1001+ Albums: 60s Block 6

1001+ Albums: 

60s Block 6

The Beach Boys Today!

   Artist: The Beach Boys

   Year: 1965

       White suburban beach teen problems, brought to the fore with beautiful harmonies and perfect pop melodies. Sometimes it is unbearably drenched in white picket privilege perfection and obliviousness that comes with an easy life and sweet nothingness. Not that all music has to reflect some kind of struggle or pain, but it is so blindingly innocent at times when compared to the sex and drugs and rock n' roll beginning to form all around at the time. It's so... teeny. You can argue that there isn't much to separate it from the early Beatles of the same era, but there is this thing that is impossible for me to articulate about the way this music comes off. It isn't even that it's shallow (although it is, but so is lots of the music I listen to). Maybe it's just the Beach Boys. It doesn't even sound bad, it just brings me to a place I find it hard to identify with. An attitude completely devoid and naive to anything in life except holdin' hands and dreaming about getting married. It feels hypocritical to say and then turn around and call A Hard Day's Night a great album, but there is something there that comes off as less childish than what comes out of this piece. All that being said, I still liked it. Maybe I connect more to the world of teenage dreams and schmaltzy adolescent sentiments than I'd be comfortable admitting.

   Rating: C+

Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul

   Artist: Otis Redding

   Year: 1965

       An excellent run through of soul classics. There are many better versions of these songs, "Respect" has it's definitive version with Aretha Franklin, "My Girl' with the Temptation, "Wonderful World" with Sam Cooke, and even surprisingly "Satisfaction" with the Rolling Stones. However, these are all strong covers by Redding, not touching these above versions, but being pretty damn good anyhow. The others I don't know how many of which are original and how many are covers, but they are just as good as the above mentioned tracks. Consistently solid soul throughout. Redding is a great singer singing great songs, and it's hard to go wrong with that. It is so very nearly an A-, but I have to be as sparing with those as I can (an A obviously ever more rare), and it's not quite that good. 

   Rating: B+

Live at the Star Club Hamburg

   Artist: Jerry Lee Lewis

   Year: 1965

       This is rollicking, raving, rockin' and rollin' music steam trained by an unstoppable and insatiable Jerry Lee Lewis on fire at the piano. It nearly never slows down or pauses, going at a jet pace and blazing a trail through every song like a great ball of fire itself. Making the blues red hot and rocking. 

   Rating: B

A Love Supreme

   Artist: John Coltrane

   Year: 1965

       Unexpected vocals for a brief few seconds, echoing the refrain "a love supreme". Another solid jazz album, a genre that I'm beginning to understand as on different level (let it be known not a better one, just a different one) when compared to rock or soul or blue or pop or what have you. It's more like classical music than the more sing along variety of music in the book. In fact, why is there no classical? I guess all the guys who did that stuff were dead by now. It's hard to interpret jazz. All there is is mood (which is often complex) and there are (usually) no lyrics to point you in any particular direction. It isn't always obviously sad or obviously upbeat, as is mostly the case with classical which I've just compared it to. It's abstract and sophisticated, sometimes I worry too sophisticated for me to fully understand. But I'm learning. What I do know is this has a powerful, understated, towering, rolling thunder finale. I can picture Coltrane standing on the tallest building, playing as storm clouds gather in the distance before the rain starts.

   Rating: B+

Bringing It All Back Home

   Artist: Bob Dylan

   Year: 1965

       A sign of things to come, if not quite the explosion that comes in the next album. Initially causing an uproar among folkies but soon being regarded as a masterpiece by everyone else, this is where Dylan plugged in his electric guitar and made one of the boldest transformations in rock history. It isn't as big a departure as it is said to be though. The politics are still there to an extent, just this time less blunt, more masked by lyricism and seemingly stream of consciousness songwriting. And on the second side he picks up the acoustic again, only this time singing less about the masters of war and more about the tambourine man. I wouldn't look too hard to analogies and enjoy the vision.

   Rating: A-