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My 50 Favourite Things from 1973

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Way, way back in January this year, I pledged to create a list celebrating my 50th birthday this year – my 50 favourite things (books, songs, albums, films, etc) from the year of my birth, 1973. I’ve linked to the post here where I was asking for suggestions about what what to include (and very interesting all your suggestions were).

As is the way of things, life got in the way and I forgot all about it. But the recent re-releases of Dark Side of the Moon and Larks’ Tongues in Aspic have reminded me what a great year it really was for music, which has prompted me to finish my list.

So, apologies in advance for indulging me, but I’m going to go through my list now, in reverse order, one entry a day, until I reach my top choice just before Christmas. Feel free to chip in, slag me off, express incredulity, applaud my choices or remind me what I’ve missed out (spoiler – don’t wait for Tom Waits or Steely Dan to make an appearance).

Unlike Kid Dynamite’s current massive list project, I pledge to at least try and finish this in the time promised (one entry a day). And also unlike Kid Dynamite, my tastes are a bit more mainstream so you’ll probably recognise a lot more stuff! 🙂

Anyone who ever follows my comments on here (there must be somebody) can probably guess what my number one will be. But don’t spoil it if you know.

I’ve tried to limit it to one entry per artist/act/person, but there’s a couple of exceptions which I felt I couldn’t ignore and had to include more than once.

So here goes! First entry in the comments!

https://theafterword.co.uk/great-things-from-1973/

4

Comments

  1. (50) Space Ritual (Hawkwind) – I felt I needed to include this as it was released the day I was born, so I do feel connected to this album. Not one of my favourites, however, or it would have been a lot higher. But I admire the vision and the intensity (and the wonderful cover). It’s all very cosmic, truly one of a kind.

  3. (49) Home Thoughts from Abroad (Clifford T Ward) – The song, not the album (never heard the album). Sickly sweet? Maybe. But it gets me right THERE, and has a wonderful innocent simplicity you can’t beat. Pretty sure this was an inspiration to a young Kate Bush, as the piano style is very reminiscent of her first album, particularly The Man With The Child in His Eyes.

  4. Some musical groups (that I’ve heard of) formed in 1973:

    AC/DC
    Academy of Ancient Music
    Azymuth
    Bachman-Turner Overdrive
    Bad Company
    Butts Band
    Cabaret Voltaire
    Caledonia Soul Orchestra
    Cold Chisel
    Devo
    The Dictators
    The Glitter Band
    GRIMMS
    Harmonia
    Heart
    Hudson Ford
    Irakere
    Jack The Lad
    Journey
    Kansas
    KC and the Sunshine Band
    Kiss
    Klaatu
    Kokomo
    Kronos Quartet
    The Kursaal Flyers
    L.A. Express
    Los Lobos
    Montrose
    Old & In The Way
    Pilot
    Quiet Riot
    Racing Cars
    The Roches
    Rose Royce
    The Rubettes
    Runrig
    Sailor
    Showaddywaddy
    Starry-Eyed And Laughing
    Sweet Honey In The Rock
    The Tallis Scholars
    Television
    Third World
    Ultravox
    Utopia
    Vardis
    The Winkies
    The Wombles

  5. The downside of ’73?

    The OPEC Oil Embargo had us all queueing for petrol and caused an acute vinyl shortage, leading to unsold records being melted down in order to make new ones.
    Neil Innes recorded this little ditty about it (in 1974, though).

    • I actually didn’t really include TV – just didn’t get round to it and had to draw the line somewhere. Probably a few TV shows might have made the cut if I had bothered to look into it!

  7. 1973 was a good year! We had a deputy head during my time in the 5th form, with a lax sense of discipline, meaning lots of out of bounds trips to hostelries after hours. Also went on a schools cruise, on the SS Nevasa, where I learnt most of my bad habits.
    This was the only song at the over 16s disco I was willing to “dance” to:

  8. (48) Godspell (film) – Christian rock! With clowns and mimes and the twin towers! Maybe an odd choice, but I tend to love films that are brave and bonkers. And I genuinely love the songs. It maybe helped that my (Christian) parents had the LP and the songs were ingrained into my consciousness from a young age.

          • I take it you’ve heard of it at least? It’s basically the gospel story (the story of Jesus), which might not mean much to you if you’re not religious (I had a religious upbringing – in the parlance normally used I’m a “lapsed Catholic”) – but acted out by a bunch of hippies in (bizarrely) an empty Manhattan (was filmed in and around the Wall Street area on weekends, I believe). So I think the intention was to somehow appeal to modern audiences, but it has a bizarre dreamlike feel to it.

            I do genuinely like the music in it (well crafted tunes, if a little showbizzy – I’ve only just noticed that it’s the same guy who wrote the songs for Wicked??) and I love the weirdness of it. The Jesus character is a bit like Leo Sayer (in a Superman shirt).

            • I’ve heard of it, Arthur – indeed, I’m well familiar with Jesus Christ Superstar – but for some odd reason have never seen Godspell (I also had a religious upbringing and, for all practical purposes, I’m also lapsed – Methodist, then C of S in my case).

              Is it worth seeing?

              • Also methodist upringing here 🙁 My condolences.

                Vaguely remember both but Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat were bigger in our Sunday School.

              • Honestly I’m loathe to recommend it. It has a place in my heart but my desire to praise it is being severely diluted by having to justify why I like it. 🙂 The lower echelons of my list are a bit wayward… hang off until maybe the top 25!

                  • I’m all in favour of “wayward” ! (Now there’s a surprise!). So I look forward to the quirkier stuff.

                    You piqued my curiosity about Godspell.

                    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070121/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_godspell

                    It all started as a student project and then moved to Off-Broadway.

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godspell

                    The guy who wrote the songs was Stephen Schwarz.

                    When it came to London it had several future stars.

                    “1971: London, England

                    Godspell opened at the Roundhouse Theatre in Chalk Farm, London on November 17, 1971. This London production featured Jacquie-Ann Carr, Julie Covington, David Essex, Neil Fitzwiliam, Jeremy Irons, Verity-Anne Meldrum, Deryk Parkin, Tom Saffery, Gay Soper, and Marti Webb. After a successful run at the Roundhouse Theatre, the production transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre, also in London, on January 26, 1972.[18] with Barry Stokes.”

                    Here’s Julie Covington from the soundtrack album.

                    • @kaisfatdad – the “All for the best” music above is very familiar to all Swedes of a certain generation (that would be mine) and none of us knew it was from Godspell originally! It was given new lyrics in Swedish by Magnus & Brasse for the sketch “Bäst att ta sig ett glas” from the album of the “krogshow” Varning för barn which we all listened to and laughed at growing up. In fact, I only just now, when clicking on Arthur’s video, learned where they took it from! Very different lyrics however, with Brasse playing the devil trying to convince Magnus to have some alcohol, and Magnus trying to resist.
                      The song part of the sketch start at 2:26 (but it’s very much part of a larger context, so feel free to listen to all of it).

                      Not sure if it’s still funny today…very much the humour of the 70s I’d say.

              • Me neither, not seen or heard it. No particular reason, just never been exposed to it. I too know JCS well though. Sang bits of it in a show actually.

    • Is it best to know a musical before you see it? Went to a touring production of “Chess” last year, and found it all a bit mystifyingly tedious, as I could barely tell what was going on – luckily SFWIC was so disgusted by the standard of performance that when she suggested we leave at half-time, I was happy to accede.

  9. Probably Frank Zappa’s best-ever touring and recording band was around in ’73-’74.
    Jean-Luc Ponty, George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Ian Underwood or Napoleon Murphy Brock, Sal Marquez, Bruce Fowler, Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey or Chester Thompson (sometimes both of them!).

    • Turned 16 in 73 and saw that Zappa touring band. Went by myself. Bit out of my depth for that band’s music at the tome. A month or so later the Stones played in Melbourne , another peak line up. Showcased Exile and Stick Fingers. Seriously excellent.
      Then a few months after that Santana’s best band showcased Caravanserai and Welcome.
      So for me 73 was a very good year.

      • FZ, Jean Luc Ponty, Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Ruth Underwood, Ian Underwood, George Duke, Bruce Fowler, Sal Marquez (late March – July).

        This iteration of The Mothers toured from February to September ’73.
        Sal Marquez left in July after completion of their June-July Australian dates.
        Ian Underwood left in September ’73, as did Jean-Luc Ponty.

        Napoleon Murphy Brock and Chester Thompson joined for the next ’73 tour from October to December ’73.

  10. (47) Matching Tie and Handkerchief (Monty Python) – I love Monty Python so wanted to include something from them, but they didn’t do much in 1973 apart from their live shows. This record, however, is a fascinating artifact, it’s most notable feature being that side two was pressed with two concentric grooves so when you played it it was chance which determined which “side” you were going to hear. The world’s first three sided record.

  11. (46) Fluff (Black Sabbath) – (song)
    Black Sabbath fans will probably hate me for not including their album from this year, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Sorry.
    The truth is I’m not a Black Sabbath fan at all. I’m afraid to me most hard rock/ metal just sounds like a poor substitute for Led Zeppelin.
    I’ve picked out this individual track however, as it’s the one thing I love that the band have done. It goes against type by being an instrumental acoustic ditty, and just hits the spot for me. I love its simplicity and lack of pretentiousness, just a sweet little tune that probably anyone could learn on guitar with a few days practice.

    • That’s a curveball. You can actually make a really good album out of the acoustic Sabbath tracks:

      Planet Caravan
      Orchid
      Solitude
      Laguna Sunrise
      Fluff
      Don’t Start
      Supertzar
      She’s Gone

  12. (45) Live and Let Die – film
    Not the best Bond, and not Roger Moore’s best, but I have a lot of time for him (as the Bond I grew up with) and I think he did a sterling job here taking on an iconic role and making it his own.

  13. (44) Killing Me Softly – Roberta Flack (song)
    I didn’t actually realise this version wasn’t the first recording of this song. However, I think it’s probably the definitive one. Consummate soul pop.

  14. (43) Jonathan Livingston Seagull (film and Neil Diamond LP)
    Maybe this is another idiosyncratic (idiotic?) choice, but I think it’s an important artifact of post-60s individualism and new age thinking. Bonkers it may be, but the book felt like a revelation to me reading it as a teenager. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a seagull discovering a higher purpose and having a spiritual awakening. And I think it’s fascinating how it led to such a bizarre, hypnotic film. With music by Neil Diamond, no less. But to me it’s got a unique pull, despite the cynicism of adulthood. I don’t think you would ever get a mainstream film like this today.

    These days the film is almost totally forgotten about, and hard to find. However, multiple copies of the soundtrack LP are available for a quid in every bargain bin of every second hand record shop.

    • I absolutely loved both JLS and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (and another one by Richard Bach, though even looking now at his bibliography, I can’t remember which) when I was a kid. I’d largely forgotten about them but seeing your mention of JLS has made think I’d like to read them again and see what I think now.

      • Messiah was the first one I read, which led me to Seagull as well.

        I hesitate to use the term “guilty pleasure” as I know a lot of people on here don’t like that term (!) but I like the books in the way that I kind-of-know-they-are-pseudobabble-nonsense … but something in me (the spiritual side of my nature?) loves the idea of things like this being true (enlightenment, purpose, transcendental awakening, whatever).

        (Same reason I love the lyrics of Jon Anderson probably)

        I do think there’s a place for this in our psyche. We can pretend all we want that we are rationale and scientific beings, but we all still secretly and naively crave to grow mental wings like Jonathan and fly beyond the limits of daily life. Don’t we??

        I’ve got one of Richard Bach’s later books sitting here waiting to start – called “A Gift of Wings”, it sounds from the cover blurb like he plunged deeper into quasi-religious babble in his later career: “Richard Bach’s unique vision… touching with magic the drama of life across all its limitless horizons”… But I’ll reserve judgement until I actually read the thing.

  15. (42) Badlands – film
    Terrence Malick went on to do better things, I believe (I think his high tide mark was Thin Red Line, The New World and Tree of Life) but he certainly hit the ground running with Badlands, his debut. Cementing the careers of Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, this story of young killers on the run is a dreamy and nihilistic delight.

    • It is such a stunning movie to watch. So beautiful and delicate, in contrast to the horror in the plot. I always felt Jack Fisk, the ‘art director’ deserved more credit.

      I have a beef over the outcome for Holly but I don’t want to give away any spoilers over a fifty year old film 😉

      • Fisk has had a wild career. His resume includes Badlands, Days of Heaven, Carrie, The Thing Red Line, Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, The New World, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Tree of Life, The Revenant, and currently Killers of the Flower Moon.

        He also has the distinction of being Mr Sissy Spacek. They met on Badlands, still together.

  16. My second favourite movie of all time. So beautiful.

    You are the only person I have ever heard describe Tree of Life as Malick’s high water mark, and I say that as someone who loves Tree of Life. Kudos.

    • I love it! When I’m feeling especially Malicky, I like the extended cuts of Tree of Life and The New World. Not for the faint hearted – LOTS of long, lingering shots of nature in magic hour light.

      • Tree of Life was the last film I saw in the cinema, walked back out, bought another ticket and watched all over again.

        I get why people hate it, but it really flicked a switch.

        • Have you seen the extended one, the Criterion BluRay? Definitely worth a watch, although loses a bit of the focus of the original. (“Focus” doesn’t seem the right word to describe such a meandering film though….)

          One thing I love about Terrence Malick is the music he chooses. I’ve got into quite a few classical pieces due to him, mainly Holst, Wojciech Kilar and some Mahler and Ravel stuff. And anyone who doesn’t come out of The Thin Red Line with a love of Melanesian choir music has no soul!

          (By the way, Terence Davies is also another fantastic curator of great music in his films)

          • I used to love Terence Malick, Badlands and Days of Heaven being a young Reto’s favourites. I sort of rated The Thin Red Line, proclaiming it better than the much the same time Saving Private Ryan. To be fair, SPR has aged better and I was being a ponce. But Tree of Life? Absolute ineffable gubbins. 10 hours of unmitigated boredom and tommyrottery.

            • Ah, that’s interesting. For me, The Thin Red Line has aged quite brilliantly, whereas I watched SPR again recently and once you get beyond the superb opening 40 minutes what’s left feels like a high end TV movie.

  17. (41) The Three Musketeers – film
    I always found Richard Lester’s directorial style quite similar to Blake Edwards and Robert Altman. A rambling, improvisational feel with a keen eye for understated physical comedy. I think Lester is probably under-rated for his erratic output, but there’s a through-line of marvellous, characteristic work from A Hard Day’s Night, to this, to drawing out the underlying comedy in the Superman films in the early 80s. I think he made rollicking, joyous movies, and the The Three Musketeers he had one of the classic adventure stories to have fun with. I even like the sequel from 1989.

    • Not forgetting the Four Musketeers which was filmed at the same time as The Three Musketeers.

      Though it was not without a problem.

      During production on The Three Musketeers, the producers realized that the project was so lengthy that they would not be able to complete it as initially intended — as a roadshow epic with intermission — and still achieve their announced release date. The decision was therefore made to split the project into two films, and thus the two halves were released as The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers some six months apart. Most of the actors were incensed that their work on the long shoot was used to make an entirely separate film, while they were only being paid for the work of one. Lawsuits were filed on behalf of those contributing to the film to gain the salaries and benefits associated with a second film that was not mentioned in the original contracts. All SAG actors’ contracts now have what is known as the “Salkind clause”, which stipulates how many films are being made.

      Roy Kinnear died during the making of The Return….

  18. (40) Goats Head Soup (Rolling Stones)
    Putting this at number 40 is likely to annoy both the fans (“why not higher?”) and the haters (“why include this at all?”).
    I love the Stones… up to this point. I think here is the exact point they started becoming a bit of a parody, a rock institution. There’s just something intangible missing, some sort of songwriting edge or zeitgeist nous that I just feel was burned into Sticky Fingers and Exile and is just AWOL from this point onwards.
    I find it unsatisfying as an album, and I don’t listen to it much, but it merits inclusion here because some of the songs are still decent. It is still the Stones, and long into their twilight they could still pull off a good single or two. I like the obvious tracks, the ones that were on the Rewind compilation: Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) and Angie.

    • Cuh! How very dare you dis The Goat!

      Keef was pretty much out of it, struggling with drugs post Exile. The only country these reprobates were allowed in was Jamaica. Bill Wyman scarpered when he encountered local hoodlums. The album is mainly Jagger and Taylor led and is all the better for it I say.

      Try 100 Years Ago and Hide Your Love for extraordinary Stones tracks you won’t find the like anywhere else in their catalogue.

      • Angie is Keith is it not and a smash hit? A real proper tune. There are some interesting things elsewhere. 100 years ago is one of them. It really takes flight in exciting fashion. Keith is less present apparently and the quality drops. I wonder why? A connection there?

  19. (39) The Long Goodbye (film)
    I mentioned Robert Altman above, when talking about Richard Lester, and here is the man himself. I love Elliot Gould’s laconic performance here. It’s a great update to the classic Raymond Chandler story. And for a plot so labyrinthine and confusing it’s amazing how leisurely a pace Altman sets: I haven’t watched it for a while but I seem to remember the first 10 minutes or so revolve around Gould trying to feed his cat. But somehow it all ties itself up very satisfyingly in the end.

  20. (38) Rock On – David Essex (Song)
    A minimalist masterpiece by the (often underrated) David Essex and producer Jeff Wayne. Definite shades of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band stuff in it’s stripped down feel, and the immense slap-back echo probably puts it in the glam-rock category, but it’s got its own thing going on.

  21. (37) The Ghost of Thomas Kempe – Penelope Lively
    I don’t know how well known this book is these days, but it deserves to be remembered as a children’s classic. It’s the story of a young boy who is haunted by a pesky poltergeist, but it takes a couple of surprising turns and in the end becomes a poignant story about the passage of time.

  22. (36) Love’s Theme – Barry White/ Love Unlimited Orchestra
    Those strings! There are fewer sounds more luscious than Mr White conjures up here, a soaring, exhilarating blend of pure joy over a Shaft-style wah-wah and hi-hat backing. I feel White’s “walrus of love” reputation almost turned him (unfairly) into a joke figure, as this smooth soulful sound was co-opted by a million disco producers and eventually descended into kitsch and parody. But Love’s Theme remains towering and perfect. To my mind, it hasn’t aged a bit.

  23. (35) The Day of the Jackal (film)
    A textbook example of the type of slow-burning thriller you rarely see any more, this is the kind of film that phrases like “gripping tension” were invented for.

  24. (34) Also Sprach Zarathustra – Deodato (song)
    Always teetering on the edge of cheesiness (like many of the best songs), this wins you over with it’s sheer joy and force of purpose. The “theme tune from 2001” to a jazz funk beat, extended to nine minutes with a Fender Rhodes electric piano workout? Sounds obvious in hindsight, doesn’t it? What’s not to love! One of the happiest tunes in the universe, only a churl would deny the urge to dance to this.

  25. (33) That’ll Be The Day (film)
    David Essex again? Well, he was rather ubiquitous in 1973, wasn’t he? I didn’t really like this film when I first watched it, because it wasn’t what I expected. I thought it was going to be about a young guy forming a band and getting famous, but he doesn’t pick up a guitar until the very last shot.
    It’s more of a social message, with a bit of nostalgia (the seventies looking back on the fifties across the chasm of the sixties). Teenage rebels and wasters can no doubt relate to our young anti-hero and his existential crisis of impending adulthood, probably more so if you grew up in the actual era portrayed.
    The sequel the following year was also brilliant. Two films that have been a bit forgotten these days.

    • I watched both fairly recently after having not seen them for decades. They stand up well. Stardust is the more interesting film, but they work well together as one piece, the continuity spoilt only by Ringo Starr somehow morphing into Adam Faith.

  26. (32) The Dark is Rising – Susan Cooper (book)
    The second children’s book in my top 50, which perhaps says something about my reading taste… But (as I’ve mentioned on these boards before) I find a lot of times children’s fiction has a directness and brevity that more “complex” adult fiction lacks. So no apologies from me.
    This is a fine, spooky tale with folk horror and fantasy themes, and makes sense in its own right outside the whole five book “The Dark is Rising” cycle (this is book two). It’s not the best of the five, and I’d recommend reading the whole series.

    • I used to really like this series of books, but when I reread them a few years ago they really annoyed me. The difference between then and now is that I’ve developed a substantial allergy towards King Arthur, when used in other works than the Arthurian legends!

  27. (31) Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade (song)
    Aren’t we all sick of this song by now (those of us in the UK at any rate)? Well, quite. It’s been rather diluted over the last five decades by being wheeled out again EVERY Christmas. But try (if you can) to listen with fresh ears: it’s a marvellous tune, festive with a hint of melancholy. And Noddy Holder’s singing is a quite astonishing thing: I don’t know how he manages to create that “roar” in his voice (I think multi-tracking his vocal a few times is part of it? He sounds like a one man football sing-a-long). This is a uniquely memorable song from a band who still don’t really get the credit they deserve.

    • Not sick of it in the slightest and my 7″ will soon be getting its regular annual plays over the festive period. I agree that it’s a marvellous record, and it used to annoy me that people were snooty about it until I realised that the people being snooty about it were just snooty in general. It’s the working class Xmas song, for people whose houses aren’t big enough to accommodate extended families (“Are you sure you’ve got the room to spare inside?”) and whose grandparents get a bit drunk at family gatherings. Great stuff.

      • ^ This is correct.

        I think my lack of aversion to the Christtmas staples comes from never having worked in a pub or shop where they’re on the radio all the time. And also I’m a sentimental old coot.

  28. (30) Mean Streets (film)
    Not Scorsese’s best, but definitely his breakout film that first marked him as a genius. I love the man, one of my favourite directors, and Mean Streets has a definite aura about it. No doubt helped by early standout performances from Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.
    My favourite Scorsese film overall is hard to choose – with all due respect to the classics (Raging Bull, Goodfellas…) I think my personal favourite would be a toss up between King of Comedy, The Color of Money and The Departed.

    • I was extremely surprised to hear Mark Kermode mention, in his review of Killers of the Flower Moon on YouTube, that Thelma Schoonmaker corrected his pronunciation, insisting it’s not the Americanised “Score-say-zee” but “Score-say-say”. According to the rules of Italian pronunciation she’s quite right. But even Italians call him the Americanised way. I’d feel self-conscious and pretentious using the Italian pronunciation when I’ve never heard anyone else doing so ever.

      • The “correct” pronunciation of things can cause problems at times. When I was once in New York I had a mortifyingly embarrassing encounter (well, felt like that to me anyway) when I tried to buy a croissant from a deli. The Noo Yawker behind the till had no idea what I was trying to say (and my Scottish accent didn’t help) until I pronounced it “crah-SONT” with a hard R and T, rather than my lilting gallic “correct” pronunciation.

      • I first heard the correct pronunciation in the Band documentary where his old friend Robbie Robertson used it – so presumably it is the way Scorsese says his name.

        Surely the most mispronounced surname is J K Rowling’s. One of the most famous people in the world and yet you can see a story on the news about her, and a reporter will say it correctly, then it’s back to the studio where the presenter gets it wrong.

        But changing the subject to a complete non-entity, myself, my real surname is often mistaken for being German, and well-meaning people pronounce it in that way, even when they have heard me say it. Used to happen to my dad as well – leading to jokes when he was serving in the navy in the war- at least he’d be alright if they were sunk and taken prisoner.

  30. (29) Mind Games – John Lennon (song)
    You’ll see on a few occasions I’m going to choose a specific song rather than a whole album. It takes a lot for me to be impressed by an album as a whole, unless it’s really good from start to finish. This is a good example. The Mind Games album as a whole is… decent but a bit dull. However, the title track is a wonderful, soaring thing – it all hangs on that high string note (not sure if it’s an orchestra or a string synthesiser) holding a nagging major third (musicologists please don’t correct me if I’ve got that wrong), giving the song a yearning, unresolved feel. Beautiful stuff. That Lennon guy was pretty decent sometimes.

  32. (28) American Graffiti (film)
    Back in the days when George Lucas was a promising young director of the new Hollywood wave in the 70s. This film is funny and bittersweet in just the right proportions, and has an excellent lazy feel to it, with an engaging cast of youngsters.
    I still find it unbelievable that this was a film which came across as a period drama about a long lost and far-off innocent time, yet was only made 11 years after it was set (1962). A film made today about 2012 would hardly have the same impact. Just a reminder of how astonishing the sixties were and how much they were a watershed for the western world. (Not that I would know – I wasn’t there).

    • It depicts the Kennedy era as a lost Eden. A myth of course, but a very seductive one – see also The Nightfly and John Stewart’s I Remember America.

      The soundtrack album is unremittingly fantastic.

  33. (27) If You Want Me To Stay – Sly and the Family Stone
    Sorry, not the album Fresh, but for me the joy of Sly Stone in 1973 boils down to this one song. A marvellously compressed little groovy ball of funk, with a bass line to die for.

  34. (26) Future Days – Can
    A teeny bit similar to Pink Floyd, 1973 was the year that Can’s avant garde experimentation coalesced into something a bit more tuneful and something you might conceivably play to a normal person.
    It’s all about the title track for me, which bubbles along with a kind of In A Silent Way type groove, every band members simultaneously locked into their own personal trip but still playing off each other in a delightful way. Spray is a bit more experimental, Moonshake is delicious space funk, then over on side B they stretch out with a big lovely long jam, Bel Air.
    “Krautrock” as a name for this genre barely does this album justice. It has psychedelic touches, latin rhythms, jazzy sounds and an overall sense of trippiness that started to die out around this time into something a bit harder and shinier and seventies-ish. I think Future Days belongs in that glorious sunshine period of experimentation before the 1970s started in earnest.

    • I can’t comment as I’ve never heard anything by Can but I am wondering, is their name Can as in “a can of Coca-Cola” or is it Can as in “yes, we can”? Or is that ambiguity an essential aspect of their moniker? Or does it mean something completely different in German?

      Edit: I just checked my iTunes and I have one song by them. Last Night’s Sleep on the soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ film Until The End Of The World. I love that soundtrack, but don’t remember that track at all. I think I probably always skipped it. It certainly didn’t make it onto any of my playlists, unlike the rest of the album.

    • “Krautrock” was always an inadequate term – lazy 1970s journalism. Consider the musical range and diversity of all the bands labelled as Krautrock – the main thing they had in common was that they were interesting…

      • It’s especially nonsensical if you consider how atomised or “non-centralised” German music scenes were in those days and maybe still are, and they didn’t seem to have much exchange between them – Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and later DAF were in West Berlin, which might as well have been on a different planet from Dusseldorf. (actually it was on a different planet from everywhere, but ya knowarramean)

      • Yeah totally.

        I still remember the time I first got into Can, back in the good old days of the early nineties when you had to seek music out and actually buy it. If I remember correctly, Mark E Smith was on Radio 1 – was it with Mark Radcliffe maybe? – and going through some of his favourite records. One he chose was Can’s Vitamin C – my friend at uni taped if off the radio and it blew us away. We went on a search to buy what we could find by this mysterious German band we had never heard of.

        Mixed results: Flow Motion and Saw Delight were patchy, Ege Bam Yasi and Tago Mago were good but a bit weird, but Future Days was definitely the bomb as far as I was concerned.

  35. (25) You’re So Vain – Carly Simon
    A bit of a cheat, as the song dates from the previous year, but it was released and charted in the UK in 1973, so I’m taking it. Just looking up more info about it now, I’ve only just become aware the bass is played by Klaus Voorman. I always loved that little sinister bass run that opens the song (“Son of a gun”). But the song as a whole is driving and infectious, with a killer cryptic puzzle in the lyrics. Jim Gordon on drums as well, a great rhythm section.
    And that ironically self-defeating chorus: “You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you”… rock lyrics rarely get as witty and catchy as that! The whole thing just makes me smile how perfectly it all hangs together. Then realising you also have Mick Jagger on backing vocals is just the icing on the cake (especially when you then start to wonder if he’s the vain one the song is (not) about).

  36. (24) “Red” and “Blue” albums – The Beatles
    Oh how timely. I promise I wrote this list much earlier this year, before I even knew these albums were being re-released this year and before we started discussing them at depth here.
    Cheap cash-in albums? Allen Klein trying to wring as much money as he can out of his new clients? Maybe. But like many people, I suspect, these two albums were my gateway into a wider Beatles world, and made me realise what an astonishing career they actually had. Cheap and slightly tacky the covers and packaging might be, but in their own way they are iconic.
    It was my uncle who had these two LPs (in red and blue vinyl, no less) and I taped them off him one afternoon. (Long story, he and my cousins were living with us temporarily after their house got repossessed – but you don’t need to hear all that! For me at least it was an opportunity to mine his LP collection).
    I had already dipped my two in the later Beatles through my dad’s LP collection, but the red album in particular was the one that was a revelation to me here: I still remember the sheer thrill of hearing A Hard Day’s Night, Eight Days A Week and We Can Work it Out for the first time.
    I Am The Walrus was another firm favourite – I’d never heard anything like it.
    And strange to say, since it now seems the song is stale and ubiquitous, this was the first time I heard Hey Jude. Ooooof – that adrenaline thrill when it kicks into the coda section. I treasure that memory!
    And that was it for me, the door was opened. They became my favourite band in the world (I occasionally wander but I always come back).

    • I like the packaging. One of the masterstrokes for me (steady!) with these was that Mad Day Out photo in the gatefold. Kind of strange and enigmatic, but also showing the Fabs as men of the people.

      Most people in 1973 wouldn’t have been familiar with the Get Back image AKA “the Beatles have just thrown you to your death and are laughing because they know they will get away with it”

      • Yes, totally, I love the covers as well – sorry, I was writing that quickly and glossed over that aspect and maybe sounded as if I was being disparaging. I kind of meant they are SEEN as quite cheap and tacky, and were obviously thrown together in a hurry (the fonts are horrible) – but despite all that they definitely work as covers, and have become iconic. And totally, the inner sleeve photo was cryptic and amazing.

        • As a kid I was obsessed with that photo – there’s a “clone” of every single member of my family in it! I was sure it had to mean something important…but what? I could never come up with a theory that managed to convince the rational side of my brain, so I just stared at the photo with a mix of excitement and fear. 😀

    • For many years, the Red and Blue LPs were all the Beatles I owned – and, in fact, all the Beatles I needed. I own more Beatles material now – but I suspect that I could still be happy enough with just the Red and Blue albums. Mind you, I’m not a Beatles specialist…

  37. (23) Street Life – Roxy Music
    I might annoy some Roxy fans on here in saying this, but I could never find one of their albums I liked all the way through. To me they are a singles band, and this single in particular is a marvellous distillation of what makes them so good. Operatic, frenzied, driven, with a trademark histrionic vocal from Ferry. I love it.

  38. (22) The Exorcist
    In an age when the horror genre relies a lot on jump scares and gore, it can be quite a shock to watch The Exorcist again and realise how sedate it is for a great proportion of its running time. The flagpole moments that everyone knows gives the impression the film is a rollercoaster of shouting priests, head-spinning, floating and blasphemous language, but it’s not like that at all.
    I love how much of a slow burn it is. You get really invested in the family, and really connect with them as they are dragged into a nightmare, and then things really ramp up in the last half hour. Horror films that have a bit of weirdness and bit of religion tend to be my favourite, and this is the daddy of them all. (For the record, I find it much more immersive and less showy than The Omen, which it tends to get lumped in with).

    There’s only one thing I really resent about the film, and it’s that the theme tune (a certain proggish instrumental by a young genius which might well make an appearance on this top 50 list) has become synonymous with the film. I think that’s an American thing: that album (as I understand it) was big in the UK and Europe before The Exorcist came out, but only got really big in the USA when it was used in the film. It’s created this lazy cliche of that style of music being thought of as “horror film” music (and therefore being endlessly copied and recycled for that reason. Truth is, it’s not really “horror film” music at all, and to be honest The Exorcist isn’t even really a “horror film” when it comes down to it. It’s in a class of its own really.

    • Yes! Still the best, scariest horror film ever. My favourite scene isn’t a horror scene. It’s when Chris (Ellen Burstyn) meets with Father Karras in the park. She is so clearly distraught and shattered and barely managing to hold herself together.

      Chris: But… could you see her?
      Karras: Yes, I could. I could see her as a psychiatrist, but I can’t see her…
      Chris: Oh, not a psychiatrist, she needs a priest! She’s already seen every fucking psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you, now you gonna send me back to them? Jesus Christ, won’t somebody help me?

    • I watched this twice at the cinema upon it’s release. The first time with my then current girlfriend and the second time with a bunch of fellow art students all of us tripping out our gourds. Needless to say I remember very little about the second viewing except a lot of stifled laughter and our relatively quick ejection from the premises by da management. I do have better recall of the first viewing though. The tension in the auditorium was palpable probably caused by the advance publicity the film had garnered and the sight of members of the St. john’s Ambulance noticeably in attendance both in the auditorium and the cinema foyer. There was some nervous laughter during the early scenes then a palpable silence punctuated by the occasional stiffled girlish squeal as the film progressed but I stopped giving vent to my pent up tension in that manner after being given a quite painful dig to my ribcage from my girlfriend’s elbow.

      • I only saw it when the ban on it was lifted and it was re-released in cinemas in 1998 for the 25th anniversary. I saw it at a midnight screening at the Odeon in Renfield Street in Glasgow, and I remember it was packed. You’ve reminded me that a lot of people were snickering in the audience all the way through it! Philistines, the lot of them 🙂

        • It was a full house when my girlfriend accompanied me for a romantic evening’s entertainment that first time. I recall glancing behind me as the film commenced and seeing a group of three girls were sat behind us. Glancing back some time later in proceedings the three girls had visibly shrunk back into their seats as far as it was possible and were holding one another’s hands.
          I dig it out from my late wife’s dvd/blu ray collection very occasionally and it still holds up as a film. Possibly it holds up even more all these years later due to the brouhaha surrounding it upon it’s release being no longer present and the true strengths of the film get to shine through. It’s a film with a good script and some fine performances. It doesn’t shock anymore but it is still unsettling in it’s steadfastly downbeat atmosphere.

    • You’re making a great point about Tubular Bells being copied by lots of subsequent horror soundtracks. However, one reason for that may be that the approach works so well. I remember reading that early screenings of Halloween were not going so well, so John Carpenter went away and came up with that soundtrack (which surely owes a debt to Tubular Bells) which immediately made the film scarier.

      • Yeah, I think personally I just never associated that tinkly Tubular Bells motif with horror (The Exorcist was banned in the UK when I was wee, and I was a good boy who didn’t watch pirate videos or horror movies). To me it says childhood, awe, beauty, pensiveness… but not “ooh scary”. So it irks me that it has become associated with that.

        But I’m well aware I’m pushing against the tide. As I do a lot. Sigh.

  39. (21) Ooh La La – The Faces (song)
    I have a bit of a confession about this song – it was only relatively recently I realised it wasn’t Rod Stewart singing on the original. I’ve no idea why Ronnie Wood sang it (it suits Rod’s voice very well, as his 1998 cover proved), and once I found it it was him it sounds totally obvious. I have no idea why I thought it was Rod: my brain must have just filed it and didn’t question it. Or some weird Mandela effect parallel reality going on.

    Anyway. The song is just terrific. Nothing about it is particularly outstanding when you break it all down (quite an obvious chord sequence, lyrics ever so slightly cheesy and trite, nothing outstanding from a musicianly point of view), but it has that intangible magic that the best Faces stuff has. It just seems to tap right into your happiness nerve and put a smile on your face. Few songs sound as effortlessly joyous as this one.

    • (And I’m going to stop apologising for choosing a single song rather than an album whenever I do that, as it just encourages annoyance from the more dedicated fans than me. It’s my list and I can’t please everyone 🙂 )

      • This one makes a lot of sense because the album is very patchy but the title track is great fun.

        Never apologise for what you like. Unless you like Kenny G, I’m which case hand yourself in at the local police station immediately.

        • Album is patchy, Rod’s eyes were turning more to his solo career, Ronnie Lane was beginning to show early signs of MS, and the “fun” was not as evident on this album.
          But the title track, Cindy Incidentally, and Borstal Boyys rank high in Faces output

          • One rule I’ve set myself with this list is, even if there are three or four good songs on an album, I’ll only choose one. Either the whole album goes on the list, or one song from the album at most – no in between!

  40. (20) The Last Detail (film)
    I can’t quite believe I’m into the top 20 already. This film (by New Hollywood stalwarts Hal Ashby and Robert Towne) seems to get forgotten about when people list great Jack Nicholson films. I first heard about it from reading the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls book, and when I finally saw it it didn’t disappoint. Kind of a road trip movie (two Navy officers escorting a young prisoner to military prison and they go AWOL for a few days in the process) with definite comic elements, it slowly draws you in and has an immensely moving ending.
    The feel of it reminds me very much of Midnight Cowboy, it’s that kind of poignancy it leaves you with, and that sense that a very specific story about a specific thing is actually about far bigger life issues that affect us all.
    Wonderful movie, much under-appreciated and very much worth seeking out.

  41. (19) Don’t Look Now (film)
    Based on a Daphne Du Maurier story, and it has a feel of Nicholas Roeg trying to ape Alfred Hitchcock.
    I’m actually reluctant to comment on this film because if someone here hasn’t watched this I don’t want to spoil it for them. I know that’s unlikely for a 50 year old film, but I originally watched it totally cold without knowing what was coming, and that last scene just blew me away. Incredible how it not only explains most of what has happened, it also turns the film on its head and pretty much changes the genre of film it is.
    The basic set up is that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are a couple who have suffered with the tragedy of their young daughter dying in a freak accident. On a trip to Venice things then start getting strange… and I’ll say no more. I see the original promo blurb called it a “psychic thriller”, which is an interesting classification.

    If you’ve never seen it then PLEASE watch it. Then either thank me or curse me.

  42. (18) The Princess Bride – William Goldman

    ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

    A tough sell, this one, as it’s so hard to pigeonhole. When you describe it as a slightly ironic fairytale story with comedy elements, it just makes it sound like Shrek or something. But if you know, you know. Maybe it doesn’t hit everyone in the same way, but as William Goldman himself said (himself probably puzzled by the book’s success), “Something in The Princess Bride affects people”.

    I think it’s summed up by the faint theme running through the story: life isn’t fair (it’s just fairer than death, that’s all). Without overselling it’s philosophical leanings, the book is actually a great exemplar of stoic principles, of finding meaning in life through self-defined goals and acceptance of fate and misfortune.

    William Goldman, of course, is THE William Goldman, movie screenwriter par excellence (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and the subsequent 1987 movie version of The Princess Bride is almost as good as the book.

  43. (17) Selling England by the Pound – Genesis

    As I’ve previously mentioned elsewhere, I only really started listening to Genesis last year, album by album, and this particular album is the one where I think everything really properly gelled for them for the first time and they truly entered into the upper echelons of the progosphere. Not so much ditching their eccentricities but just truly owning them, you can hear a definite newfound sense of confidence. Everything takes a massive step forward: the sophistication of the lyrics, the recording quality, the musicianship… and we get an utterly convincing and cohesive statement over 8 songs.

    The key track for me is “I Know What I Like” – there’s something absolutely rousing and thrilling in how powerful and strident the melody and performance is. But The Cinema Show is probably the best track overall.

    I feel I must point out that, in my opinion, this wasn’t their peak. They got better after this and The Lamb Lies Down is their proper masterpiece. But I love Selling England by the Pound for the massive step forward it represented for the band.

    • Coincidentally, I was doing the “let’s listen to Genesis” thing at much the same as you.
      Selling England By The Pound was the next step from the ambition of Supper’s Ready (from Foxtrot), and that step does indeed produce one marvellous album.
      But … “The Lamb Lies Down is their proper masterpiece” – nah, yes it is another step up and is stuffed full of invention and ideas, but as an album I’d say Selling England is toppermost
      (then again I’d put Trick Of The Tail at number 2, so make of that what you will).

      • Much as I’m praising Selling England here, I still think there’s something cold about it that stops me coming back to it more. It definitely hasn’t forged as deep a connection with me as other albums. Lamb Lies Down just strikes a chord and I’m not sure why: I think I knew from the second I heard Carpet Crawlers that there was something special about it.

        And I totally agree about Trick of the Tail. In my head I still maintain the customary “the band were best with Peter Gabriel” stance, but my heart seems to want Trick of the Tail more and I find myself relistening to that one the most (Lamb excepted). Something totally joyous and moving about it, isn’t there? They totally just went for it without Gabriel and knocked it out of the park. Entangled, Mad Man Moon and Ripples are all probably in my top ten Genesis songs. And Squonk is as confident a move forward, sonically and thematically, as I Know What I Like a few years earlier. It’s a magnificent album.

        Shame Wind and Wuthering lets things down a bit…

  44. (16) Freebird – Lynyrd Skynyrd (song)

    Yeah, yeah, I know it was actually 1974 it was released as a single and got popular after that, but (as far as I’m aware) it was originally recorded and released as an album track in 1973.

    I’m not a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan by any means, but this song is just such a glorious celebration of rocking out that I believe it transcends taste and preference. It’s just loud, proud and 100% sure of its own intent and place in the world that it brings a smile to my face every time. An anthem in every sense of the word.

    It’s all about the guitar solo, obviously. That switch into high gear after the slow buildup, then it just keeps building and building… and just when you think it can’t keep on like this it doubles down and keeps building.

  45. (15) Houses of the Holy – Led Zeppelin

    This would be higher if not for the two clunker tracks which are probably the two worst songs the band ever recorded: The Crunge (comedy funk) and D’Yer Mak’er (comedy reggae). Sometimes the confidence of a band who think they can do no wrong can lead to some truly awful creations.

    But take those two tracks away and it’s killer after killer. The Song Remains the Same is one of my favourite ever opening album tracks, pure adrenaline. The Rain Song is just lovely, No Quarter is smouldering prog and Over The Hills and Far Away is Jimmy Page doing an acoustic guitar stomper like no one else can. Dancing Days and The Ocean are riff-tastic potboilers, but they keep the ship floating.

    Led Zeppelin were a band who burned very brightly, and Houses of the Holy is the start of the cracks showing. They still had a few anthems to come (Nobody’s Fault but Mine, Achilles’ Last Stand, Kashmir…) to see out the rest of the seventies, but by this point they had lost a bit of focus and were floundering about in all directions. The dread double album was to come next (the shark-jumping moment for most rock bands), but House of the Holy is stall damn fine rock music.

    • Totally agree the first sign of cracks, but (other than the 2 clunkers) is almost up there with the near unimpeachable first 4. And can I add No Quarter to the call-outs
      First Hipgnosis cover for Led Zep too

    • I’m not a fan. However, replace those two duffers with Black Country Woman and Houses Of Holy released on Physical Graffiti but recorded for this album. I think you’ll enjoy it better.

  46. (14) Aladdin Sane – David Bowie

    One of his best albums, I think. Quite similar to the aforementioned Led Zep album there, in that it represents an artist firing off on all cylinders during a creative “purple patch”. Spaced Oddity, Hunky Dory and Ziggy would have been enough for a lifetime’s work from any songwriter, but Aladdin Sane shows Bowie going onwards and upwards: ten catchy, aggressive, forward-looking tracks, and startlingly uncompromising for being effectively mainstream pop.

    It’s been analysed and praised (and criticised) to death, so there’s little more I can really add. I think it’s emblematic of what critic Ian Macdonald characterised as the sharp irony present in Bowie’s approach to things: what Aladdin Sane is really about is consuming and regurgitating pop tropes (rock and roll, doo-wop, etc) with a glam edge. The free-jazz style piano flourishes by Mike Garson are just the icing on top, and a way of drawing a clear line between this and the “old” Ziggy stuff.

    I’m getting a bit pseudo there, aren’t I? But Bowie attracts these kinds of thoughts. Look, it’s just ten great pop songs by one of our best every performers when it comes down to it, simple as that. That he then went on to do even more amazing things over the next few years (and everyone can choose where they think his talent started to drop off) is even more incredible.

  47. (13) Summer Breeze – The Isley Brothers (song)

    I don’t really have time to wax lyrical about this today, so I’ll just say: “tune”. And nod my head appreciatively. I never tire of this song.

  48. (12) Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John (song)

    The Queen Mother of Pop can be hit and miss, but when he hits the spot with something like Daniel or Tiny Dancer he can be electrifying. This is probably my favourite Elton song. I have no idea what it’s “about” but it has an unbeatable sadness and desperation to it, and the key change for the chorus is inspired stuff.

    A theory: I think Robert Wyatt subconsciously copied the chorus melody/chords for Sea Song the following year. You may scoff, but I hear it.

    • Used to great effect at the end of the 1974 episode of Our Friends in the North – it kind of stands for the end of the idealism of the 60s. Although the date is wrong it makes sense to have the Dwightster on there – he was the king of 1974 ( wasn’t there a week when he was selling a quarter of all LPs sold in the US?)

      Great and very accurate write-up. I think here his slightly out-of-focus voice suits the strange melancholy of the track particularly well.

      Interesting theory about Wyatt. Though his ear bends firmly towards jazz and what we used to call “world” music, he’s no snob when it comes to pop music so you could be right.

      • I forgot it was in Our Friends! One of my favourite episodes that (“Have I got B.O.?”). Although the 1970 episode probably edges it.

        Was it a single in 1974 maybe? (He asks, as if everyone in the world didn’t have all knowledge at their fingertips these days)

        • I’m very much into the “long tail” idea of big records like that – rather than looking at when a record came out, looking at when it was big in the popular consciousness. Elton was the biggest thing in pop in 1974 and YBR was probably his key song at that time.

          • Funnily enough the long tail idea fits well with Queen. For a while in the 70s they released their albums in December, so that they were actually popular during the following year. Bohemian Rhapsody was Xmas No. 1 in 1975, but spent more weeks at No. 1 in 1976. Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy may seem like the most 1976 song possible, but it was in the charts during Punk.

        • It was a single in 1973. Second single from the album, after Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Interesting that they put out those two ahead of Candle in the Wind.

          I think the song is Bernie’s fantasy of being able to walk away from the fame and go back to his home, which was a farm (“I’m going back to my plough”). He was always much less confident in the spotlight than Elton.

  49. (11) Live and Let Die – Paul McCartney (song)

    Getting tantalisingly close to my top ten now.

    I love this song, it makes me want to run about and throw my hands in the air. Loved it as a youngster getting into Bond films, and love it now. It’s bombastic. Thinking about it, it was probably my first awareness of being a Beatle fan (I was definitely a McCartney fan before I liked the Beatles).

    Anyway, there are a substantial number of Bond themes that are just fabulous songs, and this is one of them. I think the challenge of writing a one-off song to suit the Bond mood brings out the best in (some) songwriters, and Macca (with a huge amount of help from George Martin) is one of them.

  50. And it’s onto the top ten! Can you believe it? Here goes.

    (10) The Wicker Man (film)

    Firstly, the soundtrack is awesome. The original lodestone for all those weirdo folk-vibes that are so trendy today.

    The film itself is admittedly a bit ropey and cheap feeling. But that’s all part of the magic pull it has. For most of its running time it’s absolutely baffling. Is this a horror? A police drama? A musical? A comedy? Well, it’s all of those. It gets called ‘folk horror’ these days, but I’m kind of reluctant to use that term as it didn’t exist at the time, and it’s a box it has been shoehorned into after the fact.

    In truth, it’s just a glorious, bonkers trip, with a razor sharp, horrific climax out of nowhere that’s never really been beaten for shock value and for sheer, existential terror. Fun fact: on its original cinema release it was paired with Don’t Look Back, another film with a shocking ending (and just as unclassifiable).

    The cherry on top is the Scottish locations, which I know very well. It’s immense fun seeing Culzean Castle and Whithorn Beach in a film, places I know well from my childhood.

  51. (9) Larks’ Tongues in Aspic – King Crimson

    I came to this album late, and still can’t quite believe it’s as popular as it is. While I love it, I can’t put my finger on why that is, and what it’s trying to do. It still baffles me. And it sounds more like free jazz or Captain Beefheart than any predefined notion of what ‘prog’ is meant to be.

    I don’t think it sounds anything like 1973 either. If I heard it cold I would have guessed it was some nineties post-grunge art rock musos, or a Jack White experimental side project.

    But it keeps pulling me back in. The contrast of the loud bits and quiet bits, the wonderful symmetry of its six tracks (three each side), the cryptic cover, the cryptic lyrics, the absolute refusal to go ‘lush’ but to keep the sound minimal, raw and unprocessed (the violin is never ‘sweet’, the Mellotron doesn’t have the standard layers of reverb and phasing to make it ‘spacey’: these elements are just left hanging dry) .

    It’s a strange, lovely beast of a thing.

    • When “prog” became a derogatory term, King Crimson should have received a free pass. They were genuinely progressive, to the point that this album sounds 20 years ahead of its time. First of a run of three astonishing, futuristic, progressive, fundamentally unclassifiable albums – then the pressure cooker blew up.

      • Yeah, I think I came too late to all this – the early 90s, when the term “prog” had started to become a definite label signifying widdly guitar solos and magic pixies and all that. That’s why it confused me that King Crimson were lumped in with that genre. But you’re right.

        I have to confess, I’m still in thrall to those three albums you mention, and I haven’t really explored King Crimson beyond them. But I can’t imagine them without Bill Bruford and John Wetton so it seems like a whole different thing outside this trilogy. I’ve got that compilation double album that came out in the mid-seventies, so I’ve dipped my toe in the pre-Lark stuff, and I’ll jump in to it all properly one day.

        Funnily enough, at the moment I’m playing the complete recording sessions from the recent 50th anniversary release of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic. (It’s hours and hours of tryouts and false starts etc) I’ve got it on the Blu Ray in the other room while I’m working, and it sounds like the band are recording next door.

  52. (8) Red Shift – Alan Garner (book)

    Garner wrote some fine children’s fantasy books in the 60s, but started getting weirder with The Owl Service then stepped off the deep end with Red Shift, the gateway to his mature output.

    Short but weighty, you might get to nearly halfway through before you get your head round what’s going in (it’s set across three time periods, but it’s never really clearly signalled, you just have to piece it together). Some shocking violence and some deep psychology combine to make it a story you won’t forget in a hurry. And the sense of the Cheshire landscape is so vivid (again, without hammering you over the head with detail), you will feel like you’ve lived there.

  53. (7) Band on the Run – Paul McCartney

    Yes, two macca songs in the top 20 in close succession. While I’m of the unpopular opinion that he was always stretched for album material, Paul could still hit the bullseye on individual songs, and this one is almost up to Beatles standards.

    I feel there’s a lineage here, of mini song suites that can fit on a 7 inch, from Good Vibrations to Bohemian Rhapsody to Paranoid Android and beyond. I always love it when an artist can pull off something like that with confidence. When Band on the Run moves from it’s winsome opening section into those big strummed guitar chords for the main bit, it’s absolutely electrifying.

    • The opening line apparently inspired by a George Harrison phrase at a Beatles meeting. Agree that albums sometimes appear stretched, but the parent album was perhaps the least stretched Macca

      • Yeah I would probably agree that about the parent album. Still didn’t make the cut for my top 50 though. I decided this single song was better on its own! I find a lot of stuff on that album quite tiring and I generally don’t listen to it from start to finish. Some individual brilliant tracks of course, like Jet and 1985.

  54. (6) The Sting (film)

    I think its “big brother” film (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is better known and more highly respected, but I just find The Sting to be such great fun, the supreme caper movie and just so damn likeable. I would put it in the same category as The Italian Job or Ocean’s Eleven, a heist movie which teases you and leaves you just out of the loop enough for you to want to keep watching to see how it plays out.

    Redford and Newman are one of the most watchable duos in cinema history, and the sign of a great heist movie is that you want to be in the gang as well.

    I also love how it constantly seems to be teetering on the edge of darkness (and with some key, shocking moments like the death of a major character early on), but manages to pull back with expert precision to leave you with a smile on your face and a spring in your step with that final unforgettable line after the big twist.

    The added bonus of course, is that the film popularised the work of Scott Joplin. In my more wistful moments in life I always seem to end up playing “Solace” back in my head (although I can’t quite carry off staring into space in a fedora and vest the way Redford does).

    • This is one of my most watched films, from the days of owning very few VHS tapes but watching the ones I had obsessively!
      I haven’t watched it since the VHS gave way to the DVD, and I don’t own it on DVD…I think I’ve had my share of it! But I did love it at the time.

  55. (5) Innervisions – Stevie Wonder

    My goodness, into the top 5 now in this endlessly procrastinated thread which has descended deep into the comments section. Let’s plough on!

    I don’t really think I need to say anything to praise or justify this choice? I think there IS such a thing as music that is Objectively Good, and in the great judgement at the end of the world I’m sure God himself would identify Stevie as a Good Thing that has had a net benefit on the wellbeing of humanity with his music.

    He perhaps made better albums than this one (although I would disagree – this is his best in my opinion), but I would say none as focused and cocksure. He was the best and he knew it. Innervisions has an achingly perfect sound to it, the perfect blend of organic funkiness and futuristic synth sounds. And the sleeve design is (chef’s kiss) “mwoah”.

    My personal favourite track isn’t one of the soaring soul tunes (Golden Lady, Misstra Know it All) or the funky groovers (Too High, Livin’ For the City) but Visions, a gentle ballad placed bravely right upfront as track 2: that gorgeous blend of Fender Rhodes, dual guitars and jazzy double bass, with those wonderful sustained chords, sends me to heaven every time (and I love the sleevenote tribute to guitarist David “T” Walker: “whose playing is as warm as his birth sign: Cancer”. Aw, Stevie.)

    And, this bears repeating, as has often been said before, that Stevie Wonder is pretty much a genius on multiple levels, to the point where you start to wonder (hah, “wonder”) if it’s actually all the same guy. Each one of these Stevies is worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of greats: we have:
    – Stevie, one of the best ever songwriters the world has seen
    – Stevie, one of the best ever singers the world has seen
    – Stevie, one of the best ever keyboard players the world has seen
    – Stevie, one of the best ever drummers the world has seen
    – Stevie, one of the best ever harmonica players the world has seen (and there isn’t even any harmonica on this album)
    – plus he’s an electronics innovator and an accomplished arranger/producer/multi-instrumentalist…
    … Couple all that with the fact that he was a star at the age of 10 or something, and was still in his early 20s by the time he made Innervisions AND he did all this when he was blind from birth… AND he came back from a coma caused by a car crash immediately after this album was completed… you really have to consider whether there are angelic or supernatural forces at work here. (But maybe that’s just “superstition”, ho ho ho).

    • 5 albums in four years – Music of My Mind / Talking Book / Innervisions / Fulfillingness’ First Finale / Songs in the Key of Life – not many can claim a run as great as that as that
      (the run ended by Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants which was a bit dreck though)

          • I was going to say Ebony and Ivory instead, but I think that actually has some good elements, doesn’t it?

            Anyway, since we are talking Stevie, here’s a wee reminder of the last thing he did in 2020, a bona fide return to form (in an age when that phrase is much overused and beyond cliche) – this is truly magnificent and groovy in the style of his great 70s stuff – Can’t Put it in the Hands of Fate: (the magnificently long intro makes it spine-tingling when he starts singing around the minute and a half mark…. plus he gets all political and even does a swear!)

  56. (4) There Goes Rhymin’ Simon – Paul Simon

    After my boundless praising of Stevie Wonder, I think I’ll need to rein it in a bit for fear of peaking before I reach my number one.

    Anyway, I’m now getting into the realms of nostalgia (not that there’s anything wrong with that) as this was an LP from my childhood. Me and my sister used to sing along with Mardi Gras and One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor.

    The songs are terrific, top notch, stone cold classics every one (yes, even Was A Sunny Day), and many, many little lyrical phrases from this record echo round my head to this day without conscious prompting. “I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly, and looking back down on me, smiled reassuringly…” is just one example.

    Speaking of the lyrics, me and my sister used to laugh and puzzle over the lyric to Was A Sunny Day – “She called him Speedoo but his christian name was Mr Earl” – and then years later I was delighted to discover it was cribbed from an old doo wop tune.

    But apart from the songs being terrific (Paul on a real roll here), what I particularly love about this record is the whole sound and feel of it. There’s absolutely nothing lo-fi about it; it sounds warm and luscious, every instrument just spot on. It feels like a time that no longer exists, a time when artists could get a massive budget to get a cracking bunch of musicians into the best studio rooms with the best mics and an expert producer, and yet resist the urge to go big and overproduce. In short, it sounds effortless, natural and welcoming, the kind of effortlessness that clearly takes a lot of effort to produce!

    And it’s just not the same on streaming or on CD. You need that big LP with that wonderful Milton Glaser gatefold sleeve (all the LPs I love seem to have wonderful sleeves, as if the creative peak of the performer has synced with the creative juices of the art team), and when you place the needle at the start of side two and hear the opening chords of American Tune, it feels sweeter than any other acoustic guitar has ever sounded. I melt every time.

    • Yes, an entirely wonderful album.
      My favourite moment on it is that octave leap that Simon’s voice takes between the words “soul” and “rose” in the line that you highlighted above (“I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly, and looking back down on me, smiled reassuringly…).

      • Oh definitely. Goosebumps.

        By the way, it was only relatively recently I heard the original hymn that Paul based the American Tune melody on, on radio 3. I’d heard it was based loosely on something, but it’s almost identical! Not that that detracts from the accomplishment of American Tune by any means, of course…

  57. (3) Tales From Topographic Oceans – Yes

    Wait! Come back! Ignore the naysayers and luxuriate in this crazy rambling album that sounds like nothing ever did before and never will again. Tales From Topographic Oceans is a true test of mettle, separating the hardcore Yes lovers from the day trippers.

    “Maybe I’ll just sing a while and then give you a call, maybe I’ll just say hello and say maybe that’s all”

    Oh Tales, let me list the ways I love thee.

    I mean, that cover for a start. If, like me, you regard the LP sleeve as the dominant visual artform of the late twentieth century, then how can you not love a delicious big gatefold Roger Dean painting like this? Stars, flying fish, fossils, a ziggurat, a cryptic shadowy creature lurking in the background… and then the unmistakable Yes logo to cap it all off. Just beautiful.

    “Wait all the more, regard your past, school gates remind us of our class”

    The sleevenotes. Once you open up the gatefold, you can wallow in the magnificent, rambling, insane lyrics and the equally magnificent, rambling, insane backstory by Jon (albeit all of this is in a regrettably tiny and ugly font, virtually illegible on the CD editions). So how did the album come about? No sex and drugs and rock and roll excess for these starship troopers, oh no: Jon had “ a few minutes to myself in the hotel room” before a concert in Tokyo, so started browsing a book by Paramhansa Yoganda (me neither) and got caught up in a lengthy footnote about “the four part Shastric Scriptures” (as you do). He and Steve then had a series of “sessions by candlelight” as the tour continued, working out the structure of the album as a four-part suite of connected songs.

    What’s not to love about that? I mean, if you are at all inclined towards prog excess, then you want your musicians to go full throttle into it, don’t you? Don’t hold back, guys, give us the full Shastric Scripture experience and stick a 10 minute guitar solo in the middle for good measure.

    “Stand on hills of long forgotten yesterdays”

    Rick Wakeman. He left the band after this album (but boomeranged back a few times), and the accepted story is he thought Tales was bloated and overlong and he wasn’t interested, at that point riding on the rising curve of a successful solo career. So… what? He phoned it in and his keyboard parts aren’t up to scratch? To that I say, nonsense! This album is one of my favourites for that authentic fix of analogue 70s keyboard warmth. Rick might not have had the notion to throw off any grandstanding parts like the astonishing harpsichord solo in the previous year’s Siberian Khatru, but the underlying bed of Mellotron, Moog and string machines is a masterclass in tone and taste.

    “Softer messages bringing light to a truth long forgotten”

    The Steven Wilson surround sound remix. Dusting off and touching up some clumsy mixing on the original, I think the Steven Wilson DVD probably matches the original LP as the ideal listening experience for Tales. You need those crazy percussion and chimes coming at you from all sides at the start of The Ancient/ Giants Under The Sun, and once you experience the album in this way you’ll never look back.

    “Do the leaves of green stay greener through the autumn?”

    It’s an endurance test, Tales, but in a good way. One of the funniest descriptions I’ve heard of the first ten minutes of side three is that it sounds like Steve Howe just practising his scales. And it does! No argument from me there. But I say that any prog-lover will know you NEED that kind of stuff – the more abrasive and difficult these kind of passages are, the more you appreciate it when it all dissolves into a beautiful spanish guitar ballad and Jon comes back in… “So the flowering creativity of life wove its web face to face with the shadow…”

    It’s all about the journey, man. You need to experience the rambling whole to truly appreciate the little pockets of beauty dotted through it.

    “Nous Sommes Du Soleil….”

    Look, I’ll stop there or I’ll risk getting as rambling and bloated as the very LP I’m talking about. I haven’t even mentioned Alan White’s incredible drumming (who else could so confidently claim the position recently vacated by the mighty Bill Bruford?) or Chris Squier’s acrobatic bass workouts. Suffice to say, I love it all and I think Tales is a joy and a landmark of rock excess in the 70s, which is why I’ve put it so high in my little list here. Is it better than Close to the Edge, the album immediately before it? Nah. Is it better than Relayer, then album immediately after it? Again, nah. But it’s in a class of its own and it’s a unique accomplishment.

    • Been in my top 3 Yes albums since I first heard it. And the new remix demonstrates beautifully that Wakeman wasn’t sitting on his hands during the sessions.

      Over the years, it’s become the ultimate totem toward which prog-haters can hurl their derision. I suspect that many of them will not actually have heard it.

      More fool them.

    • You have to admire the ambition, but Wakeman was probably right when he said “too much for a single album, not enough for a double”.
      The takeaway curry story on stage may be apocryphal, but I don’t believe he ever phoned-in his contribution. Always comes across as doing the best he can with the material offered.

      • Can’t say I agree with Wakeman about that – but then I wouldn’t, would I? Carve up one of my favourite albums and decide which bleeding chunks don’t deserve a place? No thanks.

        As for phoning-in his contribution: I give you…Parallels! (I’m here all week…)

      • Paradoxically, I kind of agree it’s too long. Like the white album, like Electric Ladyland, like bloomin’ Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, like Mahler (!) it kind of FEELS too long… but but but… I was serious when I said it’s like an endurance test and that’s part of the fun. It demands that you give time over to it, and allow that 80 minute journey in your life.

        I’ve tried to work out which bits I would cut out to tighten it up a bit, but always reached the same conclusion in the end: None. No bits. You take it as a whole or you don’t take it at all.

        Oh yeah and totally agree that “phoning it in” is not in Wakeman’s nature at all. It was a bit of a flippant comment. But he was absolutely not really satisfied with the whole thing. (Personally I think he just took umbrage at an early stage and is too stubborn to ever back down!)

  58. (2) Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd

    Oh how predictable. But there’s a reason this album is so ubiquitous: for want of a more descriptive term, it’s just brilliant.

    I’ll try and describe what I like about it, which isn’t easy. I think it’s just a perfect storm of so many factors all in alignment: the songs, the playing, the production, the concept.

    It just feels so… deliberate. It doesn’t bombard you with melodies and ideas, it just kind of ambles along at a similar pace for 40 minutes, quite stately and unshowy.

    The actual volume of the content is pretty minimal: nominally 9 tracks, the first track is really just a kind of overture, the second a little experimental sidetrack (shades of Ummagumma), Time and Great Gig kind of blend into each other, don’t they? On side two, Any Colour You Like is an instrumental coda to Us and Them. So really it’s, what, five proper songs, one of them being Money in the middle for a bit of blues rock to break it up a bit.

    So what’s astonishing is their vision in carving and arranging this slim material into a perfectly paced 40 minutes, the sequencing feeling as natural and inevitable as a ticking clock. I can’t think of another album with a more impressive flow and cohesion.

    It certainly helped that the band finding their feet coincided with Alan Parsons and the studio crew having the time and talent and opportunity to record it all so impeccably well. I genuinely feel that rock audiophile standards reached their apex with Dark Side. Sonically, it just doesn’t put a foot wrong, and every single instrument is a Platonic standard of what that instrument should sound like in rock. The reverb (EMT plate reverb I believe) in particular is just juicily perfect, creating an absorbing sheen over the whole thing.

    But talking about Dark Side just feels redundant. Something about it just works, something about it just touches people (mainly white middle aged males, admittedly), and connecting with its stark and slightly depressing worldview feels like therapy for a generation.

    Personally, I discovered it at 17. I remember the exact moment, one quiet afternoon in the house lying down with my head between the big speakers of my dad’s stereo, letting that heartbeat slowly build up and take me to a new world.

    • It is indeed hard to say anything new about Dark Side, it’s just so… good. What do you mean when you say “first track is really just a kind of overture, the second a little experimental sidetrack” though? I assume the funny little experiment is On The Run? So where does Breathe fit into your conglomatorial sequence?
      Also, “Time and Great Gig kind of blend into each other, don’t they?”. Nope, you haven’t convinced me. They suit each other but are starkly contrasting. Hence Breathe (Reprise)’s calm nod to the church is needed for a perfect musical and lyrical segue.

      Far away across the field
      The tolling of the iron bell
      Calls the faithful to their knees
      To hear the softly spoken magic spells

      • Yeah, maybe overture wasn’t the right word for that start bit. I just meant you get a load of sound effects, then Breathe sounds like half a song, and just when you think it’s getting into it, it goes off into another sound effects bit (On The Run) for five minutes. I dont really feel like it’s until Time that the album feels like it’s actually starting. The Big Song to kick it all off properly.
        It sounds like I’m criticising it, but I’m not: I think the pacing, the teasing, the ebb and flow, is what makes it so good.

        I concede your point about Great Gig being a whole separate song, yeah that’s fair enough.

        • I think I prefer the non-song Floyd to the song Floyd. I mean when it becomes verse chorus verse it’s a bit conservative or conventional. The parts that are instrumental are better. The part of Money where the time change happens and everything just lifts off is so much better than the plodding blues that precedes it with it’s platitudes about wealth.

        • I’m still beg to differ about Breathe. “Half a song”? Get thee hence forthwith! Speak To Me is a fantastic little overture, but Breathe is a fantastic song proper. Not to be so casually dismissed. Not on my watch. Try listening to it on headphones on a Jamaican beach after smoking a spliff or two. Tomorrow if poss. Get back to me on how it goes.

    • It reminds me of smoking dope. I almost instantly fall asleep as soon as the heart beats. The alarm clocks a wake me with a start but, otherwise, it’s so soporific, I’m soon back to slumberland.

  59. (1) Tubular Bells – Mike Oldfield

    With crushing inevitability, my obsession with Mike Oldfield wins the day.

    I’m long past trying to properly articulate my love for this music. You all must have that one special record, surely? That one album that goes beyond rationality and just plugs directly into your soul every time you hear it? Tubular Bells goes beyond all reason for me, I can’t really analyse it. There’s something about the balance of instruments, the haunting melodies, the warm fuzzy sound, that just does it for me.

    There aren’t any lyrics to speak of, which makes it even harder to explain. (When we find it difficult to talk about music, it’s easier to quote and dissect lyrics; something tangible to analyse).

    I first heard Tubular Bells as a youngster, so there might be some nostalgia in this. I had an idea what an ‘LP’ was; a collection of songs (sung by Don Maclean or Peter, Paul and Mary) so Tubular Bells baffled me and I didn’t really know what I was hearing. I remember asking my dad, ‘is this still the first song?’, wondering when the vocals were going to start.

    It lodged itself somewhere in my brain until I discovered the record again in my teens and got obsessed with it. And ever since, on and off, I’ve been playing it regularly and rebuying it in all sorts of different formats like a ritual.

    So there you go. You might quite like Tubular Bells, you might think it’s 70s prog bobbins, you might not have any opinion on it at all. If I’m your wife or your dad you probably just affectionately dismiss it as one of those quirky hobbies I have that no one understands. But you just need to know that for me Tubular Bells (and the other early music of Mike Oldfield) is a religious experience bordering on cultishness.

    So that’s my number one Good Thing of 1973.

    Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks for indulging me in this esoteric and self-obsessive list! 😊

  60. Absolutely brilliant thread! Loved all of it. Terrible ending. 😺

    My recollections of 1973 is of an awful year in meat world, so I lost myself in music. It was the year Glam faded (ironically the race to Christmas Number One was its last hurrah) and Little Feat came into my life. I’d have put Countdown To Ecstasy as my number one, I think.

    But the thread isn’t mine. It’s yours and I’ve looked forward to reading it every day. Bravo 👏👏👏👏👏

    • Well said, Tiggs. Not all of it, I didn’t get that far, but I thought your opening sentence was well articulated. It’s been a very enjoyable thread, slightly ruined beyond all redemption at the last minute by his final choice being a bit meh and everything, but other than that, sterling stuff, much applauded.

  61. It’s been a great read, thanks Arthur. I was going to make a comment about doing the same for my 50th year, but I’m not sure if 1975 has all that much going for it. Perhaps I should do a bit of research. Well done again.

  62. Cowslip’s Almanac: Marvellous thread this has been – some familiar, some new discoveries, some not hitting the same spot for me. But always well presented, argued and defended.
    Number 1 was (based on previous postings) a bit of a given (and one hard to argue against for 73 – I’m listening to it again right now).
    Still surprised by number 3, but that’s more down to me not getting it (and placing Going For The One and 90125 higher in my Yes list)

  63. I enjoyed reading this thread, Arthur – obviously approaching it from a different headspace, since I was 12 in 1973…”revealing corridors of time-provoking memories“, indeed!

  64. A very enjoyable thread, Arthur, and one that shows that you have been blessed to have reached the ripe old age of 50 without being bitten by the Heavy Rock Mosquito. It’s unlikely any of us that suffer from the Kerrangue virus would have listed 50 things from 1973 without mentioning Billion Dollar Babies.

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