I think it was Billy G who proclaimed 1972 as the deepest and best year of music, but for my money, 1971 is equally, if not moreso, stunning. It's almost not fair for me to present you with choosing one of these nine records and omitting at least 30 other worthy candidates - almost all are five star albums, worthy of all the praise they've ever received and then some. In many cases, I decided to include the entire allmusic review of the album because it's not only obviously inspired writing, but really, the record deserves every damn word written about it. (HINT: READ THEM!)
I'm personally going to think about this choice for the better part of the day before clicking my option...there's just no way I can immediately choose any one of these nine records.
Omissions:
# Sly & the Family Stone * There's A Riot Going On (Epic)
# Tim Buckley * Starsailor (Straight)
# Rico * Trombone Man: Anthology 1961-71 (Trojan)
# Toots & The Maytals * Stoot Slatyam (Trojan)
# MC5 * High Time (Rhino/Atlantic)
# Faust (Recommended)
# Ash Ra Tempel (Spalax)
# Herbie Hancock * Mwandishi (WB)
# Fela Kuti * Open & Close (Universal)
# Popol Vuh * In Den Garten Pharaos (Tempel/Spalax)
# Al Green * Let's Stay Together (Hi)
# The Kinks * Muswell Hillbillies (RCA/Rhino)
# Alice Coltrane * Universal Consciousness (Impulse!)
# Alice Coltrane * World Galaxy (Impulse!)
# Serge Gainsbourg * Histoire de Melody Nelson (Philips Fr)
# Curtis Mayfield * Roots (Curtom)
# Gong * Camembert Electrique (Charly)
# Roy Harper * Stormcock (Resurgent)
# Sir Douglas Quintet * The Return of Doug Saldana (Smash/Acadia)
# The Flamin' Groovies * Teenage Head (Big Beat)
# Bill Withers * Just As I Am (Sussex)
# Caravan * In The Land Of The Grey & Pink (London)
# Black Sabbath * Master Of Reality (WB)
# Mott The Hoople * Brain Capers (Atlantic)
# Alice Coltrane * Universal Consciousness (Impulse!)
# Rod Stewart * Every Picture Tells A Story (Mercury)
# The Faces * A Nod Is A Wink . . . To A Blind Horse (WB)
# David Crosby * If I Could Only Remember My Name (Atlantic)
# Tangerine Dream * Alpha Centauri (Relativity)
# Van Der Graaf Generator * Pawn Hearts (Charisma/Caroline)
# Alice Cooper * Love It To Death (WB)
# Joni Mitchell * Blue (Reprise)
# Fela Kuti & Ginger Baker * Live! (Celluloid)
# Santana III (Columbia)
# Exuma The Obeah Man * Do Wah Nanny (Kama Sutra)
# Dave & Ansel Collins * Double Barrel (RAS)
# Dr. John The Night Tripper * The Sun, Moon & Herbs (Wounded Bird)
# Harry Nilsson * Nilsson Schmilsson (RCA)
# Pierre Barouh * Ca Va, Ca Vient (Saravah Fr)
# Donovan * HMS Donovan (Epic/Beat Goes On)
# Kevin Ayers * Whatevershebringswesing (Beat Goes On)
# Soft Machine * Fourth (Columbia)
# Ornette Coleman * Science Fiction (Columbia)
# The Gaylads * Over The Rainbow's End: Best Of The Gaylads 1968-71 (Trojan)
# Donovan * HMS Donovan (Beat Goes On)
# Jimmy Cliff * Another Cycle (Island)
# Little Feat (WB)
# 100 Proof (Aged In Soul) * Somebody's Been Sleeping In My Bed (Hot Wax)
# Van Morrison * Tupelo Honey (WB)
# Lee Perry & the Upsetters * Africa's Blood (Trojan)
# The Isley Brothers * Give It Back (Epic)
# Shuggie Otis * Freedom Flight (Epic)
# Kraftwerk 1 (Philips)
# Gentle Giant * Acquiring The Taste (PolyGram)
# Tower Of Power * Bump City (Columbia)
# Humble Pie * Rock On (A&M)
# The Residents * Santa Dog EP (Ralph)
# John Lennon * Imagine (Apple)
# The Doors * L.A. Woman (Elektra)
# Budgie (MCA/Roadracer)
# War * All Day Music (Avenue/Ryko)
# Uriah Heep * Look At Yourself (Mercury)
# Sparks (Bearsville)
# Gene Clark * White Light (A&M)
# Leonard Cohen * Songs Of Love And Hate (Columbia)
# Marcos Valle * Garra (Odeon)
# Genesis * Nursery Cryme (Atlantic)
# John Prine * John Prine (Atlantic)
# Mott The Hoople * Wildlife (Atlantic)
# King Crimson * Islands (EG)
# Deep Purple * Fireball (WB)
# The Moody Blues * Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Decca/Deram)
# Isaac Hayes * Black Moses (Stax)
# Yes * The Yes Album (Atlantic)
T. Rex - Electric Warrior
Quote:
The album that essentially kick-started the U.K. glam rock craze, Electric Warrior completes T. Rex's transformation from hippie folk-rockers into flamboyant avatars of trashy rock & roll. There are a few vestiges of those early days remaining in the acoustic-driven ballads, but Electric Warrior spends most of its time in a swinging, hip-shaking groove powered by Marc Bolan's warm electric guitar. The music recalls not just the catchy simplicity of early rock & roll, but also the implicit sexuality -- except that here, Bolan gleefully hauls it to the surface, singing out loud what was once only communicated through the shimmying beat. He takes obvious delight in turning teenage bubblegum rock into campy sleaze, not to mention filling it with pseudo-psychedelic hippie poetry. In fact, Bolan sounds just as obsessed with the heavens as he does with sex, whether he's singing about spiritual mysticism or begging a flying saucer to take him away.
The Rolling Stones - Sticky FingersQuote:
Pieced together from outtakes and much-labored-over songs, Sticky Fingers manages to have a loose, ramshackle ambience that belies both its origins and the dark undercurrents of the songs. It's a weary, drug-laden album -- well over half the songs explicitly mention drug use, while the others merely allude to it -- that never fades away, but it barely keeps afloat. Apart from the classic opener, "Brown Sugar" (a gleeful tune about slavery, interracial sex, and lost virginity, not necessarily in that order), the long workout "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" and the mean-spirited "Bitch," Sticky Fingers is a slow, bluesy affair, with a few country touches thrown in for good measure.
David Bowie - Hunky DoryQuote:
After the freakish hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie returned to singer/songwriter territory on Hunky Dory. Not only did the album boast more folky songs ("Song for Bob Dylan," "The Bewlay Brothers"), but he again flirted with Anthony Newley-esque dancehall music ("Kooks," "Fill Your Heart"), seemingly leaving heavy metal behind. As a result, Hunky Dory is a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class.
Marvin Gaye - What's Going OnQuote:
What's Going On is not only Marvin Gaye's masterpiece, it's the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices, a man finally free to speak his mind and so move from R&B sex symbol to true recording artist. With What's Going On, Gaye meditated on what had happened to the American dream of the past -- as it related to urban decay, environmental woes, military turbulence, police brutality, unemployment, and poverty. These feelings had been bubbling up between 1967 and 1970, during which he felt increasingly caged by Motown's behind-the-times hit machine and restrained from expressing himself seriously through his music. Finally, late in 1970, Gaye decided to record a song that the Four Tops' Obie Benson had brought him, "What's Going On." When Berry Gordy decided not to issue the single, deeming it uncommercial, Gaye refused to record any more material until he relented. Confirmed by its tremendous commercial success in January 1971, he recorded the rest of the album over ten days in March, and Motown released it in late May. Besides cementing Marvin Gaye as one of the most important artists in pop music, What's Going On was far and away the best full-length to issue from the singles-dominated Motown factory, and arguably the best soul album of all time.
The Who - Who's NextQuote:
Much of Who's Next derives from Lifehouse, an ambitious sci-fi rock opera Pete Townshend abandoned after suffering a nervous breakdown, caused in part from working on the sequel to Tommy. There's no discernable theme behind these songs, yet this album is stronger than Tommy, falling just behind Who Sell Out as the finest record the Who ever cut. Townshend developed an infatuation with synthesizers during the recording of the album, and they're all over this album, adding texture where needed and amplifying the force, which is already at a fever pitch. Apart from Live at Leeds, the Who have never sounded as LOUD and unhinged as they do here, yet that's balanced by ballads, both lovely ("The Song Is Over") and scathing ("Behind Blue Eyes"). That's the key to Who's Next -- there's anger and sorrow, humor and regret, passion and tumult, all wrapped up in a blistering package where the rage is as affecting as the heartbreak. This is a retreat from the '60s, as Townshend declares the "Song Is Over," scorns the teenage wasteland, and bitterly declares that we "Won't Get Fooled Again." For all the sorrow and heartbreak that runs beneath the surface, this is an invigorating record, not just because Keith Moon runs rampant or because Roger Daltrey has never sung better or because John Entwistle spins out manic basslines that are as captivating as his "My Wife" is funny. This is invigorating because it has all of that, plus Townshend laying his soul bare in ways that are funny, painful, and utterly life-affirming. That is what the Who was about, not the rock operas, and that's why Who's Next is truer than Tommy or the abandoned Lifehouse. Those were art -- this, even with its pretensions, is rock & roll.
Funkadelic - Maggot BrainQuote:
It starts with a crackle of feedback shooting from speaker to speaker and a voice intoning, "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up" and talking about rising "above it all or drown in my own sh*t." This could only have been utterly bizarre back in 1971 and it's no less so decades later; though the Mothership was well on its way already, Maggot Brain really helped it take off. The instrumental title track is the key reason to listen, specifically for Eddie Hazel's lengthy, mind-melting solo. George Clinton famously told Hazel to play "like your momma had just died," and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn't merely rival Jimi Hendrix's work, but arguably bests a lot of it.
Can - Tago MagoQuote:
With the band in full artistic flower and Suzuki's sometimes moody, sometimes frenetic speak/sing/shrieking in full effect, Can released not merely one of the best Krautrock albums of all time, but one of the best albums ever, period. Tago Mago is that rarity of the early '70s, a double album without a wasted note, ranging from sweetly gentle float to full-on monster grooves. "Paperhouse" starts things brilliantly, beginning with a low-key chime and beat, before amping up into a rumbling roll in the midsection, then calming down again before one last blast. Both "Mushroom" and "Oh Yeah," the latter with Schmidt filling out the quicker pace with nicely spooky keyboards, continue the fine vibe. After that, though, come the huge highlights -- three long examples of Can at its absolute best. "Halleluwah" -- featuring the Liebezeit/Czukay rhythm section pounding out a monster trance/funk beat; Karoli's and Schmidt's always impressive fills and leads; and Suzuki's slow-building ranting above everything -- is 19 minutes of pure genius. The near-rhythmless flow of "Aumgn" is equally mind-blowing, with swaths of sound from all the members floating from speaker to speaker in an ever-evolving wash, leading up to a final jam. "Peking O" continues that same sort of feeling, but with a touch more focus, throwing in everything from Chinese-inspired melodies and jazzy piano breaks to cheap organ rhythm boxes and near babbling from Suzuki along the way. "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" wraps things up as a fine, fun little coda to a landmark record.
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IVQuote:
Encompassing heavy metal, folk, pure rock & roll, and blues, Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album is a monolithic record, defining not only Led Zeppelin but the sound and style of '70s hard rock. Expanding on the breakthroughs of III, Zeppelin fuse their majestic hard rock with a mystical, rural English folk that gives the record an epic scope. Even at its most basic -- the muscular, traditionalist "Rock and Roll" -- the album has a grand sense of drama, which is only deepened by Robert Plant's burgeoning obsession with mythology, religion, and the occult. Plant's mysticism comes to a head on the eerie folk ballad "The Battle of Evermore," a mandolin-driven song with haunting vocals from Sandy Denny, and on the epic "Stairway to Heaven." Of all of Zeppelin's songs, "Stairway to Heaven" is the most famous, and not unjustly. Building from a simple fingerpicked acoustic guitar to a storming torrent of guitar riffs and solos, it encapsulates the entire album in one song. Which, of course, isn't discounting the rest of the album. "Going to California" is the group's best folk song, and the rockers are endlessly inventive, whether it's the complex, multi-layered "Black Dog," the pounding hippie satire "Misty Mountain Hop," or the funky riffs of "Four Sticks." But the closer, "When the Levee Breaks," is the one song truly equal to "Stairway," helping give IV the feeling of an epic. An apocalyptic slice of urban blues, "When the Levee Breaks" is as forceful and frightening as Zeppelin ever got, and its seismic rhythms and layered dynamics illustrate why none of their imitators could ever equal them.
Pink Floyd - MeddleQuote:
Opening with a deliberately surging "One of These Days," Meddle spends most of its time with sonic textures and elongated compositions, most notably on its epic closer, "Echoes." If there aren't pop songs in the classic sense (even on the level of the group's contributions to Ummagumma), there is a uniform tone, ranging from the pastoral "A Pillow of Winds" to "Fearless," with its insistent refrain hinting at latter-day Floyd. Pink Floyd were nothing if not masters of texture, and Meddle is one of their greatest excursions into little details, pointing the way to the measured brilliance of Dark Side of the Moon and the entire Roger Waters era. Here, David Gilmour exerts a slightly larger influence, at least based on lead vocals, but it's not all sweetness and light -- even if its lilting rhythms are welcome, "San Tropez" feels out of place with the rest of Meddle. Still, the album is one of the Floyd's most consistent explorations of mood, especially from their time at Harvest, and it stands as the strongest record they released between Syd's departure and Dark Side.
