Top 10 Non-Punk Albums of 1977
Ah, 1977. Year Zero. The Year Everything Changed. The year punk arrived in a hurricane of raw passion, blood and snot to save us from the bloated prog rock bores hogging the airwaves. The Clash! The Sex Pistols! The Damned! What a pity it all sucked. Certain corners of the music press would have you believe that punk was the be all and end all, and that the early 1970s were a cultural wasteland redeemed only by the odd David Bowie or Lou Reed album. This is, of course, complete nonsense. Last year there was a lot of fuss about the thirtieth anniversary of punk, so here is a list of my top 10 albums from 1977 that have nothing to do with punk, to prove there was plenty to listen to if you didn’t believe that a bunch of badly-dressed Stones wannabes were going to change the world. I have deliberately avoided David Bowie’s classic 77 albums, Low and “Heroes”, because of their huge impact on punk and post-punk music, and also classic early post-punk albums such as Wire’s Pink Flag and Suicide and Television’s debut albums on the ground of fairness.
10. Rush – A Farewell To Kings
Rush only really hit their stride with 1976’s 2112, a gloriously overblown concept album stuffed to breaking point with spaceships, evil priests and Ayn Rand inspired dystopias all played out to an immaculate hard riffing virtuoso prog rock. Remarkably they only got better from then on, with next year’s A Farewell To Kings proving that they had no trouble following up a classic LP. The title track is a brutal anti-monarchist rant set to crunchy guitar and blistering drumming that clearly gave the Manics a few ideas, and ‘Closer To The Heart’ slyly broke the band into FM radio. The swirling ‘Cygnus X-1’ is more preposterous space rock that paves the way for the band’s next album, Hemispheres, which would see them maturing and filling out their sound with gargantuan keyboards. However the unavoidable highlight of the album is ‘Xanadu’, an epic based on Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ which shows the band at their breathtaking best (although dear old Samuel must turn in his grave every time he hears those lyrics). Alex Lifeson’s guitar mutates from hard riffing to acoustic arpeggios to the signature riff that sounds eerily like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ only good, whilst Neil Peart is let loose on a range of drums, bells and gongs to help drive the song to its thunderous conclusion.
9. Steely Dan – Aja
On Aja Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen reached their peak sonically, demanding an increasingly accomplished array of session musicians to do take after take of the songs on this album until they got the sound in their heads on tape. As such it was the antithesis of punk’s rough and ready passion. Steely Dan were no slouches in the songwriting department either, their sophisticated jazzy chords and smooth melodies miles away from punk’s three chord limit. As a result of Becker and Fagen’s increasingly perfectionist work ethic, Aja is played immaculately. The music is sublime, from Wayne Shorter’s sax solo on the opening track to the silky funk underpinning ‘I Got The News’. However, just because this record is classy doesn’t mean that it’s all sweatness and light – far from it. Becker and Fagen are at their most snide and sarcastic throughout, as ‘Black Cow’ is the bizarre and sinister aftermath of a failed relationship and ‘Deacon Blue’ is the song of a drunk, jazz-loving hipster woefully out of place in a sports-obsessed America. Cryptic and sinister yet smooth enough to be played on the radio to unsuspecting civilians everywhere, Steely Dan were, in their own way, much more dangerous then punk.
8. Genesis – Wind And Wuthering
There is a press shot of Genesis from around the time The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway came out. Peter Gabriel sits in the centre, wearing only a pair of torn jeans, hair cropped short, glaring moodily out at the camera. The rest of Genesis are standing behind him, grinning sheepishly with unkempt shoulder length hair and dressed like your dad after a visit to the charity shop. In retrospect, Gabriel’s departure seems inevitable – he had already moved on from his band mates and into the future. However, the fact that he was already somewhat removed from proceedings meant that Genesis were able to continue business as usual without him for another two LPs as the core line up of Steve Hackett, Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. However, Wind And Wuthering was the final album they made before Steve Hackett quit, leaving Collins, Banks and Rutherford to descend into MOR oblivion. However, in spite of internal and external tension, Wind And Wuthering stands up respectably as Genesis’ last will and testament. The opening ‘Eleventh Earl Of Mar’ is a fantastic prog rock epic worthy of the Gabriel years, with Phil sounding very Gabriel-like, and Hackett unleashing his full bag of tricks, from sinister distorted leads to the delicate acoustic bridge. There is also some awesomely overblown keyboards and piano runs from Tony Banks. ‘One For The Vine’ is an extended piece about a reluctant messiah, showing that Gabriel didn’t take all of the band’s surreal humour with him when he left, and ‘Your Own Special Way’ proved that the group could get radio play without compromising their sound. The album ends, appropriately on an elegiac note, with ‘Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers’/‘In That Quiet Earth’/‘Afterglow’ providing the final Genesis epic, building up to the gorgeous apocalyptic finale in which Genesis as we know and love them say goodbye for the last time. If only they’d ended it there, Wind And Wuthering would have been the perfect conclusion to Genesis’ legacy.
7. Gong – Live Floating Anarchy 1977
The Clash may have wanted a riot of their own, but Gong, loathed hippies though they may have been, were formed in the France student revolution of 1968. As a result, radical politics had always run deep in their veins underneath their drugged-out hippy spiritualism, and when all the young groups were screaming ‘Anarchy!’ in 77, they were more then happy to join in and show them how it was really done. Having lost Steve Hillage to a solo career and Pierre Moerlen and Didier Malherbe to fusion blandness, head pothead pixie Daevid Allen and wife Gilly Smyth teamed up with a bunch of fellow malcontents and, abandoning their previous laid-back sound, unleashed deranged, techno-infused space-punk. Just as far out but more mean and gritty, and spitting radical student polemic, Gong were far more in tune with the time then many of their prog-rock peers, as shown by the fact that they played live alongside The Fall and Crass.
6. Parliament – Funketelechy vs The Placebo Syndrome
Funketelechy vs The Placebo Syndrome is arguably Parliament’s masterpiece, perhaps even more so then 1975’s sublime Mothership Connection. By now Clinton’s amalgamation of black American music had matured into something that was uniquely his own, and Funketelechy.... arguably sees him perfect that vision. The usual ridiculous concepts are there, this time George Clinton and his band of merry men are out to battle Sir Nose d’Voidoffunk and warn the listeners of the dangers of falling in thrall to The Placebo Syndrome, representing consumerism. The lyrics provide as much silly fun as ever, but the band is on absolute top form, battling it out over a number of solid funk grooves over which anything can and does happen. ‘Wizard of Finance’ is a ballad of sorts, well, musically anyway, whilst ‘Flash Light’ and ‘Bop Gun’, both featuring Bernie Worrell’s awesomely funky synthesised bass, must be two of the most irresistible dancefloor juggernauts ever unleashed upon the human race.
5. Pink Floyd – Animals
During 1977, Pink Floyd were pretty much Public Enemy Number 1 in the punk community. With their ‘pretentious’ music and their rich rock star lifestyles they symbolised everything that punk was meant to be kicking out at, quite literally in the case of Johnny Rotten’s ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ t-shirt. However, if any of the punks had actually bothered to listen to the Floyd’s 77 release Animals, they may have been surprised with how much they had in common. Animals shows that Roger Waters could match Johnny Rotten for misanthropy any day, and then some. Musically the band are at their most sharp and brutal, with Dave Gilmour’s guitar raging and snarling throughout ‘Dogs’, and, although the songs are long, there is a clarity and focus at work which ensures that not an unnecessary note is played. The album’s brutal caricaturing of Thatcherite business men as dogs and pigs and its portrayal of the masses as sheep following their leaders blindly to slaughter puts The Clash’s unimaginative soapbox sloganeering to shame. The punks could complain all they want, but Pink Floyd continued to shift units and sell out stadiums, and the musical and lyrical qualities that shine through in Animals would ensure their survival as a valid creative force as far as 1979’s The Wall, outlasting most of their prog rock contempories.
4. Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express
By 1977, most of the krautrock groups that helped make the late 60s and early 70s such an exciting time for music had burned themselves out. Kraftwerk were just hitting their stride and were showing no signs of slowing down or stopping. Following on from the innovations of Autobahn and Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express is possibly Kraftwerk’s finest achievement, the ultimate paean to the unity of man and technology. Whilst their earlier releases have dated somewhat, Trans-Europe Express still sounds amazing today. The shimmering city-scapes of ‘Europe Endless’ and the title track’s glorious dancefloor monotony capture the majesty of decaying grandeur beautifully, whilst ‘The Hall Of Mirrors’ is a genuinely disturbing exploration of narcissism and self-image which seems even more pertinent in this age of plastic surgery and botox. But the finest track on the album is possibly ‘Showroom Dummies’, which betrays the band’s wry sense of humour and sees them playing with their robot image for the first time over creepy yet irresistibly danceable electronica. This album would go on to have a huge influence on the post punk and electronic scene, as well as disco and hip-hop. Artists as diverse as Donna Summers, The Human League, Africa Bambata and David Bowie have cited this record’s influence. Kraftwerk themselves would spend their remaining career refining the work they did on this album.
3. Goblin – Suspiria
Goblin were an Italian prog rock band. Fans of King Crimson and Genesis, they wound up working on the soundtracks to the films of director Dario Argento and never looked back. Their work so well complemented his films that he got them to write the soundtrack to his impressionistic horror Suspiria before filming it, and worked the film around the music. Both the soundtrack and the film display how well placed his faith was. The soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment to Argento’s dark, nightmarish and brutal horror about witches who run a dance school, but is equally effective on its own. The band eschew normal film score clichés, instead creating a dark, murky and tribalistic sound based around droning improvisation, malevolent chanting and clattering percussion. The music lurches from creepy looped celesta and bells to all-out thunderous assault and back again, via moments of unbearable tension. Suspiria is justly regularly rated as one of the most terrifying movies ever, and one listen to this soundtrack reveals one of the reasons why – this music alone is enough to send you running for the light.
2. Univers Zero – 1313
Speaking of malevolent European prog... Univers Zero were a Belgium prog rock band lead by drummer Daniel Denis. Influenced equally by Magma’s malevolent warped space prog, H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror stories and 20th century chamber music, Univers Zero were anything but easy listening. 1313, their debut album, is a portal into the depths of the crawling chaos. Bassoon, viola and harmonium are given as much space as guitar, bass and drums to create music that has very few links with anything else in rock music. Scrapes and drones build to vicious frenzies; instruments play in different keys and time signatures at the same time. Dark, ritualistic and intense, the music sounds almost like it wasn’t created for human ears. The record is almost entirely acoustic, yet it manages to achieve a pitch of terror that would send most black metal bands running for their lives. The only reference points I can think of that come close to doing Univers Zero justice are the scarier King Crimson stuff from the 73-74 period and Magma at their most demonic, like on Kohntarkosz. But really, these guys were out there on their own. Incredibly, 1979’s Heresie would reach even further heights of dark malevolence, and the group would continue making brutally twisted prog well into the 80s.
1. Fela Kuti – Zombie
Nigerian musician Fela Kuti discovered James Brown and invented Afro-beat, a fusion of jazz, funk and traditional African music. Zombie remains his most well known album, partially due to the context surrounding it. The song ‘Zombie’, which takes up all of Side 1, is a vitriolic attack on the brutality of the Nigerian military, with Fela accusing the soldiers of behaving like zombies – he sings ‘Zombie no go think unless you tell him to think’, and then barks orders like ‘Attention! Double up! Fall in! Fall out! Fall down! Get ready!’ like a deranged sergeant major whilst the backing vocalists chant ‘Zombie!’. The record became hugely popular, leading to people shouting ‘Zombie!’ at soldiers. Unfortunately the military responded to Fela’s criticism of their brutality... well... brutally, leading to a series of devastating attacks on Fela and his family, during which he was horrendously beaten and his aged mother was chucked out a bedroom window to her death. Even more incredible then the context is the music itself. Zombie is arguably Fela’s greatest album. All the Afro-beat elements are in place in excelsis – the scratchy, repetitious guitars, the rolling drums, Fela’s trumpet playing, the chanting – and it all ties together to create an utterly infectious groove over one chord, which is repeated until the end of the side of vinyl, building into an unstoppable frenzy. Side 2 is taken up by the equally long and equally good ‘Mister Follow Follow’, its subject, the perils of blindly following authority, suitably thematically related. This time, though, the band take a slightly more mellow approach, allowing the listener to recover somewhat from the righteous frenzy of Side 1. Unbelievably, with all that stuff going on, Fela would get round to releasing 5 other great albums in 1977 alone, a feat unmatched by any of the other artists in this list.
10. Rush – A Farewell To Kings
Rush only really hit their stride with 1976’s 2112, a gloriously overblown concept album stuffed to breaking point with spaceships, evil priests and Ayn Rand inspired dystopias all played out to an immaculate hard riffing virtuoso prog rock. Remarkably they only got better from then on, with next year’s A Farewell To Kings proving that they had no trouble following up a classic LP. The title track is a brutal anti-monarchist rant set to crunchy guitar and blistering drumming that clearly gave the Manics a few ideas, and ‘Closer To The Heart’ slyly broke the band into FM radio. The swirling ‘Cygnus X-1’ is more preposterous space rock that paves the way for the band’s next album, Hemispheres, which would see them maturing and filling out their sound with gargantuan keyboards. However the unavoidable highlight of the album is ‘Xanadu’, an epic based on Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ which shows the band at their breathtaking best (although dear old Samuel must turn in his grave every time he hears those lyrics). Alex Lifeson’s guitar mutates from hard riffing to acoustic arpeggios to the signature riff that sounds eerily like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ only good, whilst Neil Peart is let loose on a range of drums, bells and gongs to help drive the song to its thunderous conclusion.
9. Steely Dan – Aja
On Aja Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen reached their peak sonically, demanding an increasingly accomplished array of session musicians to do take after take of the songs on this album until they got the sound in their heads on tape. As such it was the antithesis of punk’s rough and ready passion. Steely Dan were no slouches in the songwriting department either, their sophisticated jazzy chords and smooth melodies miles away from punk’s three chord limit. As a result of Becker and Fagen’s increasingly perfectionist work ethic, Aja is played immaculately. The music is sublime, from Wayne Shorter’s sax solo on the opening track to the silky funk underpinning ‘I Got The News’. However, just because this record is classy doesn’t mean that it’s all sweatness and light – far from it. Becker and Fagen are at their most snide and sarcastic throughout, as ‘Black Cow’ is the bizarre and sinister aftermath of a failed relationship and ‘Deacon Blue’ is the song of a drunk, jazz-loving hipster woefully out of place in a sports-obsessed America. Cryptic and sinister yet smooth enough to be played on the radio to unsuspecting civilians everywhere, Steely Dan were, in their own way, much more dangerous then punk.
8. Genesis – Wind And Wuthering
There is a press shot of Genesis from around the time The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway came out. Peter Gabriel sits in the centre, wearing only a pair of torn jeans, hair cropped short, glaring moodily out at the camera. The rest of Genesis are standing behind him, grinning sheepishly with unkempt shoulder length hair and dressed like your dad after a visit to the charity shop. In retrospect, Gabriel’s departure seems inevitable – he had already moved on from his band mates and into the future. However, the fact that he was already somewhat removed from proceedings meant that Genesis were able to continue business as usual without him for another two LPs as the core line up of Steve Hackett, Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. However, Wind And Wuthering was the final album they made before Steve Hackett quit, leaving Collins, Banks and Rutherford to descend into MOR oblivion. However, in spite of internal and external tension, Wind And Wuthering stands up respectably as Genesis’ last will and testament. The opening ‘Eleventh Earl Of Mar’ is a fantastic prog rock epic worthy of the Gabriel years, with Phil sounding very Gabriel-like, and Hackett unleashing his full bag of tricks, from sinister distorted leads to the delicate acoustic bridge. There is also some awesomely overblown keyboards and piano runs from Tony Banks. ‘One For The Vine’ is an extended piece about a reluctant messiah, showing that Gabriel didn’t take all of the band’s surreal humour with him when he left, and ‘Your Own Special Way’ proved that the group could get radio play without compromising their sound. The album ends, appropriately on an elegiac note, with ‘Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers’/‘In That Quiet Earth’/‘Afterglow’ providing the final Genesis epic, building up to the gorgeous apocalyptic finale in which Genesis as we know and love them say goodbye for the last time. If only they’d ended it there, Wind And Wuthering would have been the perfect conclusion to Genesis’ legacy.
7. Gong – Live Floating Anarchy 1977
The Clash may have wanted a riot of their own, but Gong, loathed hippies though they may have been, were formed in the France student revolution of 1968. As a result, radical politics had always run deep in their veins underneath their drugged-out hippy spiritualism, and when all the young groups were screaming ‘Anarchy!’ in 77, they were more then happy to join in and show them how it was really done. Having lost Steve Hillage to a solo career and Pierre Moerlen and Didier Malherbe to fusion blandness, head pothead pixie Daevid Allen and wife Gilly Smyth teamed up with a bunch of fellow malcontents and, abandoning their previous laid-back sound, unleashed deranged, techno-infused space-punk. Just as far out but more mean and gritty, and spitting radical student polemic, Gong were far more in tune with the time then many of their prog-rock peers, as shown by the fact that they played live alongside The Fall and Crass.
6. Parliament – Funketelechy vs The Placebo Syndrome
Funketelechy vs The Placebo Syndrome is arguably Parliament’s masterpiece, perhaps even more so then 1975’s sublime Mothership Connection. By now Clinton’s amalgamation of black American music had matured into something that was uniquely his own, and Funketelechy.... arguably sees him perfect that vision. The usual ridiculous concepts are there, this time George Clinton and his band of merry men are out to battle Sir Nose d’Voidoffunk and warn the listeners of the dangers of falling in thrall to The Placebo Syndrome, representing consumerism. The lyrics provide as much silly fun as ever, but the band is on absolute top form, battling it out over a number of solid funk grooves over which anything can and does happen. ‘Wizard of Finance’ is a ballad of sorts, well, musically anyway, whilst ‘Flash Light’ and ‘Bop Gun’, both featuring Bernie Worrell’s awesomely funky synthesised bass, must be two of the most irresistible dancefloor juggernauts ever unleashed upon the human race.
5. Pink Floyd – Animals
During 1977, Pink Floyd were pretty much Public Enemy Number 1 in the punk community. With their ‘pretentious’ music and their rich rock star lifestyles they symbolised everything that punk was meant to be kicking out at, quite literally in the case of Johnny Rotten’s ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ t-shirt. However, if any of the punks had actually bothered to listen to the Floyd’s 77 release Animals, they may have been surprised with how much they had in common. Animals shows that Roger Waters could match Johnny Rotten for misanthropy any day, and then some. Musically the band are at their most sharp and brutal, with Dave Gilmour’s guitar raging and snarling throughout ‘Dogs’, and, although the songs are long, there is a clarity and focus at work which ensures that not an unnecessary note is played. The album’s brutal caricaturing of Thatcherite business men as dogs and pigs and its portrayal of the masses as sheep following their leaders blindly to slaughter puts The Clash’s unimaginative soapbox sloganeering to shame. The punks could complain all they want, but Pink Floyd continued to shift units and sell out stadiums, and the musical and lyrical qualities that shine through in Animals would ensure their survival as a valid creative force as far as 1979’s The Wall, outlasting most of their prog rock contempories.
4. Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express
By 1977, most of the krautrock groups that helped make the late 60s and early 70s such an exciting time for music had burned themselves out. Kraftwerk were just hitting their stride and were showing no signs of slowing down or stopping. Following on from the innovations of Autobahn and Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express is possibly Kraftwerk’s finest achievement, the ultimate paean to the unity of man and technology. Whilst their earlier releases have dated somewhat, Trans-Europe Express still sounds amazing today. The shimmering city-scapes of ‘Europe Endless’ and the title track’s glorious dancefloor monotony capture the majesty of decaying grandeur beautifully, whilst ‘The Hall Of Mirrors’ is a genuinely disturbing exploration of narcissism and self-image which seems even more pertinent in this age of plastic surgery and botox. But the finest track on the album is possibly ‘Showroom Dummies’, which betrays the band’s wry sense of humour and sees them playing with their robot image for the first time over creepy yet irresistibly danceable electronica. This album would go on to have a huge influence on the post punk and electronic scene, as well as disco and hip-hop. Artists as diverse as Donna Summers, The Human League, Africa Bambata and David Bowie have cited this record’s influence. Kraftwerk themselves would spend their remaining career refining the work they did on this album.
3. Goblin – Suspiria
Goblin were an Italian prog rock band. Fans of King Crimson and Genesis, they wound up working on the soundtracks to the films of director Dario Argento and never looked back. Their work so well complemented his films that he got them to write the soundtrack to his impressionistic horror Suspiria before filming it, and worked the film around the music. Both the soundtrack and the film display how well placed his faith was. The soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment to Argento’s dark, nightmarish and brutal horror about witches who run a dance school, but is equally effective on its own. The band eschew normal film score clichés, instead creating a dark, murky and tribalistic sound based around droning improvisation, malevolent chanting and clattering percussion. The music lurches from creepy looped celesta and bells to all-out thunderous assault and back again, via moments of unbearable tension. Suspiria is justly regularly rated as one of the most terrifying movies ever, and one listen to this soundtrack reveals one of the reasons why – this music alone is enough to send you running for the light.
2. Univers Zero – 1313
Speaking of malevolent European prog... Univers Zero were a Belgium prog rock band lead by drummer Daniel Denis. Influenced equally by Magma’s malevolent warped space prog, H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror stories and 20th century chamber music, Univers Zero were anything but easy listening. 1313, their debut album, is a portal into the depths of the crawling chaos. Bassoon, viola and harmonium are given as much space as guitar, bass and drums to create music that has very few links with anything else in rock music. Scrapes and drones build to vicious frenzies; instruments play in different keys and time signatures at the same time. Dark, ritualistic and intense, the music sounds almost like it wasn’t created for human ears. The record is almost entirely acoustic, yet it manages to achieve a pitch of terror that would send most black metal bands running for their lives. The only reference points I can think of that come close to doing Univers Zero justice are the scarier King Crimson stuff from the 73-74 period and Magma at their most demonic, like on Kohntarkosz. But really, these guys were out there on their own. Incredibly, 1979’s Heresie would reach even further heights of dark malevolence, and the group would continue making brutally twisted prog well into the 80s.
1. Fela Kuti – Zombie
Nigerian musician Fela Kuti discovered James Brown and invented Afro-beat, a fusion of jazz, funk and traditional African music. Zombie remains his most well known album, partially due to the context surrounding it. The song ‘Zombie’, which takes up all of Side 1, is a vitriolic attack on the brutality of the Nigerian military, with Fela accusing the soldiers of behaving like zombies – he sings ‘Zombie no go think unless you tell him to think’, and then barks orders like ‘Attention! Double up! Fall in! Fall out! Fall down! Get ready!’ like a deranged sergeant major whilst the backing vocalists chant ‘Zombie!’. The record became hugely popular, leading to people shouting ‘Zombie!’ at soldiers. Unfortunately the military responded to Fela’s criticism of their brutality... well... brutally, leading to a series of devastating attacks on Fela and his family, during which he was horrendously beaten and his aged mother was chucked out a bedroom window to her death. Even more incredible then the context is the music itself. Zombie is arguably Fela’s greatest album. All the Afro-beat elements are in place in excelsis – the scratchy, repetitious guitars, the rolling drums, Fela’s trumpet playing, the chanting – and it all ties together to create an utterly infectious groove over one chord, which is repeated until the end of the side of vinyl, building into an unstoppable frenzy. Side 2 is taken up by the equally long and equally good ‘Mister Follow Follow’, its subject, the perils of blindly following authority, suitably thematically related. This time, though, the band take a slightly more mellow approach, allowing the listener to recover somewhat from the righteous frenzy of Side 1. Unbelievably, with all that stuff going on, Fela would get round to releasing 5 other great albums in 1977 alone, a feat unmatched by any of the other artists in this list.
posted by Jonathan Thornton at 10:34 pm
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