“You can't stop a train with just a smile.”
- This Kid's/UFO
“Which decade had the best music?” That's a question a nerd on Instagram, thisisnicholasedes, asked his followers recently. He got over 6,000 responses. The results, of course, aren't a random sampling. They're made up of the demographic that follows him, so that has to be taken into account. Still, 6,000 is a lot and the guy said he counted every one by hand.
What would your response have been? Here's the outcome of the survey:
#3 = With 810 votes, the 1960s
#2 = With 1,900 votes, the 1980s
#1 = With 2,962 votes, the 1970s
The 90s came in a distant fourth.
Surprised?
On the subject of the 70s, I saw this question last week: "What's a great band from the 70s that the average person wouldn't know of?" That's an easy one for me.
In March of 1979, I still had a couple of weeks left at Camp Lejeune, NC, before shipping off to Japan. Early that month, a buddy and I drove two hours west to Fayetteville, NC, to see a band neither of us had heard of. The other band on the bill we knew, Judas Priest, but the headliners, no idea. Doing something for no good reason is one of the glories of being young, is it not? Off we went. We got there and jammed ourselves into the Cumberland County Memorial Colosseum with 4,500 other general admission souls. For the uninitiated, those were the days void of assigned seating. You wormed and fought your way to some desirable spot and then you DID NOT give any ground.
The lights went down and Judas Priest played their ferocious set. Rob Halford was all decked out in his leather and, of course, he was “Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!” It ended with a couple of encores and up went the lights for the stage change. I wish I had a picture from those days at an event like this one. The haze of smoke from floor to ceiling was forest fire-dense. No one now could possibly believe it.
After a half-hour intermission of standing around so we would not lose our spot up close, the lights went down again. Some guy stepped to the mic and said with great enthusiasm, “Would you please welcome from England…U…F…O!” For the next hour and a half we received a full-on metal attack, but one that was also melodic and varied in tempo and dynamics. It wasn't simply a torrent of decibels. I won't attempt to describe it all. I'll just say it was the type of thing where you look at the person beside you and make that wide-eyed expression like, “I am so blown away by this.”
The show ended and with ears ringing, my buddy and I drove back to Lejeune talking about what a magnificent band we'd stumbled onto. A month later I went to Japan. There were a couple of guys there already in the know about UFO so I had kindred spirits waiting for me. There are four or five albums I associate with my year over there, ones that got plenty of play in the barracks. The Cars and Toto's first albums, Joe Jackson, Steve Miller and the live album of UFO's, released in January 1979, Strangers in the Night. It's a sizzler, let me tell you, and it really captures what I experienced that one night long ago. On that record is the band's German shredder guitar god, Michael Schenker. He is the younger brother of Rudolph Schenker, founder and axeman for the Scorpions. You mighta heard of ‘em. Well, shortly before I saw UFO in NC, Michael and his Flying-V Gibson, in a rockstar creative-differences meltdown, departed the band. I don't know who his replacement was that night on stage when I saw them, but a slouch he was not.
I have great affection for Strangers in the Night. It hangs on my album Wall of Fame. Does the average person know UFO? I've never run across one. I always get blank looks when I mention them.
Oh, and what's my pick for best decade of music? Boy, that's a Sophie's Choice. They all have their share of excellence and awfulness, but it's hard to argue against the 70s. How about you?