Favourite Albums of 1974?

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9. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra (1974)
Had this LP but just lost patience with it, really wanted it to be my thing but it went so ambient it just seemed to disappear into the ether. Which was probably the point of it but still...
Hawkwind Hall of the Mountain Grill
Oh hell yes. Have the cassette of this. Great burnout music.



Wiki is listing its release as January 1974, so I'm wrong here.


There's probably a bunch of jazz that I'm missing, since I don't have a handy resource for release dates. Already, I know I missed a few:

Chapter Three - Gato Barbieri
Mysterious Traveller - Weather Report
Virgin Land - Airto Moriera
Sorcery - Jack DeJohnette

And there are others from 1974 coming to mind:

Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell
Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons
Machine Gun - Commodores
Nightbirds - Labelle
Unrest - Henry Cow
I Want to See the Bright Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson
Information Inspiration - Shuggie Otis
Slow Dancer - Boz Scaggs
Rags to Rufus - Rufus


Yeah, that's one that never comes into my local record store. I've pestered the guy there for years about it. It's the only Van from his classic run that I don't have on vinyl. Well, except Tupelo Honey because I don't really care much for that one.

Tupelo Honey was the first Morrison I ever found on vinyl, so I have a soft spot for it, even if some of it is probably pretty mild stuff. Still, Straight to Your Heart Like a Cannonball will always be on my short list favs of his.



Let the night air cool you off
Spooky Lady's Sideshow by Kris Kristofferson deserves some love too. Kris has some tremendously well-written tunes on this LP and they are about as grim as you'd expect from him. "Ever since the first I had, the worst I had was good" is an awesome line.

"Cause nightmares are somebody's daydreams
Daydreams are somebody's lies.
Lies ain't no harder than telling the truth.
Truth is the perfect disguise"



Tupelo Honey was the first Morrison I ever found on vinyl, so I have a soft spot for it, even if some of it is probably pretty mild stuff
It's amazing how deep that "first consciousness" impacts for records. I have so many bands where my favourite LP of theirs is "what, that one?"