Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1972
by Scott Miller

"Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" - The Temptations
1972 represented something of a peak of musical racial integration. When I was eleven and twelve, the radio stations in Sacramento that everyone listened to aired a continuum of black and white music that—while there was some stylistic distinction between R & B and rock—was all meant to be listened to by the same audience; generally speaking, the same people bought Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night. By 1977, the tribe that had become disco people did not talk to the tribe that had become heavy metal people, and radio that wasn't market-specific became commercially unviable. It was a sad, epochal change, occurring almost overnight. "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" was a shining example of what was to go missing from mainstream white audience music—and paradoxically, a lot of black audience music, too—in years to come. It's a one-chord, danceable song, but it's not a groove-based cut, it's a cinematic cut: impressionistically orchestrated, sophisticated in its lyrical and vocal drama. The presence of mind to make artistic decisions like treating troubled family relationships realistically, and a facility with one-liners like, "And when he died, all he left us was alone" could have saved countless hard rock projects from the scrap-heap of zero-attention-span teen pandering that became their fate.

"Virginia Plain" - Roxy Music
I still remember the ad in National Lampoon: "It's not rock—it's Roxy!" The music didn't filter to my demographic for another year, but that challenge to the zeitgeist by itself surely sowed seeds. Roxy mixed then-prevalent fifties nostalgia with hints of science fiction, and romance with ennui—to say nothing of Bryan Ferry with Eno—into a disorienting presentational culture shock; has the world fully caught up with "Ladytron" even today? "Virginia Plain"'s quick sketches of jet-setting circles find oddly apt punctuation in oboe, synthesizer, and Manzanera and Thompson's rock-hard eighth note grind. Oh wow!

"Lean On Me" - Bill Withers
On the foundation of one of the world's most quoted piano runs, the recurringly impressive Bill Withers tops even "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Use Me." This is one of the most believably altruistic lyric sets ("No one can fill those of your needs that you don't let show"); it's a song that truly makes the world a little better place.

"C Moon" - Paul McCartney and Wings
A couple of years before the Wailers' major label debut Catch a Fire, Paul and Linda McCartney were already all over the reggae. This B-Side of the, uh, fire-friendly "Hi Hi Hi" is delightful, sensing a gap with the next generation who don't want to tell their daddies what their love is all about.

"Living In the Past" - Jethro Tull
Remarkable for both its ability to pull off flute as a lead instrument and its ability to pull of a 5/4 time signature, this was recorded in 1969 but didn't get released, at least in America, until the Living In the Past collection made this and other fantastic early tracks available.

"Amie" - Pure Prairie League
There's something quintessentially 1972 about Pure Prairie League's series of forgery-grade Norman Rockwellesque wild west tableaus; like no other period in album history, all graphics were required to scream High Dollar Label Art Department. In this case the artwork matches the El Dorado detailing precision of this lovely song, but elsewhere it was amazing how there was no such thing as a band so humdrum as not to get decked out with a dead-serious Daliesque dream landscape suggesting the crux of psychology and spacetime.

"Superfly" - Curtis Mayfield
Records could sure sound good in 1972. The bass and Latin percussion, the brass, Mayfield's amazing vocal—just a feast for the ears all around, as are most of the recordings on this list (we today are still lurching in fits and starts back to this level from the sad audio purgatory that was the eighties). Isaac Hayes pioneered the blaxploitation anthem form, but Curtis takes it to a level of high art with the dramatization here. "Ask him his dream/What does it mean?/He wouldn't know" is a great line, but the clincher is the little two seconds of "huh-huh" whose density of inuendo is inexplicably enormous.

"Dirty Work" - Steely Dan
"I foresee terrible trouble, but I stay here just the same" is precisely the right phenomenology of the other man; the Dan came on the scene doing transgression and everything else exactly right, giving studio slickness a good name. The emotional pitch—sixths and ninths floating around to give a little tug of remorse here and there—is as noteworthy as the sheer musical invention. Donald Fagen didn't sing lead—yet somehow he's still the star when the soaring backing vocals come in on the chorus.

"Rocks Off" - The Rolling Stones
Why do people say this record sounds muddy? Exile On Main Street is the very essence of clarity—certainly a lot of today's releases pale in video-game unreality by comparison. What is probably the greatest album that can plausibly be called a blues record starts with this anomalous, slightly Tex-Mex rocker; it gets the job done, though, ratcheting up the energy level with the mismatched shouts through the chorus and setting the stage with some of rock's most decadent lifestyle details.

"Give Me Another Chance" - Big Star
The first Big Star album is a somewhat modest affair; it's very pretty, and the rockers are respectable in a slightly shrieky way, but the people who know what Paul Westerberg means by "I'm in love with that song" are probably not talking about "When My Baby's Beside Me." Even the canonical "In the Street," "Thirteen," and "Ballad Of El Goodo" for me hold something back that finally hits on "I've been looking for to find/Something to believe in my mind/And I thought it was you." Who would ever choose the phrase "believe in my mind?" Yet, it somehow gets a point across that isn't conveyed at all by just "something to believe in." "Don't give up on me so fast/I see it's me that's wrong at last" is another early moment of relational awkwardness that somehow breaks down the thickest walls of interpersonal untruth using the lightest of musical tools.

"Roll Over Vaughan Williams" - Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson's first solo album after Fairport Convention is a prickly affair, but probably my favorite work of his to date. It certainly shows off the guitar abilities for which he's justly celebrated, and his no-compromise morality greets the public with all the charm of, "Don't expect the words to ring too sweetly on the ear/Live in fear." Another great and unique track is the Irish-folky "The Angels Have Taken My Racehorse away."

"Big Brother" - Stevie Wonder
Talking Book is such an embarrassment of riches, it's hard to pick a favorite. "Superstition" and "I Believe (When I Fall In Love...)" are both certifiable classics on completely different levels. The bluesy, beatnicky, slightly West African sounding "Big Brother" is my very favorite. It gives the mind that's tired of hearing about children dying an overdue talking-to; I love, "Your name is 'I'll see ya'."

"Hang On To Yourself" - David Bowie
What a year—Ziggy Stardust is up next. We all know all about it. For me, "Hang On To Yourself" is where it fires the afterburners. Stupid words; this is all about the acrobatics they do varying that riff, and the sheer sound of the acoustic guitar locking in with that tight-as-hell electric band. The version with Aynsley Dunbar on the "1980 Floor Show" was even more merciless.

"Rock & Roll, Pt. 2" - Gary Glitter
I have to roll my mind back to before the ubiquity of this as a sporting events sound byte, to when it was the craziest, most revolutionary thing on AM radio. Just these troglodytes yelling "hey!" over a very decent slide guitar instrumental. There's some magic gating and delay to the sonics that put it across, not to mention how good those "heys" really are.

"All the Young Dudes" - Mott the Hoople
This is in a category I called "music hall descent with a twist," to which I've received the excellent feedback that Church music and Bach are at least as relevant there. The extent of the twist is the big deal here: "All the young dudes carry the..." is the set-up, then the minor on "news" is cool enough, but then "boogaloo dudes" seems to take up a new descent, then "carry the news" is a radical, unexpected resolution—he has to cheat back up to the fundamental key in the turnaround. Ian Hunter makes you not even notice the words are crap—except for the rather amusing, "I needed T.V. when I got T. Rex."

"And You and I" - Yes
Yes were an entity unto themselves. They made a good living fitting in with arena-caliber art rockers like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, but they had an organic approach and a world-class rhythm section that yielded fresher, more inventive, better integrated recordings than similar acts. As with their peers Jon Anderson's stream-of-consciousness lyrics can carry some mythologizing dead weight, but there is a prophetic sensitivity, particularly to environmental concerns, that assures one of always trying to get at a difficult truth and occasionally succeeding. The whole Close To the Edge album is art rock at its finest, with "And You and I" containing some of the most delicate and rapturous instrumental passages—in the latter case, the big, slow synth refrain. And let's not forget fantasy landscape illustrator Roger Dean's importance in the ascent to prominence of album art; it's probably not an exaggeration to say he's the person most responsible for there even being the concept of album art coffee table books.

"Couldn't I Just Tell You" - Todd Rundgren
Something/Anything was a milestone in record albums' ability to achieve direct and intimate personal communication. It accomplished it with the useful device of many songs that were frankly light fare (like "I Saw the Light" and "Hello, It's Me") and many songs that were frankly humorous diversions (like "Wolfman Jack"). But the way it modulates over its two albums to weightier material—"the kid gets heavy," as I believe the album puts it—is nuanced and moving in and of itself. "Couldn't I Just Tell You" arrives as Todd has loaded the bases in a way that will never quite be the same again, and hits one out of the park. Likely the greatest power pop recording ever made, it's somehow both desperate and lighthearted at the same time—with both the believable abandonment of "you can turn your back whenever you please" and the confessional cleverness of "I'm not a coward if that's what you believe" and "couldn't we pretend that it's no big deal?" The guitar solo features some truly amazing dexterity and inflection, and that open-string reinvention of the theme near the end is simply awesome. He'd probably thank you to remember that he's a guitar great, and the evidence is right here.