The Wicked Carried Us Away
Tonight’s sunset from the shed
As regular readers will know, I’ve spent the last eleven and a half months in 1970, listening to and commenting on albums released that year. It’s been fun, although it hasn’t gone quite as I expected; I originally planned to do a post a day and to include occasional essays on stuff found in the music press, notably casual and unreflective sexism and racism, and the shifting definitions of ‘progressive’.
It didn’t work out that way, mainly because the arrival of a global pandemic and lockdown flattened a lot of my impulse to be creative. Also, there was some crappy music in the middle of 1970 that I didn’t feel much inclined to listen to and write about. Things have picked up of late though.
Anyway, after some discussions and some thought, I’ve decided to keep going into 1971. Pre-pandemic I managed to spend several days in the National Library of Scotland with their complete 1970 runs of Melody Maker and New Musical Express. I’d like to do the same for 1971 if I can, with the added bonus of Sounds to refer to if it’s in their archive. I won’t be doing a post a day, but I’m looking now at a preliminary list. If 1970 was still in the shadow, somewhat, of 1967-69, by 1971 we were definitely into the era of the progressive underground and the frost-blue eyelids of Glam rock. There was plenty of decent jazz around, and a lot happening on the folk scene.
Bring it on.
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A while back I posted a link to a piece on Medium by someone who had experienced a coup in Sri Lanka, talking about what 45 and his merry band of grifters and crooks have been up to (link is here). Zeynep Tufekci, herself a veteran of coups in her native Turkey, writes more on the same subject in the Atlantic, here : https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/ It’s worth a few minutes of your time to read.
As I write this, I have no idea what stupidities are being planned for us in the name of Brexit by our own grifters, crooks, charlatans and chancers, but it doesn’t look good.
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Music: I’ve had this song before, in its Bony-M incarnation, but not this 1970 original from Jamaica. The Melodians: Rivers of Babylon
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