Fifty years later . . .
 

Okay 2021 ... with your iPhones, tablets, pitch corrections & all, and fifty years to build on - show us watcha got.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net...02&oe=6028A724

'Linda McCartney - Ram' ... huh? Pretty sure that was husband Paul's second solo album.

Wikipedia think it is a Paul & Lynda McCartney album and she is credited with co-writing 6 of the 12 tracks.

Some great ones in that line up, but here’s another correction:
4 Way Street was a CSN&Y album. ;-)
Some of the best live acoustic sounds ever recorded are on that record, by Young especially. :)

Yes, probably more than fifty Tears!


1971 -An exciting year for me. My own flat (albeit a West London hovel) a beautiful Swedish girlfriend. Saturdays in Kings Road.
the only albums there that resonated for me, was "Blue" by Joni Mitchell, and "If I could Only Remember My Name" by David Crosby.
I was reminded of that era by a long, frank and thorough documentary on Crosby last night, including much input by the man himself and acknowledging his many faults and failings.

Two comments on age and time. I am a late aged parent with one in college and twins in high school.

The parents are all digital but my daughter thinks the fruit crates of albums I have are neat. Most of my listening is robots feeding me new stuff based on history.

My kids will listen to things from this era where I smile for their interest but I am usually tired of hearing same stuff so many times in my life and tired of basic progressions.

Get my humor. Maybe I'm tired of I, IV, V blues and rock because of my own chronic mediocre skills. At a deeper level, I might be tired of my cohort overall - thus much of the music - for so many out of shape or near dead brains, bodies and ideas. I've got a problem being a kid stuck in a sexagenarian's body.

Lots of wonderful music on that list, but the one from 1971 that had the biggest impact on me wasn't listed: Little Feat's eponymously named first album.

I became fourteen that year. I was given my first guitar on the previous Christmas. It was the dawning of an age of excitement for me because I finally was able to make my own music. The following year 1972 contains some of my favorite music. What amazes me is how fresh and exciting some of that music still sounds to me.

And... three quarters of those bands and artists have lost members to mortality, many multiple members. There is only one member of Uriah Heep alive, Mick Box. Only two members of the Allman Brothers survive. Only the drummer of ELP made it. And the list goes on and on.

Bob

That was the year the John Denver released "Poems, Prayers, and Promises" with "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as the lead single. The cover photo with a Guild 12-string with only the MOP peak logo started me on a search for a Guild guitar that resulted in a 1969 D-35.

The biggest influence of those albums for me, albeit years after it was released, is Led Zeppelin IV. Masterpiece.

I'll also add Black Sabbath's Master of Reality.

Well that is quite a list, 1971 was memorable in that I graduated from University, early Summer, worked an awful but well paying temporary summer job (still in the U.K. at that time) then took a flight to Athens, then overnight ferry to the island of Crete and after a few weeks there another flight to Israel and another overnight hitchhike ride thru the Negev desert south to Eilat on the Red Sea where I lounged at the Peace Cafe and listened to many of these albums....

Looking at that list brings me to believe I like the music of the sixties more fondly as a whole. Man, I'm getting old.

I turned 16 in 1971, and that list is a wonderful generator of nostalgia and great memories to this old geezer! Is it just me, or did "pop/rock" music have so much more variety and great melodies than we hear from newer stuff today.

Same concept, differrent guy. 1971 - graduated from University in May. Worked a fun and well paying temporary summer job... then took a 45' sloop out to sea. Missed all the new music from September '71 to early '73.

What I remember from '71 is Intel...oh...and a girlfriend.....whew!

That's just an amazing list. Just another reminder that "The 60s" really didn't end until 1972 or so. For my taste, and that's obviously all it is, there was more good pop-rock-blues-R&B-jazz released from 1968-1972 than any other period of time. Jazz was better earlier, but there was a ton of innovation and fusion stuff happening in those years, with Miles, as usual, leading the way. I was too young to appreciate most of it at the time, I turned 9 in '68 and 13 in '72, so it took me a few or several more years to get into a lot of it. And there was plenty of great music released before and after that period. But there was SOOOOO much classic stuff released in those years, no other period ever came close...

-Ray

Very interesting list!

I also turned 14 that year but I don't remember owning any of the ones on this list. I'd been playing (at) guitar for 2 years and mostly tried to play the songs I heard on the radio.

Nevertheless, this list has some great music but the fact it lists albums that are now officially 50 years old makes me realize how old I've become.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have made it this far, but things like this remind me that there are probably far fewer years in front of me than the there are behind.

Best,
PJ

I can't join in. I was 2. I suppose I could celebrate sleeping through the night, having a full head of hair and being well on my way to being potty trained.;)

Hey Neil, did any of those albums influence you when you got older? I too was too young at that time but years later I gained an appreciation for some of it.

I turned 20 that year... so turning 70 this year :-( Great list. I owned a good half of the records on that list (and still have most of them) Zep, Genesis, ELP, Jethro Tull, Cat Stevens, Moody Blues, George Harrison and more. Pretty much all of it is as good now as it was then (to me, that is)

Some of my faves are on that list. I am a product of that time - I had every one of those albums on vinyl except for King Crimson, Genesis, Carly Simon, and Uriah Heep. Now I have digital copies of the same records, including the Uriah Heep. I think I'll listen to a couple of those today.

So true, I'd even say 1975 really. All the big 60's acts were still going strong then. The "changing of the guard" didn't really get going until the Ramones hit in '76 and to be honest, they weren't widely liked at the time. You would NEVER have heard the Ramones on commerical radio back then.

And btw, yeah, Ram is credited to both Paul and Linda. At least that's what it says on my copy, and I got it the week it came out.

From the moment the needle hit the groove I was hooked - The Yes Album.

I was 16 in '71 and playing in a band with my HS buds. I owned quite a few of those albums.

Thanks for posting.

I was born with less than two months remaining in the year. There was plenty of good music from that era, and there is really great music out today. You just have to dig a LOT deeper to find it b/c the music industry has changed how music is made, distributed, and marketed. I keep trying to find the good stuff and not settle solely on the past.

Well, I must be an outlier - I was 23 that year & didn't buy a single album off that list - too busy buying pre-war blues on Yazoo/Origin Jazz/Biograph etc, which was my whole musical environment of that time - did get around to noticing Little Feat & JJ Cale later on tho, for a brief interlude..

Well, a lot the subjective impact of art is due to the context it was created in (how society as a whole interacted with it) and with its listener's age at the time -- and it's pretty well established that the music that grabs us before age 30 or so has a particular stickiness with us throughout the rest of our lives.

These things mean that if any one of these LPs were not created in 1971 and instead through some quirk of fate created instead this year, they would be received and understood in entirely different ways. It's not the fault of any artist in 2021 that that can't duplicate that situation creating music now, nor it entirely the fault of my teenager that they don't hear those records the same way I (or my cohort) did then or now with the glow of memory/nostalgia.

Thinking of the early 70s music, one thing that occurred to me looking back about a decade later was that the role of recreational drugs cannot be underestimated in how by only a few months later than this period (in my estimation) the quality of "rock music" (including music by these same artists in many cases) dropped off. This is a complex subject, and in some cases classic recreational drugs like alcohol slowly degraded some artists creativity. Heroin had its impact on Jazz even earlier, but that extended to rock. The exact plus/minus for the use of psychedelics by artists is complicated. But the simplest chemical reason for what I saw looking back in the 80s for the drop off in accomplished innovation was the rise of cocaine.

In '71 I was married for a year, we were in our first apartment. I quit playing professionally once I got married (got back into 15 years later). To me 1971 musically was Carole King, James Taylor, Philly soul music and Led Zeppelin. It was also about the birth of 'underground' FM radio (WDAS in Philly), playing Quicksilver Messenger, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and other 'alternative' album sounds.

1971 was a very good vintage for music and a very good years for me.
I was at uni and had just bought a used Les Paul Custom. (Late '60s
reissue.) Nice guitar. I had a J-45, not sure of the year.
Talk about tall cotton.
Paying $216 divided four ways for rent.
Uni tuition at the University of Houston was $117/semester.
My dad had just retired as a geologist and went independent.
He was making so much money as an independent geologist that he bought me a Ford pickup.

Mark

"Four Way Street" was what got me into acoustic guitars, especially Neil Young's songs. The year before, I had bought a Gibson SG Standard. "Cowgirl in the Sand" became my favorite song and I ended up trading the SG for a Yamaha FG300 eventually working my way up to a D-35.

Ahhh... the ‘70s. There will never be another decade like it musically. I hear what some of you are saying about the 60’s. However, coming of age during the ‘70s was nothing short of magical musically:wild::wild: