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.
No comments:
Post a Comment