The 70s: Threat Or Menace

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When I got married I was given a CD-R by NED RAGGETT!! of Rhino Record's Super Hits Of The 70s compilation, a collection of, essentially, mostly US pop chaff from the 1970s. The rule seemed to be that nobody with more than two hits or with a famous album to their name was allowed through the door so what you get is about 150 songs worth of purest 70s pop sensibility. And what I learn is that the 70s were bonkers, about half the songs are these stately pop/rock songs about DEATH - why?? Was it something in the water?? Also it is really really hard to listen to this stuff and work out even where it came from - how exactly did the dots join between the music being made in the 60s and this odd overwrought kind of pop. The ones that aren't about death are either:

- weird nursery rhyme shit about smiling
- songs about how the man can't cut our hair & other vague 'social comment'
- tubthumpers about how good rock n roll is.

NB none of this is meant as disparaging, half these records are terrific and all of them are strangely addictive.

Anyway the record that tipped my balance from 'cool' to 'WTF' was "Wildfire", the chorus of which goes wildfire oh wildfire and the verses of which go as follows:

verse 1: singer sings of a girl he luvved who owned a pony called Wildfire. Wildfire oh Wildfire etc.
verse 2: there is a terrible storm and the pony escapes and DIES and the girl follows and tries to rescue him, also DIES. Wildfire oh Wildfire.
verse 3: another storm leaves the singer starving to death and he can hear the hooves of the GHOST PONY approaching!!!!! WILDFIRE OH WILDFIRE.

The entire thing is incredibly drippily performed. WHAT ON EARTH was going on with all this 'death of Little Nell' stuff being not even a fringe but a completely core part of pop???

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

but There Is A Light That Never Goes Out and about 80% of Nick Cave to thread!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yeah but that's the 80s really, when the switch back to pre-"60s" tropes began to gather momentum (cave eg uses rock sound to blues-country-brecht&weill effect; while morrissey is notoriously obsessed by the john leyton moment in british pop)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

expanding on that, when it returns, it's in the quaratine quotemarks of personal crackpot expressive style -- ie it's an element how cave or morrisey are UNLIKE the mainstream, or challenging it

(actually this is the kind of topic i'd like chuck eddy's input on cz he has a genius for noting where the actual mainstream mainstream has continued to be the thing it's always claimed it isn't, sometimes even more so than those who critique it)

(ie maybe mid-70s hairmetal is FULL of nursery-rhyme deathsongs)