Early 1970's rock: Name some of your favorites

Iggy & Stooges, New York Dolls, Modern Lovers, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, Sweet, Slade, MC5, Big Star, Badfinger, Faces, Wings, JLPOB, Rod Stewart (only in the 1st 1/2 of 70's!), Beach Boys (yes, even through 1st 1/2 of 70's!), Blue Ash (first record - good luck finding this), Flamin' Groovies, Neil Young, Raspberries, Derek & the Dominos, plus of course the ones Sean mentions above (and the everpresent Led Zep, Who, Aerosmith, Allmans, etc.), and I'm sure others I haven't thought of at this moment, but overall this is not a big period in rock history for me. It was a time of countryish soft rock, boring hard rock, pompous progressive rock, keyboard players, jazz-rock fusion, horn sections, and stoner jam music that you couldn't dance to, but which wasn't psychedelic anymore. Almost without exception, when it comes to bands from the 60's who were big in the 70's, I prefer their 60's work (there were also plenty of great bands that straddled the decade's divide, such as Creedence, The Band, Sly & the Family Stone, etc., plus The Dead only begin to be occasionally tolerable for me starting in the early 70's). About the best thing going at this time, other than Detroit-style 'proto-punk' and British glam-rock, was all the James Brown inspired funk that preceeded disco, foremost among which (other than the man himself and various JB spinoffs) were The Meters, Parliament/Funkadelic, early Kool & the Gang, The Ohio Players, and about a million other lesser lights, plus such singular soul talents as Al Green , Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield. Stretch a bit to '75, and the first New York punk is released by The Dictators, then on to The Ramones and The Cramps in '76, and things begin to look up again for guitar-based R&R where the songs don't come in 'movements' and last for a whole album side, and aren't played by bands that you need more than the fingers of one hand to count all the members of.

Just as I suspected - although there are few common nominations I can hang with (Mott, Floyd, Dan, Crimson, Hawkwind) most of what people like from this era serves mostly to confirm my general indictment of the time, IMO. Oh well, TEHO! (Despite Tweakgeek's disputing this conclusion, I like his additional nominations, especially Gamble/Huff.) (But Sir Lord Baltimore?! Guess I can't really bitch though - I have been known to listen The Damnation of Adam Blessing when nobody's around.) Few more I forgot: Captain Beefheart (more so in the 60's, but still), Brownsville Station, Shocking Blue, NRBQ, The Move, and I'll even nominate The Flying Burrito Brothers as an affirmative defense against The Eagles. (Can't believe that Queen and Bad Company are still waiting in the wings...)

Great story, Avideo (but who'da thunk they were frat boys?)! BTW, did you ever see The Golliwogs (pre-Creedence) play? Or The Torquays, The Syndicate of Sound, or any of the other great SJ/SC area bands of the early-to-mid-60's (how about Sly)? And what were some of the other acts CCR played with on your tour?

Back to the list: How could I have forgotten Dave Edmunds or Dr. Feelgood...

OK Ben, I'll step in here...
Jay, let's not get too far out of bounds here - "BTBW" is from '68, and Boston didn't come out until '77, if I remember correctly (and trust me, I've tried to forget! :-).

Looking back through the nominations, I see no one has mentioned Bob Marley & The Wailers by name. Collective ganja fog, no doubt...

He wasn't. Double wow! (Jim McCartey was the ex-Yarbird guitar player.) Since the Cactus rhythm section was Tim Bogert and Carmen Appice - as in B(eck) B(ogert) & A(ppice) - the confusion is understandable.

Yes, Kiss did have some half-decent songs, and even a half-decent album (Destroyer), but I must be just a couple of years younger than Waltersalas, and I can truthfully say (not pridefully say) that I didn't like them even a little back in the day. However, I was definitely a weird kid: grew up on The Beatles and Elvis, and was buying Howlin' Wolf records by the time I hit junior high school. Most hard rock from the late 60's onward (that I heard) didn't do it for me - in fact it turned me off. When all the other kids were heavy into Boston, Foreigner, Kiss, Frampton, Aerosmith, Bad Company, Led Zep, et al, I was digging back into the early Who and Little Walter. It was only when I first heard "Allison" and "Psycho Killer" on free-form FM that I became interested in what was going on in current rock. Of course, I wasn't listening to Iggy or The Dolls in the early 70's either, but my whole tolerance for hard rock and heavy metal slowly increased as I got more into Zep and especially Hendrix and latter-day Stones during high school (for better or for worse). It wasn't so much the sound (although I don't like guitar-wanking - I like songs and feeling) that kept me away, as it was the whole aesthetic of cock-rock posing and high-times lifestylin'(not to mention stupid lyrics), all of which made me a prime candidate for punk when I finally got exposed to it around the tail-end of the first British wave, which led back to Iggy and Lou, etc. But I still like '67-and-backwards the best, and The Beatles still make everything else sound stupid.

(BTW, one my fav bands as a kid and today, whose heyday began in '69 but covered the early 70's, is I believe not on the list yet: The Jackson Five. No matter what Michael has done since Thriller - J5 forever!)