Black Sabbath - Sabotage (English heavy metal)
Kiss - Alive! (American had rock, live album)
Rainbow - Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (English-American heavy metal, debut for supergroup featuring former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and members of Elf)
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - One Size Fits All (American progressive rock / jazz fusion)
Wings - Venus and Mars (English pop rock)
Brian Eno - Another Green World (English art rock / ambient)
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (English progressive rock)
Queen - A Night at the Opera (English rock)
Jethro Tull - A Minstrel at the Gallery (English progressive rock / folk rock)
Tangerine Dream - Rubycon (German electronic / ambient)
David Bowie - Young Americans (English blue eyed-soul/ funk)
Heart - Dreamboat Annie (American hard rock / folk rock, debut)
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (English hard rock, double album)
Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir - Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (Bulgarian folk music)
Chris Squire - Fish Out Of Water (English progressive rock, solo debut for Yes bassist)
Roxy Music - Siren (English art rock)
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic (American hard rock)
Dolly Parton - The Bargain Store (American country)
Rufus - Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan (American funk / soul)
Parliament - Mothership Connection (American funk)
Ohio Players - Honey (American funk)
Bee Gees - Main Course (English soul pop / disco)
Willie Nelson - Redheaded Stranger (American country, concept album)
Linda Ronstadt - Prisoner in Disguise (American country rock)
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks (American folk rock)
Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust (American folk rock, guest appearance by Joni Mitchell)
Bad Company - Straight Shooter (British hard rock / blues rock, supergroup featuring members of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson)
Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run (American rock and roll)
Steely Dan - Katy Lied (American jazz rock / pop rock)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (Canadian-American hard rock / country rock)
Neil Young - Tonight’s The Night (Canadian-American country rock / blues rock, recorded in 1973)
Nazareth - Hair of the Dog (Scottish hard rock)
Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare (American shock rock / glam rock)
Sparks - Indiscreet (American glam rock / art pop)
Rick Wakeman - The Myths and Legends of King Arthur (English progressive rock, concept album based on the legend of King Arthur, solo album by ex-Yes keyboardist)
Rush - Fly By Night (Canadian hard rock / progressive rock, their second album overall but first to feature drummer and lyricist Neil Peart)
Rush - Caress of Steel (Canadian hard rock / progressive rock)
Steve Howe - Beginnings (English progressive rock, solo debut for Yes guitarist)
Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert (American jazz, live album improvised on piano at the Opera House in Köln, Germany)
The Dictators - The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! (American proto-punk, debut album)
Television - "Little Johnny Jewel (Part One)" b/w "Little Johnny Jewel (Part Two)" (American proto-punk/art punk, debut single)
Dr. Feelgood - Down by the Jetty (English pub rock)
Neu! - Neu! 75 (German krautrock / proto-punk)
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (English folk rock / soft rock, their first album with Lindsey Buckingham as a guitarist and Stevie Nicks as a vocalist)
The Who - The Who By Numbers (English rock)
Steeleye Span - Commoners Crown (British Folk Rock, guest appearance by Peter Sellers on ukulele)
Armageddon - Armageddon (English-American heavy metal / progressive rock, first and only album for supergroup featuring members of the Yardbirds, Captain Beyond, Renaissance and Steamhammer)
Kraftwerk - Radio-Activity (German electronic music, concept album about radioactivity and radio)
Camel - Music Inspired by The Snow Goose (English instrumental progressive rock, concept album inspired by the novella by Paul Gallico)
Various Artists - The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Soundtrack to the 1975 movie musical, performed by the film cast including Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and Meat Loaf)
Patti Smith - Horses (American art-punk, debut album)
Gavin Bryars - The Sinking Of The Titanic (British minimalism, one of the first four albums simultaneously released on Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, featuring the title piece as well as Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet)
Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel - The Best Years of Our Lives (English glam rock)
Grateful Dead - Blues for Allah (American jazz rock)
War - Why Can’t We Be Friends? (American funk / latin funk)
Tom Waits - Nighthawks at the Diner (American spoken word / jazz, recorded live in studio with a small audience)
AC/DC - High Voltage (Australian hard rock / blues rock, debut, Australasia release not to be confused with the mostly-different international release of the same name)
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music (American noise)
Bob Dylan and The Band - The Basement Tapes (Canadian-American folk rock, recorded between 1967 and 1975)
Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (English pop-rock, autobiographical concept album about the early careers of Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin)
Electric Light Orchestra - Face the Music (English progressive pop / art rock)
Frank Zappa and the Mothers with Captain Beefheart - Bongo Fury (American blues rock / jazz fusion, live album with some studio tracks)
Parliament - Chocolate City (American funk)
Funkadelic - Let’s Take It To The Stage (American funk rock / psychedelic funk)
Fela Kuti - Expensive S*** (Nigerian Afrobeat)
Foghat - Fool for the City (English blues rock / hard rock)
Earth, Wind and Fire - That’s the Way of the World (American funk / progressive soul, soundtrack to the 1975 film of the same name)
Fripp & Eno - Evening Star (English ambient / drone, collaboration between musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno)
Eagles - One of These Nights (American country rock)
Richard and Linda Thompson - Hokey Pokey (English folk rock)
Crack The Sky - Crack The Sky (American progressive rock, debut album)
Gentle Giant - Freehand (English progressive rock)
Thin Lizzy - Fighting (Irish hard rock)
The Tubes - The Tubes (American art rock)
10cc - Original Soundtrack (English art rock / soft rock) John Lennon - Rock ‘n’ Roll (English rock ‘n’ roll, cover versions of songs from the 50s and 60s, his last studio album as a solo artist)
A lot of famous albums came out this year - and more specifically, ones in the rock genre, many of which I feel too familiar with to make an objective top 10 or anything like that, so I decided on "superlatives" that mostly focus on albums I was less familiar with:
Biggest earworm: Rainbow - “Temple of the King"
Kind of a standard Dio melody, but I kept humming that guitar riff to myself - part of its uniqueness to me is that it’s not exactly a “ballad”, but it’s still approached more cleanly and melodically than a typical metal song of the time. I keep picturing it playing at the end credits to some kind of
Most “outside my music taste” that I still greatly enjoyed: Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir - Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic
A few songs from the former album were on a tape my half sister gave me when I was probably 12 or 13 to expand my music tastes, whereas the Gavin Bryars I’d read about somewhere but never actually listened to before. Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares is mostly a capella Bulgarian folk music that ended up getting wider popularity about a decade later when the British indie label 4ad reissued it - knowing some of that label’s most famous artists (Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins), it fits with their aesthetic surprisingly well. The Gavin Bryars consists of the title piece where musicians play the same song isolated from each other and slowly fall out of time (based on the story of the band on the Titanic playing as the ship went down), and another, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, where an orchestra very gradually starts harmonizing with a tape loop of a homeless man singing part of a Christian hymn.
Most different from what I was expecting from the popular songs: War - Why Can’t We Be Friends?
“Low Rider”, the title track, and a lot of funky but mellow Latin grooves with more substantial lyrics than, say “Low rider knows every street yeah / Low rider is the one to meet yeah”.
New guilty pleasure: The Dictators - Go Girl Crazy!
Kind of a fun missing link between New York Dolls (sleazy attitude, Chuck Berry riffs, and not necessarily the speediest tempos by modern standards) and Ramones (juvenile humor, bubble gum pop and early Beach Boys melodies, doing a “punk” version of “California Sun” first). Seeing the song titles "Back to Africa" and "Master Race Rock" one right after the other was a little concerning, but both song titles seem to be deliberately misleading (but still shock value based) jokes: The former is about an American white man who is in love with an African woman. The latter seems to make the tongue in cheek claim that the band themselves are metaphorically the ascendant "master race" of current rock music, and notably has the couplet "We're the members of the master race / We don't judge you by your face".
Group that I want to check out more of now that I have actually heard them and thus I am less liable to confuse their name with that of Steely Dan: Steeleye Span
(who were there first by a fair margin- The Dan and the, er, Span both had albums in 1975 that I listened to though)
A couple of songs I enjoyed on an album that I otherwise correctly ascertained wouldn’t be my thing: Eagles - “Journey of the Sorcerer”, “Too Many Hands”.
One is a progressive rock / bluegrass instrumental that ended up becoming the theme song to the original Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio program, the other is more typical, yet just the slightest bit more ominous and “rockin’” than most Eagles hits.
Probably never going to listen to again, but at least now I can say I’ve heard it all the way through: Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music
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