Let me explain. I have this long running music listening project I started this year. I’ve been focusing on a single year in music every month starting with my birth year, 1967. Well, I’m up to 1973 this July, and I thought I’d review what I added to my playlists, and then mention video gaming, because. . . well. . . why not.
Mostly I’m ripping vinyl I got months ago like Tower of Power’s self-titled album and War’s The World is a Ghetto, just to name a few, but I created another playlist to highlight hit songs in case Mark and I go on a road trip. I have the top 30 songs from Billboard’s Hot 100, which I collected way back in the early 2000s. Some favorites of mine (not all in the top 30) are songs like: Edgar Winter’s “Frankensten” and “Free Ride”, The Ojays’ “Love Train”, Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and “Higher Ground”, Paul McCartney’s Bond song “Live and Let Die”, The Ohio Players “Funky Worm”, Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly”, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show’s “Cover of The Rolling Stone”, Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years” (greatest guitar solo ever), and War’s “Cisco Kid”.
Of course, I couldn’t stop there and looked up 1973 films for their soundtracks. I just stuck to top box office hits that interested me, for the sake of time. Enter the Dragon was a big hit worldwide, and the Clint Eastwood film Magnum Force was in the top ten in the U.S. . Both soundtracks are composed by Lalo Schifrin funny enough. American Graffiti is a good soundtrack of 50s music I used to have and have to go get again. I am currently eyeing a certain library near me.
Then I looked up music from TV shows. I stuck to shows that debuted in ’73. Favorites of mine I got the theme to were: Schoolhouse Rock, The Six Million Dollar Man, Super Friends (DC’s Justice League), Starlost (a Canadian Scifi I never heard of but want to watch now because Harlan Ellison wrote it), and Ultraman Taro released only in Japan. There seemed to be a new Ultraman show released in Japan every year in the 70s. Some of them managed to make it to the U.S. but years later.
In writing this, I couldn’t resist looking up video games even though there’s no music of any kind other than bleeps and bloops. But some significant beginnings happened in the wake of Atari’s Pong in '72. Sega, Midway and Williams Electronics all begin making video games with pong clones. Konami is created. Hudson Soft is created but as a radio shop and would not make video games until the late 70s. Taito makes its first video game, possibly Speed Race, which came to the U.S. in ’74. Finally for you PC gaming fans, the BASIC Computer Games book is published containing 101 games you could type into your early build-yourself microcomputer kit.
In '73 I was five years old and not aware of music, but I did play Pong on my TV and watch Schoolhouse Rock, Six Million Dollar Man, and Super Friends.
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