1976
Aka - I’m As Mad As Hell and I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore
(well actually I’m not fully mad yet, but I’m definitely on my way there)
Peter Finch as Howard Beale the crazed prophet of the airwaves in the 1976 classic - Network
Context
Our journey reaches 1976 and we find Britain rather on its uppers. Though the roots of the Sterling Crisis could be found earlier in the decade, now was the time the ‘sick man of Europe’ had to go cap in hand to the IMF for (at that point) the biggest bail out in its history. The fact that only half the loan was ever drawn down and might not have been necessary in the first place (it transpired the treasury had ballsed-up their numbers) was irrelevant. The damage was done and political instability in the government and general disgruntlement across the nation grew arm in arm. Though things would continue to bubble for a short while, 1976 would foreshadow significant change both politically and musically.
The US was probably in slightly better condition than the UK but that’s not saying much. The country was still coming to terms with Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war. Add in stagflation and even the bicentennial celebrations might not have been enough to lift the mood on their own.
Faced with this kind of landscape what could the average person do? The normal human response to challenging situations is often categorised as
flight or fight so that’s the theme of the initial 10 tracks I’ve chosen.
Music wasn’t the only place where flight or fight was an option. At the cinema you could escape into the everyman underdog world of Rocky or watch a giant ape fall in love with Jessica Lang. Or you could forget about your worries simply by frightening yourself at Carrie or The Omen, which built on earlier films like The Exorcist to cement the supernatural horror film as a blockbuster.
Alternatively, you could face directly into the troubled times and go and see Taxi Driver with its themes of alienation, isolation and the breakdown of society and the individual. If that was too heavy, there was the dark satire of Network or simply confronting the reality of corruption at the highest level in All The President’s Men. I'll leave our US posters to comment on the degree to which Jimmy Carter's election in ‘76 was fuelled by American desire to escape that grubby recent past. It strikes me that though the optimism didn’t last long there would have been at least a short period of hope and raised expectations?
Beyond cinema, relief was to be found in the world of sports through the excellence of Nadia Comaneci at the Montreal Olympics and Borg's first Wimbledon title; but much more importantly in the shape of Dennis Tueart. I doubt it occurred to many of us that day that it would be over a third of a century before we saw another meaningful trophy lift! But then, I’m not sure anyone would have predicted the subsequent career trajectory of the winner of the men’s Olympic decathlon either, so life is full of twists and turns.
Anyway, onto the music and the musical response to the upheaval in the UK and beyond. Would people choose ‘flight’ by retreating deeper into the music scene they already knew or even go full escapist into the hedonism of the newly emergent world of glitterballs and disco ? Or would they choose ‘fight’ and get as angry as hell and not take this any more ? The answer being both, the initial playlist 10 is split into two parts.
Part 1 - Flight
If you chose flight, there’s plenty of forms of escapism available to the discerning listener in 1976 and my first 5 tracks illustrate a variety of different routes people took to swerve the prevailing gloom.
Escape route 1 : Invent an even shinier version of your genre
Album: Boston - Boston
Track: More Than A Feeling
In 1976, seemingly out of nowhere, Boston appeared showcasing the archetypal huge arena friendly sound that would go on to define much of rock for the latter part of the 70s and further. Surely to have achieved this they must have been used a state-of-the-art facility in a glamourous location to create a sound like this? Well, that’s certainly what they told Epic, who insisted that they needed to go to Hollywood with their in-house producers to achieve the increasingly excessive 70s’ sheen that they demanded. However, thanks to the brains of Tom Scholz the reality was somewhat different. Guitarist and songwriter Scholz had created the demos in a basement home studio he’d kitted out with his savings and he and the producer John Boylan, agreed that those demos were close enough to releasable that the job could be finished there. Consequently a ‘decoy’ band was sent to record in LA to placate the record execs whilst the job was finished on the sly back in the basement. Scholz had created the sound by employing his MIT taught and Polaroid honed engineering skills to create a range of innovative production tools, for instance allowing him to create an overdrive that allowed for offered a level of power whilst still retain clarity and warmth that other pedals of the time could not achieve. It's unsurprising that Scholz went on to found a music tech company that amongst other things released the Rockman range of pedals. His combination of musical and technical skills gave him and Boston a very distinctive sound, all for a fraction of the cost of the prestige studios outlay.
There is an irony that the 'bigness' of the main riff of More Than A Feeling, so emblematic of the emerging pristine FM radio and stadium friendly sound that came to be referred to as Adult Orientated Rock, was actually achieved using a DIY ethos that we associate with a completely different type of music that was about to emerge. But as will become apparent, 1976 was a messy complicated year in music.
Escape Route 2 – Regress Back to your school days
Album: AC/DC – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Track: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
There’s always one kid who when the teacher says ‘I’m being serious’ then proceeds to double down even further. This album is the musical equivalent of that kid. The world is going to rat shit so let’s produce an album with track titles like Big Balls and Love at First feel.
Probably the thing that best sums up this album is the fact that it only got released in Europe and Australia in 1976 because Atlantic considered it either too crude or too crap (depending on who you believe) for the American market which would have to wait till 1981.
Whether you prefer to call it irreverent or plain childish it’s hard to deny it’s charm. I’m quite po faced but I find it hard not to smile in the face of much of this. That said it’s not entirely one dimensional, Ride On has more emotional depth to it than most of the album, though it would be hard to have less. Nonetheless the title track sums up the mischievous tone and at the end of the day if JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures names a Stand after your song then it clearly has some cultural resonance.
Escape route 3 : Style It Out
Album: Boz Scaggs - Silk Degrees
Track: Lowdown
Smoother than an Al Jarreau 80’s theme song, Silk Degrees is sufficiently cool that you can almost forgive William Royce Scaggs for the creation of Toto : -)
It’s often referred to as part of the Yacht rock canon, but I’ve never really understood the parameters of that genre and to me this is blue-eyed soul with a little bit of jazz and funk with the production sheen of AOR. I should really hate it but it’s just too good for that.
Much beloved of later hip-hop samplers, Lowdown is the distillation of the album and Scaggs breakthrough track.
Escape route 4 : Double down on the pop music
Album: Abba - Arrival
Track: Knowing Me Knowing You
Sometimes escapism isn’t quite what it seems. For a bit of pop escapism people looked towards our white jumpsuit cladded friends from Sweden. However, having maybe bought the album for the apex escapism of Dancing Queen, if they listened a bit harder to tracks like Knowing Me Knowing You, it’s hardly escapism at all. It marks the start of their highly successful transition to relationship break up songs and is elevated by a quality of song writing that it would take several decades for people to actually appreciate. It’s minor key melancholy and harmonics are lifted straight from the romantic period of classical music giving it an almost elegiac feel. For all of Partridge’s A-Ha buffoonery, it’s actually a remarkably restrained song, let down (or made cheesely iconic) by the spoken word parts. It does beg the question, if they hadn’t insisted on dressing in a ridiculous fashion whether they’d have been taken more seriously first time around.
For all it’s kitsch, quality will out and it has survived the ensuing decades in much better condition than other escapist pop of the year such as the Brotherhood of Man’s wretched Kisses for Me or Leo Sayer and his annoying afro which was apparently deliberately cultivated with great effort at the suggestion of his manager Adam Faith to give him a distinctive and recognisable silhouette.
Escape route 5: Embrace the glitterball
Album: The Trammps – Disco Inferno
Track: Disco Inferno
‘Burn Baby Burn’ indeed; within three years Disco Demolition night would find disgruntled rock fans trying to take that instruction literally, but in 1976 disco had yet to become so omnipresent. Disco Inferno by The Trammps would however help change all that. Although its peak popularity came from being included on the soundtrack to ‘77’s Saturday Night Fever, it’s original release was on the ’76 album of the same name. Before Studio 54 had even been opened, and prior to much radio play, Disco Inferno was a huge hit in the nightclubs. It didn’t invent the 12-inch single but it helped define it’s use as a long form dance format that DJs and the club crowd could get lost in for a while. Though much of disco music would ultimately mutate into synth-based precision this early incarnation has a different feel to it, the syncopation makes it sound funky and organic and the layers of instruments dropping in an out create a groove that people could really sweat to.
Observant thread members may however notice a potential category error on my part. Is this really escapism? The phrase ‘Burn Baby Burn’ echoes the chants from unrest such as the LA Watts riots/rebellion in 1965. So maybe dance was a form of liberation and club culture wasn’t simply a form of escapism but another way of fighting the powers that be? Which brings me to the second half of my list.
Part 2 – Fight
In the same way that escapism can take many forms so can fighting back, so again a few different musical examples from 1976.
Fight mode 1: Do It Yourself
Album: The Ramones - The Ramones
Track: Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
I’m sure there are punk aficionados who will correct me but if The Ramones debut album wasn’t the actual birth of punk, it certainly crystallised the concept in the form of an album.
Three chords songs, definitely no fannying around soloing, in fact no fannying around at all; just straight in and out asap. Buzzsaw guitars and lyrics that weren't trying to say anything profound or clever, reflected the age and were a direct challenge to what many had come to see as the bloated excess of rock music.
Stripped back, DIY, nihilist rock had announced itself whilst Malcom and Vivien were still arranging the clothes on the rack back in Chelsea. ‘ey oh, let’s go indeed.
It’s a fair bet this lot aren’t going to offer you a twelve minute song about a wizard.
Fight Mode 2: Toughen up your identity
Album: Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Track: Jailbreak
Though it didn’t quite know it, classic rock was about to lose some of its pre-eminence. However, despite the warning shot from the Ramones, there was still plenty of life left in more traditional forms of rock and in some cases, bands were doubling down to great effect. A case in point being Thin Lizzy. Their previous two albums had left them in danger of being dropped but a slightly harder edge and a clearer identity meant that Jailbreak would be the album that would set them on the road to real stardom. The opening track sets out their stall very nicely and the album shows that trends will come and go but quality music will always find an audience and I know this album is beloved by more than a few on here.
Fight mode 3: Advocate for the herb
Album: Peter Tosh – Legalise It
Track: Legalise It
In a year when Rastaman Vibration and Blackheart Man both came out I’ve gone instead with Peter Tosh’s album simply because it’s always been my favourite of the three albums.
It’s not clear to me what the Jamaican government hoped to achieve by banning the title track but as is often the case with these approaches it roundly backfired. The combination of a very direct and coherent lyric with a classic one-drop rhythm makes this arguably one of the most powerful and yet simultaneously laid-back protest songs in the history of music. No mean feat. I’m not going to claim this album is the equal of the next one in the list, but I could easily have chosen a number of tracks from it. I went with this one because it took on a campaigning life of its own.
Tosh didn’t live long enough to see his plea come true, murdered at age 42 but Tosh’s message lived on through his song and 30 years later it would be legalised in his homeland and in many places throughout the world. Though in some ways it now seems very tame, oh for the days when lawyers only smoked weed, it is nonetheless a classic.
Fight mode 4: Intermingle protest into one of the greatest albums ever written
Album: Songs in the key of Life – Stevie Wonder
Track: Pastime Paradise
Steve Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life is generally viewed as one of the greatest albums ever made. Of the albums featured in this initial playlist this was by far the hardest to pick a track from because it’s breadth and quality is staggering. Most musicians would kill to write a song as good as ‘As’ once in their entire career and yet lots of people wouldn’t even consider it the best song on the album, choosing ‘Sir Duke’, ‘I Wish’ or something else over it.
As we are in the ‘fight’ section of the playlist I was very tempted to choose Village Ghetto Land, its gentle stately progress belies a lyric full of disgust and anger; tragically, it’s as relevant today as it was then. I’ve decided to go with Pastime Paradise because its sound was so ahead of its time, in part because of the use of the Yamaha GX1 that Wonder described as his ‘Dream Machine’. How a company can produce something like the GX1 and then end up creating something as despicable as the DX7 is something I know leaves us all slack jawed in confusion.
Next time you get the notion to do something daft Yamaha, remember this is what an A++ looks like.
Fight mode 5: Accuse a TV presenter of being a perv
Album: Not yet
Track: Anarchy in the UK – The Sex Pistols
Despite their protestations, they DID know what they wanted as well as how to get it and Bill Grundy rather stupidly obliged in this notorious bit of TV.
Though Never Mind The Bollocks wouldn’t come out until ’77, by the end of ’76 The Sex Pistols were already on their way to cartoon notoriety via 'that' interview and more importantly through the release of their first single. I say cartoonish but that’s with the benefit of distance. It’s easy to forget that for many at the time, John Lydon’s sarcastic, sneering and contemptuous delivery and daring to mention things like the IRA heralded the end of civilisation in the same way that Elvis’s hips, or Lennon's Jesus comment once had. On the flip side it perfectly expressed the frustration of mid-seventies British collapse. It’s actually a pretty hooky, well organised rock song but it’s cloaked in a chaos that perfectly matched the increasingly frustrated times it was released in. The band had been in the making since the early 70s with the initial scene developing out of Maclaren and Westwood’s shop in the King’s Road, creating a very different genesis and focus from that of punk in the US. The addition of Lydon in ‘75 was the next piece of the jigsaw and they gigged playing covers as well as developing their own material and building up a following prior to the Nov ‘76 release of their first single. This single would be the only playing credit bassist Matlock would have on the subsequent album as he was fired for liking The Beatles or disliking Johnny Rotten depending on who you believe.
In picking this I’m conscious that I have ignored The Damned’s New Rose released a couple of months earlier, partly because I’m sure someone will nominate it and we’ll hear plenty of The Damned in years to come, and partly because the immediate impact on public consciousness that The Sex Pistols had was a cultural ‘moment’.
So rock music was about to reinvent itself again and if The Ramones had already laid out a musical blueprint at the start of the year on one side of the Atlantic, then at the end of the year on the other side The Sex Pistols grabbed the megaphone and announced loudly and colourfully that the tectonic plates of music were definitely on the move and the rock orthodoxy would not hold.
Summary
Obviously this is an extremely partial coverage of 1976 in ten songs but hopefully enough to give a sense of the tensions and divergent approaches to music that were building up and hopefully enough to encourage people to fill in the myriad gaps I’ve left.
I’ve said it was flight or fight, and picking a genre to do so, but of course this is an over simplification. If you were David Bowie you could simply write a song like Golden Years that spans funk, glam rock, disco and art pop but then slightly disguise it all via a new austere and detached persona. Station to Station is an album I’m sure someone will nominate tracks from. Similarly you could adopt the 10CC approach of just simply being very good at what you do and write a song like I’m Mandy Fly Me as a mini classical suite, changing time signatures and tempo without jarring, hugely layer it with dreamy harmonics, and chuck in the odd diminished 7th to create the ‘is this real or imaginary?’ feel.
But back to the imminent clash of cultures that '76 would foreshadow, could there be much more of a contrast between the first and last track in this initial ten? One was made at a respected studio using the latest, greatest and very expensive Neve Console and the other in a DIY basement study with kit cobbled together. The fact that the former would be The Sex Pistols recording at Wessex Sound and the latter Boston’s basement effort only illustrates how messy and unsettled music was in 1976.
The punk volcano hadn’t quite erupted yet and the disco inferno hadn’t fully caught fire but if you listened and looked hard enough, all the signs were there and soon there would be no going back.
