Year End Music Review
Diamonds, diamonds
Quick... what do these have in common:
The Who Sell Out
The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society
Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Rolling Stones Beggar's Banquet
They all were released or charted in the extremely fertile musical period of 1967-68, they've pretty much been permanent fixtures on my iPod all year, and up until this year they were all pretty much unknown to me.
In fact, when you look at 67-68 in music history it's hard to see what didn't happen in this era:
Glow Boys
Events
January 4 - The Doors release their self-titled debut album
February 13 - The Beatles new single "Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane" is released in the United Kingdom
February 13- Jefferson Airplane's influential album Surrealistic Pillow is released.
February 14 - Aretha Franklin records "Respect" at the New York based Atlantic Studios
March 12 - The Velvet Underground release their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico.
March 31 - Kicking off a tour with The Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck at The Astoria London, Jimi Hendrix sets fire to his guitar on stage for the first time. He is taken to the hospital suffering burns to his hands. This guitar-burning act would later become a trademark of Hendrix's performances.
May 2 - In the United States, Capitol Records pulls the plug on the Beach Boys' mysterious Smile project. Brian Wilson, who had taken more than a year to compose and produce the album, could not bring himself to finish it.
May 12 - Procol Harum's musical career begins with the release of the single "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
May 12 - Pink Floyd stage the first ever rock concert with quadraphonic sound at Queen Elizabeth Hall, England
May 12 - The debut album of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced is released in the UK.
June 1 - The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is released. David Bowie releases his self-titled, debut album, 'David Bowie
August 4 - The Small Faces release the psychedelic single "Itchycoo Park" reaching #3 in the UK Singles Chart.
August 23 - The debut album of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced, is released in the US.
November 9 - First issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published
December 10 - Otis Redding and four of the six Bar-Kays die in a plane crash in Lake Monona (Madison, Wisconsin). It was considered to be one of the worst air tragedies in entertainment history, since the Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper air crash, 8 years earlier, in 1959.
The Who destroys their instruments during a performance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
December -The Moody Blues release Days of Future Passed.
January 13 - Johnny Cash performs his famous concert at Folsom Prison in California.
January 21 - Simon and Garfunkel release album The Graduate Original Soundtrack.
February 18 - David Gilmour joins Pink Floyd, replacing founder Syd Barrett, who checked himself into a psychiatric hospital.
April 4 - James Brown appears on national television, in an attempt to calm feelings of anger in the United States following the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
September 7 - Led Zeppelin performs for the first time; at their first show, they are billed as The Yardbirds (the Yardbirds had disbanded two months earlier, and guitarist Jimmy Page subsequently formed this new group).
November 22 - The Beatles (also known as "The White Album") by The Beatles is released
December 3 - Elvis Presley's 1968 Comeback Special airs on NBC.
I don't know what draws me to all this. I can only say Sell Out fills me with profound nostalgia as the antecedents of Tommy are so prominent. Piper at the Gates of Dawn is just phenomenal, nowhere near as dated as I thought it would be. Banquet I have written about here before. And The Kinks? A band that got lost in the jetsam of the British Invasion (Lola versus Powerman is another I've kept in heavy rotation).
The Vivian Girls
Others... I rediscovered a blast from the 80s, Matt Johnson and The The. Parts and Labour's Mapmaker is worth as download. The Vivian Girls' Where Do You Run To is the song you can't listen to just once. I like Q-Tip's new record.
The Smashing Pumpkins:
Turn me on bald man
Here's a band it took me 15 years to really discover. Best band of the 90s; I've since burned all my Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Even Zeitgeist, though a lesser effort, is worth a burn.
So Happy New Year! What have you been spinning?
posted by John Allore @ 12/27/2008 08:27:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
"Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they'd never end.
We'd sing and dance
forever and a day.
We lived the life we'd choose.
We'd fight and never lose,
for we were young
and sure to have our way."
-- Mary Hopkins
You can really get me going talking about the music of the late 1960's!
Don't hold back, Bill.
'Anon'
My dear 'Anon',
I'm glad you approve of my passion for 60's music.
Should I mention some more songs from that era?
I thought John was doing pretty good there by himself.
Knock yourself out, Bill.
"In the town where I was born
lived a man who sailed the seas,
and he told us of his life
in the land of submarines.
So we sailed into the sun
'til we found the Sea of Green,
and we live beneath the waves
in our Yellow Submarine."
You asked for it, Anon!
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