Mott The Hoople

One of the most sought-after of all ‘60s cult LPs, 1967’s Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids is the sort of record that could only have emerged during the psychedelic era, and a vibrant manifestation of that period’s freewheeling, boundary-breaking spirit of musical adventure. Hapshash and the Colored Coat—the English duo of Michael English and Nigel Weymouth—initially achieved notoriety as a graphic design team whose distinctive visual sensibility placed them at the center of London’s original psychedelic explosion. The pair’s vivid visual imagination spawned album covers and countless posters promoting performances at London’s legendary UFO Club by such acts as Pink Floyd and the Incredible String Band. Those visual works brilliantly captured the London scene’s buoyant, mind-expanding vibe, and feature some of the psychedelic era’s most arresting imagery.

Time Life collections are usually rock-solid groupings of classic songs presented carefully and lovingly, and the FM Rock series is no exception. The theme seems to be songs you might find on a free-form FM station, because each volume contains songs that no commercial program director would come close to allowing on the air. Mixed in with these selections are some classic FM tunes as well, making for a wild and unpredictable listen. For example, Vol. 2 has hit tracks by the Doobie Brothers ("Rockin' Down the Highway"), Rod Stewart ("Every Picture Tells a Story"), and Little Feat ("Willin'"), but also obscurities like Crazy Horse's "Gone Dead Train" and Fleetwood Mac's "Jewel Eyed Judy," as well as oddball choices like Moby Grape's "Gypsy Wedding" and Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come." Beyond being entertaining listening, all the entries in the series could turn listeners on to bands they missed the first time around, and are fine additions to the collection of someone who wants to delve deeper into the music of the '70s.

Three CD set. 2022 instalment of Grapefruit's popular year-by-year overviews of the more melodic end of the early 70s UK progressive rock scene. A four-hour compilation featuring big hits, key album tracks, cult classics and rarities from 1973. 1973 was another significant year in British pop, with the recent arrival of glam inspiring many underground bands to adopt a more streamlined sound. That more song-based approach helped give the 1973 singles chart a new energy, with memorable 45s from Mott The Hoople, Manfred Mann's Earthband, Faces, Status Quo, Medicine Head and Nazareth.

Sounds of the Seventies was a 40-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, spotlighting pop music of the 1970s. Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Sounds of the Seventies" series covered a specific time period, including individual years in some volumes, and different parts of the decade (for instance, the early 1970s) in others; in addition, some volumes covered specific trends, such as music popular on album-oriented rock stations on the FM band.