Sunday, May 10, 2009

The 1970s -What was the golden age?

Base: 272

A comment to the Radar review by Matt, got me thinking...When you collect 70s singles especially of the Glammy persuasion, anything after 74 doesn't conjure up the same sense of excitement. But is it snobism?
So with more time than sense, based on the 272 70s singles reviewed these last 3 years, you can see above a chart that represents what appears to be the golden period for singles -namely 1973 and 1974. I have always said that 1974 was the new 1965! There is a big drop after 1974 into 1975 and it plummets dramatically for 1976 and beyond. So basically The Drones or The Suburban Studs do not cut The Mustard like Daddy Maxfield does...
Just to upsept the theory, my next two reviews will be for singles released in 1976...

5 comments:

Unknown said...

This theory will irk my friend Chuck (and thereby make me smile) -- he contends that 1972 was the golden year.

Glenn said...

"Everyone knows that rock achieved perfection by 1974, it's a scientific fact!" - Homer Simpson is always right.
Most of the best glam albums came out in 74 as well, IMO.

Collin said...

I dunno about it all being downhill from '74. Lots of interesting hard-rock hybrids and early power pop things begin to creep in at that point. If anything, I'm less fussed on '71/'72. Lots of laconic, lite 60s treacle hold-over mixed with/mired in various then popular styles - country rock, singer-songwriter, dylan. lots of blahness there. ...at least to me.

matt Smith said...

I'm so psyched that my comment resulted in a BAR GRAPH! This seriously made my day! As this chart shows, 74 is probably the golden year for the hard rockin' glam singles and though Bowie and Bolan had already begun to move on from Glam by this point what they were doing two to three years earlier was a whole different breed of glam. I'm not going to break it down in this post because everyone who reads this already knows Glam covers many different sounding bands and each sound seemed to have a "golden year" of it's own.

matt smith

Anonymous said...

Looking Back, it's interesting that the 60s music 'climactic' was 1967 (British offshore radio closed by the UK gov.Marine Offences Act)..and similarly the Dutch passed similar legislation Aug/Sept 1974 , outlawing Radios Veronica, Nordsee, Atlantis.

The free radio stations provided an incredible 'boost' to the music biz in both eras, encouraging new independent record labels both in the 60s and 70s phase, and encouraging creativity amongst musicians,artists, bands.