Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty abhorred the recording industry. His first success as a member of Stealers Wheel, 1972’s “Stuck in the Middle With You,” was a parody of Bob Dylan’s style that poked fun at an industry cocktail party.

Pacific Gas & Electric formed in Los Angeles in 1967 and was named after the West Coast power company, which forced the band to change its name to PG&E in 1971. The New York Times at the time called them “among the best and most underexposed talent in the country.”

“Disco Inferno” was first recorded as the title track of the Trammps’ 1976 album. Released as a single, “Disco Inferno” only reached №53. When the Philadelphia group’s tune was included in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, “Disco Inferno” was re-released and shot up to №1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.

New wave band Talking Heads, fronted by David Byrne, got its name from an issue of TV Guide. In the liner notes of Popular Favorites 1976–1972: Sand in the Vaseline, bassist Tina Weymouth said the magazine “explained the term used by TV studios to describe a head-and-shoulder shot of a person talking as ‘all content, no action’. It fit.”

It is sad to note the passing of Dash Crofts, 78, who scored a number of hits in the 1970s with bandmate Jim Seals, who died in 2022. Crofts was a singer, songwriter, and played guitar and mandolin. Seals and Crofts earned Grammy nominations for “Diamond Girl” and “Summer Breeze.”

In the mid-1980s, John Fogerty found himself at a creative dead end. His most productive period had been from 1968–1972, when he and his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, charted nine Top 10 singles.

With little input from the Beatles other than the use of their music, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road: A Rock Spectacle’ debuted off-Broadway at New York’s Beacon Theater on Nov. 17, 1974. Produced by Robert Stigwood and directed by Tom O’Horgan, the musical included 29 songs, primarily from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road albums.

The Bottom Line was an intimate Greenwich Village club that hosted major rock, jazz, and blues artists. The 400-seat club was a launch pad for young musicians like Bruce Springsteen, who appeared in 1975. Lou Reed, Johnny Winter, Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Eric Clapton, James Taylor, and Van Morrison performed here.

“All Things Must Pass,” the title song of George Harrison’s 1970 triple album, was inspired by Timothy Leary’s poem All Things Pass, an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching. The Beatles rehearsed the song in January 1969 but did not include it on the Let It Be album. Billy Preston was the first to release the song, as “All Things (Must) Pass,” in 1970.

Lou Reed was a member of the Velvet Underground until the downtown band broke up in 1970. “Walk on the Wild Side” was included on Reed’s second solo album, 1972’s Transformer.

Exciting news from the Guess Who website: Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman tour together as The Guess Who for the first time in 23 years!

Janis Ian was 14 when she wrote her 1967 hit single “Society’s Child,” a controversial song about how social pressure doomed an interracial romance. “I was sitting on a bus in East Orange, NJ, where I was living with my parents, and I saw it happening around me,” Ian told Songwriter Universe.

“Bad Time” was a №4 hit, certified by BMI as radio’s most-played song of 1975. Written by guitarist Mark Farner, the song was a departure from the trio’s hard rock roots. “It was kind of a different song,” Farner told Songfacts.

“Ariel” was a №26 hit for Dean Friedman in 1977. It opens with the lyric, “Way on the other side of the Hudson / Deep in the bosom of suburbia.”

Keith Carradine wrote and performed “I’m Easy” for the 1975 Robert Altman film Nashville. Carradine, as womanizing musician Tom Frank, performs the song to an audience of past, present, and possibly future lovers.

Bob Seger mixed classic rock with a geography lesson in “Katmandu,” first released on his 1975 LP Beautiful Loser. The single reached №43. The song refers to the capital of Nepal, located in the Himalayan Mountain range. Seger wrote “Katmandu” to poke fun at the music business.

The members of Looking Glass were students at Rutgers University in New Jersey when the band formed in 1969. Singer-guitarist Elliot Lurie told The College Crowd Digs Me how the band got its name.

“Tiny Dancer” was first released on Elton John’s 1971 album Madman Across the Water. When an edited single version was released in 1972, it only reached №41. As more album cuts were played on FM radio in the 1970s, “Tiny Dancer” in its original form became a listener favorite.

Fellow record collectors Al Trommers and Robert Plotnik opened Village Oldies in 1967 at 149 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. It was at the record shop that Trommers, known as Broadway Al, gave Plotnik the nickname Bleecker Bob. The partners moved to MacDougal Street in the 1970s.

“Doctor’s Orders” was recorded on Midland International Records in the US by disco diva Carol Douglas and became a №9 hit on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1975.