Also a tacked-on studio track, the credibly funky “Got To Give It Up.”  It’s very nice to hear from Marvin again, as it seems like a long time since he’s put something out, and nice to hear that he at a minimum put on a heck of a live show.

Song of the Year:  David Bowie – “Heroes.”  I almost gave the nod to “Police & Thieves,” but this is just a remarkable song.  Often covered, but never not as a travesty, as no one can touch Bowie on those vocals or that Eno arrangement that’s more a cascading wall of sound than any recognizable instruments.  Equally good in the German “Helden” version, although for some reason the French “Héros” isn’t nearly as captivating.  Also, a significant portion of my readership and I danced to it as our first dance as man & wife.

Album of the Year:  I’ve been going back and forth between Wire’s Pink Flag and the Ramones’ Rocket To Russia.  In Wire’s case, Pink Flag is just leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else in the punk scene, and one of the most inventive records I’ve heard since Eno’s early solo records.  On the other hand, Rocket To Russia is almost certainly the Ramones’ peak, and a record I actually listen to a lot more than Pink Flag.  Plus if they don’t get the nod here, they probably never will, and that doesn’t seem right.  Call it a draw, I guess.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Suicide.  Partly this is because I’d heard them described as this amazing punk band that’s like a synth-y Gene Vincent, and there’s nothing punk about them.  Partly it’s because this stuff gets really tiring at album length.  But mixed into the shuffle, and I always got happy when a Suicide track came up.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Blue Öyster Cult.  All up until this point, I was consistently positively reevaluating BÖC as much more creative and a secretly awesome band than their given credit for, but this time they’re mostly just pretty lame, with big dumb obvious melodies.  On the other hand, “Godzilla” is big and dumb in all the right ways.  History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man.

Album List

ABBA - Gold

Aerosmith - Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

Bee Gees - Wedding Songs

Blue Öyster Cult - Workshop Of The Telescopes

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Legend

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Trenchtown Rock: The Anthology 1969-78

Bruce Springsteen - 18 Tracks

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Buzzcocks - Spiral Scratch

Buzzcocks - Time's Up

Cheap Trick - The Authorized Greatest Hits

Concatenate

Count Basie - Count Basie Big Band: Montreux '77

Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On

Culture - Two Sevens Clash: The 30th Anniversary Edition

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

David Bowie - Changesbowie

David Bowie - Heroes

David Bowie – Low

Dennis Alcapone - Guns Don't Argue

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic: The Best Of Electric Light Orchestra

Elvis Costello - Best Of

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True

Elvis Presley - Elvis 30 #1 Hits

Fela Kuti - The Best Best Of Fela Kuti

Fleetwood Mac – Rumors

Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac

Goblin - Goblin

Iggy Pop - Kill City

Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

Iggy Pop - Nude & Rude: The Best Of Iggy [Explicit]

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

Jethro Tull - Original Masters

Jethro Tull - Songs From The Wood

Jimmy Buffett - Songs You Know By Heart

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Beserkley Years: The Best Of Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers

Joy Division - 1977-1978 - Warsaw

Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

Judas Priest - Metal Works '73-'93

Junior Murvin - Arkology I: Dub Organiser

Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express

Lynyrd Skynyrd - All-Time Greatest Hits

Marvin Gaye - Live At The London Palladium

Motörhead - No Remorse

Neil Young – American Stars ‘n Bars

Neil Young - Decade

Parliament - Tear The Roof Off 1974-1980

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits

Peter Tosh - Equal Rights [Bonus Tracks]

Pink Floyd - Animals

Queen - Classic Queen

Queen - Greatest Hits

Randy Newman – Little Criminals

Raphael Green & Dr.Alimantado - Arkology II: Dub Shepherd

Rush – A Farewell To Kings

Rush - Chronicles

Santana – Moonflower

Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols

Steely Dan - A Decade of Steely Dan

Steely Dan – Aja

Suicide - Suicide

Talking Heads – ‘77

Talking Heads - Sand In The Vaseline

Television - Marquee Moon [Bonus Tracks]

The Clash - Clash On Broadway

The Clash - Super Black Market Clash

The Clash - The Clash [UK]

The Congos - Arkology III: Dub Adventurer

The Congos - Heart Of The Congos

The Dictators – Manifest Destiny

The Grateful Dead - To Terrapin: Hartford '77 Set 1

The Jam - Compact Snap

The Jam - This Is The Modern World

The Kinks - Come Dancing With The Kinks

The Ramones - Leave Home

The Ramones - Live At The Roxy 8-12-1976

The Ramones - Mania

The Ramones - Rocket To Russia

The Stooges - A Million In Prizes: Iggy Pop Anthology

The Stranglers – No More Heroes

The Who - The Ultimate Collection

V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1

V/A - Children Of Nuggets I

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - Kill Bill, Vol. 1

V/A - Pure Funk

V/A - Russ's Punk Mix

V/A - Samba Soul 70!

V/A - Saturday Night Fever

V/A – Saturday Night Fever

V/A - Trainspotting

V/A - Trojan Dub Massive Chapter I

Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings

Wire - Pink Flag

Yes – Going For The One