Rockissue

Making Chronological Playlists: A Case Study: 1973

What exactly do we mean by a chronological list? It is a list arranged by date and oftentimes defined by date as well. Lists that purport to offer the greatest of "all time"—in other words, claiming not to be defined temporally—in fact tend to be restricted indirectly or implicitly to a certain time frame. Say, the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which in its latest edition begins with the Arabian Nights, indirectly excluding the entirety of ancient Greek and Latin literature. Earlier editions included some ancient works; without explaining why those involved in the project think that the reader no longer need to bother with any literature written before a certain date, we must assume that lack of care is the culprit. On that note.... Implied restrictions on what is included in such lists immediately and surprisingly arise, at times so sloppily as to border on the parodic; in his introduction to that book, Peter Boxall refers only to novels, as if both the reader and he knew that the book only covers novels. I guess...? At least this genre restriction helps explain the unstated temporal restriction, as there are fewer works in ancient or medieval times considered to be novels by our modern-day understanding of the format.

Onto projects only slightly worthy of being killed in the womb... when music publications like New Musical Express and Rolling Stone rank the greatest albums of all time, they also implicitly limit themselves, if only because albums were not terribly important to Rock music before 1964. Indeed, because gramophone records do not predate the Twentieth Century, such listmakers triumphantly claiming that they have determined the greatest albums (or the greatest films, because photograph and phonograph developed quite simultaneously, or the greatest... video games? interactive websites?) are not inaccurate in using the phrase, "all time." That does not mean they are not still smarmy "snake oil" salesmen.

When music publications do make lists with stated temporal limits—for example, the best albums of the Seventies—they then rank any album released from 1970 through 1979, making one big list for that decade, instead of one for each year (or—why not?—one for each month or week of the year), or merely listing the albums chronologically, briefly addressing at the end of the note for each album where it stands in terms in quality. In other words, the list could be arranged like so:

The Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead. Released June 14th, 1970. (Blah blah blah.) This album is tied with David Bowie's Hunky Dory as the fifteenth-best album of the decade.

This arrangement would distract from the selling point of the article. Readers want to know which albums "make the grade"—so they can get riled up and make complaints—and they get this fix quickest by seeing a ranked list, from best to worst. That said, with digital publishing, the limitations imposed by the size and number of paper leaves, and the cost of manufacturing them (at least for now much greater, in both measurements, than those of simple websites like this one) do not hinder us from presenting multiple versions of a list. For example, at the Rock Annual the albums and songs are listed by year but also by artist in the giant index. (I do fail in listing the albums chronologically within the year, largely because the exact release date of many albums is hard to find. To my credit, I do not rank the albums, because I am just one person and not silly enough to claim to have listened to all these hundreds of albums with enough attention to rank them.)

There are also permutations of our standard lists to consider. Why not a list of best albums of the decade spanning the years, 1965-1974, and the decade, 1975-1984, in addition to the decade, 1970-1979? Or, if one wants to bring more of a topical focus to the forefront, the decade could begin in any given year: 1967-1976 would be an obvious one for a list of albums covering the intertwined histories of Psychedelia, Progressive Rock, and a few related genres/ subgenres.

All of these concerns do not yet touch upon the crucial ahistorical factor in these lists: they often do not include singles or individual album tracks ("deep cuts"). A similar concern extends to other media, by the way: short films get ignored in the case of cinema; while short stories and poems originally published in periodicals or anthologies are square pegs forced into the round holes of "great books" lists. Music lists are ever plentiful in these grim times wherein many people only read via a computer screen, online, thus encouraging short, superficial articles, not even read thoroughly but skimmed. "Listicles" allow the reader a pleasurable alternative to scanning headlines—which often brings bad news—while engaging in activity that requires the same (lack of) attention and thought. To be fair, more of the major music publications, when they inevitably publish their latest version of these lists, have begun accompanying album lists with lists of songs (Pitchfork especially does this), or crafting the latter as separate projects, as New Musical Express and Rolling Stone have done. Some listmaking endeavors focus only on songs, such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's ‘500 Songs That Shaped Rock’ or the website Spontaneous Lunacy. But few dare to mix the two and the standard remains album lists... and books and documentaries about albums... and massive box-set reissues focused on single albums... and nostalgia tours with artists performing an album in its entirely.... While, being focused on the Rock era of popular music, I too obsess over the album, I want to counter that with an appropriate focus on singles. And the prospect of a list that mixes albums and singles together is tantalizing.

One difficulty with such a task is a basic matter of arithmetic. That is, if one makes a list that is in some way confined to popular music at its peak—arguably, 1965-1984, or perhaps 1955-1994—one would likely select a larger number of albums relative to singles and deep cuts, and thus the number of tracks from the albums will dwarf the number of tracks not from albums. If we were to attempt to equal out the two categories, by liberally including a massive number of individual tracks, we would arguably end up devaluing a lot of albums that are best appreciated in their entirety. So what to do? I have chosen one year, 1973, and the Rock Annual lists of albums and of singles and deep cuts for that year, with which to experiment with various means of interfiling albums and songs into a single playlist. Slightly past Rock music's creative peak, when the album was definitely predominant, this year's list unsurprisingly features more than twice as many albums (105) as singles (49).

To begin, note that any mixture of albums and songs, even if limited to a single artist and when presenting that artist's full discography, is bound to be lumpy. As already explored in our article on the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady and similar singles compilations, any complete list of an artists' official releases cannot automatically be made into a handy compilation without repeating those tracks that were both released as singles and included on an album. A thorough step-by-step listing of every Buzzcocks release would repeat, for example, ‘I Don't Mind’, first made available on Another Music in a Different Kitchen, their debut full-length album, then released as a single. One can dream of a world in which each version of a track were unique in some way: the 7-inch-45 versions of course often sported a "hot" mix suitable for A. M. radio (or merely an abridged version as the years went by and songs on albums tended to get longer); and 12-inch-45 versions came along too, being longer mixes, meant for dance clubs but also at times compelling enough for deep, personalized home listening. There are other alternate versions, perhaps released on a compilation; or revisions made after an album was released, a curious tendency to which none other than Michael Jackson was prone. Once M. T. V. came along, there were at times special mixes or edits for the promo clip that never found their way to a commercial release. Nonetheless, such a world is indeed a dream. There are countless great songs of which only one version exists: the "album version" is the "single version"—keeping in mind we are discussing mixes here, not masters; different masters will sound different, however slightly.

This particular complication becomes ever more befuddling with my self-imposed challenge of making a multiple-artist playlist for a single year. If there were alternate versions of songs, then we could counter the imbalance between album tracks and individual songs by including alternate versions. If certain tracks lack alternates, though, we would have a situation where, for example, Pink Floyd's ‘Money’ (for which a single edit exists) could be included twice, by itself and as part of The Dark Side of the Moon, whereas Elton John's ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (for which the album version is the single version) would only be included once, thus giving the Pink Floyd song more of a prominent place than the listmaker intended.

An obvious second strategy to try out would be to cut down the size of the playlist by picking a few songs from some of the 105 albums, especially the singles released to promote the album or non-singles that became hits on Album-Oriented Radio, and mix them in with the 49 individual tracks as well as the albums that remain whole.

Before we proceed further with that process, we should consider the music itelf. The year, 1973, as we look back upon it, sees the Rock-and-Roll music that promised social upheaval and cultural revolution instead confirming its status as the popular-music mainstream of the U. S., the U. K., and significant swaths of the rest of the world, at least among the young and the middle (and at times upper) class. The next year would witness early, but very crucial, steps in the development of Disco (George McRae's ‘Rock Your Baby’) and Punk (Patti Smith's ‘Piss Factory’). But in 1973, the former is foreshadowed by the smooth sounds of artists like Barry White and his related Love Unlimited groups but most of all the groups on the Philadelphia International label. For example, on the single that Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes released from their album Black & Blue, ‘The Love I Lost’, drummer Earl Young concocted a variation on a beat in 4/4 time that would be copied on countless Disco songs over the next few years. As Andrew Grant Jackson writes in his book 1973: Rock at the Crossroads, "The Motown Beat was often 4/4 time, hitting the snare on every beat in a bar. Young's 'disco beat' was 'four on the floor', hitting the bass drum on every beat, the snare on beats two and four. What was different was the variations he'd play on his hi-hat cymbal, as well as his metronomelike timing." Another song that definitely counts as proto-Disco is M. F. S. B.'s ‘T. S. O. P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)’, used as the theme song for the television program Soul Train. Alongside Motown favorites, legendary D. J. David Manusco played these songs and similar Soul tracks at his Loft club presented by musicologists such as Peter Shapiro and Tim Lawrence as an almost-mythical birthplace of the godhead Disco. Even more abstract.... Punk's roots in the Glam Rock of Roxy Music and the New York Dolls obviously only makes sense in retrospect, as the canon-of-sorts concocted by David Bowie, in his support for Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, and a new, refined meaning of the word, "punk," elaborated by journalists like Legs McNeil, Nick Kent, and Lester Bangs, gradually spread the good word.

Other trends were peaking or cultural developments reaching fruition. Elton John had the highest-selling album in the States—with a double L. P. no less, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, featuring not only the title track but three other iconic Rock works: ‘Bennie and the Jets’, ‘Candle in the Wind’, and ‘Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting’. The next year, his Greatest Hits was the best seller, putting him into the rare category of artists to be the highest-selling for two consecutive years. Another "piano man" rocker, Billy Joel, began to make his mark, paving the way for future chart-topping successes nearly as big as John's.

The aforementioned Glam Rock, into which John was commonly grouped, certainly reached its peak of popularity. Though the original Glam star, the aforementioned Bowie, retired his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, he would make another album at least somewhat in the Glam style next year, Diamond Dogs, and the other groups regularly used to define the genre were all at their gaudy best: the New York Dolls, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Slade, the Sweet. And several other artists either mimicking Glam fashions and sounds or in some way Glam-adjacent were also making their mark: Argent, Brownsville Station, Alice Cooper, Rick Derringer, Brian Eno, David Essex, Alex Harvey, the Pink Fairies, Suzi Quatro, Todd Rundgren, Lou Reed, Status Quo, the Stooges, Wizzard. Any sort of dividing line between Glam and ordinary Rock had become quite hazy; at its simplest, Glam fades into the Fifties nostalgia of these years, especially when taking into account Elvis Presley's post-comeback Las Vegas performances. How many songs in our list of singles and deep cuts were "good time," "feel good" unabashed pop ditties with the word, "rock," in the title? Five. And that's not including ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ or ‘Smokin' in the Boys Room’.

Glam Rockers more conceptually inclined, reflecting their British art-school origins, namely Bowie, Roxy Music, and Brian Eno (originally part of Roxy, but booted from the band in 1973 after their second album), bring us into the territory being explored by Progressive Rock, Kraut Rock, and Space Rock. With the exception of Stevie Wonder's Innervisions (perhaps his greatest), 1973's best albums are found in this realm. The term, Space Rock, is used less often but captures most obviously Hawkwind, with its speculative-fiction themes and its collaborations with Michael Moorcock, as well as a host of other bands, some of them German and accordingly also defined as Kraut Rock, who created long-form works more focused on rhythm and improvisation than those found in Progressive Rock. Amon Düül II, Pink Floyd (until this year's Dark Side of the Moon), Kingdom Come (especially this year's Journey) and early Tangerine Dream all count as Space Rock. For the West German bands, terms Kosmiche and Kraut Rock are used interchangeably, though obviously there are instances where the former is used as an alternative to Space Rock or—my own preference—to refer to artists less likely or not at all to use a steady rhythm, e. g. Cluster, Popul Vuh, and Klaus Schulze.

The clear movement away from the free-form experimentation of the late Sixties-early Seventies in retrospect sees Kraut Rock and Space Rock bands lose some of their novelty and liveliness in the years, 1973-1974. Unsurprisingly, the U. K. Progessive Rock that was better positioned to cross boundaries between the experimental and Rock, or Jazz and Rock, or Jazz and Classical, continued to flourish and arguably reached a peak with Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans this year, Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in late '74, and the Robert Fripp-John Wetton-David Cross-Bill Bruford version of King Crimson, which debuted in '73 with Larks' Tongue in Aspic, also featuring the extra percussionist Jamie Muir.

Meanwhile, among relatively-traditionalist musicians, "Outlaw" Country, in 1973 exemplified by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kinky Friedman, Billy Joe Shaver, and Jerry Jeff Walker, was revving up. And with the post-Duane Allman version of the Allman Brothers Band striking it big with its comeback Brothers and Sisters album, the genre of "Southern" Rock begins to flourish: Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, and Black Oak Arkansas among others—much of it centered around the unlikely hot spot of Macon, Georgia, home of Capricorn Records. And while we were long past the Folk Revival, the Soft Rock "Singer-Songwriter" genre that sent out several chart-topping landmarks in the years prior (Carole King's Tapestry, Neil Young's Harvest) was nearly as plentiful as ever: Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, and Carly Simon, for example, in 1973, with hits to come next year from Hoyt Axton, John Denver, and Gordon Lightfoot. As with Glam Rock, the divide between what we could call Folk-inspired or Country-inflected Soft Rock, on one hand, and "regular" popular music, on the other, was blurry; in the U. S., it was essentially nonexistent. The relative unpopularity of Glam Rock in the States (or, more precisely, the manifestation of Glam styles and personas mostly in the Hard Rock/ Heavy Metal of Alice Cooper, Kiss, and, in the Eighties, many others), combined with the greater success of Soft Rock from the likes of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac (however unfair we are being to the latter in defining them so) marks a crucial moment when American and British popular music permanently diverged after nearly a decade of Beatlemania-induced convergence.

Another movement in the States, Britain, and elsewhere: plenty of artists crafting music closer in spirit to the Folk Revival; indeed, what was transpiring was a deeper appreciation for Folk musics from diverse sources, that could be heard in guises fairly traditional but also modernized, as with the Irish groups the Chieftains and Planxty. Though not reflected in this year's lists, the artists usually defined as British Folk-Rock continued a similar approach, even as several of them, we know in retrospect, had already reached their zenith of popularity and acclaim, notably Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. A growing market for what would later be called "World" music benefitted from an enhanced appreciation for music originating outside the U. S. or Britain. In 1973, the Wailers switched to Island Records and Bob Marley's ascent to global renown began in earnest with the two albums Catch a Fire and Burnin'. And—though, again, not represented in this year's selections—Fela Kuti and his large Afrika 70 band was truly making its mark by crafting the unique, transnational genre of Afro Beat. Over the next decade, other pioneers of the "World" genre would mark their ascent.

To begin to make a playlist for 1973, we have the 49 singles or deep cuts that are listed separately; again, this list does not overlap with the 105 albums listed for this year.

Aerosmith - 'Dream On', Aerosmith

Argent - 'God Gave Rock and Roll to You', In Deep

Brownsville Station - 'Smokin' in the Boys Room', Yeah!

David Cassidy - 'Daydreamer', Dreams Are Nuthin' More than Wishes

Harry Chapin - 'W. O. L. D.', Short Stories

Cheech and Chong - 'Basketball Jones Featuring Tyrone Shoelaces', Los Cochinos

Jim Croce - 'Bad Bad Leroy Brown', Life and Times

Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando - 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree', Tuneweaving

Deep Purple - 'Woman from Tokyo', Who Do We Think We Are

Rick Derringer - 'Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo', All American Boy

Bob Dylan - 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Original Soundtrack Recording

The Eagles - 'Tequila Sunrise', Desperado

The Eagles - 'Desperado', Desperado

David Essex - 'Rock On', Rock On

Golden Earring - 'Radar Love', Moontan

Dobie Gray - 'Drift Away', Drift Away

The Hues Corporation - 'Rock the Boat', Freedom for the Stallion

Terry Jacks - 'Seasons in the Sun', Seasons in the Sun [1974]

Billy Joel - 'Captain Jack', Piano Man

Billy Joel - 'Piano Man', Piano Man

Elton John - 'Crocodile Rock', Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player

Elton John - 'Daniel', Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player

George Jones/ Tammy Wynette - 'We're Gonna Hold On', We're Gonna Hold On

Eddie Kendricks - 'Keep On Truckin', Eddie Kendricks

The Love Unlimited Orchestra - 'Love's Theme', Rhapsody in White

Paul McCartney and Wings - 'Helen Wheels'

The Steve Miller Band - 'The Joker', The Joker

Olivia Newton-John - 'Let Me Be There', Let Me Be There

Ann Peebles - 'I Can't Stand the Rain', I Can't Stand the Rain

The Persauders - 'Some Guys Have All the Luck', Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me [1974]

Billy Preston - 'Will It Go Round in Circles', Music Is My Life

Ray Price - 'You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me', You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

Suzi Quatro - 'Can the Can'

Queen - 'Keep Yourself Alive', Queen

Roxy Music - 'Pyjamarama'

Leo Sayer - 'The Show Must Go On', Silverbird

Carly Simon - 'You're So Vain', No Secrets

Slade - 'Cum On Feel the Noize', Sladest

Slade - 'Merry Xmas Everybody'

The Sweet - 'The Ballroom Blitz'

Sylvia - 'Pillow Talk', Pillow Talk

The Three Degrees - 'When Will I See You Again', The Three Degrees

T. Rex - '20th Century Boy'

Ike and Tina Turner - 'Nutbush City Limts', Nutbush City Limits

Barry White - 'I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby', I've Got So Much to Give

Wings - 'Live and Let Die', [Various artists] Live and Let Die: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Wizzard - 'See My Baby Jive'

Wizzard - 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday'

Bobby Womack and Peace - 'Across 110th Street', [Bobby Womack/ J.J. Johnson] Across 110th Street: Original Motion Picture Score

For 72 of the 105 albums we have selected individual tracks, in most cases the hit single or two drawn from the album. If the track is not a single, but instead a deep cut that has become renown in its own right or merely my own selection of an exemplary or representative track, such is noted in brackets.

The Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters:
‘Ramblin' Man’
‘Jessica’

Ash Ra Tempel - Join Inn
‘Freak 'n' Roll’ [deep cut]

Black Oak Arkansas - High on the Hog
‘Jim Dandy’

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’

Blue Öyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation
‘The Red and the Black’ [deep cut]

James Brown - The Payback
‘The Payback’

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend
‘Breadfan’ [deep cut]

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’

Dr. John - In the Right Place
‘Right Place, Wrong Time’

The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
‘Long Time Runnin'’
‘China Grove’

Embryo - Steig Aus
‘Call’ [deep cut]

Embryo Featuring Charlie Mariano - We Keep On
‘No Place to Go’

Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly
‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’

Fripp and Eno - (No Pussyfooting)
‘The Heavenly Music Corporation’ [deep cut]

Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
‘Let's Get It On’

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
‘Firth of Fifth’ [deep cut]

Grand Funk - We're an American Band
‘We're an American Band’

Kinky Friedman - Sold American
‘Sold American’
‘Ride 'Em Jewboy’ [deep cut]

Al Green - Call Me
‘Call Me (Come Back Home)’
‘Here I Am (Come and Take Me)’
‘You Ought to Be with Me’

Al Green - Livin' for You
‘Livin' for You’

Guru Guru - Guru Guru
‘Der Elektrolurch’ [deep cut]

Daryl Hall/ John Oates - Abandoned Luncheonette
‘When the Morning Comes’

George Harrison - Living in the Material World
‘Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)’

Roy Harper - Lifemask
‘Highway Blues’ [deep cut]

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Next... The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
‘The Faith Healer’

Gary Higgins - Red Hash
‘Thicker than a Smokey’ [deep cut]

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
‘Search and Destroy’

The Incredible Bongo Band - The Incredible Bongo Band
‘Bongo Rock '73’

The Intruders - Save the Children
‘I'll Always Love My Mama’

The Isley Brothers - 3 + 3
‘That Lady’

Waylon Jennings - Honky Tonky Heroes
‘We Had It All’
‘You Ask Me To’

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’
‘Candle in the Wind’
‘Bennie and the Jets’
‘Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting’

Gladys Knight and the Pips - Imagination
‘Midnight Train to Georgia’
‘I've Got to Use My Imagination’

Kool and the Gang - Wild and Peaceful
‘Jungle Boogie’
‘Hollywood Swinging’

Labelle - Pressure Cookin'
‘Medley: Something in the Air/ The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ [deep cut]
‘Open Up Your Heart’

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
‘The Song Remains the Same’ [deep cut]
‘Over the Hills and Far Away’
‘D'yer Mak'er’
‘No Quarter’ [deep cut]

Little Feat - Dixie Chicken
‘Dixie Chicken’

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd
‘Simple Man’ [deep cut]
‘Free Bird’

Manfred Mann - Solar Fire
‘Father of Day, Father of Night’

The Marshall Tucker Band - The Marshall Tucker Band
‘Can't You See’

John Martyn - Solid Air
‘May You Never’

Paul McCartney and Wings - Band on the Run
‘Band on the Run’
‘Jet’
‘Let Me Roll with It’ [deep cut, b-side]

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - Black and Blue
‘The Love I Lost’

M. F. S. B. - Love Is the Message
‘T. S. O. P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)’

Montrose - Montrose
‘Bad Motor Scooter’
‘Rock Candy’

Mott the Hoople - Mott
‘All the Way from Memphis’

The New York Dolls - The New York Dolls
‘Personality Crisis’
‘Trash’

The O'Jays - Ship Ahoy
‘For the Love of Money’

Yoko Ono/ Plastic Ono Band with Elephant's Memory - Approximately Infinite Universe
‘Death of Samantha’
‘Now or Never’

Yoko Ono/ Plastic Ono Band and Something Different - Feeling the Space
‘Growing Pain’ [deep cut]
‘Woman of Salem’ [deep cut]
‘Run, Run, Run’
‘Woman Power’

The Pink Fairies - Kings of Oblivion
‘City Kids’ [deep cut]

Planxty - The Well below the Valley
‘The Well below the Valley’

Charlie Rich - Behind Closed Doors
‘Behind Closed Doors’

Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
‘4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’
‘Incident on 57th Street’ [deep cut]
‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’

The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup
‘Angie’
‘Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)’

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure... The Second Roxy Music Album
‘Do the Strand’
‘Editions of You’ [deep cut, b-side]

Roxy Music - Stranded
‘Street Life’

Klaus Schulze - Cyborg
‘Synphära’

Sly and the Family Stone - Fresh
‘In Time’ [deep cut]
‘If You Want Me to Stay’

Paul Simon - There Goes Rhymin' Simon
‘Kodachrome’
‘Loves Me like a Rock’

Ringo Starr - Ringo
‘Photograph’
‘You're Sixteen’

Status Quo - Hello!
‘Caroline’

Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstasy
‘Show Biz Kids’
‘My Old School’

10 cc - 10 cc
‘Rubber Bullets’

The Wailers - Catch a Fire
‘Concrete Jungle’
‘Kinky Reggae’

The Wailers - Burnin'
‘Get Up, Stand Up’
‘I Shot the Sheriff’

Loudon Wainwright III - Attempted Mustache
‘The Man Who Couldn't Cry’ [deep cut]

Tom Waits - Closing Time
‘Ol' 55’

Jerry Jeff Walker - Viva Terlingua
‘Desperados Waiting for the Train’ [deep cut]
‘Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother’ [deep cut]

Bobby Womack - Facts of Life
‘Nobody Wants You When You're Down and Out’

Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
‘Higher Ground’
‘Living for the City’

Neil Young - Times Fade Away
‘Don't Be Denied’ [deep cut]

At least one album, The Weird World of Blow Fly, a live recording, is definitely best enjoyed from start to finish but, being comprised of parodies of others' songs and in its lack of sonic variety, manages to be both a representative work, historically significant, while not being conducive to being mixed in with other artists' work. For a playlist purpose, then, it can be excluded. This leaves us with 32 albums to be included in their entirety, plus 151 songs drawn from 72 albums.

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
John Cale - Paris 1919
Can - Future Days
Caravan - For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night
The Chieftains - 4
Betty Davis - Betty Davis
Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery
Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Faust - The Faust Tapes
The Grateful Dead - Wake of the Flood
Hawkwind - The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London
Henry Cow - Legend [Leg End]
King Crimson - Larks' Tongue in Aspic
Kingdom Come - Journey
Major Lance - Major Lance's Greatest Hits Recorded Live at the Torch
Magma - Mekanïk Destrukïw Kommandöh
John Martyn - Inside Out
Nektar - Remember the Future
Neu! - Neu! 2
Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Gram Parsons - G. P.
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
Lou Reed - Berlin
Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, a True Star
Santana - Welcome
Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five and Dimers like Me
The Upsetters - Blackboard Jungle Dub
The Who - Quadrophenia
Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans
Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation
Z. Z. Top - Tres Hombres

Simply because these albums are included in their entirety, we are not saying that any one of these 32 is better than each of the 72 excerpted albums. In fact, when compared to Innervisions, many of the 32 are decidedly not superior. The Rock Annual lists are meant to provide the listener (me—maybe you?) a musical history, so that if one were to listen to the albums and tracks selected for a certain artist or year, a pathway to understanding the work of the artists or the time in question is provided. Thus, first of all, significant gradations of quality exist, depending obviously on one's personal experiences, among the 105 albums. Second—back to our topic—albums have significant gradations of quality among their individual tracks, and as such are more or less likely to be represented by exemplary cuts. ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, in your opinion, may be superior to any of the tracks on any number of these 32 albums. The entire Houses of the Holy album as well. But that does not mean, if you want to make a selection of albums and tracks for the year, 1973, that an album which is more consistent throughout is not a better choice to include complete.

Even when drawing out tracks from such a large number of albums, the difficulty of making a playlist incorporating whole albums remains discouraging. One-hundred-fifty-one songs from those 72 albums, plus 49 songs on their own, equates to 194 songs total; which, assuming they are rarely longer than five minutes, makes for about 18 or 19 albums. Except, we have included tracks roughly twenty minutes in length from Ash Ra Tempel, Embryo, Fripp and Eno, and Klaus Schulze. So make that 21 albums. How to interfile 21 albums of material with 32 albums to be heard whole, other than by having a selection of songs (roughly a short album) between each whole album as sort of intermission? Not a bad option, but hardly what we expect from a playlist/ D. J. set/ compilation. Then again, this playlist includes a full Magma album, which could very well annoy the bejeezus out of many listeners, so perhaps we should not worry about making too much of a seamless experience?

Or perhaps a side of an album could be followed by a selection of tracks of similar genre: say, the A side of Aladdin Sane followed by some Glam tunes. Alternately, the juxtaposition of moods could be the goal: side A of a "difficult" album like Berlin followed by a selection of the sunniest, happy-idiot pop songs from our 49 tracks. Or the Jazz-Rock fusion of Santana's Welcome clashing with the Country stylings of Waylon Jennings.

Given the difficulties we have come across while trying to make a playlist that blends together whole albums by certain artists and selected tracks by other artists, we also must consider giving up on the whole endeavor and resorting to the two extreme variations on a chronological playlist. That is, either include, in addition to the 105 listed albums, the entirety of the albums from which the 49 singles and deep cuts came—unless, of course, the single was a non-album track and so must be listened to on its own; several such singles, as seen above, are listed for this year. Not only would that result in a few artists awkwardly only being represented by a song or two (e.g. for 1973, Wizzard, the Sweet, Suzi Quatro), it would also make for quite a long playlist.

Or choose one-three, maybe four, tracks from the 32 albums that we want to listen-to whole and make a playlist comprised solely of songs. For example, two of the 32, Future Days and The Dark Side of the Moon, could be represented by selected tracks (‘Breathe (In the Air)’ and ‘Money’ from the latter, ‘Moonshake’ from the former), but I decided against that. Indeed, except for a few albums conceived as singular works, namely one of the most successful of all Progressive Rock albums, Tubular Bells, as well as The Faust Tapes and Remember the Future, none of which are split into parts except for the bipartite split into side A and side B; and a few that, in my opinion, truly excel from start to finish (most of all, my own pick for best album of the year, Here Come the Warm Jets, an appropriately-absurd selection of such an absurdist album, given that available evidence suggests that the oil shock of late '73 caused its release to be pushed back to early 1974; but as the album is copyrighted 1973 and was intended to be released that year, I prefer to keep it in that year), any of these albums could be similarly excerpted. But I want to stick with my goal of mixing albums and songs. As noted above, we have already picked out tracks from a few albums comprised of side-long tracks: (No Pussyfooting), Join Inn, and Cyborg. Doing the same with Tales from Topgraphic Oceans, which features one track for each of its four sides, would lead us away from an accurate view of Rock culture in the Seventies. Again, we are at the height of Progressive Rock. A playlist of only songs does not fit the times.

–Justin J. Kaw, October 2022