The Day Music Was Invented: April 4, 1969

It's the 50th anniversary of a string of albums that have made up about half of my listening over the last 50 years. I doubt that fact reflects well on me, but I don't care. I'm now at a place in life where an artist can receive a Grammy for "Lifetime Achievement," and I have not heard any of his or her music. Not a song. Can you hear me, Dr. Wu? I. don't. care. :) Forthwith, my tongue-in-cheek tribute to the music of my life.

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Nothing much had happened in the music world before the spring of 1969. 

A bunch of guys with long hair fiddled around with harpsichords sometime between Rome and the steam engine. And then a bunch of guys with beards fiddled around with saxophones. I think some guys with guitars sang. Something like that.

Anyway, music was invented on April 4, 1969 when a band called the Chicago Transit Authority released its first album.

There followed a flood that barely lasted a decade. Nothing much has happened since 1979—since September 24, 1979, to be exact, when the Eagles released The Long Run.

In between those two albums came Chicago (Jan 26, 1970), Little Feat (Jan 1971), Chicago III (Jan 11, 1971), Chicago at Carnegie Hall (Oct 25, 1971), Paul Simon (Jan 24, 1972), Sailin’ Shoes (Little Feat, Feb 1972), The Eagles (June 1, 1972), Chicago V (July 10, 1972), and Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill (Nov 1972).

If the world had ended then, all would have been well. But there was more. It was called 1973.

It included Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken (Jan 15, 1973), The Eagle’s Desperado (April 17, 1973), There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (May 7, 1973), Chicago VI (June 25, 1973), and Steely Dan’s Countdown to Ecstasy (July 1973), which happened to have the best single ever recorded, “My Old School.”

Yeh, yeh. Dark Side of the Moon. Got it. Made no sense until I heard it with Wizard of Oz. Good movie, though.

To kick off 1974, the Dan released Pretzel Logic (Feb 25, 1974), the Eagles On the Border (Mar 22, 1974), a supergroup called Souther Hillman Furay (SHF) their debut album (1974), and Little Feat’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (Aug 9, 1974). SHF played one spring weekend at Brown and already didn’t seem like they liked each other much. But it was real music.

Halfway through the decade, Steely Dan dropped Katy Lied (Mar 1975), and you could feel the music teeter, the flood begin to ebb. Alas. Same with The Eagles’ One of These Nights (June 10, 1975), Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years (Oct 6, 1975) and Souther Hillman Furay’s second album, Trouble in Paradise (1975). SHF imploded. It was David Geffen's concoction that thought it wanted to be the next Crosby, Stills, and Nash when it really should have wanted to be the next Eagles.

One bright spot of 1975: Fleetwood Mac (July 11, 1975). I have my college roommate, Glenn Stewart, to thank for bringing that album into the dorm.

If things stopped there, plus some Talking Heads and maybe the Police, we would all have been just fine. Steely Dan started to go all jazzy with The Royal Scam (May 31, 1976) and Aja (Sept. 23, 1977) before jumping the shark completely with Gaucho. The Eagles gave us Hotel California (Dec 8, 1976) and would have put “How Long” (the second-best song ever recorded) on the album if J.D. Souther hadn’t written it.

Fleetwood Mac closed the flood with Rumors (Feb 4, 1977) and the Eagles with the aforementioned The Long Run (Sept 24, 1979). That same month, Elton John released his disco monstrosity, Victim of Love, and the earth shook, the sky fell, and music ended.

It was a brilliant decade, barely, and never to be repeated.