That's what I would say confidently if I felt like I could be declarative here. But I wasn't there, man! This is still based on just like, my music, man!
So it started with the soundtrack to The Graduate. My, how that Simon and that Garfunkel made some beautiful music together. But did you know that The Graduate soundtrack CD doesn't have a full version of "Mrs. Robinson"?!? Just two interludes?! That's weird (it had to come from Bookends). I mostly just found it odd how the Dave Grusin tracks seemed less mature than the Simon & Garfunkel tracks. Because isn't this famously the first movie soundtrack to be all rock/pop music based? Was rock & roll that mature that fast?
But I guess they were folk. Those singer/songwriters were really starting to come into prominence at this time. This track by Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper," came up and it sounds a lot like Belle & Sebastian. So good on him! You know who else was a great singer/songwriter of this time? James Taylor of course. His eponymous album was out this year. I don't know if it's the most special of his works, but it includes "Carolina in my Mind" so it is by far great.
Now I should mention The Kinks' Are The Village Green Preservation Society. By far their strongest album even though if you'd told me they would sound like this a few years ago (before I delved into their catalog) I probably wouldn't have been interested. But it is such a lovely sound on this album, something purely nostalgic when most everyone else was going harsh and pessimistic...it's nice to put this on and "remember" village green. But you know what Kinks song was great from that year but not from that album? "Days," a single that I spent oh so much time tracking down. I knew the words from an Elvis Costello cover but I couldn't find it anywhere except as a part of more expensive collections of songs. Do you know how many record stores I've searched through the Kinks 45s looking for this one? Finally, after searching Amazon on a fairly regular basis (for at least the damn digital version), I saw it pop up on the Made in Dagenham soundtrack. Turns out to be a pretty great soundtrack (I still haven't seen the movie)! Now I have the song and it is one of my favorites, maybe my favorite song by The Kinks. Optimistic and sad at the same time, it captures those fond memories with someone that (for whatever reason) isn't around anymore.
The Kinks "Days"
Now for some more miscellany. Harry Nilsson's Aerial Ballet was a pretty great follow-up to Pandemonium Shadow Show. Not particularly different but it shows development and maturity. And looking through my ratings, damn near every song was 3 stars or higher, which is saying quite a bit. I'm pretty picky with my ratings. It includes the original version of the song Three Dog Night made popular ("One"), the original version of his first huge hit ("Everybody's Talkin'"), and this lovely ditty.
Harry Nilsson, "Little Cowboy"
You know, he was a favorite of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney so of course this is my transition to The Beatles' self titled/White Album. This was my first favorite Beatles album. It can be traced back to "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monkey." Hear me out. I was a casual Beatles fan, like everybody else, for years. I figured I heard it all because I knew so many singles and it seemed like I had to have heard pretty much all of it. Then I was listening to some Sirius radio and that song came on. I loved it so much! It showed a different side of this band, a freewheeling rock n roll machine full of monkey piss. And I looked it up and found out it was on The White Album. So I actually bought a Beatles album (whereas originally I kind of thought it would be unnecessary (I now have found it necessary to own all of their albums and whatever other stuff I can track down)). I love this album because of two things: they were experimenting (for better or worse) with all sorts of different sounds, and they were drifting more toward rock 'n' roll as a baseline after tinkering with different sounds on their previous few records. If that's not contradictory to you, then you understand. Lots of different sounds, but they kept coming back to guitar-based rock & roll. "Revolution 1." "Happiness is a Warm Gun." Obviously "Helter Skelter." Beautiful record despite the negative sides of experimentation (I will say that "Revolution 9" was a very, very noble failure).
The Beatles "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monkey"
Hey, The Zombies were back! And that's gonna do it for me for The Zombies. But Odyssey & Oracle is a damn near perfect album that seems to me to predict a whole sect of indie pop in the 2000s. As much as it sounds like the 60s ("Time of the Season" is kind of a cliche to play in movies/miniseries in late 60s montages) it's so timeless in a way that their peers did not really accomplish. I don't know how many contemporary artists directly name-check The Zombies but I can hear the influence of this album all over this century's loveliest indie pop.
The Zombies "A Rose for Emily"
And now something completely different-ish. Soul was evolving in a couple different directions here. Lots of funk, The Impressions brought a new(ish) level of social consciousness to Motown with This Is My Country, and the southern soul was going deeper and harder. The definitive posthumous album of all posthumous albums came out this year as well, which was The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. That's gonna do it for Otis from my collection, so I have to say a few words. I guess he followed in Sam Cooke's footsteps a little too closely, dying just way too young. His Sam-with-edge style was just such a beautiful creation and you can just feel every emotion listening to him. It's comforting and heartbreaking at the same time.
Otis Redding "Let Me Come On Home"
Nancy Sinatra put out the album of duets with Lee Hazlewood called Nancy & Lee and this time I couldn't help but think She & Him should cover songs from this album. Although I don't think M. Ward could bring the authority to the songs that Lee Hazlewood conveys. But I think Zooey would fit well into Nancy's shoes on these songs.
For the purpose of this project, 1968 ended with Jimi Hendrix' Electric Ladyland. He seemed to double down on psychedelia, pushing the limits of rock guitar even further than on Are You Experienced? It doesn't get much more "of the times" of the late 60s than Hendrix, blending blues and psychedelia, rock & roll and drugs. I have one more Hendrix "album" coming up in this project, which is a live recording of his performance at Woodstock. We are getting to the year of Woodstock, but there was so much more developing at this time, about to explode all over this thing.
Where I Stand: 3204 of 36674.
Other Highlights Worth Mentioning:
- "Hey Jude"!
- "Daydream Believer"!
- Creedence made their debut (to me) with "Suzy Q" and "I Put A Spell on You."
- I quite liked Lou Rawls' "Lifetime Monologue"
- A later-career Gene Pitney track "She's A Heartbreaker" was quite nice.
- I kind of think of The Band in the same way as Cream where they could be kind of boring in a pre-70s style of 70s rock but I actually kind of like Music From Big Pink. Probably the Bob Dylan factor.
- Hey, I finally got to another full Rolling Stones album in Beggars Banquet. "Salt of the Earth" is a great track to close the album.
- Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul is probably the best almost-as-good-as-the-last-one album of 1968 I think.
- The few years I have of French pop were brief, but 1968 had some great fun tracks from Monique Thubert, Marie Laforet, and Nino Ferrer. And good ol' Serge Gainsbourg was really rollin along with songs like "Bloody Jack" and "Ford Mustang."
- The Velvet Underground seemed to fall back into somewhat traditional rock n roll a bit with White Light/White Heat. At least compared to their debut. Still highly experimental and forward, but something about this album seems less so than other parts of their catalog. However, it is probably the best evidence to justify the strange claim I have heard a couple times in the past that they were the "first punk band."
- Johnny Cash ruled and played at a prison. The recording captured it quite well. I'm not sure what else to say about it at this time. I feel like I should have something profound to say. I listened, I enjoyed it quite a bit, I was able to picture him playing for a bunch of prisoners.
On The Next Installment...
1969 was 'uge! In addition to my favorite Beatles album, we're bringing jazz back with Sonny Sharrock, George Russell, and others! The Temptations get their psychedelic soul on! Debuts from Bowie, Neil Young, Roberta Flack, MC5, The Stooges, and Led Zeppelin (rock & roll is about to be changed forever)!! We've got Dusty Springfield's definitive album, Elvis makes a comeback, Isaac Hayes kills it, and much much more. Stay tuned. I'll try to make it less thrown-together next time.
