Tuesday, February 21, 2012

1969


                In many ways a deepening of the genre explosion of 1968, but now we’re starting to get into the territory where the genres are becoming more fully-formed and distinctive.  This is probably most clear in the world of prog, where most of the big UK prog bands are up and running already (no ELP, but Jethro Tull, Yes, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson all put out albums in 1969).  Of them, Yes and Floyd are still very tentative.  Yes’s debut is fun, but surprisingly indebted to Deep Purple’s early prog sound, right down to the organ-driven sound and rearranged Beatles cover.  I think they do a better job of it, but don’t sound particularly original in doing so.  Deep Purple themselves put out their last prog album this year too, which I have on cassette, remember being underwhelmed by, and haven’t dug out for this project.  Floyd, meanwhile, have an album that practically screams “filler,” the half-live/half-studio double Ummagumma.  The live half is good, but nothing they haven’t already done better on Saucerful, still mining their psychedelic half-structured jam sound.  The studio half, though, is just a mess of basically-failed experimentation.  Overall, a step back from Saucerful, especially in contrast to what King Crimson is able to do.  Crimson’s debut, In The Court of the Crimson King, is probably the best prog album we’ve gotten so far, but what’s interesting in context is how it sounds so heavily indebted to psych predecessors.  Floyd, obviously, but also Hendrix on “21st Century Schizoid Man” and Traffic on the mellower numbers.  That might be the most surprising thing from listening to circa ’69 prog, is how Traffic sounds like an influence on a lot of what’s going on.  I hear it also on Jethro Tull’s 2nd album, the first with Martin Barre, and the first that strikes on the classic Tull formula of folk-prog.  I also failed to mention last year, but find it worth noting that UK folk-rock is taking off in a big way.  This is especially clear in ’69, as Fairport Convention have stopped aping US folk-rock and embraced their English folk wholeheartedly.  Next year, Traffic will sound like they’re following Tull & Fairport on the more folk-rocking John Barleycorn Must Die, but for now Tull seems to be picking up from where Traffic suggested they might go last year.
                Sadly, this year Traffic is breaking up, releasing the half studio leftovers/half live stuff Last Exit.  Titles like “Medicated Goo” and “Shanghai Noodle Factory” make it pretty clear that these are not exactly fully-formed songs, but rather platforms for jamming.  Which is fine and all, except that last year they did so much better.  The live stuff is probably better, but not fantastic or anything.  Interestingly, Cream release basically the same album as their breakup/farewell album, with the same half live-half studio formula (Goodbye).  They differ in two key ways, of course.  First, they actually stay broken up.  Second, this might just be Cream’s best album.  The live stuff is much better than most of the Wheels of Fire stuff, keeping the intensity of that album’s “Crossroad” up for the entire run, and the 3 studio tracks not only avoid the forced whimsy that cluttered Disraeli Gears and Wheels, but includes what’s possibly their best pop song: the George Harrison-featuring (and therefore unsurprisingly) Beatleseque “Badge.”  Also, no tedious drum solos this time.
                So not only do Cream and Traffic basically release the same album, but then their chief creative forces join together for Blind Faith the same year, and it’s a great EP regrettably stretched to LP length Cut the interminable drum solo and the uninspiring Buddy Holly cover, and you’re left with what sounds like a Traffic album with better guitar playing.  It’s interesting just how much this is Steve Winwood’s project, and Clapton fades into the background.  My working thesis on Clapton at this point is that he’s basically a great sideman who is only as good as the creative force he’s working with/for.  So he was tepid in the Yardbirds because they didn’t get strong creative force until Jeff Beck replaced Clapton, and so his best solo album was the one where Duane Allman drove him to excel, and his other ones were directionless and uneven.  It does raise the question of who the creative force pushing Clapton was in Cream.  Presumably not Ginger Baker, who similarly becomes a Steve Winwood sideman in Blind Faith.  Possibly Jack Bruce, but I think the correct answer is producer/fourth member Felix Pappalardi, at least based on the fact that Pappalardi went on to join Mountain, who sound like a natural evolution of the Cream sound in a lot of ways, and I’m not sure I could tell you anything Bruce did post-Cream.  Mountain, by the way, technically haven’t started yet, but Leslie West called his first solo album Mountain and the same band plus a keyboardist would go on to form Mountain next year, so that seems like a bit of a technicality.  Unless, of course, you think the secret to Mountain’s success was the piano-playing, I suppose.  Not a lot to say about Mountain, though.  It sounds great while it’s playing, in a very c. 1969 hard rock way, highly indebted to Cream but clearly its own animal.  Apart from the cover of “This Wheel’s On Fire,” though, I can’t really remember any songs once it stops playing.  That’ll change once they actually become Mountain, though.
                The biggest development in the hard rock world, though, is clearly (if retrospectively) Led Zeppelin’s debut (and second album).  Although I guess I can hear why they were not obviously world-beaters out of the gate.  Listened to in context, they’re definitely mining the same territory as Cream and Mountain and Jeff Beck and so many other heavy blues-rock bands.  They do a good job of it, but they’re not heads-and-shoulders above the competition or anything.  They do sound a lot better from a fidelity perspective, although whether that’s due to Page’s original production or the superior remastering of my CD reissues, I can’t say.  What’s most interesting to me is how I re-hear things they’re doing in context.  This is most clear on “Thank You,” which I always heard prior as a kind of proto-power-ballad, but heard on 1969 shuffle sounds much more like a “Whiter Shade of Pale” type psychedelic ballad.  It crops up a couple of other places too: “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” rocks like a Lennon rocker off the White Album, Page does a pretty spot-on Hendrix impression on “How Many More Times,” etc.  So I can hear why people didn’t immediately jump on the Zep bandwagon, although I still can’t hear why people thought the Jeff Beck Group was better.  Their second album has a lot of the same problems as the first: reliance on other people’s songs, inventive guitar playing but uninspired backing musicians, Rod Stewart.  I think I give it a slight edge, though, because the soloing is more distinctive.  I’ll grant that at this point Jeff Beck was a more interesting guitarist than Jimmy Page, although Page was a better arranger and formed a better band to showcase his talents.
                One interesting note in all of this stuff is a real resurgence of old 50s rock & roll covers.  Sometimes this is clearly searching for material (Blind Faith, Jeff Beck), but it also makes me wonder if Elvis’s ’68 Comeback Special didn’t have more of an impact than I gave credit.  Perhaps he reminded all of these ‘60s rockers how much they loved the ‘50s stuff.  Even Bob Dylan gets in on it, although he takes it a step further by actually recording a mess of tracks with one of Elvis’s Sun Records labelmates. 
                Elvis himself, for what it’s worth, is doing all kinds of things, but largely not looking back to his Sun days.  I’d generally described the Elvis in Memphis period as his take on the Memphis soul sound, but that doesn’t quite capture it.  It’s accurate insofar as some of the stuff, but not all.  The ballads sound much closer to country, and thus to traditional Elvis ballads, but “Suspicious Minds” sounds much more Motown than Stax, and “Power Of My Love” sounds very close to the heavy pounding sound of early Zeppelin, albeit with a horn section.  I’m not ready to say that From Elvis In Memphis is a better album than Elvis, but I might go so far as to say that, on the whole 1969 at least rivals 1956 as Elvis’s peak.  And I’m genuinely surprised how contemporary all of it sounds mixed in with what else is going on. 
                It also seems to make a good segue to talking briefly about Joe Cocker, who is really just kind of a footnote, doing his best approximation of Comeback Special-era Elvis.  But if Elvis was probably the greatest rock & roll vocalist to neither write his own material or be part of a band with the writer Robert Plant/Roger Daltrey style, Joe Cocker is probably the last to have a real career purely as an interpreter of other people’s material.  (outside of R&B, of course)  But man, between him and Rod Stewart, the Boomers clearly loved their phlegmy vocalists.
                Speaking of great vocalists, though, it’s interesting to note how great the Stooges sound right on their debut.  Not all that innovative.   They’re basically a garage band, and on their debut not as good as, say, the Monks.  So much better than the MC5, though, who apparently were better thought-of on their contemporary debut (probably due to the radical political content part).  But the Stooges absolutely school them.  Not brilliant players or songwriters (really the debut is “I Wanna Be Your Dog” & “No Fun” plus filler), but it all carries on the charisma of Iggy Pop, probably the best rock vocalist at conveying a sense of menace since at least Jagger, and almost as good as John Lee Hooker.  Also much more daring than the Velvets, who have this year mutated into being a folk-rock band with some mild experimentation.  So like the Byrds circa 1966 (esp. on “What Goes On”).  Hardly a bad sound, mind you, but again the Velvets sound more a part of their time than I gave them credit for.  And I give them credit still for sounding radically different on each of their albums.
                Speaking of the Byrds, Gram Parsons is gone, but the Byrds are sticking with that country sound.   As, for that matter is ex-Byrd Gene Clark on his own material.  Parson’s own new band does it better, though, and Gilded Palaces of Sin is probably better than even Sweetheart of the Rodeo, even if Sweetheart is more important by virtue of coming first.  Even the Beach Boys are starting to incorporate country elements in ’69, going so far as to cover “Cotton Fields.”  Impressively, for the first time since his debut Bob Dylan sounds like a follower.  Nashville Skyline isn’t a radical departure from his roots sound, but it sounds more like the Flying Burrito Brothers than John Wesley Harding.  He won’t stick with it, but it’s also a trip to hear Dylan’s “clean” voice.
                Dylan’s old Band-mates (get it?) haven’t gone country, but are keeping with their own roots-rock vision, almost certainly bettering their debut.  It’s impressive that they’re sticking with a very non-jammy approach of meticulous song-construction, since elsewhere in the roots world, jams seem to be very much in vogue, esp. with Creedence, who release 3(!) albums this year.  Contrary to what a workload like that might suggest, they get less jammy and more song-focused as the year goes on, but always have space for a 5+ minute groove.
                One of the interesting aspects of this project is how I’ve got albums that I’m fairly certain were not on anybody’s radar at the time, because those bands would go on to do bigger things later.  Yes’s debut, for instance, doesn’t sound especially remarkable in context, and the only reason I have it is because they’d grow up to be the band that did The Yes Album and Fragile.  In a similar vein is the Allman Brothers’ debut, which is good (fitting somewhere between the roots-jams of Creedence and UK blues rock, but closer to the former).  But it’s not in itself a great classic, and if the Allmans had broken up right after, it would be another forgotten footnote.  By contrast, take the Sir Douglas Quintet’s Mendocino.  They did fade into obscurity soon after, but it’s probably a better album than the Allman’s debut, working the same roots-jammy territory but with better songwriting and probably worse playing.  Still, it’s not impossible to conceive of a world where Sir Douglass went on to classic-rock-radio immortality, and the Allmans became an obscurity, whose LP I picked up on a whim because I’d once heard that one song (in real life, “She’s About A Mover”, but in my alternate reality, let’s say “Whipping Post”).
I have no good segue to make here, but I also probably need to talk about Tommy somewhere.  It’s a fantastic record, but doesn’t sound like too much else going on in rock.  The Who and Kinks both in ’69 are playing music that evolves pretty clearly from what was happening in the mid-60s, but that doesn’t sound much like anything else that’s going on.  They sound more like each other than anybody else, but even then only insofar as they’re making mod-rock-derived concept albums.  The Kinks are opening up their sound, adding a horn section and the like, while the Who are expanding their compositional chops (although I probably more properly should say Ray Davies and Pete Townshend here).   Also following on the early-60s sound are the beginnings of what will become glam rock in a couple of years.  Both Bowie and Marc Bolan (still calling his band Tyrannosaurus Rex) sound like committed Syd Barrett disciples at this point, albeit more like the acoustic solo stuff Syd is doing now, rather than the Floyd-era stuff.  Nick Drake, incidentally, sounds about halfway between the British folk scene he was a part of, and the damaged acoustic rock of Syd.
                I’ll close out the rock discussion by talking about the Beatles and the Stones.  Sadly, there’s only one more year of Beatles.  Still, in 1969, the Beatles are starting to sound removed from whatever else is going on in music, neither influencing or influenced by, but off on their own path.  This isn’t absolutely the case.  The Yellow Submarine tracks sound like the harder psychedelia that emerged in ’68, and “The Sun King” sounds somewhat like an homage to Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys.  Also, while I listened to the Get Back bootleg, I’ll talk more about that in the context of Let It Be, next year.  But for the most part, the Beatles’ big release, Abbey Road, sounds pretty out-of-time.  I’ve sometimes heard the side-2 suite described as influencing prog, but as I discussed above, prog was pretty fully-formed already.  Really, the whole album sounds like the Beatles just removed themselves to their own musical world.  This definitely shouldn’t be taken as a slam, as it’s a very entertaining musical world, but it contrasts with the Stones, who sound very much still engaged with the music around them.  If the Stones on Beggar’s Banquet sounded like they’d just embraced the return to roots, by Let It Bleed they’ve opened their influences back up considerably.  The roots stuff is still there, obviously, especially on tracks like “Love In Vain” and “You’ve Got The Silver,” but elsewhere it sounds like they’re listening to contemporary soul/R&B stuff, especially on songs like “Live With Me” and “Monkey Man.”  And obviously they go gospel on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” although I’ve always preferred the single edit, which lops off the intro gospel choir bit.  It’s all-in-all probably my favorite Stones album, although I can see the argument for either Sticky Fingers or Exile
                Outside of rock, my record collection is beginning to fail me.  My big Stax set ended in ’68, and I haven’t sprung for its sequel sets, meaning my soul collection gets much more artist-centered and therefore less comprehensive.  Some good stuff in soul this year, though, and the biggest year for soul evolving and changing since at least Motown’s debut, I think.  Both the Temptations and Isaac Hayes have changed up their sounds in a big way.  The Temptations have begun their ‘psychedelic soul’ period, which is probably the other big influence on Funkadelic (after Sly & The Family Stone), and is pretty remarkable in its own right.  Isaac Hayes, meanwhile, more or less invents album-length soul.  There had been great soul albums before Hot Buttered Soul, but they were basically just collections of single-length songs.  Hayes is the first artist, or at least the first commercially-successful artist, to take advantage of the ability to stretch out on 12-20 minute epics like “Walk On By” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.”  The former shows how Hayes has been listening to his rock contemporaries, and incorporates acid guitar into a string-heavy soul jam, and the latter is a phenomenal example of a slow-burn/build.
                Outside of the Anglo-American world entirely, ’69 is a good year for illustrating why I hate hate hate the term “world music.”  It’s overly-reductive and vaguely colonial, grouping all sorts of musical styles together into a single category basically defined as “not made in the US, Canada, or Europe.”  What’s happening in Jamaica is at least as different from what’s happening in Brazil as what’s happening in London is from what’s happening in Detroit.  Moreover, lumping together traditional folk styles and contemporary pop misses a lot of what’s going on.  I’ve talked before about how this project reinforces my contention that ska/rocksteady should be considered a strand of North American soul music, and that Kingston was up there with Detroit and Memphis as capitals of ‘60s soul.  The only reason it sounds more influenced than influential is essentially technological: St. Louis radio stations reached Jamaica, but Jamaican stations didn’t have the signal strength to reciprocate.  What’s interesting this year is how you can begin to hear how Latin American music is in dialogue with North American and British music.  The Stones have already started incorporating Latin rhythms, and samba again sounds like a new variety of soul music rather than a wholly-distinct genre.  The whole mess probably most clearly comes together on Santana’s debut, which alternately sounds like an acid rock record, a roots-rock record, and a Latin jazz record, often all at once and in the same song.  So score another one for the theory that genre purity is a bad idea.
Song of the Year:  “Gimme Shelter” – The Rolling Stones.  Part of me wants to say the closing suite on Abbey Road, but “Gimme Shelter” is just about perfect from beginning to end, and captures such a fantastic atmosphere of desperation and menace.  The Stones’ finest song, bar none.
Album of the Year:  The Kinks – Arthur.  Maybe Tommy or Let It Bleed as runners up, but not only is Arthur the Kinks’ best album, but it’s got three of my all-time favorite Kinks songs on it (the widely-acknowledged classic “Shangri-La,” but also “Brainwashed” and “Arthur”).  Also, "Arthur we love you and want to help you" is a much more likeable sentiment than the pissy hipsterisms of Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" or the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home."  Abbey Road not in the running, by the way.  When it’s good, it’s really good, but it’s got some decidedly fillerish stuff (I’m looking at you, “Octopus’s Garden” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”).
Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Isaac Hayes.  I knew he was always Stax’s secret weapon, writing the majority of the Stax classics, and I knew he was great solo in the ‘70s, but I didn’t realize how ahead of the curve he was in pioneering album-length soul music.
Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Probably either Yes or the Allman Brothers, for the same reason in both cases.  Their debuts are quite good, well-played, and highly-enjoyable, but apart from knowing both go on to do bigger and better things, neither particularly stand out from the crowd.  Maybe Yes’s debut would go on to be one of those ‘forgotten classics’ rock geeks love, like Love or the Zombies, and the Allmans probably would have been fondly remembered by local scenesters in Jacksonville, but neither sounded like world-beaters out of the gate.
Albums
B.B. King - B.B. King
Blind Faith – Blind Faith
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Trenchtown Rock: The Anthology 1969-78
Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself: The Best Of Charles Wright
Country Joe & the Fish - The Collected Country Joe & the Fish
Cream – Goodbye
Cream - The Very Best Of Cream
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Chronicle, Vol. 1
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willie & The Poor Boys
Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Crosby, Stills & Nash
David Bowie - Changesbowie
Dillard & Clark – Through The Morning, Through The Night
Elvis Presley - Back In Memphis
Elvis Presley - Elvis 30 #1 Hits
Elvis Presley - From Elvis in Memphis
Elvis Presley - The Memphis Record
Fairport Convention - Liege And Lief
Fairport Convention - What We Did On Our Holidays
Frank Sinatra - Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
Iggy Pop - Nude & Rude: The Best Of Iggy Pop
Isaac Hayes - Greatest Hits Singles
Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul
James Brown - 20 All Time Greatest Hits!
Jeff Beck Group – Beck-Ola
Jethro Tull - Original Masters
Jethro Tull - Stand Up
Jethro Tull – Stand Up
Jimmy Cliff - Jimmy Cliff
Joe Cocker – Joe Cocker!
Johnny Cash – At San Quentin
Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan - The Dylan-Cash Sessions
King Crimson – In The Court Of The Crimson King
Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II
Leslie West – Mountain
MC5 - Kick Out The Jams
Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard
Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
Neil Young - Decade
Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Nick Drake - Way To Blue (An Introduction To Nick Drake)
Os Mutantes - Everything Is Possible!: The Best Of Os Mutantes
Pentangle - Early Classics
Pink Floyd – Ummagumma
Quicksilver Messenger Service - Happy Trails
Rod Stewart & The Faces - Gold
Santana – Santana
Sir Douglas Quintet – Mendocino
Sly & The Family Stone - The Essential Sly & The Family Stone
Stevie Wonder - At The Close Of A Century
Syd Barrett - Opel
T. Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection
The Allman Brothers Band – The Allman Brothers Band
The Band – The Band
The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys
The Beatles - Abbey Road
The Beatles - Get Back
The Beatles - Mono Masters
The Beatles - Past Masters, Vol. 2
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Byrds - III: Full Throttle
The Byrds - VI: Final Approach
The Doors – The Soft Parade
The Ethiopians - Everything Crash: The Best of The Ethiopians
The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - BBC Sessions
The Kinks - Arthur: Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire
The Kinks - The Kink Kronikles
The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
The Rolling Stones - Singles Collection: The London Years
The Stooges - The Stooges
The Temptations - Psychedelic Soul
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
The Who  - Tommy
The Who - The Ultimate Collection
Tommy McCook & The Super Sonic - Top Secret
Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough - The Anthology
Traffic – Last Exit
V/A – Easy Rider soundtrack
V/A - Hitsville U.S.A.
V/A - Kill Bill, Vol. 1
V/A - Psychedelic Pop
V/A - Samba Soul 70!
V/A - The Best Of 60s Surf
V/A – Woodstock soundtrack
Willie Colón - Cosa Nuestra
Yes – Yes

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