Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #88 - Giorgio Moroder - From Here to Eternity (1977)

Disco is a much maligned genre, and I guess I can see why. It supplanted the lush, technical, hyper-musical, heavily expressive, virtuosic, jazz- and classic-influenced progressive rock of the early seventies with throbbing, soulless beats, computer rhythms, and synthesized, phony baloney strings and horns. Great songwriters like Jeff Lynne and Freddie Mercury away from their sublime melodies and towards repetitive, inhuman grooves. I get it.

Still, I've never had this visceral hatred of disco, and this list, which contains several of the best albums from the genre, has given me a new appreciation for it. It's hard to criticize disco for being robotic when you listen to Kraftwerk. It's hard to criticize it as soulless when you listen to Throbbing Gristle. It's hard to criticize it as artificial or inauthentic when you appreciate lost genres like Exotica or Bubblegum. So I'm not ashamed to say I enjoy disco, especially for its influence on New Wave and much of modern electronica.

Nevertheless, in this enjoyment, I find something deeply depressing about it, and about this album in particular. Giorgio Moroder was an Italian producer who helped raise Donna Summer to stardom with his programming prowess. Here, he steps out from behind the mixing desk and lets his work stand on its own, untainted by any exterior interpreter.

And stand it does. The music is tight and well-produced. The melodies are catchy. The background vocals are superb. So why depressing? I think it has to do with the sense of fatigue that comes from the repetitive beat. The first track starts out sublime, but as he human vocals fade into robotic vocoders, its exuberance slips into a minor key and turns dark. All the time the four on the floor beat remains constant, monotonous, inexorable.

Like Lou Reed singing about the pointless, yet inescapable, life of the hard partying drug user, this feels like an early commentary on club culture, almost before there was such a thing. Moments of occasional euphoria fade away to reveal a deep emptiness, and yet through it all you keep desperately dancing, even after all enthusiasm or joy for the activity has died.

Make no mistake: I don't regard this as a weakness of the album. Instead, it's really what makes it so strong. There are a million records of cheerful, upbeat, one-dimensional techno. From Here to Eternity has an emotional depth lacking in similar yet inferior records. Even the title is perfect. At first glance, it sounds inspiring, but upon further reflection it suggests fatigue and hopelessness. Just like the eternal, thumping, bass beat, there’s no end in sight to an existence of empty hedonism.

Giorgio Maroder is one of the pioneers of electronic dance music, and this remains his most popular and influential work. Even if you're not a fan of disco, you have to appreciate his technical savvy and artistic vision. As a high water mark of pristine electronic production, From Here to Eternity totally holds up 40 years after its release.

Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #89 - Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)

David Bowie described them as "the band of the future," and it's not hard to see why. As the bloated and pompous progressive rock of the early seventies gave way to the stripped down futurism of the latter half of the decade, and romanticism was replaced by cynicism, Devo was a band on the cutting edge.

More than even the Ramones, Devo embraced stupidity as an aesthetic on their debut album, a hymn to the "devolution" of modern man that straddles the line between social commentary and meaningless absurdism. In this sense, this album is as "punk" as anything else on this list, helped along by the fact that the band can barely play their instruments.

Of particular note is the fact that Brian Eno agreed to produce this album. It bears little resemblance to his own work, and while his influence on Talking Heads albums at around the same time can be heard in subtle audio manipulations that give the music a rich and unique texture, here his involvement seems to have been limited to leaving the band alone and letting them do what they wanted. This is apparently more due to Devo's unwillingness to accept his ideas than any conscious effort on his part, though.

Devo is at their best when they are able to apply their blunt sound and yelped vocals to a catchy pop hook. Unfortunately, that only happens in a few places here. Space Junk, with it's high, chiming guitars is radio gold. Mongoloid is equally good, in its mundane treatment of a rather controversial topic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album struggles to find good melodies. Jocko Homo features the iconic "Are we not men? We are Devo!" chant, but is otherwise fairly uninteresting. Gut Feeling in exciting only in that it features some clearly Eno-influenced synth parts, and the cover of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction highlights the dumb and primitive nature of the original, but it's not as fun to listen to.

In a lot of ways, Devo embodied the New Wave movement at the end of the seventies as much as any other band. Transforming punk from antisocial caterwauling to subversiveness that was radio-friendly , complete with angular melodies, high-pitched amelodic vocals, and generally futurist mindset.

But while Devo were certainly pioneers, they were neither as catchy nor as inventive as their contemporaries and those who would come later. Ironically, the genre would continue to evolve for the better, even as the band championed devolution.

Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #90 - Fela Kuti - Zombie (1977)

Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician who not only popularized the Afrobeat genre with his innovative and funky arrangements, but also succeeded in seriously annoying the Nigerian government with his anti-establishment, pro-freedom lyrics. Anyone who uses music to stand up to tyranny at personal cost is okay by me, and although I was unfamiliar with Fela Kuti's work prior to starting this list, I'm glad to have the opportunity to appreciate it.

The original album is short, consisting of two tracks that together clock in at less than half an hour. And although CD reissues add two bonus tracks of live material, the impact of the original packs quite a punch on its own.

The title track, Zombie, is built on a funk guitar pattern that stays the same throughout the song's 15 minutes. On top of that, a blaring staccato horn arrangement plays a repeated descending riff that is surprisingly catchy. It's a fast paced, aggressive piece, which makes sense when you consider that the whole thing is a critique of the Nigerian military, analogizing their members to zombies, unthinking monsters who do what they are told, even when it means committing atrocities.

The second track, Mister Follow Follow, is more laid back. Lyrically, it treads the same themes as its predecessor. The titular Mister Follow Follow is the mindless drone who goes along with authority without questioning the consequences. Musically, though, it's quite different. Whereas Zombie is firmly rooted in funk, Mister Follow Follow is more jazz-based, with instrumental solos taking turns over a stable rhythmic backdrop.

Of particular note is an extended saxophone solo, presumably played by Kuti himself. It's an extremely creative and engaging part, everywhere hitting notes you wouldn't expect, but always in ways that sounds great. It proves that the band leader is not only revolutionary and iconoclastic, but extremely gifted technically as well. While Mister Follow Follow is not as immediately catchy or as confrontational as the title track, I prefer it for its subtlety and the way it showcases individual band members.

Speaking of the band, The Africa '70 is worth a shout out for how tightly they hold together. This kind of music is so heavily focussed on a great rhythm section, it doesn't work unless you have the players to carry it off. Combined with general competence, the folding in of African drum patterns to otherwise Western musical idioms makes for a very engaging listen.

Protest music comes in all forms, from the "Three Chords and the Truth" style of American folk music, to Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff's political reggae. It always works best, however, when the music can stand on its own, as the music on Zombie certainly does.

The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #91 - Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Great (1978)

One of the reasons I chose this Top 100 list from Pitchfork Magazine instead of, say, Rolling Stone, is that they’re not afraid to include groups like Throbbing Gristle, bands that everybody hates and no one listens to, but which were undeniably important in the development of modern music.

For the record, I don’t hate Throbbing Gristle. I think they’re awesome.

I've already reviewed this album once for this blog, but for the sake of continuity and a fresh pair of ears, I am happy to do so again. Throbbing Gristle emerged out of the English working class, where poverty, post-colonialism, and a declining influence in the world left many young people feeling alienated and disaffected. Throbbing Gristle channeled their misanthropy and hopelessness into making "industrial music for industrial people," melding post-punk and proto-electronica into something that was as bleak and cold as their teenage surroundings.

20 Jazz Funk Greats is the band's third official album, and sees them branching out from their noisy and distorted roots, crafting some pretty sophisticated and moody music. The album obviously owes a debt to early lounge music, as evidenced both by the title track and the similar "Exotica" which recalls some of the sounds popularized by Les Baxter and Martin Denny, albeit in a more perverse way. In contrast to the in your face aggression of the first two albums, this album is more like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: sinister depravity lurking underneath a seemingly benign exterior.

For example, Beachy Head sounds like a lovely spot to go for a stroll until you realize that it’s a leading spot for suicide jumpers in Britain. Hot on the Heels of Love resembles a perfectly pleasant dance track, but the deadpan delivery of the group's chanteuse, Cosey Fanni Tutti, is almost pleading: “waiting for help from above”. The way the line is said makes it clear that the wished for help is not coming.

Elsewhere, frontman Genesis P-Orridge is in characteristically creepy form, as he sings about "Persuasion" and "Convincing People" to do things it's clear that they're going to regret very soon. In fact, this could be seen as a sort of theme for the record, as it lures you in with its slick and subdued beats only to yield much that is deeply disturbing. Rather than bombard listeners with feedback and growling, 20 Jazz Funk Greats persuades them, although they may not enjoy having themselves persuaded in the long run. 

I would be remiss not to talk about Throbbing Gristle's influence. In addition to basically inventing the industrial genre single-handedly, and spawning future acts like Coil, Psychic TV, and Chris & Cosey, the band's electronic experiments and penchant for minimalism and mind-altering substances went a long way towards inspiring trance music, not to mention their contributions to numerous experimental artists who have collaborated with the band members over the years. Throbbing Gristle took punk's anarchy and turned it up to eleven, not in volume, but in anti-establishment aesthetics, leading many of us to question our very notions of what constitutes music. For that alone, they deserve a place in history.