Artist	Song
Black Sabbath	Am I Going Insane (Radio)
from Sabotage (1975) 4:20
Led Zeppelin	Kashmir
from Physical Graffiti (1975) 8:28
Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Pardon My Heart
from Zuma (1975) 3:47
Pink Floyd	Have A Cigar
from Wish You Were Here (1975) 5:10
Joan Baez	Diamonds And Rust
from Diamonds And Rust (1975) 4:46
Fela Kuti	Water No Get Enemy
from Expensive Shit (1975) Edit version. 9:53
Queen	Bohemian Rhapsody
from A Night At The Opera (1975) 5:57
Bob Dylan	You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
from Blood On The Tracks (1975) 2:51
David Bowie	Young Americans
from Young Americans (1975) Single version. 3:13
Eagles	Lyin' Eyes
from One Of These Nights (1975) 6:26
Frank Zappa	San Ber'dino
from One Size Fits All (1975) 5:57
Tom Waits	On A Foggy Night
from Nighthawks At The Diner (1975) Live. 3:46
Fairport Convention	One More Chance
from Rising For The Moon (1975) 7:55
The Band	Hobo Jungle
from Northern Lights - Southern Cross (1975) 4:15
Bruce Springsteen	Night
from Born To Run (1975) 2:58

Comment:

Statement submitted for approval: 1975 was the most confused year in the history of Anglophone rock/pop music.

... Rock wasn't quite comfortable yet, as it is now, with its blizzard of subgenres, and where was its guiding light? The trappings of hippie music had dried up in an increasingly non-utopian society, and folk-rock, prog, and the singer-songwriter boom were on the way out by 1974 or thereabouts; conversely, punk and disco weren't on the way in until round about 1976. What was there left to rely on?

... The Eagles "Lyin' Eyes" seems to me to be the best stab, at least among the songs on this mix, at a representative song for '75: cynical country rock stretched out to epic proportions (a six-and-a-half-minute song basically just yelling at a woman for cheating? At least it's real pretty... the song I mean...) -- a prog-like duration, perhaps, but without a real sense of looking into the future....

Several artists from rock's classic period were making apparently last-gasp statements: the Northern Lights - Southern Cross album would be the last solid Band studio album of the Robbie Robertson era -- the Last Waltz not far away -- and Fairport Convention's album Rising For The Moon, which must sound much better now than it ever did at the time, was seen as basically a one-shot reunion with a Sandy Denny now devoted to mystic songwriting typified by the glorious epic "One More Chance".

Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks' "last classic album" status seems to be more of a popular reaction to finally a "proper" confessional singer-songwriter album from the man than an actual response to greatness; nevertheless, succeeding great albums from Desire to Love And Theft were all but ignored in its wake. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" is the track that trades best in the mythological imagery that was Dylan's real guiding spirit of the period; it's also Blood's shortest and most lighthearted song.

As for Dylan's supposed successors, we have here two of the front-runners finding their own voice apart from the crowd: Springsteen's heroicism ("Night" could be a three-minute encapsulation of the Boss's entire career) and Mr. Tom Waits's Boddhisattva-like compassion for the lowlifes who can't help themselves, delivered in the growly, boozy voice he's so famous for that made its first appearance on Nighthawks At The Diner.

Really, they're all good songs; in this fractured musical world of 30 years later, it might very well be seen as an advantage that there was so little actual direction at the time. When punk and disco polarized everyone in the later years of the decade, all of these songs would be neither here nor there for the moment; what were those brave warriors missing?

[Image from "Praise the Lord" by Jewell Jeffrey: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/praise-the-lord-jewell-jeffery.html]

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