2024, Family, gardening, Music

70s Sing Along

35 Comments

The last two days have been gardening days chez nous.  When you have massive numbers of flowers (instead of grass), spring clean-up is a bear.  Monday we did a few hours in the front and yesterday we spent in the backyard so Guinevere could be outside with us. (Still LOTS to do… but that’s for another day). 

As we were getting going yesterday, YA brought out what I thought was a sunglasses case.  I’ve seen this around, usually when she’s getting packed up for a trip.  Turns out it’s actually a little bluetooth speaker that she got on a client trip.  I wasn’t too excited about this as our choices of music don’t usually sync up but the first song was something I recognized and then the second and the third.   I asked her if it was a specific station or if she had asked it “to play old stuff my mom would like”.  She responded that she had asked for music from the 70s. 

I graduated from high school in 1974 so I guess you could say I came of age musically in the 70s.  Abba, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Simon & Garfunkel, Moody Blues, Heart, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond.  I was fond of many folk singers in the late 60s as well but I got my first radio of my own when I was in 10th grade.  (I never did have a record player of my own until I got married!)  I suppose a lot of nostalgia is wrapped up in that music for me. 

As the gardening went on, more and more songs that I recognize played on.  I don’t know the name of many of those tunes or even the artists, but I know a lot of the lyrics.  YA did suggest at one point that I didn’t have to sing along quite so loudly.

I did eventually thank her for playing “old mom music”.

If you can stand the 70s rock stuff, do you have a particular tune you like?

35 thoughts on “70s Sing Along”

  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    In the 70s I was into John Denver, Helen Reddy, Chicago, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Neil Diamond, Streisand. One of my favorite movies is “The Big Chill” (Kevin Costner’s first role as the body of the guy who died) with a back drop of 70s music, as well as a character reflecting Tom Selleck’s Magnum PI role. I love that movie. It is one of the first movies that I remember with an intentionally curated sound track of music by groups (not a sound track written for the movie). Now that is common practice.

    By the late 70s I was living on a remote lake in Northern MN where the wasband was a camp caretaker. Grand Rapids had a public radio station where I discovered the wide variety of folk music and where I could listen to the early years of Prairie Home Companion. Then it was Sally Rogers and Claudia Schmidt. I loved it all. When I came to grad school at the U of MN in 1979 I went often to the venues where they played. It was wonderful.

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  6. How much time ya got? 😉 Some of the best songs ever recorded were written in the 70s (and many in the 60s and 80s too). After that, meh, except for a few standouts like Shania Twain.

    Here’s a few of my faves:

    Bridge Over Troubled Water; Let it Be; American Pie (my vote for second greatest rock tune of all time behind Stairway to Heaven–also from the 70s. But American Pie is probably my favorite of the two); Midnight Train to Georgia; Dancing Queen; Stayin’ Alive; Hotel California; Cat’s in the Cradle; What’s Going On; Ain’t No Sunshine; Imagine; Bohemian Rhapsody.

    “Yada, yada, yada . . . I mentioned the bisque.” 🙂

    Chris in O-town

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  8. The soundtrack of my life! A little over a week ago I attended a fabulous Eagles tribute concert. Most of the audience was “old” but we could still sing nearly all the lyrics. Am going to see “Beautiful” at Chanhassen next month – love me some Carole King!

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  15. I thought there were a lot of excellent blues-influenced bands in the 70’s. Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Derek and the Dominoes, Traffic, Janis Joplin, Humble Pie, Faces, the Siegel-Schwall Band. And these guys….

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  16. It’s funny, while I’ve certainly heard most of the seventies rock stuff and danced to it at pot and beer fueled parties, it’s not what I listened to at home. There, artists like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Steve Goodman, John Prine, CSN&Y, Leo Kottke were in constant rotation on my record player. 

    By the time wasband and I arrived in the Twin Cities during the summer of 1972 our marriage was in deep trouble, and we separated in the fall of 1974. After I moved out, I began in earnest to explore the local music scene. The Prairie Home Morning Show, and later on the Morning Show, could be counted on to introduce me to new artists, and when I stumbled on the Prairie Home Companion Show in August of 1974, I had found what would become my musical home base. It was a great time to explore live music in the Twin Cities.

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