Customer Reviews

The '70s: Original NBC Motion Picture Soundtrack

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Where are the rest of the songs that were featured on the show? Obvisiouly there are many songs missing...The three songs that I loved are not even on the CD...If you are going to have a "soundtrack" you SHOULD include ALL songs!

The 70s, despite what alot of people may think, actually had a great smorgasboard of music. Rock, soul, r&b, funk, punk, even disco. While these are some fine tunes, if someone carefully researched all the archives of 70s collections out there they could've done alot better compiling the songs for this soundtrack.

This screened here last night, and i enjoyed it, even though it never really took off in terms of capturing the atmosphere, you were pretty aware you were watching 200# people pretending they were in the 70s.But, not terrible.
Anyway the soundtrack I found sensational almost,
so when I did an Amazon search, how pleased i was to find there is one, given that the show was a telemovie, and as such, the morons included no music credits as happens with proper cinema movies, like this.
But great, there is a sound-track CD!
and its cheap!
And it....includes only a fraction of the great unidentified songs!
So though cheap, i maybe wont bother! It needed a 2-cd set, and include the less-played songs.

anyway, who can at least identify them for us, someone should list the actual sound-track here, I challenge them. im particularly interested in one that had the words 'Big Brother' in the chorus, if anyone knows, as someone will, please email me, ill be grateful. pfarnell@optusnet.com.au

Most of the music was excelent. There were several selections I did not care for but I bought it anyway for the majority of the music

I agree with another reviewer who noted that many excellent songs from the show itself are missing from the CD. A couple songs by Joni Mitchell and Rare Earth - rarely heard on classic rock radio - are two examples that come to mind. I'm baffled why 1)the best songs were left off the soundtrack, and 2)how it can be called a soundtrack with so many songs left out! I had intended to buy the CD but when I saw the list of songs, I changed my mind.

I've had enough '70s nostalgia to last the rest of my life. The same people who complained about the lousy state of affairs at the time are probably the same ones dusting off their puka shells and Farrah Fawcett posters now. NBC has poured millions of dollars into an ad campaign for a cheesy, poorly written and acted TV movie that takes a decade and paints it with the broadest, most obvious strokes possible, thus trivializing important events and hyping unimportant ones. This soundtrack, the fiftieth repackaging of mostly bland '70s rock hits that initially annoyed many of the same people who eat them up now, is just part of the ad campaign. Buying this soundtrack is just a way of encouraging NBC to continue this nauseating, revisionist history madness. Please don't let them make "The '80s"!

I have the same problem with this companion soundtrack CD to NBC's "The 70's" that I did with their earlier soundtrack for "The 60's"--or any other anthology that attempts to sum up an entire decade with a single disc. Unless you're going to make it a multi-disc set or limit you focus to a specific genre (disco, punk, reggae, etc.), you can't begin to even adequately cover the time period.

My personal collection is such that I already had every one of these songs. And with the exception of two of these artists (Free and Van McCoy) I also have at least one full length album of each of them. So I'm certainly not knocking the song choices. Many of these are some of the biggest hits of the decade. Eight of the selections went to No. 1 and all but two were Top Ten--the exceptions being the Allman Brothers' "Jessica" and Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds." [The latter is a welcome addition, but for many listeners will seem out of place among the mainstream pop of the remaining selections.]

While the critics of the era told us that The Sevenites was a vast musical wasteland and disco sucked, these songs prove that they were full of crap "Superstition" was the funkiest, rockingest song that Stevie Wonder had recorded up to that time. Marvin Gaye showed that social consciousness didn't fade out with The Sixties. The Temptations proved that they were still one of the most soulful R&B vocal groups on the planet. Bands like Free still knew how to rock 'n' roll. And "Hot Stuff" and "Heart of Glass" were among the best dance grooves of the decade.

Is this an essential purchase? No. Is this a better than average introduction to The Seventies music scene? Yes. And if it will lead you to go on and purchase some of these artists' CDs, by all means you can't go wrong starting here. [Just don't end here.]

This disc is so mainstream, it's pathetic. NBC decided to take the safe road by repackaging a Ktel collection as a movie soundtrack. Where's Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died"? The Bay City Rollers? The Partridge Family? These lame acts were what the 70's were all about! They were too rebellious for this collection. So NBC puts on the disc songs we can hear in about three hours on your average oldies station? A pithy collection at best.

Now that everyone's asking 'remember the '70s?' instead of 'forget the '70s,' NBC's documentary on the decade has spawned this strong collection born and raised in the Me Generation. What you get is a transformation of sorts, from the early soul stylings of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and Barry White through the tempered rock and folk experimentation of Free, Jefferson Starship and Cat Stevens right up to cursory cuts of disco and new wave (Hot Stuff, The Hustle, Heart of Glass). Bob Marley's reggae classic Three Little Birds makes a nice diversion, as does Billy Preston's Nothing From Nothing. But some of it exposes the weakness of the period as well as a sorrowful synopsis of the artists represented; among them Elton John's Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me, the Allman Brothers' Jessica and Three Dog Night's Joy to the World, a fact minimized in severity thanks to the abscence of Disco Duck, Teddy Bear and Having My Baby.

The cover even shows a "legacy-haired" girl with Ziggy Stardust's "Lightning Bolt" make-up, but where's the Glam-rock song? Where's the pre-metal hard rock (Led Zep, Sabbath... the Who, for chrissakes)? Where's "Jesus Rock", where's Prog Rock (EL&P, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis), where are the roots of punk/new wave (Jonathan Richman, Big Star, The Ramones)? Where's KISS?

This is obviously someone's Top-40 AM Radio recollection of the decade, and as such scratches only the flimsy top layer of a very formative period not only in music but in the collective zeitgeist. Too bad.