70s Music Compilation CDs--The Big Boys

Being the huge 70s collector that I am, it just naturally follows that I would have a huge 70s music collection. I been attempting for the past several years to collect every Top 40 hit from January 1970 to December 1979. This has become an lengthy process with at least 25 songs not available on CD at this time.

Of course the starting point for me was the release of 70s Compilation CD collections. Mainly from Rhino and TimeLife. It goes without saying that these two companies are the big boys of the reissue CD market. Both Rhino and TimeLife have the best reputations and are very well respected among oldies fans. Their pedigree in releasing collections of great music is second to none.

In the early 90s, just after Razor & Tie began reissuing 70s music under the name The 70s Preservation Society both TimelIfe and Rhino jumped on the bandwagon. TimeLife's Sounds of the 70s quickly became the premier collection to own and I doubt that anyone who has this series would argue the point. However, I find Rhino's Have A Nice Day: Super Hits of the 70s and Didn't It Blow Your Mind: Soul Hits of the 70s to be a more statisfying collections.

Sometime around 1996 or 97 I began collecting TimeLife's Sounds of the 70s and it took me about two years to complete. There is no disputing TimeLife's ability to license a huge amount of music for their collections and Sounds of the 70s certainly boasts a great roster of music. The series as a whole give collector's a much larger representation of the different styles of music that appeared throughout the entire decade versus the Rhino collections. The entire collection consists of 46 CDs with over an hour of music on each CD.

However, I do have a few issues with the collection as a whole.

First of all, each of the covers for each of the CDs I find to be really awful. I don't like a single cover. This is pretty much a symptom of all TimeLife collections. I've yet to run across any cover from any TimeLife series that I find attractive. They are all pretty abysmal. For Sounds of the 70s someone tried to give us a kind of pseudo Andy Warholesque renderings and in my opinion they failed misserably.

Secondly, the time it took to collect the entire series. Since these were only available through mail order (from TV advertisements and infomercials) you only got one CD every 4-6 weeks. That time could be shortened (as I did) to only 4 weeks between shipments, but that still seemed to take forever. Plus the selection of CD you received was random. Meaning you started with 1970 but the next shipment might be FM Rock. You didn't get them in the order they were issued or even numbered. Rather a lame way of doing it if you ask me.

Thirdly, the liner notes and pictures. Most of the time, the liner notes only discussed about 2/3 of the songs listed on the CDs. I found this to be a bit of a disappointment mainly because I'm a liner note reader and I wanted information on every song listed. Also, you only got two pictures of artists per CD. One on the CD itself and one on the back cover of the booklet and most of the time those pictures were altered in some way. Again in a kind of Andy Warhol style. And again, failing at it.

Fourth, and this has to do mainly with the structure of the sereis itself, the way the CDs were arranged. Meaning, you get CDs for each year (70-79) and then a second CD for each year (70-79: Take Two). After that, there are compilations CDs with titles like AM Nuggets, Pop Nuggets, Guitar Power, FM Rock and Dance, Dance, Dance. While a few of these categories like FM Rock I-IV, can stand alone, others are just nonsensical. I wish that instead, the year by year format had been continued. While other CDs in the set (like Punk & New Wave) I appreciate them being in the series, but I really could do without them. I do understand that TimeLife was really trying to cover all genres of the decade. I just think the entire thing could have been handled a bit better. Also, TimeLife made (in my opinion) a very unforgivable mistake. On the 1979: Take Two CD, they used the 1980 Can't Stop The Music version of Y.M.C.A. by the Village People. This was not the original version with lead vocalist Victor Willis but the rerecorded version with replacement lead vocalist Ray Simpson. Same on you TimeLife. You should have known the difference.

Finally, the shear difficulty in obtaining every title in the collection was a real headache. Certain CDs were only released in Canada (A Loss For Words, TV Themes, Pop Nuggets-Early 70s, and Pop Nuggets-Late 70s). While other CDs (70s Dance Party) were released long after the collection was supposedly finished. Additionally, in the 70s Dance Party CDs, TimeLife simply released the original 1979 disc as part of the 70s Dance Party portion of the collection. Also, by the time of the four Canadian only releases rolled around, there started to be some duplication of previously released material. Note a great selling point for these discs to American collectors.

For my collection, I haven't even bothered trying to get the 70s Dance Party CDs. They were released long after my shipments had stopped. Also, just about every track on these discs had been released on previous CDs. They became a big, 'why bother', kind of thing to me. As far as I was concerned, when I finally obtained the Pop Nuggets-Late 70s CD, my collection was finished. True, it ended on an uneven number (41 instead of 46) it didn't matter to me. I had moved on.

My favorite 70s music collection is by far the two series released by Rhino. Their Have A Nice Day: Super Hits of the 70s and Didn't It Blow Your Mind: Soul Hits of the 70s for me are just really fun collections to own.

The thing that I like about both of these series is that they remind of those great K-Tel compilation albums of the 70s. The focus of these series were not on the ultra cool FM sounds of the 70s but more on the one and two hit wonders from the decade. Songs that I've come to call goofy pop. Songs like Billy Don't Be A Hero, Arizona, Chick-A-Boom, Indiana Wants Me, Hooked On A Feeling, Drift Away, and the like. For me, these songs bring back many more memories of the 70s than say songs from Fleetwood Mac, Boston, Bad Company, etc. ever could. These gems on the Rhino sets are mainly the songs that I remember the most from the 70s. These were the songs that we sang along to while riding the school bus to and from school everyday. While not every song in these collections are memorable to me, I'd say 90% of them I do recall hearing on the radio at the time. And for me that is what really counts.

Most people would categorize most of these songs as probalby the worst songs ever recorded. While I can't deny that a lot of these songs are pretty awful, that is what makes these collections so much fun.

Each disc contains 12 tracks. There are 25 discs in the Have A Nice Day:Super Hits of the 70s and 20 discs in the Didn't It Blow Your Mind: Soul Hits of the 70s collections. There is one additional CD called Have A Nice Christmas: Holiday Hits of the 70s that contains 16 holiday songs. Unfortunately Elton John's Step Into Christmas and Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas Time are not included. Bummer.

Each cover of the Super Hits of the 70s series features a really cool vintage 70s item. These range from the JVC Videosphere TV to platform shoes. In fact, this series was primarily responsible for me beginning my 70s memorablia collection. I love seeing that stuff so much that I wanted to own as much of it as I could. In fact, there are several items on these covers that I actually do own. Thanks to eBay.

The covers of the Soul Hits of the 70s has a vintage picture of a differnt soul performer from the 70s. I will admit that I'm not all that crazy about the covers for this series. I think that Rhino could have done a better job. But that is just my little nitpic.

Both series contains booklets for each CD filled with pictures of most of the performers on the CDs and they talk about each of the 12 tracks. There is some really fun trivia to be found in these liner notes if you take the time to read them.

My only issue with both of the Rhino collections is that I felt that they should have continued each of the series for another 5 CDs. True, combined there are a total of 45 discs, but I feel that certain years just weren't covered as well as they could have been. The years 1978 and 1979 suffer the most from this.

They way Rhino structured these series was more in keeping with the way a school year is laid out. The first CD in each series begins in the fall (sometimes summer) of 69 and the final CD in each series ends in the spring (or summer) of 79. Likewise, Rhino's folow-up series, Radio Daze: Pop Hits of the 80s began in the fall of 79. In fact, one could almost consider Pop Hits of the 80s: Volume 1 as the 26th CD in the Super Hits of the 70s series since it contains 6 tracks from 79. The collection was released in blocks of 5 volumes every year or so. While this made collecting them easy, it also led to a particular problem with the overall listening experience of these series. The songs in each series start off in a chronological order. Meaning volume 1 starts in the summer/fall of 1969 and ends in January 1970. The next volume picks up in January 1970 and ends in February 1970. They continue this way until volume 15 of both series where they end in the summer of 1975. In fact, for the longest time, volume 15 was the final CD in the Soul Hits of the 70s series. Rhino continued the Super Hits of the 70s series with the release of volumes 16-22, but for some reason when they released volume 16, they rewound back to 1970 and it took volumes 16 and 17 to cacth back up to summer 1975. The samething happened when volumes 16-20 of Soul Hits of the 70s were released. So, for about two years or so, Super Hits of the 70s stopped at volume 22 and Soul Hits of the 70s stopped at volume 20. Finally Rhino released volumes 23-25 of Super Hits of the 70s and once again we rolled back to the clock. This time to 1976 and continued on to 1979. So, when listening to these CDs the flow of the music from one year to the next is disrupted. Not a big deal, but I find it to be rather annoying.

Along with these two series, Rhino also tried their hands at a Funk series (In Yo Face) and a Disco series (The Disco Years) but these were short lived series. Each of these series didn't last more than 5 or 6 CDs each. I didn't collect either of these series so I can't speak on their contents or their merits. I've heard good things about each of them but I was just not at all interested. I guess I felt that, at least the Disco collection, would have been a complete duplication of stuff that I already had on other CDs.

At this point in time, I know that the TimeLife Sounds of the 70s series is out of print. I believe that the Rhino Soul Hits of the 70s are also out of print. A few discs from Super Hits of the 70s have gone out of print, but I think most of the series is still available. The only volume of Super Hits that I know for sure that has gone out of print is volume 2. I think that this may have been due to Rhino loosing the licensing rights to one or more songs on the CD.

For anyone who wishes to collect either the TimeLife series or Rhino series, I wish them the best of luck. The TimeLife series will probably be the most difficult to complete. The Rhino series (both) should be fairly easy. Rhino sold tons of each of these series and I see copies for sale on Amazon and eBay quite alot. Some of the more common titles from the TimeLife series (1970-79) are pretty easy to find. It's when you get into the Take Two discs and some of the other compliatoins that you have trouble tracking them down. As for the four CDs from Canada, those will be pretty expensive. Believe me, I know.

If you are looking for a smaller collection, please read my entry regarding the Razor & Tie 70s Preservation Society series.

For more information you could check out this site: http://crapfromthepast.com/favorites/compilations.htm

Rhino also released a 7 disc box set called Have A Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box Set. A very nice set that is a great alternative to the extensive sets described above. I also have this set and I highly recomend it.

An Update: I got a good deal on Amazon and so I did go ahead and get the 5 disc 70s Dance Party CDs to finish off once and for all, the TimeLife Sounds of the 70s set. The collection is now 100% complete.