The Dropped Away

I have written before about the Drops Away Syndrome... that thing where artists seem supremely relevant and core-canonic at a particular moment, but then their reputations dip precipitously and never recover... such that no young person currently emerging into the condition of  informed, well-listened  fandom would bother to check 'em out, in some cases simply because they don't even know of that group's or artist's existence...  

So here's the New Musical Express's critics consensus of the 100 All-Time Greatest Albums from June 1st 1974. Let's look at the charting artists who've subsequently Dropped Away largely or utterly. 

 

12. Layla – Derek & The Dominoes

Debatable, but I think in terms of young listeners today, this would be the highest-placing album / artist in the list that is completely off the menu

Followed probably by this...

17. Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon & Garfunkel

And then (the curse of Clapton again)

20. Disraeli Gears – Cream

Debatable but I feel like your average becoming-hip youth would be more likely to have heard Les Rallizes Denudes than....

29. Back In The USA – MC5

Pretty certain that the eminence-with-critics held by this next chap during the early '70s (even more so in the States - where the likes of Marcus and Bangs thought he was some kind of saviour, a ruffian poet) is completely non-existent... not just with Gen Z but millennials and Gen X too 

32. Gasoline Alley – Rod Stewart

34. Every Picture Tells A Story – Rod Stewart

 

37. In The Court Of The Crimson King – King Crimson

Possibly pockets of interest in this lot among neo-prog and math-rock types, but generally dropped away I'd say

40. The Soft Machine – Soft Machine

Utterly voided

41. Hot Rats – Frank Zappa

I do have a student who is a Zappa nut.... but generally, off the table for anyone after punk

Now we get into the seriously gone-gone, dropped away zone ....

42. Traffic – Traffic

44. Music From A Dolls House – Family

50. Stand Up – Jethro Tull

54. Taylor, James – Sweet Baby James

Despite singer-songwriterism having returned with Lana D-R and Phoebe B et al 

Zappa again

58. Mothers Of Invention, The – We’re Only In It For The Money

60. Beck, Jeff, Group – Beck-Ola

Absolutely mystifying to anyone who came to consciousness after punk = the Great Stature of this axe-bore.

68. Mothers Of Invention, The – Freak Out

Zappa yet again. Apart from the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan, Frank & crew have the most placings on this chart, I think - and are the most annulled, whereas the Other Three are more impregnably canonic than ever.

70. Stills, Stephen – Stephen Stills

His daughter once took my photograph, on our porch, just feet from where I now type. Once tried to listen to Manassas but had to give up after 5 minutes. 

71. Winter, Johnny – Johnny Winter And

The whole blues-god, new prodigy of blues rock guitar thing... it's one of the most unreconstructable phenoms in rock history. Supposedly Johnny Winter's record deal was the biggest advance in history to that point, for a new act. 

72. Cocker, Joe – With A Little Help From My Friends

Alongside Joplin, surely the least-listened to Woodstock-era artist among all subsequent generations. 

75. Rundgren, Todd – A Wizard, A True Star

Despite influencing Prince and anticipating Ariel Pink in his recorded-it-all-on-his-Todd DIYness, Rundgren has not endured. I once spent an evening in the company of some Norwegians and Mr R and a succession of incredibly pricy vodka sours (this was during an Oslo music festival). He had bitter tales of recording with XTC and the intransigence of one Andrew Partridge. Did not respond well to my soused suggestion that he play Nazz's "Open My Eyes" at his concert the next night.

77. Jefferson Airplane, The – Crown Of Creation

Quite unrecoverable, I should think. I'm surprised this gets the nod and not After Bathing At Baxter's, my personal favorite in their most curious, trapped-in-time discograpy. Amazing how many albums they recorded after the famous hits...  they even had their own label, unhappily named Grunt.  Then the delta of solo albums, offshoots, Jefferson Starship...  almost a landfill in its own right.

81. Country Joe & The Fish – Electric Music For The Mind & Body

An absolutely forgotten group - for the longest while I myself had no idea they recorded this piercing psych rock mini-classic, having only ever heard the folksy protest ditty "Fixin-To-Die". I think the only reason I checked it out was I read that Tom Verlaine had been influenced. Psychedelia is obviously enduringly hip, if going through up-phases and relative dips, but this group - and acid rock generally, a different animal to psych  really - is not on the listening-list. See also Kaleidoscope (the US one not the Brit). 

85. Mayall’s, John, Bluesbreakers – Bluesbreakers

More Blues Boom boredom. Or so I assume. Wild horses couldn't drag me to the turntable  - or to Tidal - to give this a fair listen.

86. Traffic – Mr Fantasy

Traffic again. Very well respected once - their second album gets in Greil M's list at the back of Stranded, he says it's a British Music From Big Pink. I like the psych hit singles well enough. John Barleycorn is a particularly trapped-in-time listen.

90. Moby Grape – Moby Grape

Another one that makes the GM Stranded list (compiled around 1978 I should think so a post-New Wave lingering-on of Old Wave taste). I've tried but I can't find anything distinctive or memorable about the Grape. 

91. Big Brother & The Holding Co. – Cheap Thrills

San Francisco and all that made deep inroads into hip British taste - the magazine ZigZag was almost completely built around wistful West Coast longings among those just too young to have experienced it in real-time, let alone real-place.... Quicksilver Messenger Service epigones.... Hot Tuna hold-outs.... People who held their breath and waited and waited until the Grateful Dead would do their sporadic  live concerts in the U.K.  

(The first - and only, still - person of my own generation to suggest Big Brother might be worth listening to was J. Mascis...  in one of the several interviews I did with Dinosaur Jr, he was going on about a recent influence on his playing  being BB & THC's guitarist James Gurley. That gave me a right revisionist frisson, that did).

93. Doctor John – Gris-Gris

Dropped away utterly!

97. Newman, Randy – 12 Songs

I know a writer of the generation after mine who loves Newman (Mike Powell of Stylus / Pitchfork etc) but I would wager that His Gruffness's standing has plummeted precipitously. But in the early '70s he was the very definition of sophisticated and discerning rock taste, such that Marcus devoted an entire chapter of Mystery Train to his uuuurv, jostling alongside Sly Stone (!), The Band (!) and Elvis Presley (!!).

98. Spirit – The 12 Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus

More ZigZaggery.

I've tried with this group, this record, a bunch of times over the years but it's never stuck. My former MM colleague Paul Lester is a huge fan of Spirit even to the point of loving obscure Randy California solo albums. A fan of Rundgren too. (I think some of this may index to having grown up reading NME writer Max Bell, an Americanophile who wrote a riposte to Mick Farren's famous Titanic piece about the decadence of rock (the one that is said to have helped precipitate punk). Bell was - in early 1976 no less - like, "No, there's all this great music coming out of the U.S.A. Rock's getting every more sophisticated. It's just the UK scene that's a shithole. Start buying imports". )

99. Miller, Steve, Band – Sailor

Even more ZigZaggery. Children of the Future makes that back o' Stranded list. For those who know him only for "The Joker", "Abracadabra" and all those affably rockin' AM radio staples of the mid-70s, it's something of a head-swerve to learn that Miller was once revered as one of the finest blues-rock guitarists of his day and that the first couple of SMB albums are considered psych-era classics by some. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So that's 30 albums that have Dropped Away - almost a third of the list. Which is not that bad, I suppose. It means that 70 percent of the music esteemed in 1974 still has some kind of standing in today's taste-schema - fifty years on. 

However I would wager that if there's an equivalent list that the NME did in 1979 or 1980 - and there may well be - the Dropped Away proportion would be larger, possibly considerably larger. And that subsequently there's been some canonic readmission, a bit of Dropped-Away-But-Steadily-Stealthily-Climbed-Back.  Revisionism and rehabilitation. Restoration.

For most of the Dropped Away here would have originally Dropped Away within four years of this list being compiled. It was the catastrophic Transvaluative Event of New Wave that caused all these artists to suddenly become utterly irrelevant, indeed in many cases actively repugnant to young ears. It happened almost overnight. 

Of course, many of the usurping upstarts have themselves suffered subsequently from the dreaded Drops Away Syndrome ... for who of the young generation listens to, or has even heard of, Eddie & the Hot Rods, the Motors, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Boomtown Rats, Eater, Mink Deville, Tom Robinson Band, the Vibrators, the Damned, the Adverts...?

Old Waver turned New Waver

 

To celebrate Peelie's 40th Birthday in 1979, NME put him on the cover. They also printed a list of his 40 favorite tunes of all time, as played on his show the previous week. You can listen to John Peel's 40-at-40 faves here. 

What struck me about this list is the extent to which Peel's erased the music of the late 60s and the first half of the '70s. All the stuff on which he'd built his reputation - as broadcasting custodian of Underground  Rock - via his shows Perfumed Garden and Top Gear. The music on behalf of which he started his own record label, Dandelion.  

Almost the entire list consists of 

1/ early rock 'n' roll and blues

2/ punk and New Wave (three Undertones tunes in the Top 5! The godawful Quads)

3/ reggae and soul 

Okay, okay, there are two songs from the Dandelion catalogue, by Mike Hart and Medicine Head. And he does have a bona fide "heads" classic from Captain Beefheart.  There's a Faces tune and a Neil Young song. 

Still only 5 out of 40 to represent the whole 1966-1976 era - that's a bit of  personal history revisionism there.

Still, could have been worse - could have been Peel listing his 40 fave schoolgirls, eh? 

Instructive to compare this All Time Faves list with where Peelie's head was at in Christmas 1975 when he looked back at the year's offerings. This is his Top 15, counting down to the #1 which is the Be Bop Deluxe tune 

Peter Skellern - Hold On To Love (Decca)

Laurel And Hardy with The Avalon Boys - The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine (United Artists)

Mike Oldfield - In Dulci Jubilo (Virgin)

Joan Armatrading - Back To The Night (A and M)

10CC - I'm Not In Love (Mercury)

Bob Sargeant - First Starring Role (RCA)
Peter Frampton - Show Me The Way (A and M)
Bob Marley and The Wailers - No Woman No Cry (Island)
Joan Armatrading - Dry Land (A and M)
John Lennon - Imagine (Apple)
Rod Stewart - Sailing (Warner Bros)
Roy Harper - When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease (Harvest)
Jack The Lad - Gentleman Soldier (Charisma)
Millie Jackson - Loving Arms (Polydor)
Be Bop Deluxe - Maid In Heaven (Harvest)

You can hear the countdown of tracks with Peel's comments here




















Now you might think this is the absolute nadir of rock  music and the kind of climate that necessitated punk and its historical revisions, but immediately after playing Lennon's "Imagine" (not even properly from '75, a rerelease!), Peel actually says: "despite what other people say, I think this has been a great year for records, 1975 - and I think from this point on, all of the singles that I've chosen would actually get into my all-time Top 50" 

Unbelievably, the next one is

Well, he could have been correct in his prognosis about these glories getting into his all time Top 50, because the 1979 list is only a Top 40 - perhaps "Sailing", "When An Old Cricketer", "Gentleman Soldier", "Loving Arms" and "Made in Heaven" would have been tightly clustered in the 50 to 41 stretch. But I suspect not... I suspect they were all junked to make room for The Quads, Silicon Teens and SLF and more stuff like that. 

He did apparently insist to his dying day that The Quads was one of his all-time favorite singles. 

Here's his faves from the previous year, 1974

postscript 9/14/2023

 Michaelangelo Matos directs me to the famous Peel show in December 1976 which inaugurates the big switcheroo

https://www.mixcloud.com/karleldridge5/john-peel-10th-december-1976-the-famous-punk-rock-special/

And also points me to David Cavanagh's book Good Night and Good Riddance, "his history of John Peel on the radio through over 200 programs", which has good stuff on the Old Wave / New Wave transformation - MM helpfully directs readers to specific pages, suggesting starting "at p. 126 (Nuggets), jump to 188 (Ramones), then go from there"

I have the book and have dipped in here and there, but never read the stuff on the cusp-of-punk 

It's a great concept for a book. 

In fact, it struck me as a template that any number of writers could do and you would end up with a  largely different book each time. You could pick different shows than Cavanagh. Or you could pick some of the same shows he picked, but just focus on different records and artists. You could connect  the shows to different things going on in the wider music culture / society / politics. 

I even toyed with doing it as a blog series, and started gathering Peel shows. Not only did I not do the blog series, I have never listened to the Peel shows! 

One frustrating thing - something that frustrated Cavanagh -is  that the number of shows from the prepunk'70s that have survived through fan archiving is very spotty. For some reasons there's more from the late 60s, the Perfumed Garden, and early Top Gear - perhaps it was more of a big deal, or that was the only way to hear the music, so people got their reel-to-reel tape recorders out.  But some particular years in the early-mid '70s, there's only a handful of shows. Perhaps because Peel-type music you could get more easily from records shops... and it was prior to the cassette recorder becoming an integral part of music centers and transistor radio sets. 

Cavanagh, conscientious researcher that he was (RIP, BTW), actually journeyed out to some national library building on the periphery of London and went through the records of each show, in which Peel listed what had been played on forms, so that performing rights payments could be directed to the right parties. I believe a few of shows he writes about are ones where these documents are the only archival residue - he wasn't able to hear the show or Peel's patter between records. 

The prepunk '70s would be the ones I'd be most interested to hear. Because I didn't live through that era as a music fan - and the Old Wave gestalt is so fascinating. 

Whereas with postpunk, I was a regular and attentive Peel listener. Being of very limited funds, I'd taped tracks off it (although hardly ever sessions - back in the day I was never that excited by the whole Peel session thing. I'm now a little more interested, just because of things like the first Scritti session which contained tracks that would never be released or properly recorded. But back then, no... when he'd played a track from a session that was like an interruption in the flow of actual records as far as I was concerned.) 

Since Cavanagh did the book, some more Peel shows from the first half of the '70s have subsequently emerged. Often mutilated portions of a show, or of poor sound quality.  

But it's still very spotty.

But yeah I never did it.  

The whole later part of DC's project would not be tempting at all... meaning the last 25 years or so of his broadcasting. 

You see, my real-time impression of  Peel's show is that they got less enjoyable, essential or even useful in the post-postpunk era. 

New Pop he gave a wide  berth to (except for his cherished Altered Images) because it was getting played by the day time deejays on Radio One, so that meant he'd be stuck with (or perhaps simply preferred) postpunk's runty afterbirth, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, or actual punk records, from the Second Wave of Punk (I seem to remember a lot of Vice Squad). And there'd be roots reggae past its prime and the beginnings of his world-y interests. 

From that era I seem to recall taping an early Triffids session, when they were Birthday Party / Doors influenced. But it was a slim pickings sort of time. .

Then as we get into the mid-Eighties, the Peel Show became an increasingly dreary listen...  He did like the shambling bands, but which I mean the bogsheddy types, the rumbledythump bands as one fanzine tagged them, quite accurately. 

My memory is that from 1986 onwards I rarely listened to Peel  - partly because the show had got too eclectically disparate. But mainly - I just didn't need it anymore. As a music journo, I was getting sent so many of the new records, so I was able to be my own filter (Peel as filter seemed less and less reliable). And most evenings, I just wasn't in  - I was out seeing bands, seeing people, enjoying the other things London had to offer. 

As a journalist prone to excitation, I increasingly found Peel's gruff stolidity to be frustrating, deflating -  the chronic understatement of the patter seemed to have this levelling effect.

So I think I might have listened to Peel once in the entire 1990s. And then it was because it was playing in a car I was in. I seem to remember him playing quite an exciting techno record, a real juggernaut of a track. But you wouldn't habitually turn to Peel for guidance on that kind of music, would you?  Touching that he would continue to keep an interest (and later play his son's happy hardcore tunes), but yeah... there were other more reliable sources.