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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