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It was 40 Years ago....(The albums of 1973)


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Unashamedly nostalgic thread.

I was reading an article in Mojo yesterday about John Martyn's two great albums of 1973 - 'Solid Air' and 'Inside Out' and it listed a few of the classic rock albums of that year.

  • Quadrophenia - The Who
  • Catch a Fire - Bob Marley
  • Innervisions - Stevie Wonder
  • A Wizard - ?
  • A True Star - ?
  • Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield
  • Dixie Chicken - Little Feet
  • Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
  • Band on the Run - Wings
  • Berlin - Lou Reed
  • For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music
  • Let's Get it On - Marvin Gaye
  • Coundown to Ecstasy - Steely Dan

Only the Floyd and Oldfield records were on my radar (though Band on the Run was everywhere in the halls of residence I joined as I started Uni in the September).

The other ones that dominate my memories were

  • Larks Tongues in Aspic - King Crimson
  • Bananamour - Kevin Ayers
  • Birds of Fire - Mahavishnu
  • Nine - Fairport Convention (their return to form)
  • Selling England By the Pound - Genesis (which I didn't much like at the time)
  • Tales of Topographic Oceans - which I loved whilst the British music press really got its pre-punk knives out.

All of this is so subjective, but looking back it's almost like the last year when there was a wave of rock music that spoke to me. Some marvellous albums did follow but by 1975 I was getting less from it and everything seemed to be stiffening and becoming more produced.

Totally as seen from my perspective then - I would later hear other records from that year that would become favourites (e.g. the Steely Dan and John Martyns), including many from genres like jazz, folk (classical!) that I was only dimly aware of then.

So, regardless of genre, what was 1973 like musically for you? (apologies to those not yet born!)

And was it really 40 years ago?

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The Dead's Wake of the Flood was a nice arrival. On the other hand, Zappa's Over-Nite Sensation was a crushing disappointment, pandering to the masses, as was Beefheart's Unconditionally Guaranteed. Dylan's Planet Waves was great, but "Dylan" was a stinker (I know, I know, released without consent) and "Pat Garrett" was inconsequential. Iggy's Raw Power had a lot going for it, but that odd mix sapped a lot of its strength. I liked Jackson Browne's For Everyman. Maybe the best albums of 1973 were Mahavishnu's Between Nothingness and Eternity, Saunders/Garcia's Live at Keystone, and Soft Machine 6 and 7. I also liked Toots & The Maytals' Funky Kingston and Oregon's Distant Hills. (Kudos to iTunes for providing a sort showing the year!)

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The Dead's Wake of the Flood was a nice arrival. On the other hand, Zappa's Over-Nite Sensation was a crushing disappointment, pandering to the masses, as was Beefheart's Unconditionally Guaranteed. Dylan's Planet Waves was great, but "Dylan" was a stinker (I know, I know, released without consent) and "Pat Garrett" was inconsequential. Iggy's Raw Power had a lot going for it, but that odd mix sapped a lot of its strength. I liked Jackson Browne's For Everyman. Maybe the best albums of 1973 were Mahavishnu's Between Nothingness and Eternity, Saunders/Garcia's Live at Keystone, and Soft Machine 6 and 7. I also liked Toots & The Maytals' Funky Kingston and Oregon's Distant Hills. (Kudos to iTunes for providing a sort showing the year!)

Zappa pandering to the masses?!

That needs to be quoted for posterity!

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This classic also came out in 1973:

HenryCow_AlbumCover_Legend.jpg

Henry Cow - Legend

I'm not sure if I heard it then - but I did see them in a small room at Reading University towards the end of the year. A friend of mine was the first to get the record so I may have heard it in his room that year or early the next.

Not a classic but one I remember with affection:

51EW7yrh1fL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

They broke up not long after its release. Remember hearing 'Boom Bang' as a single quite a bit and I had a radio broadcast of songs from it on tape. Got the record in the summer holidays (out of money picking strawberries in Norfolk, IIRC!)

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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The Band - Moondog Matinee....(they'd peaked by then)

David Ackles - Five & Dime

Beach Boys - Holland...(one of my favourite albums by them)

Tim Buckley - Sefronia...(oh dear!)

Deep Purple - Who do we think we are?

Sandy Denny - Like an old fashioned waltz

The Eagles - Desperado

Hall & Oates- Abandoned Luncheonette

Herbie Hancock - Headhunters

Keith Jarrett - Rita & Daitya...(just starting out)

Steve Miller - The Joker

Van Morrison - Hard Nose The Highway

Bonnie Raitt - Takin' my time

Terry Reid - River ...(whatever happened to him?)

Return to Forever - Light as a feather

Rolling Stones - Goat's head soup.....(not a good years for the Stones)

Sly & The Family Stone - Fresh

Steely Dan - Countdown to ecstasy

Tapper Zukie - Man ah warrior

McCoy Tyner - Enlightenment & Song of the new world...... (he seemed to be releasing an album every month in the 70s)

Joe Walsh - The Smoker you drink

Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller & Sweetnighter

Jesse Colin Young - Song for Juli...... (remember him?)

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I have a bizarre ability to recall when I bought things (which doesn't necessarily mean they were released then!). I associate that record along with Fairport 'Live' with autumn '74. Remember going on a spree in London (after spending my holidays working in the NAAFI in Germany with very little worth buying in the NAAFI shop and the German record shops too expensive) just before returning to uni.

This too came out in late '73.

41JDABC6WXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

The first side had been played during King Crimson concerts prior to the band going on - you can hear it in some of the live recordings that have subsequently appeared.

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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1972 was probably a better year for music than '73...but thanks to Bev for starting the thread. I started college in '73, and met a whole new bunch of people... there were The Who freaks, and that was understandable (tho I was more in the "like" category), but then there were The Kinks freaks. Really? In 1973? But there they were, a very passionate bunch. Preservation Act 1 was OK, and I probably wouldn't have paid attention to it without them. We started a "Whatever happened to Pete Quaife" campaign.

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Others from '73:

James Brown - Black Caesar

Billy Cobham - Spectrum

Gary Bartz - I've Known Rivers & Other Bodies

Black Heat - Too Hot To Burn

The Crusaders - The 2nd Crusade

Paul Desmond - Skylark

The Doobie Brothers - The Captain & Me

Dr. John - In The Right Place

Charles Earland - Dynamite Brothers OST

Henry Franklin - The Skipper

Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop

Donny Hathaway - Extensions Of A Man

Willie Hutch - The Mack OST

The JB's - Doing It To Death

Clifford Jordan - Glass Bead Games

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Prepare Thyself To Deal With A Miracle

Yusef Lateef - Hush N Thunder

Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy

O'Donel Levy - Simba

Ramsey Lewis - Upendo Ni Pamoja

Lightnin' Rod - Hustler's Convention

Michael Longo - Funkia

Mandrill - Just Outside Of Town

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Catch A Fire

Les McCann - Layers

Jimmy McGriff & Richard Groove Holmes - Giants Of The Organ Come Together

Ramon Morris - Sweet Sister Funk

Joe Pass - Virtuoso

Esther Phillips - Black Eyed Blues

Pharaoh Sanders - Elevation

Stanley Turrentine - Don't Mess With Mr. T

Fred Wesley & The JB's - Damn Right I Am Somebody

Jack Wilkins - Windows

Larry Young - Lawrence Of Newark

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Like Hardbopjazz I was 10 as well. I didn't have the kind of coin to buy LPs (probably a good thing) so for 68¢ at Grant's I bought Paul McCartney's "Jet" and Blue Swede's "Hooked On A Feeling." It wasn't until the next year where I really started spending on awesome stuff like "Spiders & Snakes," "The Streak" although "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" was a bit more tasteful.

Probably the first album I bought from '73 would have been Zep's Houses Of The Holy but it was another 3-4 years before I did. The most recent purchase of nonclassical album from '73 was the 40th anniversary of Larks'. I didn't know it back but it was a busy year for Glenn Gould and thanks to the jacket collection I have a bunch.

I own over 50 albums released that year. Quadrophenia dominated the turntable from ages 17 to 19 - something like that. A practical application was typing term papers to Moon's drumming. I've hardly played it all in the past 27 years as I played it so much back then.

Berlin is too bleak play - probably only once in the past 25 years. I still like Lennon's Mind Games far more than I reasonably should. It would certainly make a list of "albums I like a lot more than critics say I should." Conversely I don't like Headhunters as much as critics (or friends) say I should nor the New York Dolls, although no friend has ever harassed me on the latter. At this point I love Let's Get It On probably more than What's Going On (which I still love).

I'm glad before the '70s were out I bought a copy of Neil Young's Time Fades Away when I could (cheaply at that). From that same store's "3 for $10 bin" I also bought Ringo's fanfuckingtastic self-titled LP from '73. :)

Aside from the Marley releases of that year I'm a sucker for Toots Funky Kingston album. The 11 year old's love of novelty songs still likes his silly take on John Denver's "Country Roads."

Much more played for the past 25 years are the pair of Waylon's albums (Lonesome, On'ry And Mean & Honky Tony Heroes) and Willie's Shotgun Willie. Nice job boys!

Hawkwind's Space Ritual was a fun discovery about 36 years after its release. Part of me is still waiting to be told they really didn't exist and it was all an elaborate prank as they are well beyond being "eccentric."

Since everybody else owns a copy (I'm sure there are exceptions here too on the jazz board) I have never owned my own copy of Dark Side Of The Moon. :)

Edited by Quincy
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I was 17. What I can remember at the moment...

Tower Of Power - Tower Of Power

Innervisions - Stevie Wonder

Allman Brothers - Brothers And Sisters

The Crusaders - The 2nd Crusade

The Doobie Brothers - The Captain & Me

Donny Hathaway - Extensions Of A Man

Loggins & Messina - Full Sail

Marshall Tucker Band - Marshall Tucker Band

WAR - Deliver The Word

Sons Of Champlin - Welcome To The Dance

Edited by Jim R
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1972 was probably a better year for music than '73...

In my odd memory 1970 to maybe 1974 were the golden years.

1970 is pretty arbitrary being the year I first started buying records. But when I listened to late 60s albums, although I came to love a lot of them, there was something a bit brittle about the recorded sound. Something happened to recording around 69/70 - 8, 16 track recording perhaps - that made things sound richer, more varied, less baroque (maybe it was also the passing of psychedelia).

Though there was plenty of plodding from musicians with limited abilities (or experience), the records I treasure from that period had a light and shade, a sense of colour, a willingness to shift from full on electric to jangly acoustic that sounded just right. A band like Free who could produce fairly lumpy blues-rock could also switch to something lithe and airy (the way their albums started to become overblown as early as 73 suggests the direction things were heading).

I didn't abandon rock until 76/77 but as early as 75 I can recall becoming discontented - this was probably because most of my early favourites had run out of ideas/were blowing their advances on indulgences rather than improving their music. But there was also a sense that around that time the 'suits' had finally got around to understanding how to control things; and that recording techniques were starting to allow that sort of sound where every space gets filled. And the colours of the early period got blended as synths replaced the range of sounds you could get out of steam driven instruments.

That's probably not how it was at all; but from someone who came of age in Britain in 1970 that's how it appeared; 1973 was well inside the good times.

[Health warning - beyond CSN&Y and Chicago my listening was almost exclusively domestic until mid-73. That summer was when I 'discovered' Dylan; and in a quite different direction, Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. On the same day!]

This was another nice one from '73:

414YWBZ2WVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Doesn't have that fairytale magic that their three classics had but there were some good songs.

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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Jazz albums released in 1973, per:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_jazz

  • Sam Rivers: Streams
  • Roland Kirk: Prepare Thyself To Deal With A Miracle
  • Dollar Brand: Sangoma
  • Art Ensemble of Chicago: Fanfare For The Warriors
  • Don Cherry: Relativity Suite
  • Cecil Taylor: Spring of Two Blue J's
  • Keith Jarrett: Solo Concerts
  • McCoy Tyner: Enlightnment
  • Carla Bley: Tropic Appetites
  • Dollar Brand: African Space Program
  • Marion Brown: Geechee Recollections
  • Herbie Hancock: Sextant
  • Frank Wright: Church Number Nine
  • Gato Barbieri: Latin America
  • Frank Lowe: Black Beings
  • Ralph Towner: Diary
  • Dewey Redman: The Ear of the Behearer
  • Eberhard Weber: The Colours of Chloë
  • Roswell Rudd: Numatik Swing Band
  • Oregon: Distant Hills
  • Dollar Brand: African Portraits
  • Weather Report: Sweetnighter
  • David Liebman: Lookout Farm
  • Oscar Peterson: Trio
  • Cecil Taylor: Solo
  • John Surman: Morning Glory
  • Betty Carter: Album
  • Mal Waldron: Up Popped the Devil
  • Michael Mantler: No Answer
  • Billy Cobham: Spectrum
  • Herbie Hancock: Headhunters
  • Spontaneous Music Ensemble: Mouthpiece
  • Charles Earland: Leaving This Planet
  • Flora Purim: Butterfly Dreams
  • Herbie Hancock: Thrust
  • Billy Cobham: Crosswinds
  • Michael_Franks: Michael Franks

The ones in red are ones that I would get exposed to in some form or fashion through through some combination of

  1. them being available in record stares,
  2. being played on the radio,
  3. getting pimped in DB through feature artist interviews, exciting reviews, and/or effective advertising
  4. somebody (often enough myself), buying them.

And I don't think this list is complete by any means..no CTI, no Crusaders, no Gene Ammons *how is this possible?) no big bands. But a picture begins to develop of Impulse!, Fantasy/Prestige/Milestone, Atlantic, & Columbia getting their "message" out to a high school kid in semi-rural East Texas who had little more to a subscription to Down Beat, access to record stores that were serviced by these labels, and I realization that in less than a year I was gonna be outta there and into someplace new.

Other than Steely Dan, "rock" was pretty much dead to my by 1973 as new music, but R&B was beginning to come alive all over again...

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I was only 3 in 1973, but since I've spent most of my adult life mining the treasures of the early 70s (always was and will be my favorite era of music) there are MANY albums from 1973 that I love.

Free - Heartbreaker

Deep Purple - Who Do Think We Are

Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny And Mutation

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

Camel - Camel

Electric Light Orchestra - ELO2

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

The Doobie Brothers - The Captain And Me

King Crimson - Larks Tongues In Aspic

Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy

Beck, Bogart & Appice - Beck, Bogart & Appice

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds Of Fire

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Seals & Crofts - Diamond Girl

Uriah Heep - Live

Hawkwind - Space Ritual

Wishbone Ash - Wishbone Four

Yes - Yessongs

Joe Walsh - The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend

Jethro Tull - A Passion Play

Queen - Queen

Carlos Santana & John McLaughlin - Love, Devotion, Surrender

Mott The Hoople - Mott

ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

Genesis - Genesis Live

Steely Dan - Countdown To Ecstasy

10cc - 10cc

Stevie Wonder - Innervisions

Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On

The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup

War - Deliver The Word

Flash - Out Of Our Hands

Buffalo - Volcanic Rock

Thin Lizzy - Vagabonds Of The Western World

Gentle Giant - In A Glass House

Atomic Rooster - Nice 'N' Greasy

Genesis - Selling England By The Pound

Herbie Hancock - Headhunters

The Who - Quadrophenia

Billy Cobham - Spectrum

John Prine - Sweet Revenge

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

Alice Cooper - Muscle Of Love

Montrose - Montrose

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Between Nothingness and Eternity

Electric Light Orchestra - On The Third Day

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans

Wishbone Ash - Live Dates

Edited by Shawn
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Nice thread

1973 was a pretty good year if you like soul jazz. But from the early lists, I have

Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
Bob Marley - Catch a fire
James Brown - Black Caesar
Charles Earland - Dynamite Brothers OST
Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop
O'Donel Levy - Simba
Les McCann - Layers
Jimmy McGriff & Richard Groove Holmes - Giants Of The Organ Come Together
Ramon Morris - Sweet Sister Funk
Pharaoh Sanders - Elevation
Stanley Turrentine - Don't Mess With Mr. T
Charles Earland - Leaving this planet

Other wonderful stuff from '73
Maceo Parker - Us - People
Harold Vick - The power of feeling - Muse
Shirley Scott - Superstition - Cadet
Blue Mitchell - Last tango = blues - Mainstream
Jimmy POnder - While my guitar gently weeps- Cadet
Mel Sparks - Texas twuster - Eastbound
Gene Russell - Talk to my lady - Black Jazz
George Freeman - New improved funk - Groove Merchant
Illinois Jacquet & WIld Bill Davis - Illinois Jacquet with WIld Bill Davis - Black & Blue
Dakota Staton - I want a country man - Groove Merchant
Houston Person - The real thing - Eastbound
Tiny Grimes - Profoundly blue - Muse
Rusty Bryant - For the good times - Prestige
Al Grey - Grey's mood - Black & Blue
Bu Pleasant - Ms Bu - Muse
Hank Crawford - Wildflower - Kudu
BUddy Tate - and his buddies (inc ROy Eldridge, Mary Lou & Illinois) - Chiaroscuro
Boogaloo Joe Jones - Black whip - Prestige
Candy Johnson - Candy's mood - Black & Blue
Gene Ammons - & friends at Montreux - Prestige
Gene Ammons - In Sweden - Enja
Arnett Cobb & Milt Buckner - Again with Milt - Black & Blue
Don Patterson - These are soulful days - Muse
Johnny Hammond Smith - Higher ground - Kudu
Willis Jackson - West Africa - Muse
Cornell DUpree - Teasin' - Atlantic
Gene Ammons & Sonny Stiff - Together again for the last time - Prestige

(I'm dating these by recording dates, not issue dates, which I don't know.)

MG

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