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 1 response by pops

I was in college during the late seventies and still to this day is my favorite era of music and gets plenty of play time on my TT.  I remember disco just hitting the bar scene (I was out and about on nickel beer night often as I was always broke LOL) and hearing the Stones answer at the time "Hot Stuff."

As a Stones fan I loved it but thought un-oh, us rockers could be in trouble.  Probably my 3 fav's I go back to:  Robin Trower, Wishbone Ash, and Ten Years After.