Best of the 70s

[Dusty Chalk]

Tied for first place are:

1 - Animals by Pink Floyd
1 - Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

...see, I'm already screwing things up. You can either assign 9.5 to both of them, or someone else can choose the same two in reverse order, but I suggest the first option, since I can't be sure the latter will happen.

Dang, 1977 alone was hard enough...the following is a tentative order (EDIT: I think this is my final answer):

3 - Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever (can't think of too many albums better than this one...by anyone...)
4 - Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes (thought I'd show some love to a completely unfairly crucified album -- so what if even the band members don't like it as much as I do? It's my opinion that's being asked, not theirs.)
5 - Klaus Schulze, Mirage (divine, blissful, delicate, beyond reproach -- one of the first truly "ambient" albums -- I still listen to it regularly...wish I had a really good recording of it)
6 - Jeff Beck, Blow By Blow -- is this really worse than Klaus Schulze? No, of course not. We're talking albums that range from 9.8 to 10.0 on a scale of 1.0 to 10.0, so it's just a matter of taste. Hard choosing a good "guitar" album (Al Di, Tommy Bolin), but this one has "Scatterbrain"...
7 - Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds -- some of the most emotive "produced" music, narrowly ousting the likes of Alan Parsons.
8 - Rick Wakeman, Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table -- grandiose. Excellent use of completely overblown instrumentation -- full rock band, multiple vocalists, choir. Simply gorgeous music.
9 - Kraftwerk, The Man Machine -- boppin'!
10 - Deep Purple, Machine Head -- from the opening moments of "Highway Star" to the closing chords of "Space Truckin'", this flat-out rawks!

Honorable mentions (this is where I lose it):

Blue Oyster Cult, Tyranny and Mvtation, Secret Treaties, Agents of Fortune, and perhaps the first album, but the first album would be the first to fall.
Tangerine Dream, Force Majeure -- dang, only 10?!?!? This is the perfect TaDream album...
The Cars -- a great pre-new-wave pop album.
Alan Parsons Project, I, Robot -- dang, only 10?!?!? Well, it does have that clunker, "Total Eclipse"...
Jeff Beck, Wired
Al Di Meola, Splendido Hotel
A New World Record by ELO
A Night at the Opera, Queen
Crack the Sky, Safety in Numbers

Others that could have been on the list, maybe, perhaps, don't know...my brain's overloaded...

Face the Music by ELO (1975)
Out of the Blue by ELO (1977)

Going for the One by Yes (1977)

ELP:

Brain Salad Surgery, Welcome Back My Friends..., Pictures..., Trilogy, Tarkus...

Crack the Sky, Animal Notes, Safety in Numbers

Black Sabbath, Paranoid

Styx, Grand Illusion, Equinox, Crystal Ball...hmmm...

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells, Ommadawn, Incantations

Vangelis, Heaven & Hell, Opera Sauvage, China, Spiral, Albedo 0.39...

Synergy, Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, Sequencer

Klaus Schulze, X

Jean-Michel Jarre, Equinoxe, Oxygene

King Crimson (Islands, L, even Red with its one weak track overtakes hundreds of other albums)? Genesis (Foxtrot, Nursery Cryme, Selling England, Lamb, Trick of the Tail, Wind & Wuthering)? Jethro Tull (Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Heavy Horses, Songs from the wood, Minstrel in the Gallery)? Rush (2112, Hemispheres, Farewell to Kings)? Foreignor? Skynyrd?

Other possible choices:

Van Halen's first album
Devo's first album
Judas Priest (Stained Class, Sad Wings of Destiny, Sin After Sin)
Kansas
Buzzcocks
Bruford albums

Police, UK, Renaissance, Joe Walsh, Steve Hackett (Spectral Mornings, Please Don't Touch, Voyage of the Acolyte), Scorps (Lovedrive), Supertramp, Aerosmith, Rocks, Wings, Venus & Mars...

Tommy Bolin, Teaser, Private Eyes

Lpppt, this is hard...

[Davey]

Dave, I think you're trying too hard to be "cool"

The implication being that I'm not already incredibly "cool"

[Dusty Chalk]

The implication being that I'm not already incredibly "cool"

Well...there's the reality, and there's the perception. The reality is, of course, that you are already incredibly cool. But the problem is, with the perception. If you have to "try", then you're not. I know, that's overgeneralizing, but that's just the way some people work.

Hey, on a completely under-related note -- I found a magazine, "Under The Radar" (or perhaps it's Under The Weather), that's talking about the most anticipated albums of 2004 -- a lot of which you and your followers would be interested in: Voyager One, Hot Hot Heat, Sonic Youth, Sparklehorse, Polyphonic Spree, Magnetic Fields, Idlewild, Doves, Clinic, Badly Drawn Boy, Divine Comedy, The Faint, The Beta Band, Broken Social Scene, Low, The Avalanches, Rachel Goswell, Dntel, Luna, Fischerspooner, Mellowdrone, many others.

Also a feature on Martina Topley-Bird (I was hoping that she was working on a new album...she is, but the article covers the Quixotic development as well, so it's too early to tell us much, apparently) and ...Rilo Kiley...? Anyone ever heard of them?

[Dusty Chalk]

Yo, Jay -- whut, no Buzzcocks? Yes, they were a singles band, but they had so many good singles, that they had whole albums full of singles. C'mon, Another Music in a Different Kitchen, A Different Kind of Tension?

And they're punk, aren't they? They're at least pop-punk.

[MindGoneHaywire]

A Different Kind Of Tension is a very good album, maybe a great one, so far as I'm concerned. I'm a pretty big Buzzcocks fan, but that is by far their best album work to my ears. It probably belonged in my 'honorable mention' list at the end of my post, but I probably overlooked quite a few recs--first Damned album, X-Ray Spex, Never Mind The Bollocks, even. I definitely think of them as 'punk rock.' But they're a perfect example of what I was referring to--an outstanding singles band that for the most part didn't produce strong albums. Tension is the only rec until TTT that flowed well; the first two always struck me as being relatively choppy, disjointed even. So while the Buzzcocks remain relatively high in the mix if I'm thinking about favorite artists, this thread wasn't a place where I felt they really belonged.

[nobody]

The thing I both love and hate about these list threads is how I see those gaping holes in my collection. Plugging up them holes makes my ears very happy but my wallet very sad.

[-Jar-]

The thing I both love and hate about these list threads is how I see those gaping holes in my collection. Plugging up them holes makes my ears very happy but my wallet very sad.

Me too.. I hardly have anything from the 70's. That Pitchfork list too.. I hardly have anything from that list either. There's always more new music. It makes it harder to go back and pick up the things you missed.

-jar