Like the 60s the 70s were also a pivotal decade for great music. Halfway punk
made a monumental impact amidst a series of classic rock albums. In this new Ultimate Record Collectione EditioUNCUT ranks and reviews no less than 500 LPs.
I’m sure these 10 masterpieces will be in there.
1972
1972
. 1975
. 1975
. 1976
. 1976
. 1977
. 1977
. 1979
. 1979
.
You can purchase a copy and have it sent to your home. Info HERE.
London’s punk oldtimers THE DAMNED
celebrate their 50th birthday this year.
50? Time storms forward mercilessly.
Their debut LP Damned Damned Damned from 1977
still is one of the best punk albums ever, in my book.
They now have a new one out, named NOT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
Their 13th longplayer. One with nothing but covers of 60/70s pop songs.
It’s a deeply personal and celebratory record to the memory
of co-founder/guitarist and musical architect Brian James,
who passed away on 6th March of last year.
The LP closes with a powerful farewell. The Rolling Stones‘ 1965 cracker ‘The Last Time‘, featuring Brian James himself, taken from his final live performance with The Damned in 2022 in London.”
Rat Scabies & Dave Vanian – The Damned at Lokerse Feesten, Belgium – August 2025
Photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Expect covers of songs by Pink Floyd, The Stones, Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks, The Creation, The Stooges, The Yardbirds, The Weeds, and a couple of others. The fact
that the record is a tribute to the late Brian Jones is the main message here. Kudos
to them for doing this. For me, after two spins, I went back to that supersonic debut LP.
Wright:“Doing Syd’s record was interesting, but extremely difficult. Dave [Gilmour] and Roger [Waters] did the first one (The Madcap Laughs) and Dave and myself did the second one. But by then it was just trying to help Syd any way we could, rather than worrying about getting the best guitar sound. You could forget about that! It was just going into the studio and trying to get him to sing.”
Barrett about his 2 solo longplayers: “They’ve got to reach a certain standard and that’s probably reached in Madcap once or twice and on the other one only a little – just an echo
of that. Neither of them are much more than that.”
Barrett himself designed the LP’s cover.
The album didn’t chart. All fans had
forgotten about their former idol.
AllMusic: “Instrumentally, the result is a bit fuller and smoother than the first album,
although it’s since been revealed that Gilmour and Wright embellished these songs as
best they could without much involvement from Barrett, who was often unable or
unwilling to perfect his performance.
It was regarded as something of a charming but unfocused throwaway at the time
of its release, but Barrett’s singularly whimsical and unsettling vision holds up well.”
Turn Up The Volume: Probably still with his head in the clouds, Barrett showed
his songwriting skills again and recorded them with two Pink Floyds. A mix of folk,
pop, and psych-rock twists. Too bad it was already over after this second and final
studio LP. Wish the crazy diamond had produced some more magic. R.I.P.
The lyrics express longing, alienation, and sardonic criticism of the music industry.
The greater bulk of the record was taken up by Shine On You Crazy Diamond,
a nine-part tribute to Pink Floyd‘s flamboyant co-founder Syd Barrett who got
fired years before for his huge drug problems.
The album went to #1 in the UK as well as in the US.
The stuntman Ronnie Rondell, who was set on fire
for the LP cover, died aged 88, last August 18th.
The Village Voice wrote: “The music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of
the symphonic dignity, and cross-referencing, that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously.”
From 1965 until 1968, he was the band’s frontman and primary songwriter,
known for his whimsical style of psychedelia and stream-of-consciousness
writing. As a guitarist, he was influential for his free-form playing and for
employing effects such as dissonance, distortion, echo, and feedback.
He got fired by the group as his increasingly erratic behaviour, partly due
to his heavy use of psychedelic drugs, got worse and worse. He developed
a blank, dead-eyed stare. Barrett did not recognize friends, and he often did
not know where he was.
When his health got somewhat better, he wrote/recorded
and released 2 solo LPs, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.
Both came out in 1970.
