Monday , November 16, 2009
nogoodforme ix: Our Favorite Albums of the 1970s
The Stooges, Funhouse (1970)
"Dirt"
Cheap, fast and out of control, the most bottom-heavy of Stooges records is, I venture to say, the universal makeout record -- if you like your making out to be equally cheap, fast and out of control, that is. It sounds like muscle cars and grainy booze and would smell like smoke and drugstore musk if it could. There are records that are dangerous based on their subject matter, their proximity to Satan or just grossness of sound, but Funhouse manages a sense of sexy menace due to its sheer libidinal overreach. You really feel like Iggy Pop would jump out of your stereo and attack you with his tongue if he could. It begins with a howl and ends in a mess -- what more could you ask for of a record? (Kat)
Neil Young, On the Beach (1974)
"On the Beach"-
My favorite Neiler record is Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, which Kat already wrote about beautifully. I always play that one whenever I'm driving down the Pacific Coast Highway from way up north and trying to make like my life is a movie shot in a speeding rental car between the mountains and the ocean a little after nightfall, and of course it always works. But life is not a movie about the Pacific Coast Highway, and sometimes it's even the opposite of a movie about the Pacific Coast Highway. Sometimes the sky's the stupidest grey or, like right now, the air's red and ashy and scary to breathe, or it's 5 o'clock on a Saturday night and you're trying to pretend not to be bored out of your skull but really that's just the biggest fattest lie. And that's when you play On the Beach, which is grey like the stupid sky but in a really nonstupid way. Excepting "Revolution Blues," which hotly celebrates murdering movie stars, the record's as downersville as they come, but I'll be damned if it won't ever save you from being stuck in some evil kind of mood. On the Beach proves that glum + glum = glorious, and grey + grey = golden, and golden's all I'm ever trying to be these days. Who needs the PCH anyway? (Liz)
Paul (& Linda) McCartney, Ram (1971)
"3 Legs"-
If I ever quit smoking pot, it is entirely within your rights to punch me in the face and scream "WAKE THE FUCK UP, ASSHOLE!" directly into my ear canal. Actually, I am requesting that you all will please do this, please. Please. There are tons upon tons of reasons why I'll never say "no" to weed; one of the leading-est is that, as far as I'm concerned: A life without getting stoned and listening to Ram is a life not worth living. Two core truths of my existence:
1) Pot fixes everything.
2) Paul McCartney also fixes everything.
Getting high to Ram is the chillest and most relaxing activity in my whole vast repertoire of chill and relaxing activities. It's like lying on your back and figuring out what animals different clouds are shaped like: lambs, goats, hedgehogs, and three-legged dogs. It is a dulcet sweet-hearted hug from Paul McCartney, who is on your front doorstep, ready to give you good Paul McCartney presents (pot?!?). It's delightfully lazy, and humble, which is rare for Paul. Ram is a true thing of beauty; a joy for ever. And it's yellow, like the cover. (LJ)
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures (1979)
"Disorder"
Do you really think that I, Kat Asharya, would pass up an opportunity to write about Joy Division? I would not be me if I did! It blows my mind that Unknown Pleasures came out in the same decade as many Led Zeppelin records. To me, Joy Division comes from outer space, or at least the deep space of industrialization, alienation, ennui and angst that seemed more at home in the great Goth-pop awakening of the early 80s that it prefigured to some extent. Compared to the Dionysian excesses of the actual decade it came out in, Unknown Pleasures is sleek, austere and supremely elegant in execution despite its punk roots, thanks in no large part to producer Martin Hannett, a Falstaffian figure whose personal excesses were burnt-out hippie -- but whose ear was nearly retro-futuristic. Honestly, as time wears on, I care less and less about the mythos built up around Ian Curtis, which is heretical, I know -- call it the first step in Project Kill Yr Idols, I suppose. But what remains is the great love and affection I feel for songs like "She's Lost Control" and "Shadowplay" and "Disorder," which still sound like outer planets barely tethered to one another by an incredibly lonely sense of connection and gravity. (Kat)
Television, Marquee Moon (1977)
"Friction"-
Marquee Moon is black-black and metallic grey, without even any spots of white. It is "sharp and angular"- to be boring about it. It's boring, so I should be. It sounds like triangles or a New York I am disinterested in. It's not very fun, and it's never funny, and it's not punk rock at all. But it's really, really good. Great, you could even say, and I do. I listened to Marquee Moon a lot in high school- it made me feel smart, or like I was in on a joke nobody else got. Since I was sixteen, I've had a recurring dream wherein I explain Marquee Moon to an arbitrary audience; I always say: it's cerebral. Eight years of prep time, to tell you all today: it's cerebral. (LJ)
Bruce Springsteen, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)
"Lost in the Flood"-
In one of the five best things I've written, I said how listening to Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. is one the five best ways to live your life real romantic-like, ranking right up there with drinking pink wine and kissing some inappropriate yet sweethearted stone cold fox. Then two days later I said how GFAPNJ would be my Summer 2009 Signature Record, because it's all jangly and sounds like orange sunshine bouncing off the ocean, or whatever. And a little while before all that I said how, if some all-powerful being were ever to tell me I could choose 17 lines of lyrics to claim as my own intellectual property, I'd so pick the last 17 lines of "For You" (aka the seventh song on GFAPNJ). So that's all still true, and one of the only things left to say is how I really wish I lived in a decade in which piano ballads about stock car racing and gun fights were easier to come by, but I'll take what I can get and just keep playing "Lost in the Flood" over and over till my ears fall off. (Liz)
Cheap Trick, Heaven Tonight (1978)
"Heaven Tonight"
I don't give enough Cheap Trick love in nogoodforme, which is ridiculous because they're my hometown band! In truth, I wrote them off for years -- familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose. But I saw the light once I actually heard Heaven Tonight as a record in its proper entirety. Besides being absolutely, perfectly named for the 70s, it combines a surefire sense of good-time pop hooks and melody with this paranoid, kind of apocalyptic sense of the world. It's the perfect sound of burnt-out baby boomers in a way, the comedown record of a decade. (Kat)
Patti Smith, Horses (1975)
"Gloria"-
This is what Horses means to me: lying on my belly in the grass at some elementary school playground in a suburb of my hometown on a summer night at an hour till dusk, headphones on and lazily babysitting while writing in my notebook about how I'm going to transcend my teenage brokenheartedness and at the very least become a legend in my own mind. The most important word on Horses is "possibility" (sung 14 times on "Land," the song that's actually about horses); it's probably the same thing Lisa Crystal Carver means when she says "I still want to be a kamikaze or an arctic explorer or The Second Coming" on page xiii of her memoir. I still want to be all those things too, in my own way, and that's 83 percent owed to the fact that I've never gotten over Horses and I'm sure I never will. "Legend in your own mind" so beats "legend in your own time," by a very long shot. Never forget it! (Liz)
John Lennon, Imagine (1971)
"How Do You Sleep?"-
Imagine is John Lennon at his most acerbic and self-indulgently negative. The whole record's a hate-binge; it's the "anti-Ram." It's weird for someone who's been in as much therapy as I have to sit through my #1 Hero Of All Life acting so psychologically retarded: the Beatles broke up, John's fucked up about it (which he's obviously denying to himself), and now he's acting out. Misbehaving. It's so juvie, particularly the schoolyard cruelty of his nasty, McCartney-directed "How Do You Sleep?" Also, I'd like to point out that "Imagine" (the song) is ever-misinterpreted by seventh-grade teachers and advertising executives, and is actually depressing, hopeless, and about how shitty the world is. Think about it.
But this album is the fucking best- it may be a hate-binge, but it's also a hate-purge. Ten years spent hero-worshipping John Lennon have taught me to always give the world a much-needed hit of motherfucking truth. To exist entirely unencumbered by self-doubt, to never compromise, and to do whatever the hell I want. Sometimes it's unsavory, and you look back on the dumb mouthy shit you spewed six months ago and basically want to crawl into a hole and die. But the key to confidence is admitting weakness- it works for me, and it definitely works for Imagine. (Laura Jane)
Tags: bad babysitters, Bruce Springsteen, cars, Cheap Trick, confidence, high school, Iggy Pop, Imagine, John Lennon, Joy Division, Laura Loves the Beatles, Lisa Crystal Carver, nastiness, Neil Young, New York City, Pacific Coast Highway, Patti Smith, Paul McCartney, RAM, smoking weed, Television, The Stooges, three-legged dogs
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9 Comments!!
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*i* need the pch, she clarified.
By Liz
on August 31, 2009 5:01 PM
This was all so beautiful and true, I can't stand it. Particularly the Imagine bit.
And if Liz and LJ still want a zine, e-mail me your addresses and I will totally send you guys one!
By Clara the annoying fifteen-year-old on August 31, 2009 7:47 PM
Clara, I can't find your e-mail; can you write to me, laurajanefaulds@gmail?
By Laura
on August 31, 2009 8:30 PM
This list has a strangely definitive quality to it. If we threw in the Saturday Night Fever sndtrck for an even ten, "TOO SEVENTIES FOR YOU" would perfectly encapsulate the musical climate of the entire decade. I was born in 1985.
By Laura
on August 31, 2009 8:37 PM
also some ramones
By Liz
on August 31, 2009 9:03 PM
I was obsessed with Marquee Moon in high school and even after over-listening to it, I still love it. Although I do think it has a few funny parts. "You complain of my DICK-tion." Also, so many lyrics are "WTF does that mean?" that it's funny.
I always though the title "Closer" a little sinister because in one way it can mean closer as in nearer/closer or it can me closer as in the last/end.
By Amy on August 31, 2009 10:06 PM
The '70s is also my favourite album cover art decade, so I have been staring at this post lovingly.
By Samantha on September 1, 2009 10:01 AM
Kat, i'm really, really happy that you praised Funhouse as a makeout album [and a universal one, at that, depending on your preference(s)]. y'all should address your all-time fav makeout albums sometime soon. it's autumn, now. the time is right!
p.s. "Lost in the Flood" is definitely my favorite Springsteen song. it's so epic!
By rob on September 1, 2009 1:23 PM
For some reason I always find it more satisfying when people recommend music I already love than when I find new stuff from rec posts. Cheap Trick, yeahh!
Also: I have always found Imagine to be sort of hopeless-sounding.
By Claire on September 2, 2009 6:14 PM