Thursday, March 1, 2012

1971


                So 1971 seems to be a banner year for two things: live albums and AM radio-style soft rock.  For the former, we get double live albums from the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, the triple-album George Harrison & Friends Concert for Bangladesh, a Traffic live album, and Mountain mimicking Cream some more with a half-live/half-studio breakup album, plus archival live concerts from both Led Zeppelin and Neil Young.  And none of them, except the CSNY and Traffic ones, feel like contractual-obligation filler.  Well, maybe the Mountain one feels like they lacked enough studio tracks, but considering the live half is both really good and a chance to hear “Mississippi Queen” again, I won’t complain.  But the Grateful Dead one (their 2nd official live album) sounds much more like the “classic” rootsy live Dead sound they’d work variations on for the next few decades than the much more psychedelic Live/Dead from ’69.  For my money, they hit their live peak next year, but it’s by deepening the formula already in place here, of rootsy originals and covers, mixed with some extended live improvisation, and all generally keeping with the vibe of last year’s twin studio classics.  The best of the ’71 live albums, however, is to my mind without question the Allman Brothers’ Live At The Fillmore.  I’ve heard it compared more to jazz improvisation than anything else going on in rock, and while the Dead would develop a similar simpatico relationship in their jams, they only rarely brought the high-energy intensity that the Allmans sustain over 4 LP sides.  Similarly, the Who could bring a similar focused intensity, but only in a much more structured fashion, and without nearly the success at improvisation.  All the sadder that Duane Allman dies in 1971, leaving this as his absolute peak, and the rest of the band’s as well. 
                The Concert for Bangladesh is worth noting, if only for the uncanny parallels between Harrison and Bob Dylan this year.  Both go from a massive dump of material last year (although Harrison’s was of much higher quality than Dylan’s) to this year releasing a lone studio single (Harrison’s “Bangla Desh,” Dylan’s “George Jackson”) and their respective sets from the Concert for Bangladesh.  That concert itself is pretty good, but apart from Ravi Shankar’s Indian classical, nothing is especially a revelation live.  We also don’t get a lot of material from Neil Young.  In fact, we get no new studio material, and only his contribution to the CSNY live album actually released in ’71, although his 2007 Massey Hall solo acoustic concert shows that he definitely had more material in the works.  We actually do hear a fair amount of Neil Young in the studio though, as well as members of the Dead, and miscellaneous other LA/San Fran players on a mess of albums released as solo records, all backed by a rotating cast of folk-rockers.  Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than David Crosby’s album, which has some very identifiable Neil Young and Jerry Garcia lead guitar parts.  It’s also an album that rocks a lot harder than I remember it, since I normally associate Crosby as the hazy hippie-folk guy in CSN (i.e. the Crosby of “Guinevere”  and “Déjà vu”), and undoubtedly one of the best CSN solo records.  On the other hand, I don’t own any other Nash solo records, and I don’t really care for the Hollies, but I’ll be damned if Songs For Beginners isn’t my favorite CSN solo album (excluding Young).  It definitely doesn’t rock like Crosby’s, but it’s just so melodic and catchy, and just makes me feel happy.  Liz can testify that it’s my default Sunday morning record.
                It’s also, I admit, the kind of record that you can point to as where the West Coast folk-rock scene tipped into ‘70s soft rock.  Still, as mellow gold records go, they don’t get much mellower or more golden than Carole King’s Tapestry, which I won’t heap praise on the way I do Songs For Beginners, but doesn’t sound terribly removed from the LA folk-rock of CSN and the Byrds and the like and is a very well-constructed record.  This really shouldn’t be much of a surprise, since (in this way and no other) Carole King is like Isaac Hayes, one of those artists who wrote all sorts of pop hits for others before stepping out as a solo artist in the early ‘70s. 
The solo efforts from John and Paul also fit well in to the great mellowing of ’71.  For Paul, this isn’t too much of a surprise, as he’s basically just continuing the same pop experimentation he’s been doing since ’67 or so.  John’s more all over the map, having basically abandoned the stark, at times Stooges-like sound of Plastic Ono Band.  It’s too simplistic to say that John’s simply turned to a soft-rock sound, although tracks like “Jealous Guy” and “Oh Yoko!” sound appropriate next to Carole King and Graham Nash.  I feel I need to re-emphasize that saying it’s soft rock is by no means a slam, whatever I might have said in high school.  “Oh Yoko!,” for instance, is one of my all-time favorite John songs.  It’s more that, for me at least, hard rock can get by without being particularly clever if it’s got enough energy, so I can appreciate a lot of pretty generic-sounding hard rock.  I can only stomach soft rock if it’s especially catchy and clever, otherwise I get bored really quickly, and therefore loathe the generic-sounding version.  This, in turn, means that there’s a lot of hard rock I like well-enough, but that most soft-rock I actively despise, since the worst sin in music is being boring.  Anyway, Lennon is by no means just a soft-rocker this year, though, as he’s got tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier” and “It’s So Hard.”  He is kind of a jerk though, in that faux-apologetic “I know I’m a jerk, but I’m admitting it, which makes me a sensitive jerk, and therefore it’s ok for me to keep being a jerk” kinda way.  See “Jealous Guy” for a prime example of this.  Also, Ringo put out a fantastic single this year: the goofy “It Don’t Come Easy.” It would have sounded perfect as the lone Ringo track on a hypothetical ’71 Beatles album.
This soft-rock tone does kinda set the mood for a lot of stuff released in ’71.  Rod Stewart, for instance, splits his efforts between sounding like a b-list version of the Rolling Stones and mining a softer folk-rock sound himself.  Curiously, it’s not simply that Rod solo is soft-rock, and the Faces are hard-rock, but rather it’s all mixed together.  Of course, it’s a year when even the glam rock sounds of T. Rex sound pretty mellow for the most part, riding an easy boogying groove.  Marc Bolan’s still pretty much the only major glam artist at this point, though.  Mott The Hoople are still decidedly b-team, and Bowie sounds more like the Small Faces circa 1968 than anything else, with a very music-hall kind of sound.  He also sounds more like the Small Faces than the (regular-sized?) Faces themselves do at this point.  What he definitely has abandoned however, is the progressive sound he toyed with on The Man Who Sold the World, although having Rick Wakeman play keys on Hunky Dory doesn’t hurt in prog-cred terms. 
Speaking of bands that used to work in the music-hall style, the Kinks have deepened substantially the rootsy vein they opened last year.  Muswell Hillbillies is definitely their “American roots-rock” album, even if they stamp their decidedly unique vision on it (and offer, in the title track, the first of Ray Davies’ many songs about gentrification).  In the sense that it’s Brits mining American roots sounds, it’s not so far removed from what the Faces and the Stones are doing, although the Kinks certainly have their own take on it.  What the Kinks do share with the Stones, though, is that neither of them is part of the soft-rock trend that the Faces dabble in and overtakes a lot of the Americans.  In fact, Sticky Fingers might be the most-rockin’ of all the Stones albums.  It also is far too limiting to say that it’s a roots-rock album.  Much like Let It Bleed, on Sticky Fingers the Stones are drawing from a lot of sources.  Rock & roll & blues, obviously, but also country on the excellent “Dead Flowers” and “Wild Horses” (stolen back from the Flying Burrito Brothers, whose first post-Parsons album is released this year but I don’t own it).  Also there’s the Southern rock-Santana fusion of “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’,” and a song that I’d overlooked before, “I’ve Got the Blues.”  It really sounds like the Stones have been listening to a lot of what came out of Memphis recently, both insofar as it sounds like something Isaac Hayes could have written and absolutely like something Elvis in his Memphis period could have released.  Elvis himself, incidentally, comes to the end of his run of great albums, with Elvis Country, which shows that Elvis too has been listening to a lot of what’s going on around him, especially what’s happening in the world of outlaw country (and heck, he covers Willie Nelson).  It’s still all very produced, but it shows how much Elvis emerged in a period when the difference between country and the blues was basically nonexistent musically that he sounds as comfortable singing Stax-style soul as he does singing circa 1971 country.  Also, “I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water” is worth noting for the way in which it fuses Stax-style horns with a country/southern rock style melody.  Really, it sounds like something the Stones would do.
It is interesting to compare the Stones to Led Zeppelin this year.  Not only do both release what is possibly their career-best album, but both albums showcase how much they’ve been listening to what’s been going on around them.  HunHunHFor the Stones, this means country and soul, but for Zep, it’s a heap of Fairport-style English folk-rock, esp. on “Going to California” and “Battle of Evermore,” itself featuring ex-Fairport vocalist Sandy Denny, the rare guest musician on a Zeppelin studio recording.  It also means prog-rock, on the very King Crimson sounding (at least in the beginning) “Stairway to Heaven.”  And, of course, there’s a bunch of rock & roll and blues, and here’s where it’s interesting to directly compare the Stones and Zeppelin, and especially (for instance) their respective rock & roll attempts (for instance “Rock & Roll” and “Bitch”).  What it really shows is that the Stones know how to give their music hips, while Zeppelin swings like Englishmen who like gentle folk music and prog rock.  It does mean that “Rock & Roll” is the first of many Zeppelin genre experiments where it took me years of listening to figure out that they were trying to do a genre experiment, as opposed to just making another Zep rocker.  On the other hand, it also means that Zeppelin can do a song with the big pounding sound of “When the Levee Breaks,” which I don’t think the Stones could ever match.  Of course, circa 1971, probably the only other band that really could is Sabbath, who also put out a career record themselves.  Unlike the Stones and Zep, though, there’s not a lot of genre diversity going on on Master of Reality, which is practically a concept album about Tony Iommi’s newfound guitar tone (and Jesus).
Another band which seems worth comparing to Zeppelin is Jethro Tull, who also started out as a blues band, before getting fascinated by prog and folk.  Aqualung doesn’t sound much like Zep, of course, although it’s working with a lot of the same prog/folk/rock elements.  Tull sound like they have a lot more to say lyrically than Zeppelin, of course.  (As an aside, between Ian Anderson’s concept album about religion, Sabbath’s gonzo-Christian-rock, and Lennon’s “God” and “Imagine”, 1970-71 was apparently a peak period for songs about religion.)  Anyway, Tull sound more like Zep than anything else happening in the world of prog, which is starting to drift far more into long-form song construction than Tull are at this point.  Still, it’s a very good year for prog, where both Yes and Pink Floyd produce their first albums in their classic sounds.  Their respective albums from last year offered big hints that they were almost there, but it’s still impressive how much more confident each sound this year, being much more willing to risk long-form experiments that actually work.  (also, Yes’s Fragile came out in ’71 in the UK, but ’72 in the US: itunes dated it as ’72, which I didn’t’ realize until just before this went up, so while normally I’d talk about it here, I’ll instead throw in under ’72).  Crimson also release an album this year, but while I listened to it only yesterday, and don’t remember disliking what I heard, I remember virtually nothing about it.  There’s a reason a 3 year gap in my Crimson discography begins now, I guess. 
The biggest genre innovation this year, or at least the one I get most excited about, however, is neither prog’s breakthrough nor soft-rock’s: it’s the emergence of funk as a distinct genre.  Obviously there were things earlier that you could point to as funk or proto-funk, especially by James Brown or Sly & The Family Stone, but heard in context they really just sounded like part of soul, and not a distinct genre.  That is no longer the case by ’71.  Not only is James Brown getting deeper and longer in his grooves, but the biggest developments are probably Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain and Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Going On.  The first builds on Funkadelic’s psychedelic stuff from last year, but grounds it in a more solid groove, creating the spaced-out but danceable template for much of what came after.  As for Sly & the Family, they’re worlds away from the optimistic rock-soul of “You Can Make It IF You Try,” and while there’s been a lot of ink spilled on the lyrical turn, what’s more interesting to me is how they’re much more narrowly focused on a tight hard funk groove.  Also, it’s probably worth noting that Isaac Hayes too shifts to funk, with Shaft, as does Miles Davis on my favorite of his fusion-period records, A Tribute to Jack Johnson.  Santana also has moved more into a funk sound, although it’s not so radically different from what they did before.  Sadly, I apparently left my copy of their next album up at my mom’s, so I won’t be able to talk about their turn to fusion in much detail.
Of course, soul is still going in its own way, where the biggest development is probably Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, the first major statement of Gaye as more than just a part of the Motown stable of artists, with his own unique (though soon imitated) sound.  It’s really pretty comparable to Van Morrison’s shift from the more formula (but still excellent) blues-rock of Them to the atmospheric but tightly constructed sound of Astral Weeks.  What’s Going On  is lyrically much more focused on real-world concerns than the flights of fancy of Van’s album, but they’re similar insofar as both are in fact song-based, but songs of such spontaneous-sounding yet deliberate construction that you can’t really hear (or want to hear) anyone else try to perform them.  Outside of Marvin, a lot of what’s going on in soul is less revolutionary and more evolutionary.  Al Green is here, but sounds like a natural continuation of the Memphis/Stax sound.  Stevie Wonder continues his relatively slow evolution (though since he’s still only 20, I’ll cut him some slack).  The rest of Motown shows how little that sound evolved.  The things that, for instance, Michael Jackson is doing in 1971 sound pretty close to what Diana Ross was doing in 1965.  Great songs, but not revolutionary.  I should pause to give a shout-out to the Temptations, who are deep in their psychedelic soul sound.  Like Marvin, they’re lost in their own world, but unlike Marvin, their sound produces a lot fewer imitators, sadly.
A couple of outliers from the LA rock scene deserve some note.  While the rest of LA moves toward a soft rock-folk rock sound, the Doors and the Beach Boys are off in their own musical universes.  The Beach Boys haven’t become a hard rock band or anything, but their sound is a lot less folk-derived and a lot more bleak than what, for instance, the CSN conglomerate are up to.  For my money, Surf’s Up is the Beach Boy’s finest post-Pet Sounds album, even if it’s got some really dumb songs by the non-Wilson members, and even if its best track (“Surf’s Up”) is a SMiLE remnant.  It also has Carl’s excellent attempt at Brian’s sound (“Feel Flows”) and Brian’s “Till I Die,” which is both magnificent and magnificently sad in its ability to capture his despair.  The Doors, meanwhile, put out what I think is their best album by mixing the blues-rock sound of Morrison Hotel with the dark poetry approach of their first couple.  The result is more distinctive than the sometimes-generic Morrison Hotel, but also easier to take seriously than the sometimes over-the-top sound of The Doors and Strange Days.  Maybe because it’s hard to pull off an L.A. Woman without a vocalist of Jim Morisson’s caliber, but while the Doors were tremendously influential (mostly on the goths), it wasn’t for this sound.  Although it doesn’t sound too much different from what John Lee Hooker’s up to this year, which to my continued amazement sounds exactly like what he’s been putting out since 1948.  I guess you don’t mess with a sound that good…
Song of the Year:  “Whipping Post”- The Allman Brothers.  In the run-up to 1971, this was the song I was most excited to listen to, and it did not disappoint.
Album of the Year:  I suppose it has to be either Sticky Fingers or Led Zeppelin IV, although there’s a part of me that wants to toss it to Songs For Beginners.  Ultimately, though, I give the nod to Zeppelin.  The Stones are very very good, but I still like Let It Bleed better.  Zeppelin, however, have outdone their previous efforts with this one.
Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Elvis Presley.  I always kind of assumed that Elvis in Memphis was the end of worthwhile Elvis, but I was wrong.  Elvis Country sounds as good as any Elvis album, and is good enough to make me think I need to pick up more of Elvis’s ‘70s stuff.  We’ll see if his less-than-stellar ’72 album disabuses me of that notion, though…
Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Traffic, I think.  Their live album is just ok.  Their studio album (The Low Spark of High Heel Boys) does pursue a somewhat interesting prog-jazz-rock direction, but it’s also a step down from last year, and apart from the title track, not all that compelling.
Album List
Al Green - The Absolute Best
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Past Lives
Bob Dylan - George Jackson
Bob Dylan - Vol. 2 : Rare And Unreleased, 1963-1974
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Soul Rebels
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Trenchtown Rock: The Anthology 1969-78
Can - Tago Mago
Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself: The Best Of Charles Wright
Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On
David Bowie - Changesbowie
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
David Crosby – If Only I Could Remember My Name
Deep Purple - The Very Best Of Deep Purple
Dennis Alcapone - Guns Don't Argue
Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic: The Best Of Electric Light Orchestra
Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002
Elvis Presley - Elvis Country
Elvis Presley - From Elvis in Memphis
Elvis Presley - The Memphis Record
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
George Harrison - The Best Of George Harrison
George Harrison – The Concert for Bangladesh
Graham Nash – Songs for Beginners
Isaac Hayes - Greatest Hits Singles
James Brown - 20 All Time Greatest Hits!
James Brown - Make It Funky: 1971-75
James Brown - The Big Payback: 1971-1975
Jethro Tull – Aqualung
Jethro Tull - Original Masters
John Lee Hooker - The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990
John Lennon - Imagine
John Lennon - Imagine Soundtrack
Joni Mitchell – Blue
Joni Mitchell - Hits
King Crimson – Islands
Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin - Wedding Songs
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Inner Mounting Flame
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard
Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson
Miles Davis - A Tribute To Jack Johnson
Mott The Hoople - An Introduction To Mott The Hoople
Mott The Hoople – Rock n Roll Queen
Mountain – Flowers of Evil
Neil Young - Live At Massey Hall 1971
Os Mutantes - Everything Is Possible!: The Best Of Os Mutantes
Osibisa – Woyaya
Ozzy Osbourne - The Ozzman Cometh
Paul McCartney - Wingspan: History
Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits
Pink Floyd - Meddle
Ringo Starr - Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr
Rod Stewart & The Faces - Gold
Rod Stewart & The Faces - The Best Of Faces: Good Boys When They're Asleep
Santana – Santana (III)
Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band - No Roses
Sly & The Family Stone - The Essential Sly & The Family Stone
Stevie Wonder - At The Close Of A Century
T. Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection
T. Rex – Electric Warrior
The Allman Brothers – Live At the Fillmore
The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up
The Byrds - VI: Final Approach
The Doors – L.A. Woman
The Ethiopians - Everything Crash: The Best of The Ethiopians
The Grateful Dead – The Grateful Dead
The Kinks - Celluloid Heroes
The Kinks – Muswell Hillbillies
The Kinks - Percy
The Kinks - The Kink Kronikles
The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks
The Rolling Stones - Singles Collection: The London Years
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
The Staple Singers - The Staple Swingers
The Staple Singers - The Very Best Of The Staple Singers
The Temptations - Psychedelic Soul
The Who - Pete Townshend - Lifehouse Elements
The Who - The Ultimate Collection
Traffic – The Low Spark of High Heel Boys
Traffic - Welcome To The Canteen
V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1
V/A - Hitsville U.S.A.
V/A - Kill Bill, Vol. 1
V/A - Pure Funk
V/A - Reservoir Dogs
V/A - Rushmore
V/A - Samba Soul 70!
Yes - The Yes Album

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