A lot of these people went to Werner Erhard's EST seminars to try to get rid of those inner tensions. For some people the Smiley Face wasn't working.

Once in great while a song from the Forgotten Seventies will get played on the jukebox at the bar. But that is not typical: there is a reason those songs are from the Forgotten Seventies.

The songs of the Forgotten Seventies are perhaps best exemplified by Fleetwood Mac. If Fleetwood Mac had been forgotten. Which it hasn't. On Classic Rock radio you can still hear "The Chain," "Go Your Own Way," "Gold Dust Woman," etc etc. But the music of the Forgotten Seventies is all of the music that led to Fleetwood Mac. 

The shell-shock of the crash of the Hippie Dream put a lot of Sixties musicians in disarray. We know this because they now made bad albums. Or they died. So sensitive new singers tried to take their place. Pretty harmonies, like the sixties, but please: No Big Hippie Dreams. A few became big: the Eagles, the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac. But then there were the others.

England Dan & John Ford Coley.

Seals and Crofts.

Captain & Tennille.

Loggins and Messina.

They weren't all duos, of course. But duos probably seemed safer. A lot of members in a band increases inner-group tensions dramatically. And, after the crash of the Hippie Dream, people were tired of inner tensions, musicians or otherwise. On a side note: a lot of these people went to Werner Erhard's EST seminars to try to get rid of those inner tensions. For some people the Smiley Face wasn't working.

Anyway, there still were bands. Bands that avoided tension in their music. Or anything that might cause tension, like a fast beat, say. But: pretty Sixties harmonies.

Air Supply.

America.

And, of course, the singer-songwriters. 

Christopher Cross.

Barry Manilow.

John Denver.

Michael Martin Murphey.

Now, "Wildfire" had some tension, but it was about a girl and her horse. Maybe the horse was a metaphor for the Sixties, but I think it was pretty much just a horse.

All of these artists, swallowed into the Forgotten Seventies. If a Forgotten Seventies song comes back it is probably because of a Geico commercial.

Then came a band that used these soft sounds, but couldn't help but add inner tensions, because most of the band members were fucking each other, and they wrote their songs about it. 

So: Fleetwood Mac. And people found that they liked the inner tensions of rich celebrities, just not the inner tensions in their own lives. And because a lot of girls wanted to be Stevie Nicks, and a lot of guys wanted to fuck Stevie Nicks. Despite all the fucking gypsy scarves and shit. Stevie Nicks was definitely a Seventies Girl.

Fleetwood Mac cast a long shadow that obscured the memories of those denizens of Seventies AM Car Radio. Then, disco came along to the Forgotten Seventies. Which I will leave for another time. For now, I will leave you with this:

I was tired of my lady
We'd been together to long
Like a warn out recording of a favorite song
So while she lay there sleeping
I read the paper in bed
And in the personal columns
There was this letter I read
If you like piña colada's
And gettin' caught in the rain
If your not into yoga
If you have half a brain
If you like making love at midnight
In the dunes on the cape
I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape

Not quite Forgotten. But a lot of what wasn't quite Forgotten Seventies was instead more of a Seventies Hangover. And no one at the bar has ordered a piña colada lately. Or writes a personal column anymore, for that matter: that is what Tinder is for.
- james james


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