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No love for 70's guitar bands?

When I was in high school it was the heyday of the pop guitar bands. Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Loverboy, etc. These bands were immensely popular during the late 70s and early 80s and continue to tour (with scant remnants of the original bandz) but they don't seem to get any love here at Audiogon. They are almost never mentioned in the "what are you listening to threads" and you never see them mentioned in the "what is your reference CD/LP/file".

I think a lot of them did some decent work early in their careers and I think all of them eventually made big money on sappy sickening ballads that shortened their careers at least in terms of credibility.

I saw most of these bands live in the 80's and have the hearing loss to prove it. I loved them at the time. Rarely think of them now. The reason I thought of this is that I found a copy of Styx Cornerstone on vinyl in my meager collection of LPs. I think my wife won it in a contest. It is the album with "Babe" on it. I'm listening to it now.

It is terrible.

Thoughts on these bands in terms of relevance today? Relevance in their heyday?
n80

Showing 8 responses by n80

n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
@hodu : "Not necessarily."

In the medium sized southern city where i lived in 1977 there were no radio stations playing The Clash, Talking Heads or even Zeppelin. For one fairly short period of time we had no rock stations at all. All easy listening, soft rock, disco. Dark days indeed.

Fortunately we still had plenty of record stores, the lights in the darkness.
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
My ears rang for 12 solid days after the 1982 Foreigner concert. I counted them.

n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
@wlutke : "The alternative was disco."

Good point.
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
What did you say? ;-)
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
Ah, I forgot about Kansas.

Yes, there was plenty going on in the late 70s and early 80s and I was more into British bands but it seems like the bands I mentioned seemed to get a lot of the attention but have not survived as well as Floyd, Yes, Elton John, Eagles, Skynrd, Zep and others from a critical standpoint.

The only place I ever hear them is on classic rock stations. And they are most of what you hear.

And maybe it is just me to see them as sort of their own genre.

They weren’t ’southern’ like Skynrd or Molly Hatchett. They weren’t as raunchy as Aerosmith. They weren't Kiss. They weren’t British. They certainly weren’t prog rock although Styx kind of took a shot at that late. They all ended up making radio/chick friendly ballads.

n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
Up through high school I was also much more into the harder rock. Zep was the least 'hard rock' of them all. Still listened to a lot of heavier stuff in college. Then a lot of Rush, Genesis, Yes and other prog stuff.  Then got into U2 then REM. Then roots rock. Then alt rock in the 90's. Then blues from the Zep influence. 

Now I'm all over the place and like it that way.
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
@stevecham : I listened to a lot of the same bands. Also BTO. The Sweet. Remember hiding the Black Sabbath albums from my parents.I think in 1980 a single album was $7-8 bucks and was a big purchase for me.

I also remember reading every single liner note and studying album covers until I knew every detail.

That’s another reason I think used CDs are the bargain of the century. I can get all that stuff for $3-5 each.

Of course CDs are not as cool as a Panasonic all-in-one record changer/receiver with round speakers and a stack of LPs piled onto the record changer. (Sadly, that’s why all my remaining old vinyl sounds so awful.
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
@bdp24 :  "Of course, if you rely on the radio to know of them they have you right where they want you ;-) ."

The operative word is 'relied'.....past tense. When you are 13 and living in the suburbs or country all there was was the radio. If you wanted to go to the record store you had to get your mom or an older friend with a car to take you.

As mentioned above, at one point where I live there were no radio stations that played the rich variety of music available in the late 70s, which, as mentioned, were really stellar.

I can remember going to my cousins house. He lived near a much larger city that had a couple of good rock stations. We listened to all that good stuff, as well as his records that he knew about because of those stations.

The radio back then was a big deal.
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