Aah, Boston. How we love you. Home to Buffalo Tom. Home to The Russians. Home to Aerosmith, The Lemonheads, Pixies, Mission of Burma, ‘Til Tuesday and countless other great bands. Boston is probably second only to New York as the US’s spiritual home of great rock music.
Boston is also home to The Neighborhoods, Watts, Tom Baker & The Snakes and Worshipper, all of whom have connections to The Dirty Truckers.
On December 1st 1976, UK TV history was made. On Bill Grundy’s Today show, the Sex Pistols and a couple of their associated chums shocked a nation. Their behavior was quickly seen as inappropriate for most of the 1970s public and by the time their interview concluded with Steve Jones calling Grundy “a fucking rotter”, things had moved from merely “inappropriate” to “causing outrage”.
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.
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…]
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.