The Sweet in the 1970s

Author: Darren Johnson
Publisher: Sonicbond Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1789520924
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
The Sweet's look, sound and attitude became an instantly recognisable hallmark of the early 1970s glam rock era. But the band did not start the 1970s as a glam band and certainly didn't finish as one. This book charts the band's journey through the decade that made them a household name: from their initial rise as purveyors of manufactured bubblegum pop to their metamorphosis into harder-edged glam rock icons. The Sweet in the 1970s takes a look at both their successes and their struggles in their quest to be recognised as a serious rock act in the latter part of the decade, once the sparkle and glitter of glam had begun to pale. The decade saw them score fifteen UK Top 40 singles, release seven studio albums and tour several continents. Unlike many bands of the era, personnel changes were few. The Sweet began the 1970s with the arrival of new guitarist Andy Scott and ended the decade with the departure of frontman Brian Connolly, followed by an ultimately ill-fated attempt to continue as a three-piece. This book is an unashamed celebration of the music of the Sweet and charts the lasting impact they had on many of the bands that followed them. After acquiring a second-hand copy of Sweet's Give Us A Wink album from Action Records in Preston as a teenager in the early 1980s, Darren has been a dedicated fan of the band. A former politician, he has written for a number of UK national newspapers, but after stepping away from politics, he has been able to devote more time to his first love: music. A keen follower of both rock and folk, he maintains a popular music blog Darren's Music Blog and has reviewed albums and gigs for a variety of publications. He lives in Hastings, East Sussex, UK.

A Night at the Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Drugs, Disco, and Atlanta's Gay Revolution

Author: Martin Padgett
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324007133
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
An electric and intimate story of 1970s gay Atlanta through its bedazzling drag clubs and burgeoning rights activism. Coursing with a pumped-up beat, gay Atlanta was the South's mecca—a beacon for gays and lesbians growing up in its homophobic towns and cities. There, the Sweet Gum Head was the club for achieving drag stardom. Martin Padgett evokes the fantabulous disco decade by going deep into the lives of two men who shaped and were shaped by this city: John Greenwell, an Alabama runaway who found himself and his avocation performing as the exquisite Rachel Wells; and Bill Smith, who took to the streets and city hall to change antigay laws. Against this optimism for visibility and rights, gay people lived with daily police harassment and drug dealing and murder in their discos and drag clubs. Conducting interviews with many of the major figures and reading through deteriorating gay archives, Padgett expertly re-creates Atlanta from a time when a vibrant, new queer culture of drag and pride came into being.

A 1970s Childhood

Author: Derek Tait
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752463446
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Do you remember glam rock, flares, cheesecloth shirts, and chopper bikes? Then it sounds like you were lucky enough to grow up during the 1970s. Who could forget all the glam rock bands of that era, like Slade, Wizard, Mud, and Sweet, or singers like Alvin Stardust, Marc Bolan, and David Bowie? What about those wonderful TV shows like Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Kung Fu, and Happy Days? Fashion included platform shoes (we all had a pair), flared trousers, brightly patterned shirts with huge collars, and colorful kipper ties. And everyone remembers preparing for power cuts and that long, hot summer of 1976? So dust off your space hopper and join us on this fascinating journey through a childhood during the seventies, with hilarious illustrations and a nostalgic trip down memory lane for all those who grew up in this memorable decade.

Slade in the 1970s

Author: Darren Johnson
Publisher: Sonicbond Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1789523117
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Book Description
Slade were one of the biggest British bands of the 1970s. One of the early pioneers of glam rock, they enjoyed an incredible run of six number-one singles, five top-ten albums and a succession of sell-out tours. However, after a failed attempt at an American breakthrough in the mid-1970s, Slade returned to Britain and faced dwindling record sales, smaller concert halls and a music press that had lost interest in them. By the end of the decade, they were playing residencies in cabaret clubs and recorded a cover of a children’s novelty song. But then came a last-minute invitation to play the 1980 Reading Festival, setting in motion one of the most remarkable comebacks in rock history. It’s now 50 years since Slade’s 1973 annus mirabilis that saw ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’, ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’ and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ all enter the UK charts at number one, and this book celebrates the music of this legendary band. From their beginnings in the mid-1960s through each year of the decade that gave them their biggest successes, every album and single is examined, as well as coverage of their raucous live shows and colourful media profile. A former politician, Darren spent many years writing about current affairs but after stepping away from politics he was able to devote time to his first love: music. His first book, The Sweet in the 1970s, was published by Sonicbond in 2021, followed by Suzi Quatro in the 1970s in 2022. Now he turns his attention to the first band he truly fell in love with: Slade. A keen follower of both rock and folk, he maintains a popular music blog – Darren’s Music Blog – and has reviewed albums and gigs for a variety of publications. He lives in Hastings, East Sussex.

Singer-Songwriters of the 1970s

Author: Robert McParland
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686610
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
The 1970s saw a wave of singer-songwriters flood the airwaves and concert halls across the United States. This book organizes the stories of approximately 150 artists whose songs created the soundtrack to people's lives during the decade that forever shaped musical composition. Some well-known, others less known, these artists were the song-poets and storytellers who wrote their own music and lyrics. Featuring biographical information and discography overviews for each artist, this is the only one-volume encyclopedic overview of this topic. Featured artists include Carole King and James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Gordon Lightfoot, Elvis Costello and dozens of other song-poets of the seventies.

Precious and Few

Author: Don Breithaupt
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466876492
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
Precious and Few is a lively and nostalgic look back at the forgotten era of pop that gave us "Hooked on a Feeling", "Dancing in the Moonlight", "I Am Woman", "Seasons in the Sun", and more. The early 1970s brought a "Convoy" of popular rock music--everything from cheesy to the classic. The authors of Precious and Few, Don Breithaupt and Jeff Breithaupt, true-blue '70s fanatics, have put together this irresistibly readable book to transport readers back to a time when people wore smiley-face buttons, went to singles bars, and heartily sang along with Mac Davis.Illustrations throughout.

Lights Out

Author: Martin Popoff
Publisher: Wymer UK
ISBN: 9781908724571
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
The first book ever on this classic British rock band UFO takes you through the Schenker era in great detail; album-by-album, song by song along with touring anecdotes and of course, tales revolving around the wild and excessive behaviour that was very much a part of the band.

Miss American Pie

Author: Margaret Sartor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596912014
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Gives an account of the author's life from age twelve to eighteen, crafted from diaries, notebooks, and letters, and reflects all the joys and sorrows of growing up in the 1970s.

70s Dinner Party

Author: Anna Pallai
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473546656
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
'Spaghetti in aspic, anyone? Revel in astonishing dishes from yesteryear: Stuffed Cocktail Grapes, Savoury Sausage Salad, a spunky Shrimp-Salmon Mould and so much more. Anna Pallai was brought up on 1970s stalwarts of stuffed peppers, meatloaf and platters of slightly greying hardboiled eggs. When she rediscovered her mother's grease-stained 70s cookbooks, she knew she needed to share them with the world, and so the hit Twitter account @70s_Party was born. Harking back to a simpler pre-Instagram, pre-clean-eating era, when the only concern for your dinner party was whether your aspic would set in time, this is a joyful celebration of food that can give you gout just by looking at it. Covering all the essentials, from starters through to desserts, dinner party etiquette (just how does one start to eat a swan fashioned from a hardboiled egg?) and the dreaded 'foreign' food, there's no potato-fashioned-as-a-stone left unturned.

Genesis in the 1970s: Decades

Author: Bill Thomas
Publisher: Sonicbond Publishing
ISBN: 9781789521467
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
Few, if any bands, have been as prolific or consistently creative as Genesis were in the 1970s, both together and apart. Across that decade, the mothership released eight studio and two live albums, played a thousand concerts and launched the solo careers of four of its members. Through it all, they weathered the departures of Anthony Phillips, Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett, ending the decade as a self-contained trio of Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford, one that was about to become the biggest band in the world. For many though, the 1970s represents their artistic peak as a hothouse for incredible songwriters. It made for a combustible, heady brew when those talents were all harnessed in the service of the band, helping create the progressive rock genre, pioneering the multimedia concert experience, as well as making a rakishly worn daffodil the headgear of choice for the cognoscenti. Genesis began the decade by playing before an audience of one and asking if he had 'any requests?' and ended it by headlining the Knebworth Festival in front of 80,000 fans. This book tells the whole story of that tumultuous decade, on record and on stage, together and apart.