'76 to '79 was a great era in rock.

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They may not all be great but are at least decent offerings. If I truly wanted to make a list of crappy '76 albums "Black And Blue" would have been right at the top.

What's your point?

Probably 90% of the classic rock standards were never singles. I believe Zeppelin had 3, Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, D'yer M'ker/Over The Hills.... It was common in the 70s that when a band had a breakthrough the older albums were revisted by the record companies looking for singles. Aerosmith's first single was "Sweet Emotion" in summer of '75. Flopped. "Walk This Way" was released as single early '76. Hit. They then went back and released "Dream On" as single three years after album came out.
"Smoke On The Water" didn't hit radio until three years after the album. Nobody heard of Lynyrd Skynyrd until "Sweet Home Alabama" got on the radio. Only then did people discover there was an earlier album with a song called "Free Bird".
The Derek and The Dominos album flopped when it came out. Nobody heard it. Nobody bought it. The first Clapton album the same year was successful. One year later Atco put out a Clapton anthology with "Layla" on it. This is when people first discoved the song and album. It was almost 1972 by the time the song was popular.

Regarding the original topic, because of two songs. It amuses me when someone calls someone who wrote 2 songs like those a bad songwriter.

And the 1970s was the best decade for film and pretty great for rock music.

I think it's obvious based on some of the albums he listed.

I enjoy Frampton's guitar playing, but I can barely listen to Do You Feel Like I Do, mainly because of the crowd reaction to the stupid mouth thing. Every time he did something with it, they started cheering like he had just pulled a crib full of babies from a burning building. Good god, people, it's not that big a deal. It's just an effect, not the cure for cancer.

I'd like to add Howlin' Wind, the debut album by Gram Parker. A fantastic album and somewhat responsible for the Elvis Costello/Joe Jackson style hard edged new wave music that followed.

?! Black and Blue has some fantastic songs. Hand of Fate, Hey Negrita, Melody, Crazy Mama. Yeah, Memory Motel is embarrassing but I'd take the worst Rolling Stones songs over the best ZZ Top, Eagles, Steve Miller, or ELO songs.

I think you missed my point. In fact, if I were to pick a single decade of music as the single greatest of all time, it would easily be the seventies for me. Most of the music I listen to and love is rooted in the seventies and it wasn't on the radio back then. Punk, art rock, krautrock, funk, southern rock, proto-metal etc, etc, all had their heyday in the seventies. Bowie, The Cars, Roxy Music, Can, Neu!, P-Funk, Hawkwind, Suicide, Ramones, Big Star, early Yes, Meters, Sly Stone, Genesis, Herbie Hancock, Eno, Amon Duul II... even the commercial stuff like Boston's debut, Heart's first two albums, Deep Purple, Judas Priest's early stuff, The Allman's first few albums, Skynyrd. Hell, I'll even throw in Giorgio Morodor, disco-era Bee Gees, Sugarhill Gang and other early rap etc, etc, etc. All are sacred texts to me. I'm 38 and all of this is music that I've slowly discovered and appreciated over the years. You have to understand this stuff to understand what's happoening now, I get that.

A lot of you are saying how much music sucks now because of what you hear on the radio. My point is that what was actually played on commercial radio in the 70s also sucked. It's easy to cherry pick classics from a decade of music and forget the schlock that actually sold. It's also a little disingenuous to hold the stuff that's withstood the test of time up as representative of the entire decade when it wasn't even what sold best. Even the much maligned eighties had a crap load of great music but speaking as someone who was in his teens back then, I can assure you that a lot of shit was actually on the radio.

Also, to all of the classic rock fans poo-pooing today's music, have any of you heard anything by The Gaslight Anthem, The Hold Steady, My Morning Jacket or the Drive-by Truckers? It would be right up your alley and there's twenty other great bands like that around today. Venturing further afield, there's a shit ton of great music coming out every year these days. Because of the destruction of the record industry, you have to search around a bit to find it, but it's definitly there. Saying "music today sucks" just shows ignorance.

OK I missed your point. I was attempting to counter your shit list with a good(I seem to be taking some heatr about that) list of 76 music.

One current band I like alot is Too Slim and The Taildraggers. However, they may just be crap because they are kinda similar to ZZ Top.

I liked the 3 hits you hear on radio till this day and wondered myself back in the 70's the same thing.
Only thing I could think of is KISS ALIVE was big and this album came out live.

Hey, if you didn't see it, how do you know he wasn't saving a crib full of babies from a burning building?

BTW when you said "that stupid mouth thing", it took me 5 minutes to figure out you meant the talk box. I was like "Wow! The '70's must've really been out of control!"!

Ok, Steely Dan's The Royal Scam a shitty album?? Bowie's Station to Station? Zeppelin's Presence? Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak? 2112?? The Pretender??

I liked the Herd and Humble Pie, Frampton solo though? Kind of yuck

are you serious with some of these or is this a joke?

I *think* he was being facetious. At least I hope so.

There are plenty of people who think the whole classic rock era is garbage so I wouldn't be so sure.

This. I own every one of them. In fact I've bought them all twice. First on vinyl, then cd. 1976 was the year I graduated high school. Other stuff from 1976 I've purchased twice:

Wings At The Speed Of Sound
Wings Over America
Johnny Winyer Captured Live
Jefferson Starship-Spitfire
Stills Young Band-Long May You Run
Bob Seger-Live Bullet
Lynyrd Skynyrd-One From The Road
Rush-All The World's A Stage
Al Stewart-Year Of The Cat
The Song Remains The Same(3x on this one)
Bought Black and Blue on vinyl. Did not rebuy the cd. Borrowed a copy to get "Hand Of Fate" which is a great song.
Maybe I changed or the music did, but the follow ups from a lot of these artists is when things started to slide downhill.

A great Live double album that came out in 1976 -- J. Geils Band - Blow Your Face Out

Awesome live album for a great band -- just saw them last weekend in Boston

I knew what it was called, but "stupid mouth thing" sounded better in the context of my rant.

I generally like your posts and agree with you (and I'm around the same age as you, my older siblings had Frampton, he was washed up by the time I knew who he was), but I must disagree here.

I hate when people dismiss entire discographies. Like you, I grew up with ZZ Top doing the overpolished synth-heavy MTV tracks and those songs have been massacred due to heavy classic rock overplaying to where I can say I'm fine living the rest of my life never hearing Gimme All Your Lovin' or Sharp Dressed Man again, but some of the 70's stuff is really good and holds up. I don't like "Don't Let Me Down" much as its overplayed but ELO actually have some excellent pop nuggets in their catalog.

Yeah, I agree nothingfails, there's always some redeeming bits to choose from when looking at any given artist's entire discography. Last Train from London and Secret Messages are some of the lesser known ELO songs and since they are not overplayed, I still enjoy them.