{"id":5801,"date":"2011-02-12T00:56:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T04:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=5801"},"modified":"2011-02-15T22:01:26","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T02:01:26","slug":"favorite-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/favorite-year\/","title":{"rendered":"1974"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vrhRsZ56b4g?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><em>The A.V. Club<\/em>&#8216;s website has started a new series of columns in which writers talk about their favorite year of music. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/1966,51531\/\" target=\"_blank\">The first one came out this week<\/a>, with a very RTH-friendly choice.<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of years, I could choose as my favorite, but my first response is always <strong>1974<\/strong>. That&#8217;s because of four albums: <strong>Randy Newman<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Good Old Boys<\/em>, <strong>Richard and Linda Thompson<\/strong>&#8216;s<em> I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight<\/em>, <strong>Big Star<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Radio City<\/em> and <strong>Steely Dan<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Pretzel Logic<\/em>. These albums all form a bedrock for a certain kind of music I really value. All those albums are weird pop of a sort: The musicianship is often understated (on the Dan album, it&#8217;s understated <em>for them<\/em>), but not boring; the lyrics are literate and intelligent, but they require a bit of work to penetrate. These albums don&#8217;t exactly set out to dazzle, but they create perfect senses of place and character. Each record slowly reveals something, the way a book or film might. As the cliche goes, they show, they don&#8217;t tell. You could call these albums &#8220;<em>Rubber Soul<\/em> for English majors.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, gut check time, and don&#8217;t think to much about it: <em>What&#8217;s your favorite year in music and why?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The A.V. Club&#8216;s website has started a new series of columns in which writers talk about their favorite year of music. The first one came out this week, with a very RTH-friendly choice. There are a lot of years, I could choose as my favorite, but my first response is always 1974. That&#8217;s because of <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/favorite-year\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[297],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}