Don't let the handshake and the smile fool ya
Take my advice, I'm only tryin' to school ya
— Smiling Faces by The Undisputed Truth
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Challenging the idea of art, which is entirely subjective, in the 70s is a very 70s thing. This is the “Me Decade.” The decade of psychotherapy and liberation -- or at least attempts to move toward liberation -- raising consciousness. We did not have a collective vision of what progress meant. It was up to us to explore that, as individuals.
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Dewey Bunnell of the band, America, said that even though “Ventura Highway” is not a real highway, it was inspired by the Pacific Coast Highway and his thoughts of returning there while he was a kid living in Omaha. Also, alligator lizards in the air are clouds.
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“Although I prefer the heavier beer of rock and roll, the sweet white wine of Joni Mitchell is welcome.”
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If Bruce Springsteen’s music can be called the sound of a ‘56 Chevy fueled by ground up Crystals records, then Parliament’s records must surely be the result of James Brown and Isaac Hayes records mixed in a high-speed Waring blender in the backseat of a leopardskin Cadillac pimpmobile.”
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The festival seating system was designed to squeeze as much money as possible out of the fans who made the industry possible. Safety was secondary, if it was a concern at all.
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Amy cites Professor Laurence Ralph, who said that “Soul Train” showed young African Americans doing things that were “radically ordinary.” Just like American Bandstand.
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The people behind No Nukes learned from the Concert for Bangladesh and avoided much of the financial drama, although the festival did not come close to achieving its goal. Still, $600,000 got into the right hands.
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There is no harm in creating fictional worlds, like the worlds in Grease or Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley. The harm is in either presenting them or accepting them as eras that never were.
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They commit Gen X blasphemy by saying bad things about Boston and Queen (Boston is an “android" band.)
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Martha Reeves and the Vandellas recorded “I Should Be Proud,” a clear anti-war song, in 1970. However, she was told that the CIA was following her around and that song was taken off the radio.
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The Village People are more important to the gay community than YMCA. Most of the guys who sang and performed YMCA were not even the original band. The fact that a gay fantasy band would sell a million copies of its debut album (which only had four songs) is pretty incredible.
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“The ‘girl’ thing seems to be real important for other people but I’m mystified by it. For me, Brass In Pocket was supposed to be real traditional, because tradition in rock is what turns me on. We want our rock singers to be confident and cocky, and Brass In Pocket was an act, my attempt to write a song that sounded like that.” — Chrissie Hynde
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Nile Rogers said in an interview with Red Bull Music Academy in 2011 that he and Bernard Edwards realized that with Good Times, they had the “perfect hip hop record because the break down took so long to develop that they could have rhymes that could go on forever…” He said for Chic, the song was just the excuse to go to the chorus and the chorus was just the excuse to go to the breakdown.
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…name-checking Nixon was not just taking advantage of an easy target. He invited this criticism by involving himself in the discussion about what was and was not “appropriate” for radio airplay.
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This [“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”] is a song of pain. There were Virgil Caines of the early 1970s who looked around and they ALSO saw a South that they were starting to find unrecognizable. The landscape and how people lived were shifting. The low hanging fruit here is, of course, to focus on the race. We can’t ignore it. In 1970, we were only six years out from the Civil Rights Act and the end of Jim Crow laws. Whether white southerners like it or not, their past as one of the largest slave societies in world history and as the former Confederacy of the United States will likely never escape them, in part because some people do not want to escape it.
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Fueled by a few too many gin and tonics, Charlie Rich announces that John Denver is the CMA Entertainer of the Year but it does not end there. He reaches into his pocket, takes out a lighter, and sets the card on fire. Fortunately, John Denver was appearing via satellite from Australia and did not see it but a whole lot of other folks did. Charlie said it was an accident and blamed it on some painkillers but given the state of country music in 1975, it seemed too obvious of a statement to ignore. That statement was that the likes of John Denver were not welcome in country music.
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The Loft was the beginning of the members-only sanctuaries that attracted gay men, in particular, because it was places like the Loft and the Sanctuary, and Paradise Garage that welcomed...legitimized the presence of the queer community. No more sitting in dark corners, making sure that you had your bail money in your pocket.
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