Following the success of their tour to support their previous album, The Yes Album (1971), the band regrouped in London to work on a follow-up. Early into the sessions, keyboardist Tony Kaye was fired over his reluctance to learn more synthesizers and was replaced with Rick Wakeman of the Strawbs, whose experience with a wider…

Wrapped up in a mess of contradictions, Surf’s Up defined the Beach Boys’ tumultuous career better than any other album.

Lennon is back for another great album with it’s iconic song for all the dreamers. Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today… Aha-ah… Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for…

With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones.

Forty-five years ago, on March 11th, 1971, the Allman Brothers Band took the stage at Bill Graham’s vaunted Fillmore East Theater in New York for the first of a series of shows that are among the most celebrated in rock history. The Allmans weren’t even supposed to be the headliners.

Of the many wonderful blaxpoitation soundtracks to emerge during the early ’70s, Shaft certainly deserves mention as not only one of the most lasting but also one of the most successful. We can dig it!  At the 1972 Grammy Awards, “Theme from Shaft” won the awards for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical and Best Instrumental Arrangement…

This album will give you chills. Amazing!  It is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 25 million copies sold worldwide. In the United States, it has been certified Diamond by the RIAA with more than 10 million copies sold.[3] It received four Grammy Awards in 1972, including Album of the Year

By 1970, the Who had obtained significant critical and commercial success branching out to one of the first rock opera’s Tommy but they had started to become detached from their original youthful mod/rocker audience with their heady ambitions projects. The group had also started to drift apart from manager Kit Lambert, owing to his preoccupation…

Despite the hit single, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” the album showed the limits of the Bee Gees’ talents as songwriters and of their appeal as album artists. We also figure out which one of the brothers we really have a problem with.

Their third time out proved the charm — The Yes Album constituted a de facto second debut, introducing the sound that would carry them forward across the next decade or more. Prog is here. Prog is real.

The central theme of “What’s Going On” and the album of the same name came from Marvin Gaye’s own life. When his brother Frankie returned from Vietnam, Gaye noticed that his outlook had changed. He put himself in his brother’s shoes and wrote a song that stands among the most tuneful works of consciousness-raising in…

Having achieved great success with their 1969 album Stand! and performance at Woodstock, Sly & the Family Stone were due to have submitted an album of new recordings to Epic Records by 1970. However, Sly Stone missed several recording deadlines, worrying CBS executive Clive Davis, and a Greatest Hits album was released in an eighteen-month…

one of four high-profile albums released by each member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Youngin the wake of their chart-topping Déjà Vu album. There is a subtle beauty but also a lackadaisical approach.

Jethro Tull were a unique phenomenon in popular music history. Their mix of hard rock, folk melodies, blues licks, surreal, impossibly dense lyrics, and overall profundity defied easy analysis, but that didn’t dissuade fans from giving them 11 gold and five platinum albums. At the same time, critics rarely took them seriously, and they were…

In the second half of 1967 and through to early 1968, when still part of Pink Floyd, Barrett’s behavior became increasingly erratic and unpredictable. Many report having seen him on stage with the group during this period, strumming on one chord through an entire concert or not playing at all. We discussion why is this…

An excellent record, Abraxas would be considered a marketing exec’s worst nightmare. But at the dawn of the 1970s, this unorthodox mix of rock, jazz, salsa, and blues proved quite successful. Wonderful cover and yes , he later became famous for smooth.

McCartney has an endearingly ragged, homemade quality that makes even its filler and there is a lot of filler and ideas but maybe not complete songs.

When people use the term “singer/songwriter” (often modified by the word “sensitive”) in praise or in criticism, they’re thinking of James Taylor.  Although this singer songwriter is one of the best selling and most influence, we find some faults in the album and it’s scattered approach that don’t always seem to play to Taylor’s strengths.

Producer Don Gallucci (of the Kingsmen) took the approach that the Stooges were a powerhouse live band, and their best bet was to recreate the band’s live set with as little fuss as possible. That was the best idea as the Stooges never sounded more wild and raw!  We made it to Episode 200! Thank…

John Barleycorn Must Die moved beyond the jamming that had characterized some of Traffic’s earlier work to approach the emerging field of jazz-rock. And that helped the band to achieve its commercial potential; this became Traffic’s first gold album but we aren’t quite sure why.

After a long recover from Tuberculosis in 1968 Cat Stevens gives us Tea for the Tillerman. The story of a young man’s search for spiritual meaning in a soulless class society he found abhorrent. He hadn’t yet reached his destination, but he was confident he was going in the right direction, traveling at his own,…

MP3 Audio [34 MB]DownloadShow URL One of the biggest-selling albums of its decade, and arguable the best album Simon an Garfunkel ever produced as a duo. The production and arrangements are stunning.

Drawing on his backlog of unused compositions from the late Beatles era, Harrison crafted material that managed the rare feat of conveying spiritual mysticism without sacrificing his gifts for melody and grand, sweeping arrangements. Enhanced by Phil Spector’s lush orchestral production and Harrison’s own superb slide guitar, nearly every song is excellent.  We discuss if…

known for its loose and scrappy approach Rod Stewart’s band members break out acoustic guitars and mandolins to play music that was never going to sound overly pretty because of the grit and gruff of Rod.  This is great first attempt for Rod but we all know the album that is going to really shine.