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I attended back-to-back Bar Mitzvahs on Saturday. Both events were beautiful, fun times with friends. At both Bar Mitzvah receptions, however, I had to hear Kool & the Gang‘s “Celebration” cranked up to get the party started. Despite the sentiments it’s meant to inspire, that song has bummed me out since it was first released. As a kid, I loved Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.” To me that was a super-cool, funky song worth resetting the needle every time I spun my 45 of it. A couple of years later this “Celebration” song becomes a smash and I was beginning to feel for sure like the times-they-were-a-changin’, like the final strains of good music that had lasted through most of the ’70s were running their course – for the worse. The rock ‘n roll that had developed since the early ’70s was already shot to hell (thank god for punk rock), and now dance music was getting too clean and buttoned up for my tastes.
I was wondering last night if “Celebration” was the first song that signaled the point when ’70s music no longer sounded like ’70s music to me, but I looked it up and saw that the song was released in 1980. So for me the point of no return may be Donna Summer‘s 1979 hits, “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls.” I was never one of those guys who hated disco, but “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls” pushed the butch, mechanistic aspects of late-70s dance music beyond a point that resonated with me. To my ears, those songs and the early ’80s dance music that would follow just sounds like Pat Benetar with an insistent kick drum on every beat. The nooks and crannies of a song like “Jungle Boogie” are long gone. Donna Summer’s move into rock music – and most of what would follow in dance music, coalescing with Michael Jackson‘s “Beat It,” strikes me as the musical equivalent of some high-tech dildo.
So maybe you’ve never thought about it this way, but is there a point at which ’70s music no longer sounds like ’70s music to you?
Hmmm… good call on “Celebration.” Whenever I hear that song at some sort of event, I immediately make my way to the bar … the closest one OUTSIDE of the venue housing the event.
I always thought Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love (1977)” was the beginning of the end for 70’s stuff. It not only had that 120 beats per minute (or whatever the standard disco BPM of the day was), it basically ushered in electronic music. Gary Neumann, et.al. would soon follow. Ugh.
I guess you’re asking for something more specific than “albums or songs that signalled the end of the 70s.” Well, pooey, ’cause I was going to say the 1978 release of the KISS solo albums. Come on — Gene Simmons singing “When You Wish Upon a Star”?!
More not to the point: albums that were released at the end of the 70s that really did sound like 70s albums, that were followed by releases in 1980 that suddenly didn’t. Cases in point: AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” (1979) followed by “Back In Black” (1980).
Blondie – Call Me
The Knack – My Sharona
The Cars – Let’s Go
The “punk” sound having an affect on “rock” music (or at least on rock radio)
I vaguely recall a thread from RTH Chess wherein someone (Links?) put forth the theory that the ’70s ended when Lindsey Buckingham shaved off his beard, circa Tusk.
Yes, Hrrundi, I’m not so much concerned with events that signaled the end of the ’70s but whether there are sounds from the ’70s that first sound – to you – like they belong in the next decade.
I’d say the first and second albums by the Talking Heads. Nothing about their aesthetic seems 70s to me; all that trendy, jerky, off kilter urban anxiety.
Two from the holy trinity:
Deguello, ZZ Top, 1979
And in the — Sheezus, it’s 1980, and this album sounds *totally* different from the one they recorded in 1979 category:
Dirty Mind, Prince, 1980
For me, “Armed Forces” did not sound like the 70’s to me while “This Years Model” did
I probably didn’t hear the NEU! album ’75 until ’77, but there was no doubt we were headed out the door marked ’70’s.
The Kinks’ Sleepwalker (1977), the Who’s Who Are You (1978), and the Stones’ Some Girls (1978) might fall into this category, not so much because they presage the 80s but because they prove that the 60s hangover was finally truly over.
How about Drums and Wires?
I never heard – and especially don’t hear, in retrospect – punk/new wave from the ’70s as music that no longer sounded “’70s.” To me it just sounded more like how the ’70s could have sounded had things not gotten so bad in the mainstream. The arrangements – drum patters, guitar playing, etc – were still rooted in music of the previous 15 years. Talking Heads did push out a bit, but how different are some of those early T-Heads songs than stuff like Eno’s “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” or “King’s Lead Hat” (yes, I know, that song can be considered a case of the dog chasing its own tail)? But, of course, this is all HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE, and I’m not going to suggest that anyone’s WRONG.
I don’t know if picking things from 1979 makes enough of a difference, but I’d have to agree on Drums and Wires, both in the sound of the music and the direction of the songs. Jungleland’s picks also bring the 80s to mind more than the 70s, for me.
Squeeze’s “Cool For Cats” is another one that came out in 1979 that sounds like it belongs at least a year or two later. The cover for the single also seems to belong to the next decade.
HVB, how about the drastic 70s/80s break for the third member of the trinity: ELO went from the megadisco Discovery in 1979 to the aggressively ’80s Time in 1981. Of course, in between there was Xanadu in 1980, which was maybe the stake in the heart to the 70s.
I think Byrne is the difference–his perceptive social weirdo shtick is very different from Eno, and added to the lyrics, the albums are full of a very 80s social angst. And yes, his lyrics and pinched vocals are part of the sound.
RUSH – Tom Saywer?
Groups like Journey, REO, STYX, RUSH were also changing their sound right at the dawn of the new decade, adding SYNTHS, elecric drums, new haircuts, narrow pant legs, mustache removal. It showed up in the music as it became even COLDER and more produced (thank you gated snare)..and the bands didn’t appear to be on dope so much.
How about Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”? Neil was so 70s to me, and side one of Rust Never Sleeps was very 70s. Side two wasn’t. So the first time I flipped that album over in the summer of ’79, I think the 70s ended for me.
Continued good stuff, Townspeeps, and it’s cool how some of you have taken this move into the future as a good thing while others have expressed anxiety over the end of this comfort decade.