Re: My love is a-live

Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 00:13:32 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1970s
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On 7/23/03 7:29 PM, in article email-address-deleted, "Naz Reyes"
<email-address-deleted> wrote:
> Does "I'm Not In Love" by 10CC qualify in *your* category?
I can't remember that one.
> I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for. Can you be more specific?
With "Strawberry Letter 23" by the Brothers Johnson, you had a kind of
soul/rock with psychedelic lyrics. Lots of harmony and unusual instrumentals
for the time. The whole mood of the song was like "Strawberry Fields
Forever" meets "Dream Weaver". It was a weird combination of rock, soul and
psychedelia that likes of which were presumably rare (if not non-existent)
before and certainly rare since. (Madonna's "Bedtime Story", off her
similarly titled 1994 album, is one exception though it was much less
rock-oriented.)
Gary Wright was, well, just plain weird-ass psychedelic rock. People who
tried this in the '80's probably waded too deep into the synthesizers and
didn't have enough soul or rock.
Both "Strawberry Letter 23" and "Love is Alive" are likely not considered
"classic rock" but they are probably considered rock classics of that era. I
feel they should be regarded as both. For some odd reason, I keep thinking
of "Imaginary Lover" by the Atlanta Rhythm Section and "Twilight Tone" by
the Manhattan Transfer as fitting loosely in this group. The mid- to
late-1970's were a window of opportunity for unusual, (experimental?) very
moody pseudo- or hybrid-rock songs like these.