The Great 70s Project: 1976

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The mention of 1976 for most people over a certain age in the UK will invariably invoke remembrances of one of the hottest summers on record. There’s more to the year than just drought, though. There’s disco, classic rock and pop.

It was also the year that punk broke into the mainstream.  A whole new world of music was born.

It was the year we checked into ‘Hotel California’ for the first time…and with it becoming a radio staple, true as the song’s tale, we never really left. Queen followed their ambitious ‘Night At The Opera’ with the equally grand ‘A Day At The Races’ and Jeff Beck continued his voyage into fusion with ‘Wired’.  As Real Gone’s Great 70s project reaches 1976, we take a dip into those classic albums and far more besides.

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REAL GONE GOES OUT: King’s X, Islington Assembly Hall, London 14/06/2017

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The Islington Assembly Hall always feels like a venue of two moods. The stage and balcony areas have a feeling of old theatre about them, much like the Empire at Shepherd’s Bush and fitting for a Grade II listed building. In other respects, visiting other parts the venue feels like stepping into a parochial town hall, albeit a rather large one. It’s easy to imagine a large table set up on a weekday afternoon with a man banging a little gavel, making announcements about Mrs. Jones’s award winning marmalade before alerting the neighbourhood watch team to a potential catastrophe regarding a missing moggie. On this evening, that feeling isn’t quite as strong as when Snakecharmer took the Assembly Hall’s stage in 2013, and even less so as the house lights dim.

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THE WHITE SWAN – The White EP

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Towards the end of 2016, Canadian doom merchants The White Swan unleashed their debut EP. Although just offering the discerning riff-junkie just three tracks, on ‘Anubis’, Mercedes Lander and her crew of heavyweight sludge lovers proved that quality always wins out over quality. Between the band’s own ‘Blood’ – a perfect fusion of heaviness and an odd, treacly psychedelia – and the heaviest version of Wings’ ‘Jet’ ever – hearing is believing – the release was an instant classic. Several months on, their eagerly awaited follow up doesn’t so much pick up where the previous tracks left off, but tries its utmost to smash the previous efforts into smithereens [in this case, meaning a thousand pieces; at no point do The White Swan attempt to put their heaviest stamp upon anything written by Pat DiNizio, but it might be a fun idea…]

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The Great 70s Project: 1975

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At the midpoint of the decade, 1974 appeared to have no definite dominant genres, but that allowed for a very varied singles chart.  1975 very much follows that trend, but pushes some of the focus back to great albums.

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ROGER WATERS – Is This The Life We Really Want?

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Roger Waters, ex-Pink Floyd bassist, songwriter and heavy-handed social commentator, released his third solo album, the rather grand ‘Amused To Death’ in 1992. A concept piece about media propaganda and news coverage, the album was one of the best sounding records of the year. It blended a few familiar Floydian motifs with the more atmospheric elements of his own ‘Pros & Cons of Hitch-Hiking’ and resulted in a cult classic. From then on, very little was heard from Waters with regard to studio material. It was perhaps wise to take some time out, of course, for to follow such a near-perfect record (at least for the style) would have been a fools errand.

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