This is the end of my three-week fling with Seventies music. But Retro 70s is a good place to wrap things up. This is one of the few compilation discs that includes “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon. I always loved Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou.” And Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone” is excellent blue-eyed soul. Of course, I could do without “A Horse With No Name” by America and Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine.”
I liked Disc Two better than Disc One. Santana’s “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen” kicks things off. Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown” and Dave Mason’s “We Just Disagree” are favorites. And while Eddie Money’s “Baby Hold On” isn’t as good as “Two Tickets to Paradise,” It still rocks.
Do you remember these songs from the Seventies? Any favorites here? GRADE: B
TRACK LIST:
DISC ONE:
- Summer Breeze — Seals & Crofts
- Black Water — Doobie Brothers
- A Horse With No Name — America
- Werewolves of London — Warren Zevon
- Cat’s in the Cradle — Harry Chapin
- Dance with Me — Orleans
- Blue Bayou — Linda Ronstadt
- Welcome Back — John Sebastian
- Sunshine (Go Away Today) –Jonathan Edwards
- She’s Gone — Hall & Oates
- How Much I Feel — Ambrosia
- Dream Weaver — Gary Wright
- I’d Really Like to See You Tonight — England Dan & John Ford Coley
- When I Need You — Leo Sayer
- Make It with You — Bread
- Never Ending Song of Love — Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
DISC TWO:
1.Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen — Santana
2. Your Mama Don’t Dance– Loggins & Messina
3. Cover of the Rolling Stone — Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show
4. Lowdown — Boz Scaggs
5. Hold Your Head Up — Argent
6. Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)– The Hollies
7. We Just Disagree — Dave Mason
8. Come and Get Your Love — Redbone
9. Magnet and Steel — Walter Egan
10. Please Come to Boston — Dave Loggins
11. I Want You to Want Me — Cheap Trick
12. I Can See Clearly Now — Johnny Nash
13. Whenever I Call You “Friend” — Kenny Loggins
14. Baby Hold On — Eddie Money
15. Hold the Line — Toto
16. More Than a Feeling — Boston
A great compilation! Unlike some of the others you’ve featured, this collection pulls songs from the entire decade rather than just the early 1970s. Favorites here: “Werewolves of London”, “Lowdown”, “She’s Gone”, “Whenever I Call You Friend” (with Stevie Nicks), and “Come and Get Your Love”. Gary Wright (“Dreamweaver”) just passed away a couple of days ago—although I think his underrated “Love Is Alive” is a better song.
Deb, yes, you’re right. RETRO 70s includes songs from the entire decade. Plenty of variety on these two discs!
Looks like a fair sample of ’70s Top 40 radio. You can’t get much more Carter Era than “Welcome Back.” The ones I like here are usually the ones who get little respect from music critics–Loggins, Toto, Bread, etc. George, your computer’s auto-correct must have changed “Boz” to “Box” in Scaggs’ name–mine just did.
Fred, my daily battle with WORDPRESS’s demon spellchecker continues. Yes, I changed “Box” to “Boz” THREE TIMES! And the minute my head was turned, “Boz” became “Box” again! Grrrrrr~
Basically what Deb said. A pretty good compilation. I even recognize many of the songs, which is surprising because I tended to ignore music in the 70s. The Doobie Brothers, Linda Rondstat, Santana, Loggins & Messina, The Hollies — don’t be around me when these songs are playng because I’ll start singing, and nobody wants that. I could do without the Harry Chapin, John Sebastian, and the Dr. Hook picks; but I think almost everyone can.
Fun fact: I once had lunch with Jonathan Edwards but don’t remember a thing about it.
Another fun fact: Box Scaggs is rumored to be Boz’s underrated little brother.
Jerry, I don’t recall anything about Jonathan Edwards, either…and I never met him!
More of the usual suspects with a pretty typical mix of “Oh, I remember that” and “Well I never need to hear that again” tunes. I still remember where I was when I first heard “Werewolves of London” (driving home late at night) and the Boston track reminds me of how HUGE that record was for a solid year at least.
I’ll also give Gary Wight a nod because he just passed away and I have a soft spot for big fat synthy seventies pop/rock.
Byron, I remember Boston had trouble getting a record deal. And then they had a smash hit and everything changed!
Maybe a half dozen winners here–Zevon, Ronstadt, Scaggs, Hollies, Cheap Trick, and Boston. That’s about it. I suppose they’re good for starting arguments, but why people buy these things remains one of the great musical mysteries.
Michael, when I found RETRO 70s in the local Salvation Army Thrift Store, it looked like it had never been played. Sounds great! I consider these compilation CDs time machines that jog a lot of memories.
Some good stuff here but a lot of easy listening crap like Bread and Seals and Croft. I also have extreme dislikes of Eddie Money, Leo sayer, Orleans, Eddie Money and Toto. I also dislike Boston who I hold responsible for the whole concept of faceless arena rock like Reo Speedwagon, Styx and Kansas.
My favorites here are Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt, Boz Scaggs, and the Hollies.
I liked John Sebastian’s songs for The Lovin’ Spoonful but could do without the theme to Welcome Back Kotter.
Steve, one of the local TV stations here used to broadcast WELCOME BACK KOTTER episodes every day.
Has to be one of the top ten worst shows of all time. A blot of comedians have made sit coms but none have been worst actors than Gabe Kaplan.
Steve, I was not a fan of WELCOME BACK KOTTER…the show or the song.
Leaden, self-indulgent blather was all the series ever had to offer. Poor Marcia Strassman, having to do those painfully-bad two-handers with Kaplan to wrap up the episodes…poor Kaplan, to have to anti-act in the face of the “kids” mugging and otherwise ineptly attempting performances that were sub-Bowery Boys, and written for them no better.
Todd, you’re right…but the ratings were good for awhile: 1975-1979.
Yes. Though not exclusively, the late ’70s was an iron-pyrite mine of poorly-done tv doing well with Nielsen households. And when a series did well and was intelligent, such as LOU GRANT, fear of what the Reagan Admin thought of it would doom it not too long into the ’80s…though, of course, almost no one looking at PBS then allowed them to run some adult content, and even the Raygun FCC nonchalance to big business doing what it wants to make money helped some more of that to leak out onto the commercial networks (beyond the very occasional example of ROOTS and very few others).
Todd, politics affects media projects more than the networks will admit.
“Hold your head up,
Hold Your head up,
Hold your head up…”
repeat ad infinitum.
Yes, I know them (mostly) and I do like a bunch of them – Summer Breeze, Werewolves of London (we made a pilgrimage to Lee Ho Fook’s in Soho – maybe in the rain – where they had a copy of Zevon’s album in the window), Dance With Me, Blue Bayou, She’s Gone, the Santana, Your Mama Don’t Dance, Lowdown, I can See Clearly Now. And there are others I like at times. Do not care for Leo Sayer or Please Come to Boston or Welcome Back (give me Summer in the City).
I just sent Deb Gary Wright’s obituary the other day,and she said she is not a fan of Dream Weaver.
Indeed, Argent was a big disappointment after the Zombies.
“Hold you head up, yeah!” though, ain’t it? (Not going to dial it up to confirm. Perhaps might listen to “Beechwood Park” or “What More Can I Do?” again instead…
Saw The Zombies once. They were a big disappointment. After you got past yhe 3 or 4 hits and everything else was forgettable. I just noticed they ( The Zombies) are playing about 4 blocks from me sometime in the near future. Rather pricey too . I paid less for The Cure, Elvis Costello, and Beck this summer and.they all played better venues.
I don’t know which Zombies you saw…the reunions have been a bit ragged (though some of the new songs have been not bad), and there were, in the wake of “Time of the Season” becoming a hit after the band dissolved, several fake “Zombies” bands (all but actual metaphorical Zombie clones) touring as the Real Thing, briefly…Their work of 1963-1968 is very solid by me, to say the least, making them one of the best of the ’60s rock bands, and that so much of their work drew on their love of jazz and of choral music didn’t hurt my feelings, any.
Argent the band, on the other hand, was not great.
And I sympathize with Deb about Wright’s biggest hit.
Jeff, I’m with Deb on “Dream Weaver.”
Well, Boston didn’t invent Faceless AOR, but they sure outsold nearly everyone else (except perhaps Foreigner, perhaps the least bad of that crowd, about as slight a credit as one can have, and Journey, who started bad, as the more boring half of the original lineup of Santana who resented all the mystical jazz shit and wanted to do Good Old Bland ProgRock Jams, only to end up dumped out themselves in favor of their biggest and most annoying hitz).
I’m glad no one has anything good to say about Leo Sayer, the most annoying inclusion in this list, and I agree the second disc is an improvement on the first, all told…but don’t hate anyone aside from Sayer, and definitely never need to hear anything from Toto again, their inclusion here being their catchiest earworm, fwiw. Always thought “Cat’s in the Cradle” extremely bathetic…but even that ahead of anything, ever, from Sayer.
Todd, I’m always surprised when I see Leo Sayer on one of these compilation discs.
I always thought he retired and came back as Richard Simmons.
Simmons had more talent. And inasmuch as Simmons’s talent can only be measured in negative increments…
Of course I remember Santana and a few others but my favourite was:
I Can See Clearly Now
Wolf, “I Can See Clearly Now” was one of the first hits to use synthesizers.
A bunch of songs I like, but only a few I like a lot. It’s good that they included Gypsy Queen with Black Magic Woman, instead of cutting it off, like most compilations do. My favorite Toto track is Africa, but that’s from the 80s. I’ll go against the prevailing winds here and say I like Dream Weaver (and also Love Is Alive). At this time we saw Gary Wright with 125,000 of our closest friends — he was third-billed on a jam-packed day of I think five bands, headlined by Yes and Peter Frampton (Frampton Comes Alive was his current release).
Jeff, Peter Frampton just performed at nearby Artpark this summer. I agree with you on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen.” Too many times they’re truncated.
I saw Wright open for Fleetwood Mac at the Oakland Coliseum in 1976! England Dan and John Ford Coley opened for David Brenner at some place in Lake Tahoe in 1977! I was there with my first bride! The highlight of that show was when some old scudder ran from the room with his hands over his ears when the band started to play! I despise Welcome Back, Kotter, both the song and the show!
Bob, I’m always amazed at the musical past you experienced!
I find the song slight and corny, but the tv series started bad and got to be abysmal PDQ.