1963

1963

                The first time I have enough music to handle a year entirely by itself!  However, between two albums, a bunch of singles, and most of their BBC sessions, 40% of that music is by the Beatles.  I can’t really complain, though, since my big revelation from 1963 is that the early Beatles, which I’d always dismissed as lightweight fun, sound like punk rock after my 1950-62 listening (although Love Me Do did appear at the end of that period).  Following a relatively down period of 1960-62, here’s a band tapping into the same raw energy of the rockabilly cats, sounding much more vibrant than anything their contemporaries are doing.  They’re not perfect, but I begin to understand just why those early Beatles records made such an impact.  They were the Ramones of 1963.

                The Rolling Stones, who first appear in 1963, however, suffer from context.  The Beatles sound like they’re revitalizing rock & roll, bringing the energy of the mid-50s rockers back after a turn toward more sophisticated but less wild arrangements by the likes of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector.  The Stones, however, sound like a tamer version of the blues acts that are still tearing it up in the early 1960s.  “Stoned,” however, the druggy, mostly instrumental b-side to “I Wanna Be Your Man,” lives up to the Stones’ image in a way that the a-sides don’t.  It also sounds a lot like what’s happening at Stax, which is some of the exciting stuff happening in 1963.  Some of it still sounds throwback-y, but a lot of it is starting to get that classic Stax mix of tightness & grit.  Oddly, my Motown collection (Hitsville USA) has nothing from 1963 on it.

                Elsewhere, the Beach Boys and Dylan both are sounding more interesting.  The Beach Boys sound positively tame next to the Beatles, but still are a great pop band.  Dylan still sounds too bound by the dictates of NYC folk purism, but his originals are starting to move beyond just being clever to being classics (and here I’m talking much more about “Don’t Think Twice” and “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” than “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which shows its age quite a bit).  Phil Spector’s hitting his peak, though, and most of the best singles of 1963 are Spector productions. 

                Oh, and both the Skatalites and Toots & The Maytals have started putting stuff out.  Not much to say about them, as it’s just a couple of singles.  The Skatalites are still making jazz singles after American jazz had kind of forgotten about it, so that’s nice.  Toots & the Maytals sound more folky than they will going forward also.   It’ll be nice going forward to look at how Jamaican artists fit in with what’s happening elsewhere contemporaneously. 

Song of the Year: “And Then He Kissed Me”  Nobody does that big sound like Phil Spector, and this is one of his best.

Album of the Year:  The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.  And not just because I ripped off the cover for my wedding save-the-dates.  Not my favorite Dylan album, but the best of his early acoustic stuff, and its only real challenger for best album from the NYC folk scene was next year’s “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” so there’s that.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Beatles.  I knew they were good, but honestly mostly from their 1965-on stuff.  But that early stuff is, in its own way, more exciting than anything they did after, at least in context.  And learning things like that is, after all, kind of the point.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  The Beach Boys, I think.  Stacked side-by-side against what the Beatles and the Stones were doing, they’re not as rocking, and stacked next to the Spector stuff, they’re not as sophisticated.  Later, they get better, obviously, and they’re still the best American pop band of the year, but circa 1963 Beach Boys sound than their peers in context.