I would like to bring something very different into the discussion. The album Autobahn was released by Kraftwerk late in 1974. This is at the very least a milestone in electronic music, for me it is something completely new. A totally different form of music which still today is a big part of my music universe. Kraftwerk inspired so many other artists in different genres, not to mention the art of their covers and looks. Genius in several ways. It is also a special pleasure to nominate something with German lyrics to this very English forum :-)
They used only syntesizers and drum machines, but actually play the music manually. It is not programmed. I am in total awe of this even today 51 years! later.
I hereby nominate the song:
Autobahn - single edit by Kraftwerk.
I recommend the single edit because the album version is more than 22 minutes long.
Going to see him, them, on Sunday. My 5th Kraftwerk gig. A lot of their early stuff was made using homemade synths and drum machines because what they wanted to do hadn't been invented yet.
"We're on the march with Allys army, we're going to the Argentine......"ooh World Cup, wasn't that the Cruyff/Neeskins v Gerd Muller final? 2 penalties 2-1 win Germany? I was 9, really wanted the Dutch to win that. Also the year of "we're on the march with Allys army"? That didn't age well.
Well, their manager did. Unlike the members of the band he became filthy rich.Wasn't this the year the Bay City Rollers made it big?
I listened to the Grievous Angel album - not bad but not really my thing.
That is a fascinating tale and one that I hope you do share. That’s very young but by god I bet it changed you.Hmm, @Saddleworth2 interesting comments there in your write-up.
And I'd better sit down and listen again to Lamb lies down on Broadway, since you generally talk worryingly good sense, and see what's bloated about it. You may well be right. Because I realise only today that although I greatly admire it (or think I do), I don't actually have the energy to listen to it very often…
I've always had it in my “five double albums for a desert island selection” (the others, now which I would defend to my last breath, being Exile on Main Street, English Settlement, Physical Graffiti and finally Colosseum Live). There are lots of good double albums, with brilliant patches on them — but my criterion being once you dropped the needle on the first track, you simply had no choice — it didn't give you a choice — you cancelled whatever you were doing that evening, and listened through to the last note of the last track on the fourth side. But, hmm, maybe Lamb doesn't live up to that. Better listen to it again. The others I don't need to — I know them note for note.
Incidentally, re. Lou Reed. I was never that taken with him. There are very good things here and there. I think it's the person he was that put me off as much as anything — which is ridiculous, because I always say you should be able to separate the person and the artist. (I couldn't give a toss if it were proven that John Keats was an absolute bastard). However, when Lou was faced with the monstrous and scandalous reality of death (and death way before its allotted time), he put aside his enormous ego, his sometimes savage judgements on other people, and produced one of the rawest, finest, most deeply felt and carefully crafted albums in the history of popular music. It is way outside the time frame of this history that you're all constructing, but I'm giving it a big shout nevertheless. I'm talking about Magic and Loss.
As for ’74. A “climacteric”, as they say, for me personally. The year I left university, at the grand old age of 20. Worked through the winter in Regents Park as a parks gardener (later on, in ‘76, did the same job again in… Longsight!) saved money, and left for Africa in the spring of ’75, just after Physical Graffiti. Left with £350 in travellers cheques, a backpack on my back, and travelled thousands of kilometres, often on my own, through some twelve different countries. For nearly a year. The last leg of the journey involved crossing the Sahara from south to north, Niamey to Algiers, (in a Land Rover, of course! a mad Italian gave me a lift). Although I was 22 when I got back, I was a different man, and my life had to be changed radically. But therein lies a different tale entirely…
Tam the paedo potato man.Well, their manager did. Unlike the members of the band he became filthy rich.
Yes 78 was Ally’s Army. Before that we had Willie Ormonds warriors. Put out on goal difference. :-("We're on the march with Allys army, we're going to the Argentine......"
It was 1978, my first World Cup, so we'll have to wait 4 years for that
Tam the paedo potato man.
That is a fascinating tale and one that I hope you do share. That’s very young but by god I bet it changed you.
Meanwhile back at the tellers station, I was cashing cheques for old Mrs Malcolm :-). I have had a good life so far but regret not having an adventure like that when I was young.
Good luck with Lamb, I’m afraid if I do play it these days it’s exerts.
I’m sure Magic and Loss with feature in time.
It was different. The decade from 64-73 was full of promise, ambition and optimism. There seemed to be a greater social cohesion and if you worked hard you could still ‘get on’. Maybe though, it’s like music and the era you grew up in always contained the best music and you apply that positivity to a wider set of criteria.By the way, broadly speaking, I recognise and remember well all features of your “summary” of the political and social aspects of 74/75.
What needs adding, perhaps, is the feeling of the times. There was a definite feeling, to me, even then, of something wearing out. I always say the sixties ended in the mid-seventies (and didn't actually get properly going till 63/64 — all we had till then seemed to be Lonnie Donegan and Marty Wilde!). When I got back, having been away though all of ’75, everybody was playing this thing called reggae (which sounded a bit like the Blue Beat I'd liked so much in the sixties, but harder edged, saying something different) or, alternatively, this thing called punk, with groups with names like the Buzzcocks. The music told me the whole story as a I stared around me and tried — unsuccessfully — to adjust again to little old England.
The place had definitely changed. The sixties were definitely over.
and was he singing Shang-a-lang?I have a tale about Tam that a roadie told us when my best friend’s band was on tour with Diamond Head in 1981. Long before, I think, any scandals emerged.
Anyhoo, it involved the roadie or one of his roadie pals going into a dressing room on a Rollers tour and finding Tam doing something to one of the Rollers’ derrières.
It was a sad story. The experiences had a lasting impact on band members and they had pretty turbulent lives and a number of early deaths.I have a tale about Tam that a roadie told us when my best friend’s band was on tour with Diamond Head in 1981. Long before, I think, any scandals emerged.
Anyhoo, it involved the roadie or one of his roadie pals going into a dressing room on a Rollers tour and finding Tam doing something to one of the Rollers’ derrières.
The single version of Autobahn came out in February 1975, but the album itself was released in November 1974, so I would argue it belongs in the 1974 playlist.Ahead of their time as evidenced by the fact that they and the making of Autobahn were featured on Tomorrow's World! Though I think it was 75 rather than 74 when they got the Raymond Baxter treatment.
I had it on my notes list as a 74 release.The single version of Autobahn came out in February 1975, but the album itself was released in November 1974, so I would argue it belongs in the 1974 playlist.
fk!..I haven't made any notes...is there an exam this term?I had it on my notes list as a 74 release.
No mate. I make notes to help me put together the write up including a list of albums I might nominate. The Kraftwerk album was one of those.fk!..I haven't made any notes...is there an exam this term?
All good. I had a flashback.No mate. I make notes to help me put together the write up including a list of albums I might nominate. The Kraftwerk album was one of those.
The single version of Autobahn came out in February 1975, but the album itself was released in November 1974, so I would argue it belongs in the 1974 playlist.
Got free tickets so can't really say no!Ahead of their time as evidenced by the fact that they and the making of Autobahn were featured on Tomorrow's World! Though I think it was 75 rather than 74 when they got the Raymond Baxter treatment.
That Forever Now lineup looks pretty decent.