60. 10 Songs about the 1970s

1970's - Aberfeldy
1970 - The Stooges
1972 - Josh Rouse
1973 - James Blunt
1974 - Ryan Adams
74 -75 - The Connells
1975 - Gene Clark
1977 - The Clash
1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
Born in the 70s - Ed Harcourt

Perhaps I should have waited until Post Number 70. Perhaps. But I become impatient.
And I've had to include James Blunt. Dear me.
I don't remember the 1970s. Not one second of it. I think my first memory is of whacking my head in 1980. When I was born 'You're the One that I Want' was Number 1.
A lot of my favourite music is from the 1970s. The good thing is one doesn't have to care about punk being Year Zero and one can like music from before and after. You can see it is a major cultural shift, though. A modern film which chose to set itself in 1972 would arguably be trying to do something very different from something set in 1977. That's my impression, anyway.
So it is that 1972 by Josh Rouse (feelin 1972, grooving to a Carole King tune) and 1977 are very different songs (no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones).
Ash named their debut album 1977 as the year of their birth and the year of Star Wars. In films, the mid 70s saw the dawn of the Blockbuster Age, whereas in music it's a bit like the opposite.
There are a lot of images from the 1970s imprinted on my mind like I feel I was there. The summer of 1976 particularly. A summer of heatwave, the cricket pitches as Clive Lloyd's West Indies team toured were parched, something you'd never see now. We used to call it the Ladybird Summer, which I'd assumed was a wellknown term, but i can't find it anywhere else, so it must have just been us.
And so, and so, and so
this has got couplets like Squeeze, a fine late 70s band. It has a refrain of sorts.
it's called

LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD

Born at the end of the Ladybird Summer
weaned on the wise words of Weller and Strummer
Dad spent the day at the Kennington Oval
watching Viv Richards make Tony Greig grovel

...& o, you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might say and how you might phrase it
back then before widespread use of crash helmets
when your head gets hit your little brain stays hit...

Mother was schooled in the best west of London
her twenties were spent with the good work being undone
by 76 all the lessons were unlearnt
heavily pregnant and heavily sunburnt

Lost dad somewhere and couldn't find a replacement
entered the 80s in a rough Camden basement
hardly the life that your Grandad had planned out
he kept you from squalor with irregular handouts

...and O, you've got to be so careful, so careful
what you accept and how you accept it
kind words from charmers and car rides from strangers
and life-changing moments'll go undetected...

Ambrose and Walsh replaced Holding and Garner
Strummer took leave and along came Nirvana
made your own way through the last days of Thatcher
streetwise and smart to your own growing stature

Learnt to discern between angels and devils
learnt far less from GCSEs and A Levels
saw through the mirage of Cool Britannia
summers were spent dealing drugs in Espana

...and you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might sell and who you might sell to
there can be changes in luck and in judgement
making your deals with the hand that life's dealt you...

Back in the city for the start of the century -
connections remade with the new English gentry
for the clueless but rich; it's no wonder they need you -
earning your name as a star of new media

The 70s saw no year headier or hotter -
owned by Clive Lloyd and ruined by Johnny Rotten -
by 77 it was colder and wetter
and the life you were born to got steadily better

Now your word's worth more than YouGov and MORI
selling the future to Labour and Tory
Ladybird, Ladybird, child of the scorched grass
born lost and solemn, determined to laugh last

But o, you've got to be careful, so careful
when you might laugh and who you might laugh at
One wrong move will take a billionaire's fortune
and coldly and casually slice the top half of it