An Ear For An Era: 1968

1968 was another year that happened right after 1967 when music was still sitting high on the summer of love but starting to show signs of breakage as the war continued on and whatnot. That's what it was. It was full of passion in both directions.

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"

Take soul even further south and you've got ska. That Toots & The Maytals anthology from my high school days seems to be holding up. "54-46, That's My Number" turns out to be quite the song. I guess Bradley Nowell had a good mind to cover that one. Also Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" (from that same Made in Dagenham soundtrack!) was another great one.

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.

An Ear For An Era: 1965

This is daunting. Johnny Cash is daunting. Bob Dylan is daunting. This era, man. Ever since I started taking 60s music seriously I think I've professed 1967 as something of a landmark year for music or something but this 1965 has me thinking. 1967 may have been special, but it was really just a part of this greater whole. Maybe it was the apex of all of this, but this whole mid-to-late-60s ERA was something special. Not contained to one year, but a whole revolution that was going on that probably started in 1963 or so and just kept evolving. 1965 was another huge year but so is 1966 as well as everything into the early 70s. So this project just got real interesting (to me at least).

There is so much to cover that there's no way I can be all inclusive, so I'm not even going to try because that would almost defeat the purpose of this project. Well, the purpose of this project IS all inclusiveness but the blogging-about-it portion would just overwhelm me. So I'll mostly speak briefly about what really caught my ear, even though there was so much more I heard.

Just as we lost Sam Cooke in that last entry, his heir apparent came onto the scene and will be alive for the next...well, 2 years of this. Of course I'm talking about Otis Redding. Otis was just so much.  Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul is one of those albums that is just so much. Backed by The MGs (man, LOVE that guitar!), full of Sam Cooke covers, his voice! So perfect! I'm trying to cut down on clips to only have stuff people may not know, but the biggest highlight is probably "I've Been Loving You Too Long."

As far as other soul, I think Stax won the Stax vs Motown battle of this year purely on the strength of Otis (but I was also treated to some Sam & Dave!), but Motown can't be denied either. Hits like The Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself," Jr Walker's "Shotgun," the unfortunately obscure Kim Weston, Marvelettes, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (The Tracks of My Tears!), Stevie Wonder (Uptight!), Supremes (I Hear A Symphony!), etc.

How was Bettye LaVette not a huge sensation in the 60s? It's so weird. I had one single come on from her from 1965 and she already had her badass strain in her vocal chords she's known for now. I figured that was part of her hard living and part of why I love her current stuff, but that amazing voice seemed to be fully formed then! I had to double check and make sure my recording wasn't a re-recording from 2007 or something. Check it out!

"Let Me Down Easy"

There was also the pure northern soul stormer "Tainted Love" that I have to discuss! Aah! So much great soul! Yeah, Gloria Jones didn't put out too many singles and I have a hard time finding anything, but I'm glad I have an mp3 of this original. Say what you will about Soft Cell, they certainly picked a good one to cover. And I do love their version, but mostly now for helping me discover the original. If there were one soul song to pick to demonstrate the power of the genre to someone that somehow hasn't heard any of it, this would be the one.

Girl pop was still going strong as well.  Petula Clark's "Downtown," I had The Shangri-Las '65! album that is actually quite strong (I liked it more than their previous album), and The Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko" but I really gotta discuss Ellie Greenwich. Just a little bit ago Ellie Greenwich passed away, who was kind of a songwriting genius that also sang a few great songs herself. When she died I remember posting this video on Facebok, a strange thing someone created that I just happened upon when I did a youtube search for her. This is the song I have from 1965 and it's just beautiful. It's fast become one of my favorite pop songs of the 60s, which is saying a lot.

"You Don't Know"

Beach Boys - If we were going through my vinyl collection instead of digital collection I'd probably have much more to say here. I think I have three albums from this year from the Beach Boys as they made their way up to that-one-album-that-will-be-the-focus-of-1966, but my digital collection only has three songs (one from each of those albums). All three were pretty big hits (Help Me Ronda, Barbara Ann, and California Girls) that have been heard by everyone and so I don't have much to say about them. I will mention that Beach Boys Party! (the home of Barbara Ann) is quite the interesting route for them to go. For such a studio-focused group, its laid back live approach is interesting (particularly because this is the definitive version of that hit song). It's still weird to me that this stuff came IN BETWEEN Surfer Girl and Pet Sounds. Anyway, there are probably some great ballads on these albums that would have changed this perspective back.

Beatles - Here is where I worry my blog will become the "check in on The Beatles, Beach Boys, Kinks, Stones, and The Who every year" but all these groups were so instrumental in the evolution of rock that I have to say something every time. So whatever. All of these Beatles albums seem essential from here on out. The critical darling of 1965 from the Beatles is of course Rubber Soul. But even that seems a little imperfect to me. Sure, it includes some bona-fide five-star songs (hello "In My Life" and "Michelle") and many other greats, but "Run For Your Life" still bothers me. When it came on I was kind of thinking it as a satire, like an early version of Shellac's "Prayer to God" which I love (pure violence but you can tell it's just a cathartic release of the over-the-top emotions one feels in certain situations), but it still bothered me. The upbeat nature of it. It kept creeping into my head at some point every day. And I read something about John Lennon regretting writing the song, which sealed the deal for the problematic nature of it. But I've written a lot about Rubber Soul when I really wanted to discuss Help! I think I actually like that one better. It came out before Rubber Soul but was probably their first pure genius album, there I said it. It might be because it was one of my later Beatles purchases so the non-hit songs are still a little newish to me but it also has Yesterday. Which, come on. I don't have to say anything about that song. An instant standard. It's funny, that Anthology thing has a live version of the song, which according to John Lennon's introduction may have been the first time the public heard it. It's just so astonishing, because the crowd was going all Beatlemania but it shut them up a little. Some annoying people just kept screaming but you could just feel the energy there that something special was happening. I guess that's all I'm going to say about that right now.

The trajectory of The Kinks is Kinda odd in this era to me. After blowing everything up with You Really Got Me, they seemed kinda middling. I love some of these songs (Tired of Waiting For You, Well Respected Man), but mostly it feels like they're just messing around with blues covers and pretending to be something they're not. Half the songs on Kinda Kinks were kinda...boring I guess. Comparatively. But don't worry, they're coming back in a big way soon.

The Stones! I complained about similar things for their last album, but it didn't take them long to get to their era of greatness. It's arrived. Strangely, I don't have Out Of Our Heads but I have that Forty Licks collection which has the big singles so I know they were great because the hits that came out this year were Satisfaction, The Last Time, and Get Off of My Cloud. So...yeah, they are here.

Hey! The Zombies had an album! Begin Here is the name. I still think they were criminally underrated in their pre-Odessey and Oracle days. This album is pretty diverse, showing the trippy pop side as well as their own unique take on american rock & roll. For some reason I didn't really buy it when The Kinks & The Stones did it, but I really dig the Zombies covers of bluesy American rock. I feel the same love put into it as I do when Jack White does it. Here's the album closer (although I also considered giving the opener, a cover of Bo Diddley's "Road Runner"), a 1956 blues stormer made popular by Muddy Waters:

"I Got My Mojo Working"

I really wish I had more music from The Sonics. I've heard them referenced as the very first proto-punk or whatever band of them all. Which I'll buy. All I have is one song, thanks to the soundtrack to Greenberg. That song is "Shot Down." Which is an awesome combination of early rock and soul and the pure energy of the punk that would come a decade later (although The Stooges & MC5 would do something similar pretty soon). This track is just so solid, so full of life. I REALLY wish I had more Sonics music! They seemed to be pushing things forward sonically more aggressively than anyone else, and that includes The Beatles, Beach Boys, and anyone else.

"Shot Down"

It is very sad that the earliest Bob Dylan album I own (digitally) is Highway 61 Revisited, but it'd be a pretty easy one to argue as his 60s masterwork. It's got such a sneer, such attitude, such great poetry. Like A Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Desolation Row?

Johnny Cash. Orange Blossom Special. It's a good segue because there are a couple Bob Dylan covers on this one. I looked at Cash's discography and it's pretty sad that this is the only studio album of his I have in this particular era (I have various songs but not full albums) and I can say with confidence that this is Cash at the height of his powers. That baritone is just completely entrancing, and the selection of songs on this album in particular is so perfect, it will go down as one of my favorite albums of all times. I think I already talked about The Wall in the last installment (briefly), I didn't realize at the time that it must have been located there for being recorded in 1964 because here it is on this album, along with so many other equally great songs. The Long Black Veil, It Ain't Me Babe, Don't Think Twice It's All Right, Danny Boy, I could go on. It's just The Commanding Authority of his voice, you just have to listen.

And then at the very end, Nico showed up already! What?! We're still in this period of uplifting music but now we have a VU collaborator showing up? Stuff's gonna get dark real soon. It's the note this year ended on, and once again it looks toward the future.

"The Last Mile"

That's gonna be it for '65.

Where I stand: 2118 of 36390 (yep, the total went down. I decided to delete some of the non-remastered versions of remastered stuff as well as other duplicates that were going to make this take even longer. Not that it made much of a dent...).

Other Highlights Worth Mentioning:

• I keep saying it, but it's pretty astonishing how relevant Frankie Valli managed to stay for how long...this year he had "Let's Hang On (To What We've Got)" while other artists from his original era fell by the wayside...
• He also had a really strange cover of "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" under the moniker The Wonder Who? that may be worth seeking out solely for the bizarreness of it.
• I could do a whole blog about the obscure girl pop and soul tracks I've amassed over the years of those compilations and reading blogs about obscure soul...not mentioned above would include stuff from Yvonne Carol, Twinkle, Paul Kelly, Gene McDaniels, Fred Hughes, Cilla Black, and African Beavers.
• The Who! I have The BBC Sessions which had some of their early singles including My Generation. I'll have a lot to say about them in 1966 because there were about 3 albums that year, but they already had so many great tracks! La-La-Lies, Anyway Anyhow Anywhere, etc...
• I have excluded Christmas music from this project because I don't want to hear it in March, but Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas would have popped up if I had not. I might catch up with the Christmas music in December or something for a special edition, we'll see how it goes.
• Sam The Sham's "Wooly Bully!" I so want to do this drunkenly in karaoke. Anyone know if the track is available for Rock Band? That one'd be a lot of fun.
• I did have one last Sam Cooke track. I could've pushed back more to 1965. The thing that happened was there was the posthumous album Shake released in 1965, but most of my tracks came from the Portrait of a Legend compilation, so when I was labeling years in that one I put the recorded date (1964) but then later got another track "It's Got The Whole World Shakin'" which I attributed to the 1965 album. I could have put several tracks from that same album together, but that's just pushing back the grief of losing him in this journey. So I already mourned him.
• Nancy Sinatra showed up, but I have some better material coming from her very soon...
• I do like that track "A Groovy Kind of Love" by The Mindbenders. So 60s!
• "Peanut Duck" by "Marsha Gee." What the h is this?? (Look it up!)
• Lots of Lightnin' Hopkins and Lead Belly showed up randomly! It was pretty great.
• The first from James Carr!!!!!! The alternative universe Otis, criminally underrated. I'll have more on him later.
• Yep, James Brown too. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag and I Feel Good. I hate that generic movie trailers and soundtracks have kind of ruined these songs for me.

In The Next Installment...

Duh! Pet Sounds! and Revolver! and Blonde On Blonde! Also some Allen Toussaint, some great French girl pop (a well as Serge Gainsbourg), more girl pop & soul, later era Bo Diddley, Loretta Lynn, Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, TWO Otis albums, Percy Sledge, lots of The Who, and ? And The Mysterians! It'll be fun.