1972
A few weeks ago, Paul Nelson's good friend and fellow critic Bud Scoppa, who worked with him at Mercury Records in the early Seventies, was going through a trunk in his garage when he came across a photocopy of Paul's list of the top ten albums of 1972. Scoppa posted the list yesterday on his blog.
At the risk of sounding like everybody's father, the ten LPs (as they were called back then) in question prove that, while we still continue to live in interesting times, the music was definitely better back then:
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
Mott The Hoople, All the Young Dudes
Randy Newman, Sail Away
Steve Young, Seven Bridges Road
John Fahey, Of Rivers and Religion
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Kinks, Everybody’s in Showbiz
Wilderness Road, Wilderness Road
Paul, an inveterate list-maker on his own, compiled his list for Fusion, a Boston-based rock magazine. It's interesting to note that, because Paul's critical output was minimized during his Mercury years, he only wrote a full-fledged review for one of these albums: Wilderness Road. Paul loved the band and more than once flew from New York to Chicago, where they were based, on his own dime. His Rolling Stone review of the album reveals Paul at his most ardent and least trendy.
Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.