Tag: Nineteen Hundred Seventies

Jim Ladd, Free-Form Radio Trailblazer, Is Dead at 75

Jim Ladd, a maverick Los Angeles disc jockey who helped pioneer free-form FM radio in the 1970s, and who went on to become a rock institution and an inspiration for Tom Petty’s song “The Last DJ,” died on Dec. 17 at his home near Sacramento, Calif. He was 75. The cause was a heart attack, […]

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India’s Early Electronic Music From the ’70s Is Finally Being Released

Purgas described the events at the National Institute of Design as a “point zero” for electronic music in India, though he hopes that further research will turn up earlier examples. But, as he and others explore in the release’s accompanying book, “Subcontinental Synthesis,” the institute didn’t grow out of a vacuum; it emerged at a […]

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The Year Lou Reed Gave Up on Music

“Loaded,” the Velvet Underground album Reed had been working on, was released in late September, and he was startled when he heard it. There had been some changes from what he’d recalled as the final recordings. The incantatory coda to “New Age” had been shortened, and the bridge to “Sweet Jane” had been cut entirely, […]

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Gary Wright, Who Had a ’70s Hit With ‘Dream Weaver,’ Dies at 80

Gary Wright, a spiritually minded singer-songwriter who helped modernize the sound of pop music with his pioneering use of synthesizers while crafting infectious and seemingly inescapable hits of the 1970s, notably “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” died on Monday at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. He was 80. The cause was complications […]

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