If I had to pick a favourite year for music, hard as it is to alight on just one, I think I might have to go for 1970. it was a year of pop hippies, novelty treats and some great one hit wonders. It's all light, frothy and fun to me and pinpoints a childhood memory of my granny's pub on the outskirts of Southampton which she ran from '69-72, and the jukebox it used to have.
She would buy the used records from the man who came to change them for sixpence each, then share them out between me and my brother and my two cousins. Consquently we had loads of records at home, all more or less from 1970.
These included:
Young, Gifted and Black/Bob and Marcia
All Kinds of Everything/Dana
Wandrin' Star/Lee Marvin
Spirit In The Sky/Norman Greenbaum
Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)/Edison Lighthouse
Yellow River/Christie
In The Summertime/Mungo Jerry
Woodstock/Matthew's Southern Comfort
I Hear You Knocking/Dave Edmunds
Apeman/Kinks
The Iraelites/Desmond Dekker, still haning on from the year before.
We played them to death then and I still have them now. Very scratchy but with labels I can identify at 50ft and b-sides I can sing along to.
And from 71 you can't beat Devil's Answer by Atomic Rooster or anything by Middle of the Road.
And let's not forget 1970 was also good for Creedence, Three Dog Night, Herman's Hermits, and more. So everytime I hear anything from this era I get a warm glow.
6 comments:
Personally I'd got for 1986, but good choice-ing on your part!
86 would be in my top 10, along with 67, 80 and 84.
Have you got the Jon Savage compilation Meridian 1970? It's a more rock-centric take on the year, but pretty eclectic - everyone from Nick Drake and Meic Stevens to Little Feat and the James Gang.
I'd like to put in a vote for 1965, too - prime Beatles, Stones, Who, Animals, Yardbirds, Byrds, Dylan, Beach Boys...
I haven't TT but I've meaning to check it out. Thanks for jogging my memory.
Were they singles from a jukebox with the big hole in the middle that you needed a special adaptor to fill?
Indeed they were Clair. And now they fit in my own jukebox.
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