Warren Zevon 1976

Hasten Down The Wind is an out-of-print 1976 album by singer/songwriter/producer Linda Ronstadt and Ronstadt's third straight million-selling album. Ronstadt was the first female artist in history to accomplish this feat. The album earned Ronstadt her second of a record 10 Grammy Awards for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female in early 1977. It represented a slight departure from 1974's Heart Like A Wheel and 1975's Prisoner In Disguise in that she chose to showcase new songwriters over the traditional Country Rock sound she had been producing up to this point. It is a more serious, more poignant album than its predecessors and won immediate critical acclaim from critics and the general public alike.

Sounds of the Seventies was a 38-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. Each volume was issued on either compact disc, cassette or (with volumes issued prior to 1991) vinyl record.

It may not be the "ultimate" collection of hits from the 1970's, but this ten disc set does indeed offer 198 of the songs that helped define the decade. Happily, they are all original recordings by the original artists, as they were heard on the radio. True, in a few cases that means the selections are "radio edits" (Rod Stewart's 1971 hit "Maggie May", for example, is missing the 30 second instrumental introduction that was included on the original album, but rarely played over the airwaves), but why quibble? The songs, though not necessarily remastered, all sound great, and the set includes some genuine treasures that have not (yet) been offered on other compilations. Highly recommended!