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Post by raliverpool on Sept 8, 2012 16:43:26 GMT 1
Last week I worked on a comparison list that I would have come up with if I'd have done this concept thread, so basing it on the same criteria (a maximum 1 song per artist; no more than two songs in a calender year, and 5 songs per each 3 years) so far my list would be for the first 6 years & 10 songs: 1953 Hank Williams - Your Cheatin' Heart 1954 Muddy Waters - Hoochie Coochie Man www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAcDLZr6Gs1954 Bill Haley and His Comets - (We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock 1955 Little Richard - Tutti Frutti 1955 Lonnie Donegan - Rock Island Line 1956 Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel www.youtube.com/watch?v=PotB76gi2_41956 Johnny Cash - I Walk the Line www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHF9itPLUo41957 The Crickets - That'll Be the Day www.youtube.com/watch?v=XddniY5fhtY1958 Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8JULmUlGDA1958 The Everly Brothers - All I Have to Do Is Dream www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmVSoJ1F0eQI've posted the links to the tracks not duplicated in Vas' selections, already we've got a couple of agree with the artist but disagree with the song selections. To be fair it is evil deciding which songs to select, a list of 500 (very Rolling Stone magazine) or 1001 (very Dave Marsh, Robert Dimery) would be easier to do in this instance! As for Fats Domino, had I'd been able to select a third song for 1956 then Blueberry Hill would have been it; whilst Ain't That a Shame would have made 6th or 7th in 1955. It is certainly not going to be the last time a major act is going to fall foul of close but no cigar syndrome.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 9, 2012 10:44:01 GMT 1
500/1000 would have been too easy - and at the same time overwhelming, there's not much chance of persuading people to listen to so many tracks. I was very close to picking HH for Elvis, but went with HD because of the performance, which perhaps was the thing that pushed him into megastardom. I also went with PS rather than TBTD as it was a bit more anticipatory of later sound, the latter could have been done by a number of acts, the former not. 1960Connie Francis - Everybody's Somebody's FoolWith so much going on in the late fifties and early sixties, it's perhaps time to take a pause and remind ourselves of what, when 78s had been overtaken by 45s, was still shifting the most vinyl. Apart from Elvis, only two artists had two US number ones in 1960; the original Miss Dynamite, Little Brenda Lee, and Connie Francis. The latter had a handful of UK top five hits, whereas Brenda only had the one (albeit a stormer of a track, can you believe she was only 15? Look on and weep, Ms Lloyd), so the nod goes to Signorina Franconero. There is another reason. Connie Francis was perhaps the most global megastar of 1960, the other side of Elvis anyway. She had started off in showbiz thanks to her accordion-playing ability, that got her on kids' television show Startime when she was 11. Ironically once she was on the show they concentrated on her singing. She started off singing demos for music publishers until one decided she was good enough to get a deal on her own; after being turned down by everyone she ended up with a debut single because one of the songs on the demo tape to MGM was called "Freddie" and the AOR rep's son was (a) of that name and (b) had a birthday coming up. It took Concetta ten singles' worth of flops to make the chart with the retro "Who's Sorry Now", and "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" was originally penned as a country number, but recorded (in two takes - imagine that with the Fix Factor fartvoicers) as an uptempo pop song (ironically it made the country charts as well). But she didn't stop there. She had recorded an album of Italian songs, one of which ("Mama") is a Lost Number One, and gained massive sales in Europe; on a European tour she noticed that German artists could get big sales doing German-language versions of American tracks. So why not just do them herself? "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" was her first attempt at doing so; she re-recorded the song in German. The result? Best-selling song in Germany of the year. Even her English version popped in at the lower end. The end result was that she started to record most of her singles in numerous languages and sweep up the European market - and thus show two things, one, the European market was something worth pitching for, and two, there was a world outside Europe. Every number one in Germany in 1960, bar this particular single, was by a German, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss or French artist, and the most contemporary sounding of those was a weak cover of the Bryan Hyland crassic. It took a bit of time for the crack to become a flood, but half-a-decade later the German chart top was finally non-Deutscher territory - 22 weeks belonging to the British, another five to the Americans. Francis herself though was in the midst of a gigantic chart run. Having finally got going, from 1958 to 1962 she had sixteen US top ten singles, three of which were number one, and ten and two respectively in Britain. But this single represents the world that was finally about to be swept away. "Vacation" dropped from the US and UK top tens in the same September 1962 week, and since then she's never come close to such exalted heights... In sum: that girl belongs to yesterday
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 12, 2012 23:42:11 GMT 1
1961 - the year of two dynasties... The Marvelettes - Please Mr PostmanBerry Gordy was a hustler desperate to get rich quick. He had tried boxing and failed; he had tried pimping and failed. He had however a talent for networking and a bigger one for songwriting. Hanging around various Detroit nightspots got him an audience with Jackie Wilson's manager Al Green (not that one) and thence a couple of songs in Wilson's repertoire; one of them, " Lonely Teardrops", topped the R&B charts in 1958. But Gordy sussed out that his royalties were as nought compared to the sales the record made. So he decided that the next time he ought to look after that side of the business as well. His sisters had a concession in a nightclub owned by Green and lent him the money to start up a label he called Tamla (after the Debbie Reynolds hit "Tammy"), later surnamed Motown when the motor city became the American Merseybeat. A couple of early hits funded a studio; and late in 1960 a million-seller gained him influence. But at heart Gordy was still a pimp; he still knew the tricks of the trade. Trust no-one. Only his family was part of the set-up. Take them while they're hungry. His Detroit hometown was perfect, chock-full of those fleeing the south's segregation and previous dustbowls, hungry for success and a break, and willing to sign over everything. Including royalties. Make sure they're your family; some of those he signed up to his nascent label were married off to each other. (The one outsider permitted into this cabal was Smokey Robinson, and he called his children Berry and Tamla.) And if they break omerta, break them; Mary Wells had a number one hit in 1964, demanded more money as a result, and was dismissed. Never got higher than no. 34 again. You play her record, Gordy told the radio stations, and you won't get any of mine. Il don e mobile. But he had a new sweetheart by then. And what was the moneymaker for the pimp? Giving the people what they wanted. That is what Gordy could do. He stepped back from songwriting but moved instead into song suggestion; he could see what would turn a song into a hit and with his magic oofle dust could generate it. Motown had a phenomenal hit rate. Because Gordy was ruthless. Songwriters could work with an artist until there was a flop; then he'd shuffle the pack. It worked. Most labels worked on the basis that if one in twenty singles reached the top 20 that would pay for the failures. In 1964 Motown was getting one in ten singles in the US top ten. Two-thirds of Motown singles in the sixties became a US hit; a success rate no other label could hope to approach. April 1961 proved to be the charm. With perfect timing - The Shirelles had just topped the US chart with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", and remember the record industry is never looking for the Next Big Thing, but copies of The Last Big Thing - a trio of teenage girls who formed a singing group at school in a Michigan suburb auditioned for a Motown contract. They impressed enough to be allowed to record a Motown product song that one of their members had re-worded. It was released in August and tottered up and down the Billboard chart - until it started jumping unstoppably up. On the 11th December 1961 it became the first number one for Berry Gordy's label. And a dynasty had started. It wasn't quite the gold strike for this new-fangled girl group idea. That was yet to come. The Marvelettes' run at the top was not long. Too young and too much a flash in the pan to sustain success. After 1962 the baton was passed to the more worldly-wise and sensual Martha & The Vandellas. But after a promising start they had a couple of ill-timed flops. It meant that their biggest hit came when Gordy's affections had already been transformed to the tiny girl with the gigantic ambition. Motown's elite were writing for The Supremes. And I think it's fair to say that was that the right decision... In sum: gonna be startin' somethin'
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 13, 2012 18:02:01 GMT 1
And now the other... The Mar-Keys - Last NightIf you don't know the name, you'll know the tune. The Mar-Keys were anonymous session musicians for a small Memphis-based label called Satellite; unusually for Memphis, the sound was very different from country, as the chap who started the label, Jim Stewart, had tried that and failed. Indeed he failed so spectacularly that he had to ask his married sister to re-mortgage so that he could try again. Her name? Estelle Axton. Some of you may already have seen where this ends. In 1959 Satellite put out a record by a local vocal group called The Veltones. It made Stewart his first money; a $500 fee for distribution rights. But having made money with something a little more soulful Stewart continued in that vein. A DJ called Rufus Thomas, who had had a number of flop singles, turned up with a demo he'd recorded with his daughter Carla. To curry favour with the local black community Stewart put it out, it came to the ear of Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, and he, bored with the conventional east coast sound, decided to take a punt on Stewart's small operation. With extra funding for a nationwide push, Stewart and Axton needed a single. Axton's son Packy was the saxophonist of a band called The Royal Spades and they were brought in to have a go; Estelle Axton suggested a name-change to The Mar-Keys and they put down a brass-dominated slowpoke of a record that climbed into the US top five. And required another name change. Satellite had already been used by a California label, so Stewart and Axton used the first two letters of their surname. Stax. The Mar-Keys never had another substantial hit, but they did attract other musicians to them. Those who did not want to shift from Memphis, and black musicians who had been overlooked for years. Stewart and Axton only saw one colour - green - and happily signed them up. Eventually Stax had its own house bands; Axton Jr forming The Packers, the brass section forming The Memphis Horns, and most of the rest forming Booker T. & The MGs. The latter two were certainly legendary under their own achievements, but even more so backing the other acts Stax signed - Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and, eventually, that torn velvet voice of Otis Redding. One of the players on this record was Isaac Hayes, who would become Stax' biggest success, but also would help to break the label, as his extravagant pay did not match his mid-seventies' sales; nevertheless, for much of the sixties, Stax vied with Motown for the top of the charts and is far too over-looked thanks to the element of airplay which favoured the poppier sound. Perhaps the best reflection of the importance of Stax is that both Lennon and McCartney were fans of Booker T. Jones and MG Duck Dunn - and it is surely fitting that, as Motown's studio was called Hitsville USA, Stax' in Memphis was called Soulsville USA. In sum: making hay, Stax
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 14, 2012 19:42:10 GMT 1
1962Ray Cathode - Time BeatThe a-side is quite important, but the b-side, "Waltz In Orbit" which follows, is perhaps even more so. With this single we have a very early dip into some very deep waters - in more ways than one. Parlophone Records was a bit of a joke within the EMI empire. There were a few serious artists assigned to it, but generally it was for novelties; the Obenkirchen Children's Choir, Jimmy Shand's uber-Scotsness, Bernard Cribbins and so on. A young producer called George Martin had been nominated as head of the label and he was given free rein to mess around in the studio with experiments. One of his experiments involved sampling a time signal created by Maddalena Fagandini, a jingle writer at the BBC. And one of the early recruits to its new sound creation department - the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Fagandini applied various modernist musical techniques, musique concrete, Shostakovich and so on, to create interesting sounds, and worked closely with the legendary Delia Derbyshire, the latter reaching her peak the next year with the Doctor Who theme. But first - indeed the first release from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - came "Time Beat" and "Waltz In Orbit", the latter in particular replete with electronic experimentation. Not quite synth, at least not yet, but mixing tape speeds, double-tracking and manipulating sound on sound to create something a little unusual. The fruit this seed would eventually bear would be prolific. Not long after this single George Martin was the last port of call for a desperate bunch of Mersey lads and their shot at fame. That will come shortly. But Martin had his new toy as well, and would use some of the techniques he learned when under the name Ray Cathode on some of the later Beatle output, starting with Revolver, as Martin played "Time Beat" for McCartney when working on the album - and thus influence the world. It wasn't the first electronic single, Joe Meek of course was producing groundbreaking work - The Blue Men (" I Hear A New World" came close to inclusion, but it was never a single, only the top track of an EP) and The Tornados for example - but whereas those songs were post-modernist in outlook, being contemporary sounds played electronically, Ray Cathode was a far more experimental and technically ambitious project. And of course how many people got some inspiration from the Beeb and its radiophones? Doctor Who alone has spawned a hatful of hits... In sum: tomorrow never knows
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 15, 2012 10:26:46 GMT 1
Prince Buster & The Blue Beats - Independence SongIn 1960 the Cuban-born Jamaican singer Laurel Aitken moved to the UK. The London label Melodisc signed him up as he was well-known to the nascent, and growing, Jamaican community in the UK, and put out " Mary Lee" as a single. It was a success, albeit on a very localized level. As a direct result of this, Melodisc's Emile Shalit decided to create a sub-label to be the home of Aitken's style of music; a fusion of rock and roll and blues, with the emphasis on the offbeat, creating a bouncy and jerky effect. The label was called Blue Beat, and pretty much created the ska scene in the United Kingdom. Over the next few years Blue Beat put out literally hundreds of singles, but only one made the chart; "Al Capone", by this particular chap, Cecil Campbell, aka Prince Buster. Whose influence on the ska scene can be shown by all sorts of things. His name, for a start; that spawned a Madness hit and a Bad Manners singer's pseudonym. Then two other songs spawned two other hitmakers' names - the aforementioned Madness and Judge Dread. And many of the later ska-volution acts covered his prodigious output. This though was his first release for Blue Beat Records, the fons et origo of a movement that would become stronger and stronger over the next decades, and kicked off the run of UK black music. Ska at first, then slowed down into rocksteady and slowed down more - and often politicized or socialized - into reggae, or romanticized into lovers rock. And despite a slow start (and many flops on a national scale - perhaps a legacy of chart sampling? I am guessing inner city specialist shops were under-represented) the genre picked up massive momentum, as it crossed over from the Windrush generation to the Beatle generation; by the end of the decade Desmond Dekker & The Aces were topping the chart. And it all came from the success of Blue Beat. Indeed its influence was even stronger than that; obviously many pop acts incorporated its style - think of "O Bla Di O Bla Da" for instance - and many of the sixties classics provide the bass or beat for later samples, plus some of the musicians found work as guests or session players (on this record, and b-side, the trombone of Rico Rodriguez, who topped the charts with The Specials, is prominent). And Glen Matlock and John Lydon grew up in communities with a large immigrant population - immersed in the sound... In sum: Kingston on Thames
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 16, 2012 15:25:40 GMT 1
1963
The Beatles - She Loves You
I suppose I could write a few paragraphs of screed explaining why.
But there wouldn't be much point, would there?
In sum: bigger than Jesus
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Post by Shireblogger on Sept 16, 2012 16:44:20 GMT 1
I tip my hat to some of this week's choices.
Connie Francis struck me as an odd selection, but I see where you're coming from with this one.
Delighted to see you in at the start with Stax. I'd have picked "Green Onions", but we're splitting hairs.
Ray Cathode is the first track you've selected that I'd never heard (or heard of) before, so thanks for that.
And Prince Buster is as good a representation of early Jamaican music as any.
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Post by Shireblogger on Sept 16, 2012 17:03:25 GMT 1
And despite a slow start (and many flops on a national scale - perhaps a legacy of chart sampling? I am guessing inner city specialist shops were under-represented) the genre picked up massive momentum. Its often postulated, and sometimes asserted, that the reason black artists were relatively uncommon in the British charts during the 1960s was because of unrepresentative sampling of music stores. I've no evidence on this one way or the other, although with all of the music press being based in London, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if inner city music stores were actually over-represented. However, I do know that people of Caribbean origin made up less than 1% of the British population in 1961 and 1971. And they typically had less disposable income than the national average, at a time when singles and albums were a relatively expensive purchase. Consequently, I don't think it is remotely surprising that artists who only appealed to immigrants from the Caribbean did not feature in the UK Top 30 or Top 50 charts during the 1960s. Economic factors and the niche appeal to a small minority of the population would have meant low sales until Chris Blackwood stepped in and started promoting Jamaican music to a wider audience. Incidentally, does anyone know why there aren't Bollywood soundtracks and singles in the UK charts on a regular basis these days ? People of Indian subcontinent origin make up a much higher proportion of the UK population today than blacks did in the 1960s, and they are more economically active too. Presumably the demographic that spends the most on music is more attracted to American & European pop, r'n'b, dance and rock than it is to music that was created in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka ?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 18, 2012 9:07:20 GMT 1
I did think about "Green Onions", it was pretty much a toss-up, after all the bands were pretty similar, but I went with "Last Night" because it came first and launched the Stax sound. Plus "Green Onions" is probably a bit more familiar - at least by name.
As far as bhangra goes, judging by Walsall balti houses the vendors will not exactly be chart registered.
The Ronettes - Be My Baby
Glasvegas. Camera Obscura. The Pipettes. The Vivian Girls. The Jesus & Mary Chain. Jan & Dean. Girls, Bruce Springsteen, Concrete Blonde, REM, Depeche Mode, The Horrors, Meat Loaf. And dozens and dozens of others.
Influenced by this record? Even tighter. Influenced by this record's introduction. The most iconic drumbeat in music history.
Created by Hal Blaine, one of the greatest session musicians in history and holder of the record of most US number 1 hits. This was one of his forty or so, topping the Cashbox charts for the 12th October 1963.
And the influence does not stop there - the sound of the single has been imitated, but never bettered, by dozens of acts ever since.
The Wall of Sound was created by a former singer with The Teddy Bears, Phil Spector, who wrote, produced and played guitar on throwaway single called "To Know Him Is To Love Him" on a shoestring budget. It topped the US charts; his first number one. And he was still a teenager.
The Teddy Bears never followed up with such success (although Annette Kleinbard wrote the number one "Gonna Fly Now", the theme from Rocky), and Spector concentrated on production and songwriting. It was as he was experimenting in a Los Angeles studio with an echo chamber that he hit upon his magic formula; layering track on top of track with veritable orchestras of session musicians, very different from his initial success, until the entire 45 seemed to be filled with a tsunami of pop that overwhelmed and enervated the eardrums.
Spector was working towards it throughout 1963, having his songs fronted by singers he could trust, such as Darlene Love (who recorded with three entities - The Crystals, The Blossoms and Bob B Soxx & The Blue Jeans), and by the time he flew the real Crystals from New York he had more or less perfected it. The first real Wall of Sound success was "Da Doo Ron Ron", a headlong rush of pure adrenalin, but he reached the absolute acme with a song written with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich.
The group presented with the song had started off as dancers in the Peppermint Ballroom in New York, home of Joey Dee's US number one "Peppermint Twist". Gradually the girls were given basic pop songs to cover whilst dressed thigh-slit skirts and exuding sexuality. The girl group was in; The Shirelles and Marvelettes had led the way, but in 1962 and 1963 number one hits in the US charts had also been scored by The Chiffons, The Angels, The Jaynettes and The Crystals (really The Blossoms in disguise), and The Dixie Cups, The Shangri-Las, and, of course, The Supremes would follow in 1964. The girl group sound even survived Beatlemania. So it was no surprise that three gorgeous young ladies would be signed up to a cheapo deal.
Spector clocked them - well, their lead singer, anyway - and enticed them away from their dead-end chartlessness, and took them to Cali; whereas Estelle Bennett and her cousin Nedra Talley were not great vocalists, Estelle's sister Veronica was astonishing. She could carry them through the Wall.
Spector's obsession with getting the sound right was in direct contrast to his initial foray into the charts. The Wall of Sound for this one was only nailed on the 42nd take...but my God was it worth it.
Sadly we know the line between madness and genius is thin and easily crossed, but that does not detract from this, a candidate for the greatest single ever released. Proving too that the single could be a genuine work of art, rather than a throwaway fashion item, and should be treated as such. And its influence would be profound - a young Californian called Brian Wilson would listen obsessively to try to capture its magic...
In sum: teenage symphony to God
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Post by Shireblogger on Sept 18, 2012 17:40:47 GMT 1
How tough was it to select a Phil Spector track ? I'd have struggled to decide which one to pick.
Da Doo Ron Ron, Today I Met The Boy I'm Gonna Marry, Then He Kissed Me, Baby I Love You...all date from the same time as Be My Baby, all are sublime, and all would be worthy inclusions.
Or, you could have gone for the more sophisticated, mid-60s Wall Of Sound tracks, such as River Deep Mountain High, or a Righteous Brothers single.
What I'm saying is, I'm glad its not me doing this list, cause I don't think I'd be able to make up my mind.
For me, the most important, most creative producer of all time. Bar none.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 19, 2012 17:19:38 GMT 1
How tough was it to select a Phil Spector track ? I'd have struggled to decide which one to pick. Certainly Spector's output is close to unparallelled, but when taking an overview it's not so difficult; matching tracks to years automatically eliminated a large number (as I have better candidate singles for most) and I just HAD to acknowledge THAT drumbeat and THAT voice... 1964The Sonics - The WitchThe who? No, that's a different band. The Sonics never had a hit single, or album; they had three goes with this, their debut single, but it never managed to hit a national chart. It was however a breakout in Seattle, not far from their Tacoma hometown. Seattle. That might be the clue as to why I included this one. This single has a shoutout at being the first-ever punk single; I would not go so far - there is a danger of anachronizing it - but I would certainly claim it to be one of, if not the, first garage singles. No, not THAT garage...but the primarily American movement of back-to-basics rock sound, influenced by some of the rootsier British Invasion acts like The Kinks and the rawer domestic sounds like The Kingsmen. Later taken to the top of the charts by the likes of ? & The Mysterians and Paul Revere & The Raiders, but which was more a transitional genre, taking rock towards hard rock, punk and metal. But it gave a lot of musicians their start in the business; a sort of US analogue of skiffle. Defiantly lo-fi and defiantly defiant, The Sonics were almost as much about attitude as about music; uncompromising on stage, confrontational and energetic, their lack of success and briefness of their sixties run did not fall on stony ground. Many acts have claimed a direct influence from The Sonics; apart from many of the grunge acts that grew up listening to the local sound, Jack White has claimed The Sonics helped inspire him to start music, and even an ornery old curmudgeon like Mark E Smith has to doff the metaphorical, with The Fall covering their "Strychnine". Their lack of success incidentally was in part indirectly due to Phil Spector; for their third album, they left the Pacific NW to try to break nationally, and recorded in Hollywood with Spector's engineer Larry Levine. However Levine knocked off the rough edges and produced a more polished sound (listen to this for example), which was exactly the wrong direction to go. An earthier and bluesier sound was more in demand by then (think of Joe Cocker or Janis Joplin for example) and The Sonics lost their chance to make themselves known on their own account. Vietnam broke up the band, although they have re-formed recently for occasional chicken-in-a-basket gigs. In sum: garage service
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Post by raliverpool on Sept 19, 2012 18:37:58 GMT 1
Here is my latest batch of 10 songs from 1959 - 1964: We agreed on two, and we went down the same route for a few but just selected different tracks: 1959 Ray Charles - What I'd Say www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTIP_FOdq24 (original Atlantic Soul & a riff later nicked by The Doors) 1959 The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You www.youtube.com/watch?v=63nlhoda2MY (the best Doo-Wop record ever made IMO) 1960 Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uqCocIh3_o (Motown) 1960 Folkes Brothers - Oh Carolina www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxgS4WVAWRQ (produced by Prince Buster, Trojan records in its infancy) 1961 Patsy Cline - Crazy www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-wJNpWgss8 (the greatest country & western record ever) 1962 Booker T. & The MG's - Green Onions www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7QSMyz5rg (the sound of Stax records and a Mod classic) 1962 The Tornados - Telstar www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuA-fqKCiAE (written & produced by the maverick genius Joe Meek, featuring an array of innovative use of taped and electronic sounds, and a UK transtlantic #1 smash hit just over a year before that band from Liverpool) 1963 The Ronettes - Be My Baby (Spector's Wall of Sound, an iconic girlgroup anthem, and that drumbeat) 1963 The Beatles - She Loves You (this really needs no explanation) 1964 Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaNzxniXxYE (written by the King Of Soul after hearing Dylan's Blowing In The Wind (a bit of a giveaway what song I'm going to use in my next batch of 10), this anthem came to exemplify the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement.)
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 20, 2012 18:06:57 GMT 1
1965James Brown & The Famous Flames - Papa's Got A Brand New BagOne thing with which R&B struggled was the album. A bit of a luxury purchase, and one which record companies had not really bothered with that much, the medium in the States had largely been confined to film soundtracks, comedians and acts that cat's-eyes would look on and think "hm, a bit too middle of the road for me". The extra expense involved was not worth it. Until in 1963 a singer had a great idea. Hitherto, James Brown had been a fairly conventional r&b singer; by the middle of that year he had racked up nine r&b top tens, including the number one " Try Me", which, but for the diamond-in-the-rough voice on it, could have been a song of Sam Cooke or The Penguins or any of the other doo-wop artistes of the period. But he had not crossed over to white audiences at all. Of his first 24 Hot 100 charting singles, he had touched no. 18 with a Perry Como cover, but otherwise he was in the chart wilderness. But what Brown knew was that he was a blistering live performer. Vinyl could not really contain him. So he decided to release a live recording. His label, King Records, were not that interested; a loss leader, surely? So Brown paid for it himself, and for a few nights late in 1962 he had a series of concerts at the Apollo Theater in New York City recorded, spliced together the choicest cuts, and out of nowhere had a million selling album. It was off the back of that that "Prisoner Of Love" became his first top twenty hit, but it took another couple of years to become REALLY big. And required a change in sound. His live shows were always more raw than on record, he choreographed a careful under-an-hour routine that he could manipulate for variety, and indeed had to; his sales market was limited but by constantly changing his performances he could command a repeat audience. And in doing so he evolved his sound away from soulful rock (or rocking soul) into something very different. An injection of horns, guitar sting and strut, with emphasis on the very first note per string, caught on in a way that had hitherto eluded him; recording the single in an hour - and Brown's vocals were done in one take - kept some of its live vibrancy. The sound became known as funk and fireballed across the music firmament. At the 25th time of asking he had a US top ten; the follow-up, "I Got You (I Feel Good)", would give him his first - and only - US number one. In the r&b market though Brown was untouchable. PGABNB was his second chart-topper there and remained there for 8 weeks; fifteen more r&b number ones would follow, as well as 60 top tens, 100 top forties and 118 r&b chart hits overall. The sound caught on elsewhere and informed the development of music, especially in the black market, afterwards, the likes of Sly Stone taking it towards stratospheric sales heights, and also informing political music later in the sixties, as many began to assert their hitherto-denied rights. And helped to usher in a whole host of new genres over the next couple of decades. In sum: get the funk out
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 21, 2012 20:10:47 GMT 1
Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling StoneDylan is one of the most obvious choices for the list; he basically re-invented and re-cast folk music for the sixties generation and kicked off the protest movement that has resonated ever since. And a unique artist in a number of ways. Perhaps the first to rely more on the album as a piece than single; one of the first who had greater success as a songwriter than performer; the first real bootleg (the Great White Wonder) was made from tapes of him jamming with The Band; he even has a shout for the first promo video with the much-imitated "Subterranean Homesick Blues". The main problem with Dylan was which record to choose. Indeed should I even have put in a Dylan song? He had more success covered than with his own idiosyncratic vocal tones, The Byrds' near-flawless version of "Mr Tambourine Man" giving him a transatlantic chart-topper, and The Hollies' finest moments on vinyl in an underrated career coming with an album's worth of Dylan covers - one of the first tribute albums. But I thought it best for the man himself to appear. And with that, what song? The acoustic "Times Are A-Changing", setting out the new folk agenda? Or his more successful electric era? Perhaps some of his later country sounds? Even one of his contemporary hits? Hm. To get a better flavour of the sixties, better to go with one of his influential songs. But then again which one? The aforementioned pop promo? How about the much-banned jugband clomp of "Rainy Day Women" for its pretty overt invitation to drug indulgence? Perhaps - but the main difficulty was finding something on youtube; evidently the copyright Nazis have been crawling over the Dylanthology. Fortunately I found this one. His finest, surely. And at over six minutes the first epic (as opposed to Epic) single. The lead track from Highway 61 Revisited, his tribute to Woody Guthrie, LARS gave him his first US top thirty single; indeed it rose all the way to the very top in Cashbox (just ahead of Barry McGuire, on whom Dylan was a direct influence) and to 2 in Billboard. And it kickstarted his career in more ways than one. Tired of performing following a long European tour (two consequences of which were that Dylan managed to replace himself on top of the UK album charts and occupied 25% of the listings), Dylan had more or less given up on music, then inspiration struck, and he wrote a dozen pages of potential lyrics, out of which he culled this masterpiece... In sum: get the folk out
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 22, 2012 11:11:54 GMT 1
1966The Beach Boys - Good VibrationsArms race. The Beatles had cracked the mainstream and then took it with them into different directions. More experimental at times, showing just what you could do with a pop song. And carried along with it was Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys had been a stellar set of harmonizing musicians who had turned surf music into a global phenomenon; but their main creative engine wanted to take it further. There were signs there before. "The Little Girl I Once Knew" did the impossible - it stopped the music before continuing, which barred it from radio play as the DJs were embarrassed into interrupting. More adventurously the opening bars of "California Girls" were dreamily languid, before the convention of fast-paced surf was slowed down into a sweet sunset sound. The Beach Boys were not simply a good time party band; there was something deeper going on. So Brian Wilson was given studio time to try something more. Unfortunately Capitol Records could not wait. After all, it had been four whole months since the last album (seriously - in the three years to the end of 1965 the band had put out ten albums, so a four month gap was above average). So what did they do? Put out an album that showed The Beach Boys as simply a good time party band; the faux-live Beach Boys Party! with Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean dropping in for a "spontaneous" jam session. It was pretty much the worst thing Capitol could have done. OK, they had a top ten out of it, but in the studio Wilson was creating something that would be perhaps the greatest album ever recorded. And the world was not only not ready for it. The world had been cheated. When Pet Sounds came out, the public thought it would be another good time party album; the evolution had been interrupted and its intensely layered sound, personal feelings and unsurpassed texture was years ahead of expectations. A confused American audience sent it to no. 10 in the Billboard charts, the third lowest peak of their 12 albums; and one of those was the toe-in-the-water debut. At least the UK, somewhat ahead of the game, treated it better, for the three weeks until Revolver came out it was the no. 1 artist album. A first for the band. As part of the sessions Wilson toyed around with another track, that would be finalized in the sessions for the follow-up album Smile - which eventually came out last year...originally the lyrics were written by Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher, but Wilson's fellow BB Mike Love was not into the LSD-induced scene in which Wilson was becoming immersed and decided to re-write them. A good job, in fact; Love's lyrics for this song were far better than Parks' unusually trite script. Wilson had been inspired by Phil Spector; he reportedly broke down when he first heard "Be My Baby" and played it repeatedly while trying to recapture and meld the Wall of Sound with surf music. Pet Sounds was the album masterpiece; "Good Vibrations" the single. It was the most expensive ever recorded, costing $50,000 at the time, over a third of a million bucks in today's money, taking 6 months and 17 sessions, each of which produced a smorgasbord of sound that Wilson mixed together to make a coherent whole. And in doing so somehow Wilson managed to confine the Wall into a laserbeam of sound, with vocals recorded, re-recorded and over-recorded so that the band sounded like a choir, a new-fangled theremin was inveigled into carrying the chorus, and it became the Beach Boys' first transatlantic number one single. The single was the absolute ultimate in what could be done in the studio. It was the Bugatti Veyron, the Guernica, the Pantheon; the ne plus ultra of recorded music. The difficulty was that, having achieved perfection, Wilson could go no further; the comparative failure of Pet Sounds and the release of Revolver saw him try to go even better and that tipped him into madness. The Beatles were on a more even keel and managed to use Pet Sounds as a springboard for Sgt Pepper. Even so, this single is the most remarkable monument to one man's mind-shattering talent. In sum: teenage symphony from God
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 23, 2012 12:13:14 GMT 1
1967The Rolling Stones - Let's Spend The Night TogetherWhen The Beatles hit, everyone was looking for the next Beatles. Especially Dick Rowe at Decca who famously missed out on The Beatles - which is dreadfully unfair, as the circumstances were not propitious and Parlophone sort of fell into creating history - but George Harrison was sufficiently sympathetic to Rowe, and a little guilty that, at the infamous New Year audition The Beatles were not at their best, to tip Rowe off about a band Harrison rated. A rawbones sounding blues outfit from London. The Rolling Stones. The Stones were not the next Beatles, they were more of an anti-Beatles; as the two bands generated their reputation, the Fab Four were seen as the cute and cuddly moptops with a cheeky line in side humour. The kind of boys you wouldn't mind your daughter marrying. The Stones? Heh. As rivalries go, it was friendly, at least as far as the bands themselves were concerned; they had different markets, and The Beatles not only gave The Stones an offcut to cover, Lennon and McCartney appeared on the odd Stones track later. But manager Loog Oldham wanted his charges to create their own path, and more or less locked singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards in a room together and told them not to come out until they had written songs. And they did. Which elevated the Stones from coverbanddom just at the right time... The Stones always sounded more rootsy than The Beatles, and kept that hard driving rock sound throughout the sixties, whereas the Fab Four explored different directions; by the time The Stones tried experimenting in late 1967 it was not quite right. Sacking Oldham as manager and trying to produce Their Satanic Majesties Request was a mistake; they went back to their fons et origo sound but as the sixties faded they ended up more mainstream. And the decade ended with disaster - the Altamont concert where Hell's Angels overturned the hippie dream and the death of the wayward genius Brian Jones. But just for now they were right at their peak. In truth I could have included practically any Stones single from 1964 onwards, there would have been a logic for any of them, but I went with this one, even though it was not a big hit. Primarily because it fits in perfectly with the Nasty image. But just watch that performance; nearly fifty years ago ( ), and they don't look particularly dangerous, but can you think of any contemporary act that can match that self-confidence, brutal ability or stage presence? Banned everywhere for its single-entendre lyrics, it was flipped in the States to be a b-side for "Ruby Tuesday", which became their fourth number one single there; in the UK they had already racked up seven, albeit there would only be a couple to go, and on the album side of things they were, indeed still are, in an incredible run. LSTNT was from Between The Buttons, which in the States was their 8th of 24 consecutive top ten albums (and if one takes into account studio albums only, Stateside the Stones' top five record is 24 out of 25, only their debut missing out), and in the UK they've never had a studio album peak lower than 6. That run though is in itself interesting; the Stones have not had a top ten single in the UK since 1981, nor in the US since 1989, yet they are still one of the biggest grossing bands on the planet, continually. The singles chart has long left the province of the music lover and instead has become the province of the fashionista... In sum: not fading away
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Post by Shireblogger on Sept 23, 2012 17:27:44 GMT 1
One glance at your 4 most recent choices, and you remember immediately how the mid-60s were so important for music - possibly the most influential 5 years ever. A faultless selection, vas.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 23, 2012 19:00:42 GMT 1
Thanks - although these were fairly easy, in that they had SUCH an influence on music thenceforth. It was a question of which to choose, and with The Beach Boys at least I don't think I really had an option.
One thing of note before the next one comes along. 1966 was the year of Revolver, Blonde On Blonde, Aftermath and Pet Sounds; so what do you think the Grammy committee chose as the best contemporary rock and roll recording?
The record that best encapsulated the R&R sound of 1966 for future generations?
One of those above? Maybe something by Simon & Garfunkel, whose Sounds Of Silence came out that year? Other epochal works by the likes of The Who, or The Seeds, or Mitch Ryder, or Mamas & Papas, or Donovan?
No. They chose this one.
I doubt belief could ever be so beggared.
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Post by Earl Purple on Sept 23, 2012 19:12:47 GMT 1
1961 - the year of two dynasties... ... April 1961 proved to be the charm. With perfect timing - The Shirelles had just topped the US chart with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", ... and I'd rather you'd picked that song, or maybe I would have picked it.
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