T-Mar

I'd also rank Lang near the very top. She's one of the very few singers who routinely issued cover versions that overshadowed the original versions. I also like your earlier choice of Hynde and Back On The Chain Gang, particularly as includes the guitar work of Billy Bremner from Rockpile. However, I think I'd have to give my 1980's pop/rock female vocalist nod to Annie Lennox.

Chombi1 

Agree about KD Lang. Really beautiful singing style that is also timeless. Her recent choice of singing barefoot in concerts kinda ruins the cool, sophisticated image I had of her though.....

T-Mar

I know that Lang performs barefoot as part of her vegan philosophy but having seen her in her non-sophisticated early days, I just consider part it of her unique character. Or maybe it doesn't faze me because I was used to seeing a barefoot Ann Murray perform on Singalong Jubilee during the late 1960s, before she became famous with Snowbird.

merziac

In a roundabout way this brings up a point I feel should be made here, since we have finally brought up Ann Murray.

Linda, Joan Baez, Carole King, Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Gentry, Janis, Grace Slick, Carly, Emmy Lou, Mama Cass, Maria Muldaur, Joni, Ann and Nancy and a few others paved the way for all that came after, especially in the rock arena.

It was a sleazy mans business and most of them had to sell at least part of their soul if they wanted to be at the table.

So while there are a lot of contemporaries, Lang, Hynde, Benetar, The great Annie Lenox (also one of my all time favorites) and many, many, many others, it's apples and oranges compared to those who blazed the trail.

obrentharris 

I guess I have a slightly different take on it.
If you go back a step or two before the singers of the sixties and early seventies you will find the singers who influenced them: My own short list would include Etta James and, before her, Big Mama Thornton. The trail is always being blazed. That's one of the beauties of music, and art in general.

Has anyone mentioned Aretha Franklin yet?
Brent

merziac

Oh no, I completely agree, Linda addresses the greats that she followed, Lola Belran, Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Maria Callas. This is exactly what I am referring to. They are to Linda what Linda and those from her time are to the later ones imho, again apples and oranges. Not saying the later ones are not great, but their success is due in large part to those that came before, way easier to build an empire on a solid foundation.

A big part of my point was the meat grinder that was the music biz, many did not survive at all let alone turn it upside down as she did. She set numerous records that had never been set by man or woman which was unheard of up to that time. Her achievements are staggering plain and simple, very few in her league even to this day.

clubman 

There's been so many great singers and Anne Murray was one of them but she never composed a song or wrote a lyric. She was fortunate enough to have the great Gene MacLellan write Snow Bird for her and her fame was established (million records sold in the US) but she struggled the rest of her career trying to find songs that were a good fit.

Carole King has 118 songs under her belt. She has a good voice but it's her writing that will be her legacy.

Great voices are now a dime-a-dozen but only artists can write timeless songs.

merziac

True enough and from my C+V point of view even with so many voices to sing them, not many timeless songs coming along anymore.

That being said, many writers could never sing their songs so they and we were lucky when Linda and many others showed up to bring it.

Many great songs got written and never sung.

KonAaron Snake 

I’m sorry - but 5 pages on a pretty face from possibly the most boring, fake, period of music that ever existed. Basically everyone from that scene not named Zevon was garbage. Fetid garbage. None more boring than Rondstad. She’s the musical equivalent of Katsup.

To even mention luminaries like Aretha and Ella on a page to Rondstad is like talking about Run DMC in a conversation about Vanilla Ice.

Kactus

texaspandj

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AlmostTrick

Likely my favorite song where Linda was backing up Neil. (and there were plenty)

Rollfast

Love her but bare feet? OUCH.

Ausberger

Yeah, instead of Aretha and Ella why not mention Wendy O. Williams and Beki Bondage? Or those two McGarrigle sisters?
While these might be subjective matters, what could possibly be seen as more objectively great than Linda Ronstadt on that 10-speed!

KDR

After reading the comments that the bike shop ad might be for Nishiki in Japan I think I remember that Nishiki was a name made up for US sales of Japanese frames that might have been made by different companies in Japan that couldn't afford a full-on marketing program on their own. I had a Nishiki Pro from the early 1980s that is a wonderful bike. It came with campy dropouts and full Nuovo Record Gruppo. One of my young friends has it now.

yukiinu

My first reaction to these long comments about singers on a bike blog, was "why is this on a bike/riding/lifestyle site? But then I realized it was good and interesting to show that riders are not just one dimensional people, and that there are other things that they enjoy in their lives. Also, they were talking about REAL singers with REAL talent, and not the trash that passes for popular music today.

Goofball

Christine McVie. !

bluehills3149

Anyone notice the "fixie" on the wall behind her? Looks like deep dish carbon wheels and all. Who would have though they had hipster bikes back in 1978?

clubman 

Polar vortex. We really are one dimensional the rest of the year.

caloso

I'm going to bet that those are track wheel covers. See https://www.tracksupermarket.com/sta...el-covers.html
Protects from picking up any debris on your super-supple, velodrome only tubulars.

Velo Mule

That was mentioned before, and someone made a good point that at that time, late '70's, we think, those deep dish carbon wheels may not have existed. It could be that the bike has old fashioned tire covers on them. Or, is our timeline off for the development of these rims?

Chombi1 

No,......time travel...... bike shop owner was an Operation Bluebook "Person of interest"..........
Must have tried to kidnap Linda that day, to make her queen of his hive......Took her shoes away so she can't run away.....

T-Mar

They're definitely wheel covers, as previously suggested. The inner and outer edges are not concentric. The lettering comes too close to the outer edge. You can see the ^ shaped compression of the rear cover at 12 o'clock, caused by the wall hook.

gshastings

T-Mar

The predecessor to Nishiki was American Eagle, a brand owned by West Coast Cycle Supply of California. They were a bicycle marketing firm with no manufacturing operations. Instead, they imported bicycles and products or had them contract manufactured by other sources. In the late 1960s, manufacturing of their American Eagle brand was transferred from the USA to Kawamura in Japan, for both quality and financial reasons. Circa 1972, the name was changed to Nishiki, to reflect that the bicycles were being manufactured in Japan.

WCCS trademarked the Nshiki brand in the USA but Kawamura had the brand rights in Japan and some other countries. The USA owner of the brand name controls the sources for the USA market and numerous sources were used during the years of WCCS control, including but limited to Kawamura, Katakura and Giant (Taiwan). When the Japanese built high model such as your Nishiki Pro and the Nishiki Ultimate failed to successfully crack the market in the very early 1980s, WCCS even went to Italian sources for models such as the Nishiki Maxima and Nishiki Cervino.