1965

                If I were to make a pithy summary of 1965, it would be that it was the year where you could start talking about “rock,” as opposed to “rock & roll” music.  Bands are starting to develop a sound that is more than just playing blues or rockabilly at a faster tempo or with a little more fuzz.  Esp. the Yardbirds and the Stones are starting to build their own distinct sounds.  This is probably the beginning of the Stones as generally remembered, with “Satisfaction” and “Get Off Of My Cloud.”  I actually think the ’64 singles were better, though.  Maybe because they’d do this fuzzy-rock style better later on, but they never returned to that early trebly sound.  The Yardbirds, though, are nothing but better.  It has been pointed out to me that I was rather harsh on Clapton, but I think that’s just a reaction to how over-praised he is.  And in part how much better the Yardbirds are with Jeff Beck.  Circa 1965, they were probably the most exciting rock band active.  Beck was making all sorts of weird sounds on his guitar, and the rest of the band had gone from sounding like geeky blues enthusiasts to a band more comfortable in its own skin.  Even the blues covers sound less like homages, and more like reworkings from a basic template (see esp. “Train Kept A’Rollin’”).

                1965 is also the year of the first Who album (they had one single last year).  It’s impressive how good they are right out of the gate.  It’s not perfect (really, no one should cover James Brown), but it’s much better than the singles-and-obvious-filler of the Kinks’ first couple of albums.  Also, they’re not even pretending to sound like a blues band (which is probably for the best).  It kinda makes Them, who are still excellent, sound a little less than cutting edge.

                The part of 1965 I enjoyed the most, though, was back in the US, out of the folk scene.  Most exciting is Bob Dylan going electric.  I hadn’t listened to Bringing It All Back Home in a bit, despite it being possibly my favorite album of my sophomore & junior years of college.  I’d forgotten how fantastic it is.  Side one (the electric side) might be the best side of music Dylan ever cut.  There’s a manic, rebellious energy to it as he willfully breaks all the rules of the purist NYC folk scene that he never captured again.  Probably because you can never reject your past so decisively ever again.  Dylan would later say that Blonde on Blonde was an attempt to capture a “thin wild mercury sound,” but it would be more accurate to say it was an attempt to recapture it after doing it here.  And falling short, despite how great that album would be.  And side two, where Dylan is acoustic but anything but folk almost seems like showing that he can beat the folkies with one hand tied behind his back.  Just absolutely fantastic stuff.  Even Highway 61 Revisited, also from ’65, pales in comparison, great as that record is.

                It also makes the debut of the Byrds seem less exciting, somewhat unfairly.  After all, 1) they were the beginning of the whole folk-rock, country-rock West Coast sound that would be dominant through the mid-70s, plus 2) their jangly sound would dominate 80s alt-rock, and (at least in my experience) continue to fascinate college-age music geeks into the 21^st century (speaking in no small part from personal experience here).  So I kinda love the Byrds, and they right away give the Beach Boys a serious run for their money as greatest active American rock band.

                I’ll also pause for a moment here to discuss the Beach Boys’ “She Knows Me Too Well,” which is sonically fine but lyrically seriously messed-up.  If you don’t recall it, it’s the one with the lyrics “I get so jealous of the other guy/And then I'm not happy til I make her break down and cry/When I look at other girls it must kill her inside/But it'd be another story if she looked at the guys//But she knows me too well.”  That’s the sort of lyrics where if John Lennon or Elvis Costello wrote it, I’d know that it’s supposed to be understood as seriously dysfunctional, but with Mike Love I kinda suspect he thinks that’s an ok sentiment.  Much like the Barbarians’ “Are You A Boy Or A Girl,” also from 1965, maybe it was a time when it was ok to be a massive d-bag in song.

                Speaking of being awful, but sonically this time, hands-down the worst album I listened to out of 1965 was The Fugs’ First Album.  Historically important because critics called it “the first underground rock album,” but as I ranted about a few posts back, apparently you can fool a lot of people (esp. professional critics) by saying you’re ‘deconstructing’ or ‘experimental,’ when you’re actually just incompetent.  I’d believe the Fugs if I thought they could actually play competently if they wanted to, but there’s nothing here to make me think they’re more than stoned hippies banging on things, devoid of musical talent but crafty enough to pretend it’s on purpose.  A sharp contrast to all the excellent garage bands starting to spring up like mushrooms in the mid-60s, who are pretty far from virtuosos, but have figured out how to still make some fantastically exciting rock that you can just enjoy, as opposed to pretending to enjoy the Fugs pretending to be experimental.

                Switching gears, I’ve got this live Ernest Tubb record from 1965 that itunes shuffle loves for some reason.  It’s a solid country album, but it’s incredibly jarring mixed in with the rock & soul that otherwise dominates my 1965 collection.  I’ve got other non-rock/soul music from ’65 (some Chuck Berry, some Miles Davis, some Frank Sinatra (including the pretty-great “It Was A Very Good Year”), but none of it’s as jarring to shift to as Ernest Tubb.  Last post I talked about how there wasn’t yet a divide between the rock/pop and soul/R&B worlds, but this is a pretty sharp reminder that there was a big big divide between those more urban/international styles and what was happening in country music.  I suppose reflecting the cultural divide, if you want to get all Boomer-retrospective on it, but pretty striking musically.  Chuck Berry sounds old-fashioned, Frank Sinatra sounds more ‘adult’, the jazz stuff is obviously less song-based, but none of them sound so radically foreign as Ernest Tubb, who might as well be from another world.

                Dipping into Jamiacan music, I’ve gotten very fond of the Skatalites, and I’ll miss them when they’re gone (they break up August 1965).  It makes me really miss the era of the jazz single; these great 3 minute instrumental pieces.  Also, considering I’ve got 3 hours of music from them from 1965, they came up on shuffle a lot.  It’ll be jarring to have my First Wave content drop dramatically tomorrow.  It also was convenient that 1965 in my little project coincided with a couple of unseasonably warm days here in DC; even without this project, I’d probably be listening to them. 

                Oh!  And I didn’t mention at all that the Beatles put out Rubber Soul, the one that’s commonly acclaimed as the start of the “classic” Beatles.  Even though this project has given me a greater appreciation of the early Beatles, I can’t deny that this is a big leap forward.  But, you know, you can only say so much about the Beatles without sounding like one of those public television pledge-drive documentaries.  They’re great, they’re ahead of the curve, send me $80 and I’ll mail you a tote bag.

Song of the Year:  (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones.  Really, how couldn’t it be.  The Stones themselves, to say nothing of countless garage bands, would spend significant chunks of their career rewriting it for a reason.

Album of the Year:  Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan.  I think I talked enough about this above.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds.  I think they got a bit forgotten by history because, while they released a whole lot of classic singles, the Beck-birds only released one uneven proper album (next year!).  But those singles were as bold and experimental and rockin’ as anything put out in 1965.  Not as catchy as the Beatles or Stones, maybe, but in their league otherwise.  Also, the good Clapton-era single (“For Your Love”) came out in `65.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Not sure I really have one for 1965.  The Kinks still aren’t putting out consistent albums, but their 2^nd is better than their 1^st (and the only Kinks record I’m missing from 1964 to 1973 is the second one they put out in 1965).  Plus the Kinks’ ’65 singles are extremely good.  So I can’t give it to them, and if not them, maybe Phil Spector?  The only Spector stuff I have from 1965 is by the Righteous Brothers, though, and I never thought they were all that great.

Also, by popular demand (one request), a list of what I actually listened to:

Artist                                                     Album

Bob Dylan                                            Bringing It All Back Home (2010 Mono Version)

Bob Dylan                                            Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan                                            Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances

Bob Dylan                                            Bootleg Series, Vol. 2 : Rare And Unreleased, 1963-1974

Bob Dylan                                            Bootleg Series, Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack

Bob Marley & The Wailers            Trenchtown Days: Birth Of A Legend

Chuck Berry                                        His 30 Greatest Hits

Davie Allan and the Arrows         Apache

Elmore James                                    Golden Hits

Elvis Presley                                       Elvis 30 #1 Hits

Ernest Tubb                                        The Complete Live 1965 Show

Frank Sinatra                                      Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years

Herman's Hermits                            Their Greatest Hits

James Brown                                     20 All Time Greatest Hits!

John Lee Hooker                              The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990

Miles Davis                                         E.S.P.

Stevie Wonder                                  At The Close Of A Century [Disc 1]

Sun Ra                                                  unknown

The Beach Boys                                Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys

The Beatles                                        Help!

The Beatles                                        Live at the BBC

The Beatles                                        Mono Masters

The Beatles                                        Past Masters

The Beatles                                        Rubber Soul

The Byrds                                            Byrds [box set]

The Fugs                                              First Album

The Kinks                                             Greatest Hits

The Kinks                                             Kinda Kinks

The Kinks                                             Kinks-Size / Kinks Kinkdom

The Kinks                                             Rushmore

The Rolling Stones                           Singles Collection: The London Years

The Skatalites                                    Foundation Ska [Disc 1]

The Skatalites                                    The Skatalites Anthology

The Staple Singers                           Freedom Highway

The Supremes                                   More Hits By The Supremes

The Who                                              The Ultimate Collection

The Who                                              The Who Sings My Generation

The Yardbirds                                    For Your Love

The Yardbirds                                    Having A Rave-Up

Them                                                    The Story Of Them

Toots & The Maytals                       Time Tough - The Anthology

V/A                                                        Hitsville U.S.A.

V/A                                                        Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era

V/A                                                        Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound Retrospective

V/A                                                        Stax/Volt Singles IV: 1959-1968