ITT: /mu/ in 1972

CALL ME THE TUMBLING DIIICCCEEEEE

LOOKIN' FOR A HEART OF GOOOOLDDD

*concludes rock*

I guess I turn in my Free Grand Funk button because their liberation from the dastardly Terry Knight merely continues their two-year decline. Especially annoying is Mark Farner's singing, which combines the worst of Jack Bruce and Eddie Fisher. Sorry, really, but. . . C-

>>127121056
What boring junkie crap. They haven't wrote a truly great tune since Paint It Black.

>on a date with a chick
>she starts talking about women's lib
Music for this feel?

Critical anticipation and instant mindless acceptance made for mass overreaction when this came out, but it does prove that the genteel Young has almost as many charms as the sloppy Young. Rhythmically it's a little wooden and Neil is guilty of self-imitation on "Alabama" and pomposity on "There's a World," his unbearable London Symphony Orchestra opus. But even the smallest songs have their gratifying moments and two are major, indeed--"The Needle and the Damage Done" and the (much abhorred by feminists as well as lovers of the London Symphony Orchestra) "Every Man Needs a Maid." B

>>127121098
Every Man Needs a Maid? LOL.

No new Led Zeppelin albums this year

>>127121079
It's ironic because Cuckgau was actually far kinder to Grand Funk than most critics. He was at least willing to give them a chance because he figured 50 million GFR fans can't be wrong.

>>127121183
man, Neil is running away with the game these days. the hell ever happened to Dylan?

>>127121213
he was also fairly kind to Led Zeppelin whereas you should hear what RSM said about them back then

I've been saying nasty things about Simon since 1967, but this is the only thing in the universe to make me positively happy in the first two weeks of February 1972. I hope Art Garfunkel is gone for good--he always seemed so vestigial, but it's obvious now that two-part harmony crippled Simon's naturally agile singing and composing. And the words! This is a professional tour of Manhattan for youth culture grads, complete with Bella Abzug, hard rain, and people who steal your chow fong. The self-production is economical and lively, with the guitars of Jerry Hahn and Stefan Grossman and Airto Moreira's percussion especially inspired. William Carlos Williams after the repression: "Peace Like a River." A+

June 17, 1972

Warning: critics' band, managed by Sandy Pearlman with occasional lyrics by R. Meltzer. Reassurance: the most musical hard rock album since Who's Next. (Well, that's less than six months, and this is not a great time for hard rock albums.) The style is technocratic psychedelic, a distanced, decisively post-Altamont reworking of the hallucinogenic guitar patterns of yore, with lots of heavy trappings. Not that they don't have a lyrical side. In "Then Came the Last Days of May," for instance, four young men ride out to seek their fortune in the dope biz and one makes his by wasting the other three. B+

Hey man, there's a load of baby killers coming back from Nam at the airport this afternoon. Wanna go down there and spit on them with me?

>>127121090
you like supertramp

>>127121407
Well, I mean they do put naked boobs on their album covers and all.

The pomposities of Tarkus and the monstrosities of the Mussorgsky homage clinches it. These guys are stupider than even their most pretentious fans. Really, anyone who buys a record that divides a. . .composition titled "The Endless Enigma" into two discrete parts deserves it. D+

holy shit!

Carl and the Passions--So Tough/Pet Sounds [Brother/Reprise, 1972]
They can't have much faith in the new one if they're loss-leading with an old one (the one that turned them into a cult band, now finally--how did we stand the wait?--available in its pristine mono form). And indeed, there's no reason they should. Despite the title, it's not some sort of primitive surf doowop--sounds a lot like Friends and Holland to me. Fairly pleasant, but even the highlights aren't all that hot: a nice Brian Wilson oeuvre called "Marcella" (sounds like Smiley Smile) and a silly gospel song for the Maharishi. C+

Their racial hostility is certainly preferable to the brotherly bromines of that other Detroit label but their taste in white people is suspect. Hence the strings (told you about their taste in white people), the double album that should have been a single, and programmatic lyrics (cf. "Miss Lucifer's Love"), not to mention letting the Process Church of the Final Judgement provide liner notes for two successive albums (reminding you that while satanism is a great antinominon metaphor it leads to murder, rape, etc.) I overlooked it on Maggot Brain because the music was so irresistible. But just remember, guys--as Hank Ballard said, "How are you gonna get respect if you haven't figured out how to cut your process?" C+

If a horse could sing in a monotone it would sound like Carly Simon, only the horse wouldn't rhyme "yacht" with "apricot" and "gavotte." Why does Mick Jagger want her? Why does James Taylor want her? Come to think of it, what does she want with either of them? C

What did everyone pick up this year?

More than anything else this fagged-out masterpiece is difficult--how else describe music that takes weeks to understand? Weary and complicated, barely afloat in its own drudgery, it rocks with extra power and concentration as a result. More indecipherable than ever, submerging Mick's voice under layers of studio murk, it piles all the old themes--sex as power, sex as love, sex as pleasure, distance, craziness, release--on top of an obsession with time more than appropriate in over-thirties committed to what was once considered a youth music. Honking around sweet Virginia country and hipping through Slim Harpo, singing their ambiguous praises of Angela Davis, Jesus Christ, and the Butter Queen, they're just war babies with the bell bottom blues. A+

>>127121724
Original case of the entire arts-entertainment complex throwing its support behind an democratic candidate and having it blow up in their faces spectacularly.

If you didn't hate the Osmonds already this will make you hate them even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIUU40nOUmM

>drag some old washed hacks from their Vegas lounge gig to feature on this train wreck

>>127121767
I mean, they kind of already did that with RFK only for that to end rather badly too.

>>127121205
boo hoo no wigger rock this year

>>127121786
Nah the Stones got you covered on that one.

Yes, folks, Steve has actually deigned to cooperate with real musicians in a real band. Some cuts of this four-sided set even echo in your head when you play them a lot. Only problem is you're never quite sure where the echoes are coming from. C-

Word on the street is he's preparing for a comeback

>>127121773
Nobody ever said Mormons getting together with Jews would lead any place good.

>>127120994 (OP)
The new T. Rex and Bowie albums are bangers m8

>>127121829
you ever heard that Warren Zevon fella? Jewish Mormon out of LA, seems pretty based

>>127121767
And they're about to do it again in New York.

Hey, I've got an idea--how about sending B. into the studio to do a blues album? We could bring in a tuba like Taj Mahal, hire some decent rhythm players this time, call up a coupla good white guitarists--B.'ll cut the shit out of them, of course, but it can't hurt. He's got a great new iceman-cometh song, he's always good for a jam or two, and if we have to we can always do "Sweet Sixteen" again. Roots, get back, it's a take. B+

Back when he was an acoustic warrior who spelled his group's name in full, Marc Bolan was referred to as "progressive", meaning he was as foolish as Donovan but not as famous. A freak hit turned him into a singer of rhythmic fairy tales for British prepubes, exactly what he was always suited for, while the great "Bang a Gong" explores the rock mythos, which has its limits but sure beats unicorns. A few more readymades and I'll stop complaining about fey. B

>>127122098
It's rude to make the listener assume they're getting Black Sabbath when they see that cover and instead end up with 1910 Fruitgum Company.

Bro what the fuck, why is music so good right now?

>>127122098
BANG A GONG GET IT OOOONNNNNN

>>127122280
>one good track and a bunch of filler

This is heavy but it's also fast which finally means real rock-and-roll after the attempted progress and hyperboogie. Dan Hartman replacing hyperthyroid Jerry Lacroix on vocals, who knows enough about songs to come up with "Free Ride" and Ronnie Montrose, who knows enough about guitar to get by. And Edgar wears lipstick, eye shadow, and a cheek stud on the cover. B

Bluesy soul records aren't getting any easier to come by, and who am I to complain about one with the great B.B. King contributing guitar parts? "It Takes a Young Girl" and "Better Lovin' Man," which sound like standards that somehow passed me by, more than make up for the clumsy "Summer in the City" and the rereremade "Five Long Years." But the singer obviously isn't getting any younger, and when he begs comparison with Lorraine Ellison and Howard Tate on "You Don't Know Nothing About Love" he's risking more than he ought to. Which is admirable, in a way. B+

With its all-time ugly vocal, kiddie chorus turned synthesizer, and crazy, dropped-out thrust, the title hit is as raw and clever as it gets, but this album is soundtrack. Some of it's even copped--with attribution, yet--from West Side Story. For a while I comforted myself with the thought that West Side Story is more a rock musical than Hair, at least in spirit. But the orchestral homages to Uncle Lennie ruin the effect. B-

>>127122009
>He's got a great new iceman-cometh song
I actually like the 90s remake more but that's just me.

>>127122463
Yes that title is the perfect summation of her artistic vision.

This is the music "no one heard" at the Garden party because Rick "didn't look the same." Despite such titles as "Are You Really Real?" and "A Flower Opens Gently By" he has some reason to pout if music rather than songs is the operative concept--the band is concentrated, jagged. Best music: Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking About You." Second-best song: Rick's own "So Long Mama." B-

Withers has created the most credible persona of any of the upwardly mobile soul singers, avoiding Marvin Gaye's occasional vapidity, Donny Hathaway's overstatement, and Curtis Mayfield's racial salesmanship. He sounds straight, strong, compassionate. And don't be fooled by "Lean on Me"--he's also plenty raunchy and he can rock dead out. The self-production here is adamantly spare, with Ray Jackson furnishing the hook of the year on "Use Me," one of the few knowledgeable songs about sex our supposedly sexy music has ever produced. A

>>127122463
First album in 5 years and didn't disappoint for a second.

>bunch of random nursery rhymes
>one token social consciousness song just to show we're down with what's cooking in 1972
>gatefold with a bunch of massively self-indulgent childhood photos of her

>>127122429
I love "Frankenstein" but that really charted in '73.

>>127121435
Yuck. 3/10 album

>>127122711
Of course he'd love a femdom song, why wouldn't he?

>>127122573
It stops being fun past 16.

>>127121098
if you're Christgau you marry her lol

>>127122500
It's ok but he peaked in the 60s.

Well it's only 26 years until Chappell Roan is born. Enjoy it while it lasts.

>>127122693
IF I WAS IN CHARGE OF CREATING MEMORIES

this pinochet guy seems really loyal bros, allende chads.. were winning so much..

Wow this was fookin great. David Bowie might really be someone.

>>127123136

>>127122463
no year larp is safe from her, huh?

>>127122429
>leader, namesake and face of the band is not the main singer or even songwriter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-AluhRNDxc

The Killer's back inna house!

John is here transmuted from dangerous poseur to likable pro. Paul Buckmaster and his sobbing strings are gone. Bernie Taupin has settled into some comprehensible (even sharp and surprising) lyrics, and John's piano, tinged with the music hall, is a rocker's delight. Also, he does have a knack for the hook. If like me you love "Rocket Man" despite all your initial misgivings, try "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself," about the state of teenage blues, or "Slave," about slavery. A-

>>127123348
Well as anon said it had been some years since she recorded anything so the late 60s-early 70s would have been safe, yes.

In its own way, this is audacious stuff right down to the stubborn wispiness of its sound, and Bowie's actorly intonations add humor and shades of meaning to the words. Which are often witty and rarely precious, offering an unusually candid and detailed vantage on the rock star's world. Admittedly, for a long time I wondered who cared, besides lost kids for whom such access feels like privilege. The answer is, someone like Bowie--a middlebrow fascinated by the power of a highbrow-lowbrow form. B+

This live triple is where everybody except certified Grateful Dead freaks gets off the bus, but I've still got my card and it ain't a joker. Sure they're beginning to sound very complacent--the whole "Morning Dew" side could be scratched, and the long version of "Truckin'" proves conclusively that the song doesn't truck much. But the best stuff here--the ensemble playing on "Sugar Magnolia," the movement of "China Cat Sunflower," Garcia's It Hurts Me Too" solo, the lyric to "Ramble On Rose"--is a lot more than laid-back good. It's laid-back brilliant. Most of the rest, patchy though it may be, is laid-back good. Also, I like the way they sing. (And write.) B+

Billie Holiday is uncoverable, possibly the greatest singer of the century, yet the fact is that Ross's versions--which occupy only two sides of this soundtrack album--are intensely listenable. That's the word I want, because it doesn't fit Holiday, who either seizes your full attention or disturbs you in the background. While copying Holiday's phrasing and intonation, Ross smoothes them out, making the content easier to take without destroying it altogether. This may be a desecration and a deception, but it speaks to the condition of a ghetto child who's always had a talent for not suffering, for willing herself up and through. Not every singer turns into a junkie, after all. B+

>>127123635
but it's great background music for a long car ride

An out-and-out rip-off, which is fine--the Woofman has always been more extreme than human dee-jays--but still costs you money. Remember, the radio is free. E

I fucking hate you.

I'LL RETUHN AGAYN TO FIGHT ANUVVA DAAAAY

Supporters will doubtlessly hear two human beings expressing themselves but all I can make out are a couple of stars trapped in their own mannerisms, filtering material through a style. Even "Blacknotes" and "Stranger's Room", fine melodies that look good on paper, sound completely flat. C

>>127122354
the drugs were starting to get to them by this point

Just how bad can a Bo Diddley album be? Well, a lot worse for one--it might feature strings or Bo's cover versions of the latest top 20 hits but fortunately he and his handlers Johnny Otis and Pete Welding know better. On the other hand, just how good can a Bo Diddley album be? Unlike Chuck Berry, who must also transcend a certain musical homogenity, Bo hasn't written a whole songbook full of great lyrics and his musical homogenity, such as it is, is a lot more homogenous than Chuck's. C+

James Taylor with panache. C+

>>127124275
and a stache! :DD

This band's defenders--fans of manual dexterity, aggregate IQ, "stagecraft," etc.--claim this as an improvement. And indeed, Tony Banks's organ crescendos are less totalistic, Steve Hackett's guitar is audible, and Peter Gabriel's lyrics take on medievalism, real-estate speculators, and the history of the world. This latter is the apparent subject of the 22:57-minute "Supper's Ready," which also suggests that Gabriel has a sense of humor and knows something about rock and roll. Don't expect me to get more specific, though--I never even cared what "Gates of Eden" "really meant." C

>>127124338
ME AND THE OHIO PLAYERS ARE GONNA TELL YOU ABOUT A WORM
HE'S THE FUNKIEST WORM IN THE WORLD

>>127123348
Technically we could also do this.

Sometimes her complaints about the men who have failed her sound petulant, but the appearance of petulance is one of the prices of liberation. If this has none of the ingratiating ease of Blue, that's because Mitchell has smartened up--she's more wary, more cynical. Perhaps as a result, the music, which takes on classical colors from Tom Scott's woodwinds and Bobby Notkoff's chamber strings, is more calculated. Where the pretty swoops of her voice used to sound like a semiconscious parody of the demands placed on all female voices and all females, these sinuous, complex melodies have been composed to her vocal contours with palpable forethought. They reward stubborn attention with almost hypnotic appeal. A

>>127123348
hey relax at least she hasn't had a single since the very early 60s

>>127124549
>Sometimes her complaints about the men who have failed her sound petulant, but
What else do women have to sing about?

How on Earth someone whose concept of beauty is so well-bred can pretend to visionary politics has always baffled me, but for starters she could try writing verses where the subject follows the predicate. Seriously, not just "the people" but plain people say "Scattered upon the four winds", not "Upon the four winds scattered." Actually, they don't say that either, but more next time. C-

the great thing about 1972 is that the charts have absolutely no rap anywhere on them

(Very) occasional songs as part of the soundtrack to the Barbet Schroeder film La Vallee. The movie got buried, now skip the soundtrack. C

Like most aesthetes, Newman is an ironist. This is fine when he's singing about human relationships, which tend to be problematic, but it's rarely sufficient morally to the big political and religious themes he favors these days. If 12 Songs was Winesburg, Ohio (or even Dubliners) transported to 1970 Los Angeles, Sail Away sometimes has the tone of Tom Lehrer transported to 1972 Haiphong, where he has no more business than Bob Hope. But never before has Newman managed to yoke his orchestral command to his piano, and I hope the leap in listenability will attract some new admirers. Also, the cosmic ironies do fit the title song, in which a slave trader becomes the first advertising man, or perhaps--this is not Tom Lehrer stuff--Melville's confidence-man, for a masterpiece even stranger and more masterful than Newman's other masterpieces. A-

>>127124990
>Wait a minute, Randy Newman sucks ass!
>Yeah, what were we thinking?

>>127120994 (OP)
this Black Sabbath band is just tuneless noise, this shit will go nowhere and influence nobody.

In which she makes a silk purse out of Silk Purse, not such a great idea--smoother, better crafted, more beautiful, and decidedly less interesting. Hardcore country songs are down to three, and here's the giveaway: four entries from the Sensitivity Squad (Jackson Browne, Livingston Taylor, and the Erics Kaz and Andersen). B-

fuck, Feminem is born this year

>>127122463
I assume all 20 copies sold of this were bought by her relatives or else Bob Thiele was just using them as tax writeoffs.

>>127125056
I'm not taking this "I Fall To Pieces" over the original, no thanks.

>>127122659

>>127122429
Thank the Simpsons for introducing you to this one.

>>127122354
imagine being filtered by Vol. 4 of all things

so they finally go in a good direction with Future Games and jump to putting out their greatest record by far in the span of a year. nothing but improvement since the addition of this Bob Welch guy.

The usual steadily unpretentious hard rock. This one sounds a little sodden and listless at first, but it does come on. Nice extension of a simple, intelligent concept, recommended to the group's fans. B

These guys certainly boogie more than the bluegrass sellouts who populate the vaguely country-oriented mainstream of contemporary American rock, and they certainly write more memorable songs. But this culminates the reactionary individualism that country-rock has come to epitomize in the counterculture. What's worse, the country orientation bespeaks not roots but a lack of them, so that in the end the product is suave and synthetic--brilliant, but false. And not always all that brilliant, either. B

christaeu spamming is the worst part of these threads

>>127126010
why do anons also always post shitty albums by over the hill 50s singers that nobody bought?

>>127121724
McGovern is BRAT

>>127128358
and act like people under the age of 80 give a shit about them too

>>127128736
but does anyone under 80 give a shit about 60s One Direction though?

Half caterwauling live weirdness with the Mothers of Invention, half tuneless topical rock songs with Elephant's Memory, this is where Lennon risks his charisma instead of investing it. I like its rawness and its basic good-heartedness, though J&Y's politics are frequently condescending. But if agitprop is one thing and wrong-headed agitprop another, agitprop that doesn't reach its intended audience is hardly a thing at all. C

>>127128899
Only Beatle to have an album out in 72.

>>127128869
>One Direction
who?

Thirdhand heavy-metal fantasies borrowed from Led Zeppelin and hooked to some clean, powerful arrangements. Okay stuff. B-

>>127125672
>What's worse, the country orientation bespeaks not roots but a lack of them, so that in the end the product is suave and synthetic--brilliant, but false
You know Don Henley was actually from Texas, right?

"Hasbrook Heights" is no "Walk On By," but it is an ambitious, honest song about the pleasures of the suburbs, where her chosen audience resides. Unfortunately, it's outnumbered by ambitious, dishonest songs directed at the same audience. Whether Hal David takes care of the liberal pieties himself ("Be Aware") or passes them along from Jacques Brel ("If We Only Have Love") and Lesley Duncan ("Love Song"), he's selling lies so blatant and boring that even his chosen audience must know it. And while Burt Bacharach's four arrangements (unlike those of Bob James and Don Sebesky, who get three each) are more tart and surprising than ever, too often he underlines "meaning" with the little dramatic touches of someone who'd like to get into something classier than the record business, like the Broadway stage. C+

"Jackie Wilson said it was reet petite," he shouts for openers, and soon has me believing that "I'm in heaven when you smile" says as much about the temporal and the eternal as anything in Yeats. "Listen to the lion," he advises later, referring to that lovely frightening beast inside each of us, and midway through the eleven-minute cut he lets the lion out, moaning and roaring and growling and stuttering in a scat extension that would do Leon Thomas proud. The point being that words--which on this album are as uneven as the tunes--sometimes say less than voices. Amen. A-

From the drag queen on the cover to the fop finery in the centerfold to the polished deformity of the music on the record, this celebrates the kind of artifice that could come to seem as unhealthy as the sheen on a piece of rotten meat. Right now, though, it's decorated with enough weird hooks to earn an A for side one. Side two leans a little too heavily on the synthesizer (played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno) without the saving grace of drums and bassline. B+

>>127128358
>why do anons also always post shitty albums by over the hill 50s singers that nobody bought?
I don't remember that. Or maybe I just didn't notice.

>>127122098
insane that he can write this with a straight face then shill derivative shit like the dolls

Those Ozzy guy's lifestyle is too crazy. He won't make it to 1980.