and the Adverts-One Chord Wonders is my favorite track of the 70s, I just think its so perfect, Loud Surf-y guitars, amazing vocals, very unique for a Punk band. Their first record is all amazing, but damn, what an amazing track.

1. Tim Buckley - Starsailor
2. Neil Young - Tonight's the night
3. Television - Marquee moon
4. The Stooges - Fun house
5. The Rolling Stones - Sticky fingers
6. Neil Young - On the beach
7. Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson
8. David Bowie - Hunky dory
9. Pink Floyd - Meddle
10. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Rust never sleeps
11. Can - Future days
12. Iggy Pop - The idiot
13. David Bowie - Low
14. Patti Smith Group - Radio Ethiopia
15. Roxy Music - Stranded
16. Joy Division - Unknown pleasures
17. Françoise Hardy - La question
18. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - My aim is true
19. Nick Drake - Pink moon
20. Tom Waits - Small Change
21. Leonard Cohen - Songs of love and hate
22. Marvin Gaye - What's going on
23. Bob Dylan - Desire
24. Bob Dylan - Blood on the tracks
25. The Beach Boys - Sunflower

(EDITED)

Tusk - Fleetwood Mac

End of discussion.

Live/Evil

can anyone guess who number 1 will be? i think it'll either be a can album, funhouse or marquee moon.

probably Marquee Moon

I forgot Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell, I'm going to have to redo this list.

Here it goes.....

1. Alice Cooper – Love It To Death
2. Suicide – 1st album
3. Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
4. Big Star - #1 Record
5. The Stooges – Funhouse
6. The Ramones – Ramones
7. Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
8. Kiss – Destroyer
9. Alice Cooper – Easy Action
10. Kiss – Hotter Than Hell
11. CCR – Cosmos Factory
12. Blue Oyster Cult – Self Titled
13. Kiss – Kiss
14. Roxy Music – Roxy Music
15. Kiss – Love Gun
16. Neil Young – After the Goldrush
17. Cheap Trick – In Color
18. Neil Young – On The Beach
19. Big Star – Radio City
20. Neu – Neu
21. Dead Boys – Young Loud and Snotty
22. Custer - Soweisoso
23. Black Sabbath – Vol.4
24. The Modern Lovers – The Modern Lovers
25. Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express

I think there are too many (younger) people on here who have been to too many 70s themed parties.

Alice Cooper? For fuck's sake.

There was good music around in the 70s.

And stop raiding your dad's record collections.

Too much great jazz/funk/soul music to incorporate into a top 25 all time of the 70's. One almost needs 4 lists. Rock, Jazz, Funk/Soul, Punk/No Wave. I think its fair to say there are more than enough great albums to produce 25 for each of these types of music.

I look back at mine on the first page and there are so many things left out.

uh.. dunno, my dad used to be into david bowie and pink floyd when he was my age and still loves them deeply, so i've known about them ever since i was little kid.. and this music simply does it for me. i've heard hundreds of records from the 70's ever since, but nothing compares (except for a few)..

The very best soul and funk was produced in the late 60s and 70s.

And taking punk into account as well, there really is no need to include any shitty novelty rock bands (Alice Cooper? Kiss? For fuck's sake).

never REALLY got into soul/funk for some reason, maybe i haven't listened to the right artists..

For instance Zeppelin, Floyd, Stones all made great albums during the 70's. Regardless of personal taste, it is a fact that these bands put out good music deserving of a top 25 mention. Throw in some, Bowie, Beefheart, Can, Iggy Pop, Lour Reed or VU, Televison, etc... and you have almost no room for other great types of music....such a difficult list.

I will make a top 25 soul/funk/r&b list that you might want to check out

thanks :)

If I had made this sort of list 18/19 years ago I would have probably included many of the albums mentioned on these lists, so in a way I can understand their presence on many of the youngsters' lists. What I don't get is why people download/buy so much 'obscure' music which apparently blows them away, and then end up having the same records on these top whatever over and over again. I'm not criticising the personal choices of anyone, I just don't get what the point of looking for new music is for many posters.

Never been to a 70's themed party. My Dad owned a total of 1 of the records I listed. Just asking, have you ever heard the first three Alice Cooper albums? At this period in time I can't see how they were any more of a novelty rock band than David Bowie, Roxy Music, Ian Dury or the MC5.

Might not be as sexy as some forgotten krautrock group or pioneering minimalist composer but to me this is good music.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QRHFIVJtqpc

It's because decent music peaked in precisely 1976. Didn't you know that?

More seriously though, there are a lot of records that time has failed to forget. Tago Mago is still amazing; Amun Duul (who I've neglected) are still amazing; David Bowie is still amazing (although I'm sure everyone knows my actual feelings on Dame Dave). I'd be very surprised if anyone who didn't live through the 90s (which I did, for part of it) would consider that Urusei Yatsura were amazing, but they'd certainly know the Bends. History makes the oblique question of how good something is seem easier. Is Fun House one of the greatest records ever? Personally, I'd say no, but in terms of how many bands lifted from it, it's absurdly influential.

I think the more recent polls (80s & 90s) are showing up a lot more 'personal choices' because a lot of people were semi-functional adults at the time. Thinking Fellers whatsit - they wouldn't appear in a 90s list in 10-15 years.

So true...I didn't even get to Deep Purple, Funkadelic, Foghat, Free, Steve Miller Band, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Styx, Judas Priest or Rush.

The Top 25 Soul/Funk/R&B Records From The 70's:
*there are mainstream ''non-get-arounds'' as well as some deep underground, gut-bucket funk*

1. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain...yes it is that good.
2. Demon Fuzz - Afreaka....find this album
3. Curtis Mayfield - Superfly...possibly the best soundtrack ever
4. Sly & The Family Stone - There's A Riot Going On...need I say more?
5. James Brown - Payback...The godfathers swan song
6. Gil Scot Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised...often overlooked
7. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions...extremely popular but extremely good
8. Skull Snaps - S/T...an underground funk/soul treat
9. Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul - S/T... true gritty soulful funk
10. Isaac Hayes - To Be Continued...the most solid 70's album Ike put out
11. Parliament - Mothership Connection...laid back, rythmic delight
12. Cymande - S/T...jamica style funk, not for the L7
13. Donny Hathaway - Everything Is Everything....this is the ghetto
14. The Meters - Look-Ka-Py-Py...southern-style new orleans mash up
15. Fatback - Keep On Steppin'....well, keep on steppin
16. Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s - Breakin Bread...go on and get a piece
17. Al Green - I'm Still In Love With You...as you will be with this record
18. Jimmy Castor Bunch - It's Just Begun...a true roots of funk player
19. Port Authority - S/T...truly underground, hard hitting tunes
20. Bobby Byrd - I Need Help...a killer live album from James' friend
21. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On...it is hard to get around this album
22. Mandrill - Composite Truth...progressive, wild funk
23. Bill Withers - Still Bill...true r&b with nice grooves
24. New Birth - Birth Day...a flowing, dynamic funky record
25. Earth,Wind & Fire - S/T...far as raw funk goes, this one is it for E,W,F

i really hate making lists in order. cause i usually dont like any of my top albums more than the other, each is good for its own time.
and im not in the mood for thinking much, so im probably just going to post lots of punk....


1. the stooges-funhouse
2.can- ege bamyasi
3.television-marquee moon
4. serge gainsbourg-history de melody nelson
5. ramones-ramones
6.neu!-75
7.suicide-suicide
8. wire- pink flag
9.patti smith-horses
10. john fahey-america
11.any morricone album, lets say two mules for sister sarah, or my name is nobody
12.pere ubu-the modern dance
13.serge gainsbourg and jean claude vannier-cannabis ost
14. jean claude vannier-L' Enfant Assasin des Mouches
15. the damned-damned damned damned
16. derek bailey-topography of the lungs
17.talking heads-more songs about buildings and food
18. alexander von schlippenbach-pakistani promade
19.captain beefheart-mirror man (released in 1970)
20. bob dylan-desire
21.the sparks-kimono my house/ propoganda
22.john fahey-old fashoined love
23.the clash-london calling
24. joy division-unknown pleasures
25.tom waits-nighthawks at the diner


or something like that....

Good list, but, blonde on blonde and mirror man are both from the 60's.

fuck youre right about dylan-but mirror man was released in 70-71

Ah, indeed, it was released in 70. I got confused because my copy says it was recorded in 65, even though it was really recorded in 67.

What do you mean, "I don't get what the point of looking for new music is for many posters?"

You don't see what the point of lookin for new tunes is, period? Or you don't understand some peoples intentions of doing so?

If it is the former that's kind of silly. If we're young, obviously we're going to be interested in music that is happening at the very moment, just as you did 18/19 years ago, yknow?

AW, another amazing lists that made me realize another record I love and ommited. SPARKS-Kimono My House. Possibly the coolest band ever!

Only a top 10 from me, but whatever.

1. (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), Lynrd Skynrd
2. Cosmo's Factory, Creedence Clearwater Revival
3. Soul On Top, James Brown
4. Nighthawks At The Diner, Tom Waits
5. Kimono My House, Sparks
6. The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle, Bruce Springsteen
7. Blank Generation, Richard Hell and the Voidoids
8. Raw Power, The Stooges
9. Specials, The Specials
10. Exodus, Bob Marley And The Wailers

The Rock List:
1. David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
2. Can - Ege Bamyasi
3. Iggy Pop & The Stooges - Raw Power
4. Velvet Underground - Loaded
5. T. Rex - Electric Warrior
6. Television - Marquee Moon
7. The Ramones - S/T
8. Talking Heads - Fear Of Music
9. Brian Eno - Another Green Planet
10. Lou Reed - Transformer
11. Gang Of Four - Entertainment
12. Nick Drake - Pink Moon
13. Amon Duul II - Dance Of The Lemmings
14. New York Dolls - S/T
15. The Kinks - Lola Vs. Powerman & The Money-Go-Round
16. Captain Beefheart - Lick My Decals Off, Baby
17. Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
18. Neu! - S/T
19. Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey
20. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
21. The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials
22. The Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
23. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
24. The Dead Boys - Young Loud and Snotty
25. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

There was an inferred clause - "I don't see what the point is of looking for new tunes [from now, if you're only going to pick 'conservative' choices from the 1970s]." The other point being that if you're into 'exciting' 'underground' music now, there was plenty of that in the 70s (beyond Bowie and the like).

Seriously though, you're studying journalism?

Yep, probably better than Moondance or Astral Weeks.

Thanks for reminding me of this album!!!
Your list is definitely the most interesting so far...

Because inevitably you keep finding more and more stuff you like, occasionally you find a new favorite, and also your tastes change as you get older.


Plus I'm young, I know relatively little about the 70's.

1. Public Image Limited - Metal Box
2. Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music
3. Tony Conrad & Faust - Outside The Dream Syndicate
4. Nurse With Wound - A Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella
5. This Heat - This Heat
6. AMM III - It Had Been An Ordinary Enough Day In Pueblo, Colorado
7. Modern Lovers - Modern Lovers
8. Amon Duul II - Yeti
9. Fela Kuti - Zombie
10 Suicide - Suicide
11. The Stooges - Fun House
12. Simon Finn - Pass The Distance
13. The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials
14. Agitation Free - Malesch
15. Can - Tago Mago
16. Neu! - Neu!
17. The Ramoes - The Ramones
18. Sand - Golem
19. Sly & The Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On
20. Walter Wegmuller - Tarot

This is a blatant excuse, I'm afraid. The point I was trying trying to make with my earlier post, and perhaps I should have pointed it out more clearly, is that when I was your age (I think), there was no internet or powerful resource of musical information like the one you've now had for a long period of time.

You were even more disadvantaged if you lived in a small town and had to rely on mail order catalogues, saving pocket money, taping stuff off the radio etc. I'm certainly not romanticising this like you often see some people my age or older doing, in fact I totally embrace any possibility that has the potential of making one person's taste expand ad infinitum, what with an array of blogs and websites at your disposal, which should encourage you to find out about a different perspective of what went on in the 60's, 70's, 80's etc.

What strikes me as a bit odd, and this is in no way a criticism of the records people put on their own lists at all, is that for all the continuous debate on this forum as to what constitutes noise, where it originates from, who are the forefathers etc, a record like 'metal machine music' is more prominent view than, say, your pierre henry's, stockhausen's, or any other true experimentator that made music in those decades. Just a simple observation, nothing polemical.

Albums that I remember being in my record collection in the 70's, so I must have thought they were good at the time though they may not be remembered as classics nowadays included:

Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Tonto's Expanding Head Band - Zero Time and I'ts About Time (still have both of these)
Greenslade - Bedside Manners Are Extra
T. Rex - Ride a White Swan
Every Bowie album
Sparks - Kimono My House
Devo - Are We Not Men? We Are DEVO!
Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks
Damned - Damned Damned Damned
The Clash - London Calling
TG - Second & Third Annual Reports
Bad Company - Bad Company
Pink Floyd - A Nice Pair
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Yes - Close To The Edge
Yes - Fragile
Klaus Schultz - Timewind
The Sensatonal Alex Harvey Band - Next
Wishbone Ash - Argus
Emerson Lake & Palmer - Tarkus
Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive
Alice Cooper - Schools Out, Killer & Billion Dollar Babies
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Suicide - Suicide

I think this is a brilliant point - there's the possibility today, which wasn't as viable an option so recently as 10 years ago, for someone with a minimum of resources to find out an entirely different narrative on the 'dawn of rock' (60s/70s). Personally, I never really adhered to the idea that the best music produced in the 60s and 70s was the music that was being written about in Q (or wherever); that's not to say that music isn't 'good', it's just that someone like the Monks or the Shaggs (who aren't particularly obscure in the context of this forum) meant more to me than the Doors [etc] did. This narrative of seeking out 'more interesting' stuff than the 'mainstream' is ubiquitous when it comes to 00s music, but doesn't seem to abide (for many here) to earlier decades.

I put Metal Machine Music as #1 on my list for a couple reasons. One, it personally was pretty much the first experimental noise album I ever personally listened to, for whatever cultural or historical reasons. And two, it was directly influential on my favorite band, Sonic Youth, and my favorite album, Bad Moon Rising. Listening to them, I reverse engineered to their influences and found that record that demonstrated that a rock musician could be every bit as experimental as a Stockhausen, though of course it pointed me towards looking into the non-rock world avant garde as well. So in my part the '70s list is every bit as much a Sonic Youth fan's list as the '80s or '90s lists were.

I considered trying to put a list together like Nefeli's, which I agree is probably the list of very most interesting music from the decade overall. But I would have been lying to pretend those were really my favorite albums from the decade, because while I may go listen to them now and love them, I mostly haven't yet. When I was searching for reminders of what to put on my list through Google and Rate Your Music, I came across Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and put it on my list at one point. But the fact is, as much as I might agree it is incredibly important in terms of taking music as a whole to a new place, I can't pretend to have listened to it as much as Big Star's third album or Live at the Witch Trials. I don't think those albums are necessarily "better" than Reich or Stockhausen's output in the '70s, I just have spent way more time with the rock records.

That said, in the '70s themselves, I was mostly, as a child, listening to AM radio, and owned a couple ELO, Bee Gees, and Little River Band albums. It would be very entertaining to put together a list of what I really was listening to in those days, and just trying to imagine brings Casey Kasem's voice into my head! At the start of the '80s in my early teens the list would be dominated by Led Zeppelin, who I still appreciate as decent musicians with three good first albums, but hardly the best of the decade. And, yes, Yes...

Both you and Glice make excellent points.

I was just thinking specifically at how I'd compile a list of 80's records 'cause that would be the hardest, since much of what I used to listen to then is a mixture of older brother record collection made up mostly of mid-to-late 70's punk and 'classic rock', my own pop music 7'' singles, the obsession of my sister for Duran Duran, and then more weird - at that time at least - bands that I suddenly got to know. It makes it even more difficult 'cause a band like Husker Du, which I'm a big fan of, I didn't even get to own a record by until they had already split up, and it ended up in my hands in the early 90's, therefore effectively making themselves 'felt' in another decade other than the one they were making music in.

A different criteria applies to Sonic Youth, which I already knew in 1989. If I'd follow my heart, Terence Trent D'Arby's 'Introducing...' would be number one because that's the first lp I went to the shop to buy for myself, but even though it has some good songs on it, I'd hardly define it as the best that came out in that decade. And so forth.