No love for 70's guitar bands?


When I was in high school it was the heyday of the pop guitar bands. Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Loverboy, etc. These bands were immensely popular during the late 70s and early 80s and continue to tour (with scant remnants of the original bandz) but they don't seem to get any love here at Audiogon. They are almost never mentioned in the "what are you listening to threads" and you never see them mentioned in the "what is your reference CD/LP/file".

I think a lot of them did some decent work early in their careers and I think all of them eventually made big money on sappy sickening ballads that shortened their careers at least in terms of credibility.

I saw most of these bands live in the 80's and have the hearing loss to prove it. I loved them at the time. Rarely think of them now. The reason I thought of this is that I found a copy of Styx Cornerstone on vinyl in my meager collection of LPs. I think my wife won it in a contest. It is the album with "Babe" on it. I'm listening to it now.

It is terrible.

Thoughts on these bands in terms of relevance today? Relevance in their heyday?
n80

Showing 2 responses by big_greg

I don't know how "relevant" these bands are today, but they are the stuff of my youth.  I was a little more into AC/DC, Judas Priest, Krokus, UFO, Scorpions, Led Zeppelin and the like, but listened to and saw my share of more pop oriented bands like Styx, Foreigner, Heart, and some of the others mentioned.

The cool thing is that many of them are still around and touring and playing smaller venues with much better sound systems than "back in day".  In the last few years I've seen a lot of great shows, mostly at "affordable" prices - Styx, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, Heart, Bad Company,  Joe Walsh, Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Brian Wilson, War, Todd Rundgren/Utopia, to name a few.  While many of them don't have all their original members, they usually sound great.  They've had a lot of time to practice and refine their stage shows!
Something I thought about is that in my youth I was more into "hard rock" and had a disdain for "pop" or "mellow" artists.  As I've grown older I still enjoy blasting some AC/DC or Judas Priest, but I've opened up to some things that I wouldn't have even considered listening to or didn't think much of in my youth - ELO, 10CC, Wings, and others come to mind.  One of my favorite pieces of "ear candy" is 10CC's "I'm Not in Love".  The production values of some of those artists during that time were very high.