Lost Gems: Five 70s Records You Can’t Stream

What with Spotify, Pandora, and the rest of today’s music streaming services, it can often feel like the entire history of Western music is just a click away. However, due to various legal issues, copyright conflicts, or simple obscurity, there’s a lot of music that still isn’t available online. Here are five forgotten gems from the 1970s that aren’t currently available on any U.S. streaming service:

Lee Majors
Six Million Dollar Funk (1978)

Riding high on the success of “The Six Million Dollar Man” TV show, Lee Majors made a bold move into the music scene with this collection of blistering funk tunes. Teaming up with members of Tower of Power and Earth, Wind, and Fire, Majors created a surprisingly groovy debut record, full of fat bass lines and funky drumming – with his smooth baritone vocals on top, bringing it all home. The title of the LP is telling: over half of the songs on the album touch on themes from Majors’ breakout TV hit. The single “Bionic Booty” is the album’s best-known number, reaching as high as #147 on Billboard’s pop charts. Other tunes include “Funky Space Crash,” “Slow-Motion Lover,” “Big Footin,” and “Watching You (From a Mile Away)”. Majors’ follow-up didn’t arrive until 1982’s Original New Romantic, an ill-conceived attempt at transitioning his musical career into the burgeoning new wave scene. It died a quick death, selling a total of 8,768 copies, and killed off Majors’ career as a singer for good.

Tom Jones
“Dance the Ska/Rudy Got Soul” (1979)

The massive popularity of the late 70s/early 80s ska movement in Britain didn’t escape the notice of long-time crooner Tom Jones. At the time, Jones’ career had stalled out and he was looking for the right vehicle to catapult him back into the limelight. When he saw the success that bands like The Specials and Madness were having covering old 60s Jamaican ska songs, Jones jumped on the bandwagon. His covers of the Skatalites’ “Dance the Ska” and Desmond Dekker’s “Rudy Got Soul” showed that he had a good ear for a song – even if his execution was a bit off. Choosing to record the songs as ska/disco hybrids made for an awkward fit; the lush synthesizer lines simply don’t mesh well with up-tempo ska. This rare 7-inch single is the only artifact from Jones’ brush with two-tone: he caught syphilis during a brief tour with Bad Manners and dropped out of sight for over a year. When he emerged, Jones had transformed himself into a rockabilly revivalist, which is a story for another day…

Denim
Denim (1974)

This all-but-forgotten band from Olympia, Washington only released one album before they broke up, a self-titled LP full of down-tempo country-rock numbers. The all-female band fancied themselves a grittier version of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and lead singer Beth Marbles was known for issuing on-stage challenges for John Fogerty to arm-wrestle. Rolling Stone described the band as “a mellower, female Little River Band, minus the compelling songcraft and knowledge of chord changes.” The album is best-known today due to its inclusion of the original version of “Let’s Get Physical,” later remade into a danceable pop smash by Olivia Newton-John. In an interesting side note, Denim bass player Debbi Fields used the money from the publishing rights to “Physical” as the seed money to start her own business: Mrs. Field’s Cookies. This may be the band’s biggest contribution to the culture. Other tunes include “(Keeping Up With) The Joneses,” “Boysenberry Blues,” “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (The Weekday Song),” and “Keeping Up (With The Joneses).” Unavailable on any streaming service, you can occasionally find lo-fi pirate copies of Denim’s lone album on YouTube.

Butternut Sqwash
Butternut Sqwash (1971)

This East German group was at the forefront of electronic music in the late 60s and early 70s, although little of their output ever reached the west. Known in their own country as Butternusskurbis, the five-man band pushed their all-synthesizer sound in new, strange directions, combining mechanical sounds with traditional instruments such as the accordion. Kraftwerk were heavily influenced by Butternut Sqwash’s 1971 debut, with founding member Florian Schneider quoted as saying, “Before Butternut Sqwash, we mainly dabbled in acoustic folk-rock. They showed us a new way to look at music: coldly and mechanically.” Due to a mix-up with trademarks, Butternut Sqwash’s debut album was only available in the west for 12 days in 1971, so it is beyond rare, which makes its absence on streaming platforms all the more tragic. Among the LP’s groundbreaking instrumental tunes are “B56Y,” “Angesehener Lokaler Scheißkopf Gewinnt Beförderung (Esteemed Local Shithead Wins Promotion),” “Mech-Mench,” and “Ironie ist Ironisch.”

Carly Simon and Crazy Horse
Circus of the Damned (1975)

Carly Simon’s abrasive attempt at a hard rock concept album, Circus of the Damned, ranks as by far the most obscure, least popular album in her catalog. In fact, Simon herself has disowned the recording, going so far as to buy up the rights to it and refusing to allow re-releases or streaming of any kind. It’s actually not as bad as Simon’s attempts to bury it would suggest, as she teams with Neil Young’s Crazy Horse bandmates for nine songs of unchecked power and feedback-drenched noise. Circus of the Damned is in the grand tradition of 70s concept albums, as Simon tells the story of Fob, a circus clown going slowly insane as he’s poisoned by the evil Ringmaster Bob. Simon wails out this fractured tale as Crazy Horse grinds through heavy power chords behind her, the disconnect between her lilting vocals and the pulsating roar of the music creating a palpable – and rocking – tension. Alas, Simon’s embargo means that we won’t be hearing tunes like “Fob’s Key Fob Fobbed Off,” “Poisoned Bernaise,” or “Fob vs. Bob” anytime soon.