Tonight I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot waiting for the GF. There was nothing on the radio. I started thinking about the 'old' days when I was little (early 70's). Man, they had some great songs. Some that came to mind:

Sundown
Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Time In A Bottle
Cats In The Cradle
Bennie & The Jets
Black Water
Horse With No Name

..you get the idea. I'm not sure what category you'd put those in (rock, pop, etc...), but man were they great songs to sing along to. It really sucks we don't have those kind of songs today. Almost everything is crap that you'll never hear a year from now. Am I alone here, or do you think the early 70's were loaded with timeless classics???

List some fave 70's tunes...Looking for some ideas for a compilation disc. Thanks...

I'm a child of the 80's but I agree with you. Nothing beats Classic Rock

The 70's had the very worst of music and the very best of music.

Unfortunately what we view as the culture of the mid to late 70's and what people equate to what the 70's was about was centered around the worst of music and that was disco.

I suppose every era has it's really, really bad music but these days it's not as identifiable with a movement or a culture. I would say this era's real bad music is R&B. That music is just sickening. Sure there are your beacons of hope in the R&B world but for the most part it is filled with Puff Daddies or P Diddies or whatever.

The decade defining music for the 60's was definitely pop rock, the 70's was disco, and for the 80's it was split in the middle between hair band music and the electronic movement.

The 90's was such a hodgepodge that I wonder what you could say was the defining music. Maybe "grunge" music, I don't know.

Two words: Black Sabbath

A-Friggin'-Men!

I saw an interview with legendary drummer Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, etc.) and he said the reason the late `60s to the mid `70s was the golden age of rock was because record labels actually encouraged bands to sound different than everyone else. They encouraged creativity and originality. And if you made a list of all the "classic" artists of that period, you'll see that almost all of them have a distinctive sound that is unique.
The last decade or so that isn't the case. If someone breaks it big, then the labels scramble to sign 100 copycats to try to capitalize on the "current hot sound".

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Here are some others in line with what you’ve listed. I picked songs that I wouldn’t mind hearing on the radio, you know how some songs that were good back then just don’t play well today.

Taxi – Harry Chapin
December 1963 (Oh, What A Night) -- The Four Seasons
Night Moves – Bog Seger
Brandy (You're a Fine Girl) - Looking Glass
Chevy Van - Sammy Johns
One Tin Soldier – Coven
Blind Feeling – Gary Wright *
Golden Country – REO Speedwagon
New York State of Mind – Billy Joel
I'm Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight – Atlanta Rhythm Section
Dead Skunk - Loudon Wainright III
Isn't It Time - The Babys
Driver's Seat - Sniff 'n' the Tears
Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield
Spill the Wine - Eric Burdon
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) - Bob Dylan
Stanglehold - Ted Nugent
If I Could Read Your Mind - Gordon Lightfoot

* This is off of his “The Dream Weaver” album, I always liked this song better than “Dream Weaver”.

Every time I hear this song my mind drifts to a skating rink I was skating in when I heard Croce died and they played that song.

I'll be 52 in a couple weeks. The early 70s(1970-75) is my favorite era of music. My high school years. There was still a dividing line between AM and FM. Not until 1976 did the barrier start to come down and album rock artists either disappeared or their music became more commercial, breaking into AM and giving birth to AOR( I blame the first Boston album and to a lesser degree the first Bad Company album).

On AM you had:
all the America hits-Horse With No Name, Ventura Highway, Sister Golden Hair, etc,
Paul Simon-Kodachrome, Mother and Child Reunion, Me And Julio.., etc.
Rod Stewart-Maggie May, You Wear It Well
Jim Croce
Three Dog Night
Badfinger-No MNatter What, Day After Day
Todd Rundgren-Hello It's Me, I Saw The Light, Couldn't I Just Tell You
Elton John-Crocodile Rock, Honky Cat, Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
ELP-Lucky Man, From The Beginning, Still You Turn Me On
Linda Ronstadt-You're No Good
Ace-How Long
Run Run Run-Jo Jo Gunne
Loggins and Messina
Carole King-It's Too Late, Jazz Man, Sweet Seasons, So Far Away
Neil Young-Herart of Gold, Old Man
CSNY- Our House, Teach Your Children
Ten Years After-I'd Love To Change The World
the last days of CCR
the last days of Guess Who
McCartney-Admiral Halsey, Another Day, Junior's Farm,Listen What The Man Said
Lennon-Imagine, Mind Games, Instant Kharma
Rare Earth
Ozark Mt. Daredevils-Jackie Blue
The Buoys-Timothy
Moody Blues-The Story in Your Eyes
Alice Cooper-Eighteen
Cat Stevens
Bread
Jaggerz-The Papper
Right Place Wrong Time-Dr. John
great soul
Backstabbers
Smiling Faces Sometimes
Me and Mrs. Jones
Ain't No Sunshine
Let's Stay Together
Give Me Just A Little More Time
Too Late To Turn Back Now
I could list for hours

FM classic rock hadn't really kicked in yet. There was underground radio similiar to deep tracks on sirius/xm. I listened to Beaker Street on KAAY Little Rock, AR. Mon-Fri. 11pm-2am. Otherwise you bought the albums for

REO
STYX
KANSAS
FOGHAT
YES
GENESIS
ZEPPELIN
BLACK SABBATH
HUMBLE PIE
SAVOY BROWN
BLUE OYSTER CULT
FREE
BOWIE
NAZARETH
GRATEFUL DEAD
AEROSMITH
MONTROSE
KISS
ZZ TOP
T REX
MOTT THE HOOPLE
and many others

Almost forgot
DOOBIES-Long Train Runnin', Listen To The Music
STEELY DAN-Do It Again, Reeling In The Years
JACKSON BROWNE-Doctor My Eyes
the pre Hotel California Eagles

Spill the Wine was a War song sung w/ Eric Burdon.

Those song exists. You just lack the time it takes to find them and/or the open-mindedness to recognize them as great songs when you hear them.

It's not an insult. Ten years ago I was listening to a new album every day. Now it's one every two weeks, if that.

Bowie's "Heroes"
Eno's "Another Green World"
The Ramones "Rocket to Russia"
Amon Duul II's "Wolf City"
King Crimson's "Lark's Tongue in Aspic"
Harmonia's "Deluxe"
Leonard Cohen's "Songs of Love and Hate"
Television's "Marquee Moon"
Roxy Music's "Siren"
Nick Lowe's "Jesus of Cool"
Talking Heads' "More Songs about Buildings and Food"
Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express"
Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic"
Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain"
The Clash's debut
Hawkwind's "Hall of the Mountain Grill"
Neil Young's "Zuma"
New York Doll's debut
Genesis' "Foxtrot"
Randy Newman's "Good Ol' Boys"
Sparks "Propaganda"
Big Star's "Radio City"
Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures"
Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken"
The Stooges "Raw Power"
T. Rex's "The Slider"
The Jam's "In the City"

Man has peaked in music. The start of this century has changed in many areas of entertainment.

I know it's fashionable to hate disco, but give me "Stayin' Alive" and Donna Summer over any of that Nickelback crap that's out there and especially over 95% of the mainstream hip hop music out there. Even rap artists make fun of disco but 90% of their hit songs wouldn't exist without those Chic songs they always sample.

I don't think anyone hates disco anymore. I think it has already gone from hated and mocked, to ironically liked, to embraced under a different name ("dance music"), to becoming highly influential and inspiring all kinds of music, to being actively embraced by hipsters and directly incorporated in their mucis to gradually gaining mainstream fans for the original stuff from the seventies. The whole "disco sucks" thing is way past dead.

True but there are still some people who still thumb their noses at disco because it "hurt" their precious rock music, when IMO, hip hop has done more to hurt rock than disco music ever did. Hip hop replaced rock a long time ago with what the "cool kids" are listening to.

I still see a lot of people bashing disco.... especially funny when you see people who listen to people like Britney and Christina saying "disco still sucks" when they would've both jumped on the disco bandwagon if they were around 30 years ago. Some years back in college I took a "History of Rock and Roll" class for an easy A and when it came time for disco, the teacher made no attempt to hide how much he hates disco music to this day, and it pisses him off that so many students know all those Bee Gees songs so many years later... even tho for someone who teaches the history of rock music to not know that The Bee Gees were around for a decade before they started making dance music is interesting in itself.

As good as it gets.


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Some good music in the '70s, but I prefer the '80s.

Never understood how in the late 70's young whites went on this disco hate, but then in the 80's they left rap music alone.
As it turns out rap music did more harm than disco ever did.
Back in the 70's the reason they hated disco was:
1) white burnouts couldn't dance
2) rock legends were making disco music also
And they were afraid that the way of rock music was going to change.
Kinda what happened with hair heavy metal in the early 90's when Nirvana hit the scene. If anything it was soul, R & B music the changed and looks like that won' ever be back. Instead now of 70's rap samples we get drum machine sounds in black music. And no music about loving a woman, but what a hoe she is.

Not everyone hated disco. It had a great run and some great music. I loved it. I suppose if simple, fun dance music was not up your alley that would make sense.

What you're referring to as R&B is actually hip hop/rap which is a very different segment. True R&B (with the exception of Alicia Keys and maybe a few others) has fallen out of popularity with the masses.

R&B hit it's peak in the early 70's with "Me & Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul and "I'll Be Around" by The Spinners. Man!!

To this day I still think the period from 1975 to 1985 was the best. Thanks in part to three letters....MTV

I like their 60s stuff more

Was born in 1972 and consider myself a "child of the 80s", as far as my musical memories go. Most somgs I hear from the 80s bring back many memories, as I was too young to remember much from the mid-to-late 70s.

There are some great lists in this thread, and over the last few years I have found myself listening to a lot of 70s music myself. Aside from the Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, etc.,. I love the music of some of those storyteller types, guys like Gerry Raferty and Al Stewart. They didn't just sing, they told a tale in so many of their songs. Some of the lyrics there just blow me away. And of course there are so many more ... I just haven't seen those guys mentioned here. (or maybe i misesd it)