Fifty years later . . .

[Photojeep]

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

[Neil K Walk]

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.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

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.

[Daniel Grenier]

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)

[ghostnote]

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.

[Highroller]

Originally Posted by raysachs

That's just an amazing list. Just another reminder that "The 60s" really didn't end until 1972 or so ...

-Ray

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.

[Brucebubs]

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

[Bluside]

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.

[Pura Vida]

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.

[Eldergreene]

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..

[FrankHudson]

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.

[dougdnh]

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.

[kingofdogs1950]

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

[DanR]

"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.

[Feste]

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