Back To The Seventies

Classy!

eaders of a certain age will remember when this whole nation was very much under one groove.

With our access to music so limited, we all listened to the same hits…

And we all gathered around the TV every Thursday, at 7.20pm, to hear and see the very latest on Top Of The Pops.

Later, if we were lucky, we could jump around like loons to those very tunes down at the P&R disco in St Kilian’s Hall. Or maybe, when we were a little bit older, the rugby club. Or – gulp! – Cabana’s, where parasites were found.

As with every era, back in the 1970s, there were artists considered to be a cut above, timeless cultural icons such as Bowie, Dylan, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and serious music fans would always bow to their greatness.

Even when they occasionally released records that weren’t all that great.

And then there were the artists who just wanted to have fun, to have their songs played on the radio, danced to on the dancefloor, and, with a little luck, hit that coveted no.1 spot. Artists that believed it was all about the catchy song, the earworm that treated you into submission with enough of a sugar rush to give you Type 2.

It happened again in the 1980s – you can check out that mix here – but, for many, the 1970s was a time when pop music came into its own, the drug-fuelled, flower-powered inventiveness of the 1960s having settled into something a little more knowing and a lot less dangerous.

Which is where this Silk Shirts & Sideburns mix comes in, celebrating 23 of those middle of the road pop hits that were very, very happy to be sitting pretty at the top of the charts. Rather than worrying about their place in the grand zeitgeist of things.

So, pull out your flares, and your scarves, your medallions, glam boots, hot pants and non-ripped denim for 80 minutes of unadulterated, unpretentious and unbelievably catchy 1970s pop classics…

You can grab some more free GG Mixtape goodness right here.