Various Artists - Then: Totally Oldies 70's / Various (CD)

Super set of 70s radio candy

By redtunictroll  Oct 14, 2003

Pros: -

Cons: -

It’s hard to imagine the highly balkanized radio formats of today producing the wide-range of beautifully crafted hits heard on this collection. From the heavy rock guitars of "More Than a Feeling" and "Hocus Pocus" (not to mention the latter’s signature yodels, something sorely missing on today’s charts!) to the R&B soul of "Groove Me," "Do You Know What I Mean" and "Starting All Over Again" to the contemplative pop and singer-songwriter angst of "Reflections of My Life," "Time in a Bottle" and "Shannon" (the last will still make you tear-up, after all these years), these are the torch-bearers of a golden decade of top-40 radio.

The ’70s also saw terrific hybrids, like Bonnie Tyler’s singer-songwriter-soul-co
untry-Rod-Stewart-rasping "It’s a Heartache," Blue Haze’s reggae-remake of the ’50s doo-wop standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," the barely-out-of-the-60s spirituality of "Spirit in the Sky," Richie Haven’s acoustic-folk-soul remake of "Here Comes the Sun," and the ressurected Neil Sedaka’s Elton John backed pinnacle, "Bad Blood." And these could be heard spun back-to-back (okay, back-to-announcement-to-c
ommercial-to-station-ID-t
o-back) on the same radio station -- something that’s unimaginable on today’s commercial radio dial.

These tracks are generally well represented on ’70s anthologies, and anyone working on a complete collection of the ’70s top-40 will find a great deal of overlap with discs they already own. But that’s not really the point of this disc... what really recommends this collection is the care with which the tracks were selected and organized into a terrific program that yields a super solid ’70s spin.