Fragmentation

Link to Spotify playlist: Mus115 - 11. Fragmentation

---

In addition to the mainstream styles selling huge numbers, the 1970s were a decade of complete fragmentation of musical styles. Really, these styles were either evolutions of the 1960s styles, and somewhat hard to distinguish, or combinations of styles, which are also hard to distinguish. But they became their own separate, niche styles.

ELO - another British band (Electric Light Orchestra), they generally were a mix of styles with Beatles-like pop with Beach Boys vocal sounds. They can be categorized as a fusion of pop and classical styles.

• Mr. Blue Sky - you can hear a lot of the Beatles influence here.
• Evil Woman - you can hear some of the string elements of art rock.

Art Rock -> Progressive Rock. Art Rock sort of melded into Progressive rock. We listened to a little bit of Prog Rock in the Art Rock section with Yes and Kansas, and ELP. Cleaner and less lush than Art Rock, the reduced reverb and echo effects gave the instrumentalists fewer places to hide, and the songs demanded more notes, faster notes, and more intricate rhythmic figures. Electronic keyboards played a very big role in Progressive Rock as well. Below is a list of some of the bigger 70s Art Rock or Prog Rock type bands.

• Pink Floyd - a British band that had a few moderately successful albums in the late 60s and early 70s, but hit it big with albums The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. Later albums The Division Bell and P.U.L.S.E. also hit number 1 in the 1990s. Producer Alan Parsons is credited as making The Dark Side of the Moon the success it was. It's a little psychedelic, a little weird, uses electronic instruments, some sax, songs about insanity (foreshadowing later trends in Metal), but has that art rock "pure instrumental" composition element to it as well.
  • Money - this was the first Pink Floyd song to enter the US Singles charts, and it has endured pretty well over the years. Note - this song is in an odd meter - 7, to be exact. It switches to normal 4 around the guitar solo.
  • Comfortably Numb - this is a good example of their "smoother" style.
• King Crimson - this was a rotating set of British art rock / prog rock members from other bands that have been mentioned in previous pages (ELP, Yes, etc...).
  • In the Court of the Crimson King - technically released at the end of 1969, you can hear the Mellotron and their more art rock stylings.
  • Larks' Tongues in Aspic (Part II)- this one is a lot more prog rock oriented - you can hear the uneven meter and cleaner drums, etc..
• Jethro Tull - this was originally a British blues band that Ian Anderson (flute, sax, guitar, and vocals) moved into the progressive rock realm. Aqualung was their most commercially successful album, while Thick as a Brick was really just one song that lasted the entire album. "Living in the Past" was a single from the album of the same name, one of the few popular singles that used a meter of 5 (rather than 4 or 3 for most rock stuff).
  • Auqualung - This is probably the most iconic Jethro Tull song.
• Kraftwerk - the most famous German prog-rock band, they had their biggest single "Autobahn" in 1975.
  • Autobahn - this whole track is 22 minutes long, just listen to enough that you can get the idea. Mostly instrumental, although some vocals come in around 7:28.
• Rush - Canadian prog-rock, they changed styles and sounds fairly adeptly, with some of their work sounding like metal, some sounding more mainstream soft rock, most stays in the hard rock style.
  • Tom Sawyer - this is probably the quintessential progressive rock song.
  • Xanadu

Jazz Rock->Fusion

Miles Davis started this trend of combining pure jazz with electric instruments and rock beats (jazz rock went the opposite way). So we have a few artists that took more jazz oriented ideas and converted them to rock.

• Mahavishnu Orchestra - John McLaughlin and others took Miles Davis' ideas and moved them closer to progressive rock.
  • Eternity's Breath, Pt. 1
• Weather Report - Joe Zawinul was the keyboardist, with Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone. They leaned towards jazz, with their biggest hit being "Birdland"
  • Birdland
• Santana - hard to put him in the same category as the other two above, because he was much more popular and much less jazz oriented. He arrived at Woodstock in 1969 as an almost unknown band, and became a sensation with his Latin rock. His popularity waned in the 1980s, but returned in the 2000s with the album Supernatural and the single "Smooth".
  • Black Magic Woman - his breakout single
  • Oye Como Va - another really popular Santana hit.
• Earth, Wind, and Fire - this band was closer to "Motown-Jazz", with many world music elements thrown in as well. Big hits of "Shining Star", "September", "Let's Groove" have cemented their place in pop music history.
  • Shining Star
  • September - almost cliché at this point, it's hard to remember that at one point, this was a new song that nobody had ever heard before.
• Tower of Power - some people say that TOP is similar stylistically to EW&F, but the biggest difference is that TOP is more funky, with super tight horns, in a way that is not like Earth Wind and Fire. They've had a rotating staff of lead vocalists and horn players. Popular tunes such as "What is Hip" for a funky journey with tight horns, "You're Still a Young Man" for a slow soulful take, "Oakland Stroke" for complex rhythms and horn lines.
  • What is Hip
  • Oakland Stroke

Singer-songwriters

This raises an interesting question - Bob Dylan wrote and sung his own songs. Paul Simon did the same. The Beatles. The Stones. Most of these bands maybe started out doing covers, but they eventually were writing their own songs. Why then, are they not considered part of the "singer-songwriter" genre? To me, it seems like this term connotes a stripped down single voice and single piano (or guitar), getting to the essence of the song without any production. But then we have artists who do use studio equipment and electronics. It also encompasses many of the artists below (particularly Carole King) who worked as songwriters for others before making their own mark. It's a hard to define genre, almost like a "catch-all" term for those who don't fit into other categories.

• Joni Mitchell - born in Canada, she hit her peak with the album Court and Spark. Wonderful music, especially the title track and the hit "Help Me". She also had a big hit with "Big Yellow Taxi", which was also covered by a lot of artists.
  • Help Me
  • Big Yellow Taxi - some poignant lyrics below:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

• Carole King - Carole started as a songwriter for other acts, writing a staggering number of hits for the Everly Brothers, Aretha Franklin, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Shirelles, etc... She decided to take her songwriting and apply it to her own solo albums. Her second, Tapestry, was a monster hit. Singles "You've Got a Friend", "It's Too Late", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", and the like. "Where You Lead" was a hit from this album that found second life as the opening song for the TV show Gilmore Girls.
  • You've Got a Friend
  • Where You Lead
• James Taylor - he got his break when he moved to London and impressed Paul McCartney enough to get a record deal with Apple Records. His second album was the biggest success, with "Fire and Rain". He covered a Carole King song "You've Got a Friend", and collaborated with his now wife Carly Simon, Simon and Garfunkel (no relation between the Simons), and even a Motown cover "How Sweet It Is". He set the style for softer singer-songwriters post-Dylan.
  • Fire and Rain
• Jim Croce - a perennial favorite, he had hits with "You Don't Mess Around with Jim", "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", "Time in a Bottle", "I Got a Name". Another artist killed in a plane crash, he was just 30 when he died. "I Got a Name" was released posthumously. He had just finished recording and producing it.
  • Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
  • Time in a Bottle
  • I Got a Name
• Cat Stevens - a British artist, he had hits of "Wild World", "Peace Train", "Father and Son". He converted to Islam in 1978, and changed his name to Yusef Islam, and stayed out of the music industry until releasing a new album in 2009.
  • Peace Train
• Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - one of the most popular folk-ish groups, they are included in the singer-songwriter group because their songs were more like an aggregation of three and four individuals rather than the "I'll write one song, you write the next" of other groups with multiple songwriters. Neil Young left the group at several points, which is why they are colloquially called "Crosby, Stills, Nash, and sometimes Young". Hit songs include "Southern Cross", "Carry On", "Our House", "Woodstock", etc...
  • Southern Cross
  • Carry On

Country Rock

One of the three main influences on early rock was Country & Western, which turned into rockabilly, which kind of died out in the 1960s. The Grateful Dead took a turn towards country rock in the early 1970s, but there were artists who definitely embraced the country side more.

• The Eagles - hits "Witchy Woman", "Lyin' Eyes" are good examples of country rock. "Hotel California" (with the addition of electric guitarist Joe Walsh) tended towards more mainstream rock. "Seven Roads Bridge" is another example country rock.
  • Hotel California
  • Seven Bridges Road
• The Charlie Daniels Band - hits such as "Long Haired Country Boy" and "The South's Gonna Do It Again", and of course "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".
• Linda Ronstadt - one of the rare solo act country rock performers that had huge album sales. She placed a lot of albums in the top 5 sellers list, and had over 12 songs in the top 40. Hits such as "You're No Good", "When Will I Be Loved".
  • You're No Good
• Willie Nelson - he was sort of the rebel "outlaw" country singer. He left Nashville because he felt it was too restrictive, and moved to Texas. He had written a lot of songs for other country artists, but when he went solo he had a few hits and moderate album sales. The first hit he had that opened the doors was "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain".
• Waylon Jennings - a little more rock than Willie Nelson, he had slightly bigger album sales. Hits like "Luckenbach, Texas" and the theme song to the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. Also had a collaboration with Willie Nelson on the hit "Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys".