Looking back at 70s music

I've really enjoyed writing Gilly Frank's Record Collection, for a lot of reasons.  One major reason is that it's been a good excuse to explore lots of music of the 70s.  Something I'm a bit fixated on with music of a given time frame is that there's a difference between the experience people had with music when it was being produced, and the experience we have looking back at it.

Basically, a record collection that was built during the 70s would be very different from a collection that is built about the 70s.  A person today, setting out to collect "the 70s" would have a solid list of great albums to collect, in a host of genres.  But a person living through the 70s would have a hodge podge of albums and singles - many of them still popular today, but many others that fall into that grey area of bands that never quite made it.

I think a really good example is Starcastle.  They've got a great sound.  Listening to it, I think maybe they were trying to take the sounds of prog rock and make it a little more accessible.  The songs are a little more structured.  When they were producing and touring, people loved them.  Their records were pretty popular.  But I'm pretty sure you're not going to hear a Starcastle song on the radio very often.

Another interesting band from the 70s was Hawkwind, who I think was entirely inspired by the scifi/fantasy works of Michael Moorcock.  I'm just going to throw that out there.  Warrior On the Edge Of Time is pretty good, and to me it feels like a cross between Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull.  Because of the flutes.