Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs
Follow The Big Takeover
1977 Albums I Liked Then
More nostalgia for 30 years ago, when I was not hip. Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols was more than my 16-year-old brain could process. I had read about the Sex Pistols in Rolling Stone and bought it based just on that. It did not prepare me for what I heard, and it would be another couple of years before I grasped what the Pistols had been doing. Mostly I bought LPs after hearing songs I liked on the radio. In fact, I would rarely buy an album until I’d heard something from it, though it didn’t have to be on the radio – a friend could play something that impressed me.
Still one of my favorite albums of all time. Full of hits, but my favorite track has long been the overlooked “Sweet Is the Night,” which is sort of like what a Springsteen song would sound like if Bruce had grown up English with classical music lessons.
Progressive rock purists disdain them, but this was my favorite prog group at the time, and honestly I think this and Leftoverture have held up well.
This has not aged well. Oddly, the song that caught my ear the least at the time, the concluding “Everybody Has a Dream,” has dated best.
I must’ve heard half of this on the radio by the time I bought it. The combination of three different singers and songwriters gave it great balance. Still a classic!
I could sing every single song on this album, take anybody’s vocal part, and could fake my way through the chords on piano. Even now, aware of its weaknesses, I still have great affection for it.
The title track was about the most exotic thing I’d ever heard back then. It hasn’t lost any of its luster for me, though I now prefer “Home at Last.”
Thanks to my friend Norman Oder for playing this for me way back when. The arrangements and production were something I could understand in the context of what I’d already heard at the time, unlike the Pistols. “Do Anything You Wanna Do” was the hit (in England), and the title track, “Ignore Them (Still Life),” ”(And) Don’t Believe Your Eyes,” and “Beginning of the End” are just as good. The moody instrumental “We Sing…the Cross” is still a favorite of mine, though it stands out like a sore thumb from all the pub rock/proto-punk tracks. The Captain Oi CD reissue adds nine bonus tracks, all either good or interesting, including collaborations with MC5 singer Rob Tyner.
There were some big hits on this album, and I loved them all at the time (now only nostalgia keeps me tolerating “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”), but none of them as much as the epic title track, powered by producer Todd Rundgren’s guitars.
Cheesy, especially the hit ballad “Just Remember I Love You,” but I loved mellow country rock verging on pop and this was some of the poppiest.
I got it because I heard “Solsbury Hill” on the radio. Since then, “Modern Love” and “Here Comes the Flood” have become my favorite tracks.
