’70s

For casual David Bowie fans who spin the radio hits and not much else, A Clockwork Orange may not be the first work of science fiction that comes to mind when chewing on the well-read singer’s labyrinth of influences from the realms of film, literature, fashion, and avant-garde art. After all, whether we’re referring to Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel or Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film adaption from 1971, the story is a blend of pitch-black satire, graphic violence, and Cold War-inspired dystopia that feels worlds removed from the cosmic-hippiedom-meets-androgynous-space-alien quirkiness soaked into Bowie’s most popular expressions of sci-fi rock: “Space Oddity,” “Starman,” “Life on Mars?”—even the riff-fueled “Ziggy Stardust.” In fact, a more apt connection might be Kubrick’s other landmark from the same era: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1968 (just over a year before Apollo 11’s touchdown on the moon ignited a global fascination with space travel), the director’s sweeping meditation on human evolution, outer space, and extraterrestrial life slammed into psychedelic culture like an asteroid, helping to unleash a whole new movement in space rock.However, dig deeper into Bowie’s cluttered universe (lyrics, interviews, photographs, production credits, etc.), and relics of his fascination with A Clockwork Orange emerge in all corners. It’s a fascination that lasted throughout his career, right up through the release of 2016’s Blackstar, a brilliant, strange, and moodily intoxicating album awash in sci-fi references.Let’s begin with the singer’s ever-changing visual aesthetic: Bowie himself once stated to Rolling Stone writer David Sinclair that the look for his 1972 classic The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars reflected in part his love of the outfits worn by the sociopathic antihero Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell) and his ultraviolent droogs. Those costumes (black bowler hats, bovver boots, suspenders, codpieces) were the brainchild of designer Milena Canonero; by appropriating elements of “London street style,” she helped lay the groundwork for an iconic (and much imitated) look that wound up seeping into glam, punk, hardcore, and even heavy metal. Incidentally, Canonero and Bowie eventually worked together on 1983’s The Hunger, an erotic vampire flick sporting heavy Dario Argento vibes.Bowie again turned to the film for inspiration during the making of 1973’s Aladdin Sane, a harder-rocking album that finds the singer’s alter-ego turning mischievous, even nasty at times, much like Alex. In addition to sleeve art featuring airbrush work from Philip Castle, whom Kubrick hired to design the movie’s infamously outlandish posters, there were some seriously Clockworkian wardrobe moves, including Bowie’s classic printed silk turtleneck.Shifting from aesthetics to the music itself, let’s return to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. While touring in support of the record, Bowie opened concerts with a recording of Beethovens Symphony No. 9, yet another nod to Alex, who describes the piece as “bliss and heaven” in one of the movie’s most biting scenes. There’s also the use of the word “droogie” in “Suffragette City.” Though a fairly minor reference, it speaks volumes about Bowie’s intimate understanding of Burgess’ original vision. After all, “Suffragette City” isn’t one of Ziggy’s orchestral ballads, floating dreamily like an orbiting satellite. It’s gnarly proto-punk inspired by The Velvet Underground and The Stooges—exactly the kind of slasher you’d expect a violent street gang to blast before a night of smashing storefronts and busting heads.Again, this seems like an odd fit for the red-haired Bowie, who (truth be told) never fully embraced the sneering menace that would come to be associated with punk rock in the late ’70s. But much like The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger (who interestingly enough owned the movie rights to the novel for a short while), he certainly flirted with such notions. Bowie seemed attracted to the transgressive darkness that often surrounds youth culture and street gangs, especially as they are portrayed in the book and film incarnations of A Clockwork Orange, both of which, it should be noted, were censored and condemned on numerous occasions in the United Kingdom and the United States. They possessed a undeniable and dangerous allure. Back in the ’70s, any artist who dared make allusions to them clearly was looking to be edgy.But it was more than just trying to be provocative (though that always was a factor during his glam years). Bowie truly loved A Clockwork Orange, of which his most passionate expression pops up on the previously mentioned Blackstar and the cryptic “Girl Loves Me.” Pay close attention to the lyrics and you’ll notice how the singer, displaying a linguist’s virtuosity, brilliantly litters the song with the Nadsat spoken by Alex and the droogs (itself a Nadsat term). Originally conceived by Burgess, it basically is working-class British slang heavily inspired by Russian:

You viddy at the CheenaTruth is me with the Red RockYou be loving little zipshotDevotchka want ya golossSpatchka want the RussianSwear to dead fun is dang dangViddy viddy at the CheenaGirl loves meHey cheenaGirl don’t speakGirl loves me

Bowie was a sci-fi junkie, one well-versed in the writings of Michael Moorcock, J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, and George Orwell. He especially loved Orwell’s dystopian landmark Nineteen Eighty-Four, which served as the thematic basis for 1974’s Diamond Dogs. On top of all that, he starred in the cult flick The Man Who Fell to Earth and in 2013 was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. But the fact that Bowie returns to A Clockwork Orange on Blackstar, which he knew would be his last album, drives home the work’s stature in his personal universe. Deep down Bowie really was a droog.

Critic Andy Beta provides an overview of Italo Disco (which he calls, "the most amazingly uncool genre ever created") in this Pitchfork feature. To be a bit snobby, including Paul Lekakis as Italo Disco is a bit questionable, but Andy is trying to take a wide swipe. Regardless, the genre is limitlessly influential and helped spawn everything from Chicago House to DFA-era New York electro. This playlist demonstrates why with a collection of the kitschy, endlessly addictive cuts. The Gary Cat Park song is a gem, among many others.

Around the 2007 release of Wilco’s sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, Jeff Tweedy talked a lot about classic rock. Sky Blue Sky eschewed much of the experimentation that had characterized the album’s immediate predecessors (2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s A Ghost Is Born), favoring a more straightforward musical and lyrical style. In several interviews, Tweedy insisted that he preferred not to give too much credence to the “alternative country” and “experimental” labels that had followed him since his earliest days as a founding member of Uncle Tupelo. Instead, Tweedy insisted, Wilco should be known as a rock ‘n’ roll band.For a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Tweedy acknowledged the influence that 1970s rock had on Sky Blue Sky, listing his five favorite albums from that era. The first five songs on this playlist are sourced from that article, wherein Tweedy confesses he “often tries to emulate” Nick Drake’s picking style and claims The Clash’s “Train In Vain” “was huge” for him growing up. Considering Wilco’s sound, those choices—as well as the inclusion of Dylan and Wings—make sense. The outlier in his list is Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” which Tweedy calls “a great pop record.” However, despite all the talk of experimentation surrounding Wilco, Tweedy has always known how to make catchy music.The remaining tracks on the playlist were added based on covers Tweedy has done, both live and on record, with Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. A version of Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart” appears on Uncle Tupelo’s swan song Anodyne*, and a cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” appears on the 2003 reissue of that album. Wilco has frequently covered Bill Fay** and Big Star, including the latter’s “In The Street” (a.k.a. The theme song to That ‘70s Show). During an all-covers set at 2013’s Solid Sound Festival, Wilco played the classic songs by The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, and Television that are featured here.Sticklers may note that The Band’s “The Weight” was technically released in 1968. However, this version with The Staples Singers was recorded at the group’s 1976 farewell concert and released two years later as part of the Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Tweedy, who has collaborated with Mavis Staples throughout the years, joined an ensemble of musical greats—including Nick Lowe, whose “Peace, Love, and Understanding” Wilco covered for Spotify’s Singles Series—to perform a rendition of “The Weight” in 2014 in honor of Staples’ 75th birthday.Tweedy is gearing up for the June 2017 release of Together at Last, which features acoustic versions of songs by various bands throughout his illustrious career. By playing in a stripped down form, devoid of any attempts at musical experimentation, Tweedy will likely reinforce just how influential this decade of classic rock was on the formation of his own, unique sound.*This song isn’t on Spotify, and was replaced with Sahm’s “Don’t Turn Around,” from his 1973 album Doug Sahm and His Band.**Tweedy typically covers Bill Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful,” which isn’t on Spotify, so I’ve replaced it with Fay’s cover of Wilco’s “Jesus, etc.,” which, of course, was not released in the ‘70s.

Joe Gibbs was one of reggae’s great businessmen and ambassadors, and also one of the genre’s great producers. He was responsible for the highly influential African Dub series, introduced Dennis Brown to America, and worked extensively with the great Lee “Scratch” Perry. The write-up to this playlist on FACT provides an excellent detail to all of this, and the playlist itself is a monster. Though one wonders why they limited themselves to so few songs, the chronological order works to its advantage, as you can hear Gibbs’ sound (and, by extension, the sound of reggae in general) evolve from the late-60s throughout the 70s. As a note, some of these songs were not available on Spotify, but we did our best to recreate it.

As a self-conscious aesthetic, lo-fi didn’t come into its own until after punk’s pro-amateur, DIY attitude had already laid waste to popular notions of what constituted acceptable musicianship and recording techniques. Yet the idea of turning crappy sound into pure sonic gold reaches back to the classic rock era. The obvious precursors are The Velvet Underground and garage-psych bands like 13th Floor Elevators, who in the mid ’60s achieved sonic delirium through intentionally muddy primitivism. Around the same time, the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys pretty much invented the concept of the warm and woozy bedroom recording, while The Beatles, during their “White Album” sessions, incorporated home demo-style graininess and feedback into their previously pristine pop. The Stones deserve a lot of credit, too. After all, there are entire stretches of 1972’s Exile on Main St. that sound like moldy-ass basement recordings.

While its understandable that some listeners would think that all the great soul music in Memphis came from the Stax/Volt stable, its simply not accurate. Not only were there other R&B imprints that challenged Stax’s standing in terms of their ability to score hits, there was no shortage of acts at other labels whose musical vision was the equal of the vaunted Stax roster. The Willie Mitchell-produced tracks Al Green cut for Memphis mainstay Hi Records in the ‘70s remain among the deepest, most transcendently sensual songs ever recorded in any genre, and they dominated both R&B and pop radio. The tunes James Carr laid down for the less celebrated Memphis label Goldwax Records were easily as intense as anything in the Otis Redding oeuvre. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the searingly soulful sounds that emerged from the musical bounty of the Bluff City.

Barry Walters delivers this great overview of the 70s soul scene in Philadelphia. With its funk intonations and more polished arrangements, Philly Soul is sometimes overlooked by R&B neophytes, but, as Barry proves here, the scene produced some of the sweetest and most memorable music from that decade. Much of the credit belongs to Gamble and Huff and their Philadelphia International Records, but the scene was bursting with talent. Check out this great retrospective of one of our favorite scenes.

Pitchfork got a lot of shit for their ‘70s list, and most of that is unwarranted. Sure, AM radio, Southern Rock, and Philly Soul are all underrepresented, and they picked the wrong Bowie song to be #1 (sorry, “Life on Mars”). But there’s some great world and reggae selections, which was unexpected, and Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” more than deserves its high placement. As a stand-alone playlist, rather than a list of top tracks, it only sometimes works. There’s an occasional serendipity — the shimmering astral mysticism of Alice Coltrane “Journey in Sachidananda” gives way to the plaintive, yearning opening lines of the Beatles’ “Let it Be,” a contrast that teases out the radicalness of both tracks — but it’s also kind of jarring to go from the edgy downtown disco of Dinosaur to fucking Black Sabbath. Still, their piece is a great tool for music discovery — the write-ups are generally solid and frequently inspired — and it’s easy to imagine a dozen, more focused and coherent playlists spawning from this list.

Punks various origin stories have been documented ad infinitum, and through them, the movements myriad influences have been enshrined in a familiar proto-punk canon. It includes everything from the snotty 60s garage-rock bands compiled on Lenny Kayes Nuggets compilation to the metallic Motor City soul of the MC5 to the sleazy glam of the New York Dolls to the proletariat pub rock of Dr. Feelgood. But while theres no denying the impact these groups had on punks inaugural class-of-76, to 2018 ears, a lot of them can sound, well, a little tame. Sure, a Nuggets standard like The Standells "Dirty Water" oozes bratty attitude, but its really no more threatening than the average golden oldie. And while the brash swagger of the New York Dolls still resounds, they essentially sound like a more irreverent Rolling Stones.But in this playlist, we highlight the pre-punk songs that, to this day, sound every bit as violent and visceral as what followed. Certainly, theres some expected names: Iggy and the Stooges 1972 thrasher "I Got a Right" actually blows past punk completely to invent hardcore a good six years early. And the nastiest of Nuggets, like The Music Machines "Talk Talk," still hit like a leather-gloved fist to the face. But there also are a number of classic-rock icons here who, in their most unhinged and primordial states, rival anything punk coughed up——listen to John Lennon shred his throat into a bloody pulp on "Well Well Well," or Deep Purple fuse 50s hot-rod rock and 70s metal on "Speed King." Punk may have preached "no future," but these songs still blaze like theres no past.

This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.A revolution in music arrived in April of 1976. And like all good revolutions should, this one began with bongos. The extended percussion break was just one exciting element of the remix -- or “disco blending,” as the credits put it -- of Double Exposure’s “Ten Per Cent,” the handiwork of DJ Walter Gibbons and engineer Bob Blank and the first-ever commercially available 12-inch disco single. When the sales for this seven-minute masterpiece outstripped those of the regular 45 by two to one, the music business swiftly realized the new format’s potential.It’s no accident it was an independent record company, Salsoul, that first gave record buyers a chance to experience the musical mutations that DJs like Gibbons and Larry Levan were concocting in such clubs as the Paradise Garage and Le Jardin. Unencumbered by the girth of the major record companies, the indies had the agility and street-smarts to fully capitalize on the phenomenon, which began in the early ‘70s in Fire Island’s hotspots and David Mancuso’s Loft and pretty much swallowed America whole during Saturday Night Fever mania at the end of ‘77.By then, most majors had their own disco departments eagerly churning out 12-inches, sometimes by rock acts like the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, and pretty much anyone else who wanted to get a song on the radio or in the clubs. But the big gears it took to move units for them meant that disco’s greatest innovations were by smaller operators. They didn’t mind the very limited lifespans for fleeting dancefloor faves and hastily assembled, studio-only acts, which didn’t suit majors more interested in the bigger profits that came with album sales and touring artists.This action was its most feverish in New York, disco’s birthplace and epicenter, where companies like Salsoul, Prelude and West End all fought hard for disco dominance. Labels based in other parts of the country -- like Casablanca in L.A. and TK in Florida – got their pieces of the action, too. By staying on top of the latest advances of DJs and the changing tastes of dancers, these labels were able to maintain a steady stream of 12-inch magnificence. And that lasted well after the majors abandoned the dance-music marketplace at the end of the decade, chased away by the disco backlash. There was also such a glut of product, many marvels only got a fraction of the exposure they deserved, which is why these tracks are so coveted by collectors and compilers today.The long-unheard mixes collected on For Discos Only: Indie Dance Music From Fantasy & Vanguard Records: 1976-1981 demonstrates how much incredible music was out there, and how little disco’s much-publicized death impaired the scenes in New York and the West Coast. The enterprising ways of many key indie labels had everything to do with that. Like Salsoul (which began by licensing a chunk of CBS’ Latin music catalog), Fantasy and Vanguard both started with very different kinds of music on their rosters than disco. Fantasy was founded in San Francisco in 1949 as a home for jazz great Dave Brubeck before hitting big with the Creedence Clearwater Revival. Founded in N.Y.C. the following year, Vanguard released many of the most iconic folk and blues recordings of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Listen closely and you can sometimes discern traces of those histories in the labels’ disco-era output, whether it’s in the irresistibly smooth jazz-funk the Blackbyrds cut for Fantasy or the impeccably performed tracks by the Players Association, which got its start when drummer/arranger Chris Hills and producer Danny Weiss began enlisting some of New York’s best session musicians to record covers of smashes like “Love Hangover” for Vanguard.But there are flashes of the future too, especially once Harvey Fuqua – a former Motown producer behind Fantasy/Honey, an Oakland-based disco imprint for the label – united his protégé Sylvester with young electronics whiz Patrick Cowley. With their synth-heavy, ultra-orgasmic sound, Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat)” spawned their own subgenre: Hi-NRG. Fantasy/Honey’s slate also included similarly exhilarating singles by Two Tons of Fun, two back-up singers for Sylvester – Izora Armstead and Martha Wash – who’d get a lot more famous when they changed their name to the Weather Girls.Meanwhile back in New York, Vanguard became a haven for some of the city’s most skilled disco purveyors. Rainbow Brown was the brainchild of Patrick Adams, a producer and arranger responsible for killer cuts for Salsoul and Prelude. A studio project modeled after Chic and Adams’ Musique by former Weather Report drummer Alphonse Mouzon, Poussez! was more sophisticated than its salacious-sounding name would suggest (but then it would have to be).It’s a testament to the era’s abundance of creativity that so much of this music has been little heard -- especially in their “disco-blended” incarnations -- since they first appeared. To mark the release of For Discos Only, here’s a playlist that relights the fuse for that original indie disco explosion.