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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 31, 2017 3:49:54 GMT -5
The What Have You Listened To Lately Thread should be taken literally. The Robo Dan Underground Thread is buried deep and mostly focused on punk rock. So here's an all-encompassing thread for music lovers, of any genre, to contain your thoughts on things such as
Reviews
History
Observations
Questions
Analysis
Concerts
Music News and Upcoming Releases
Musician and Band Profiles
and more. From your favorite kettle drum player to ugliest album cover.
I'll continue my review of 1967 Pop music here and look forward to your contributions as well
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2017 4:33:08 GMT -5
Ok, so three of my favorite album covers of all time...purely based on the cover art, not the music...  and inside...    I have a special fondness for album art from the 70s and 80s when vinyl was the primary format for music, and the visual presentation of the album cover art was part of the marketing process for the albums themselves. I could post dozens if not hundreds of album covers I adore, but chose these three as a representative sample. As for the music, side one of Queen's News of the World was a staple of my middle school and junior high listening, but I rarely if ever flipped over to side 2. Astra is not one of the Asia albums that I particularly like, but it's the best cover of their stuff (although I am fond of the art on Aqua too). I liked their first 2 albums, with John Wetton as the frontman, but the later stuff that was mostly Geoff Downs driven is far less appealing to me. Bitches Brew has it's moments, and I like a lot of Miles Davis stuff, but it's not the first or even the second or third Davis album I would reach for if I wanted to hear some Miles. But I can look at these three covers all day every day and appreciate them all the more. -M |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 31, 2017 5:24:04 GMT -5
1967-The Lead Up
Should have posted this before what I wrote up concerning January 1967 back on the What Are You Listening Thread. But that presumes I know what I'm doing. Anyway, I earlier mentioned how FM rock radio stations began to emerge and blossom by 1967. I also touched upon the various trends of the 1960's in Pop music before that year as well. But it wasn't all peaches and cream. There were 3 events that come to mind that cast a shadow on the popularity of Rock music at the tail end of 1966
1-The Beatles
August 29th, 1966 The Beatles played at Candlestick Park. It would be the last concert they would preform, vowing to themselves to never go back on tour for many legitimate reasons. In fact, they were utterly exhausted by this point with the constant travelling, recording, movie making, interviews, photo sessions and press conferences-non stop for a number of years. So a vacation was desperately needed
There were no further record releases from The Beatles for the balance of the year. January 1967 was barren as well. This was quite a difference from the amount of music they provided since they made it on the charts. Rumors began to swirl about The Beatles breaking up. When reporters caught up with a member, it was denied but rumors are hard to quash when no records were coming out and no public appearances by the group.
2-Bob Dylan
By 1966, Bob Dylan was a superstar and considered the Voice Of His Generation. He had 3 Top 10 albums between March 1965 and May 1966
He had 3 Top 10 singles during that period as well ( Like A Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street, Rainy Day Women 12 & 35). He was now selling out huge concert venues.
Then on July 29th, 1966 he had a motorbike accident near his home in Woodstock, NY. The extent of injuries were never made official since no doctor was called and he did not check into a hospital. But he disappeared from the public spotlight. Totally. No recording were forthcoming for 16 months
3-The Monkees
Corporate America took notice on how much money Rock music was generating since The Beatles took off. Which means they had to figure a way to cash in even bigger than before. So ABC TV created their own rock band through a casting call that ultimately settled on young actors,
stage performers and just one legitimate musician. They were given the songs by the best writers from the Brill Building like Tommy Bryce and Bobby Hart, Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Studio musicians played the instruments on the albums instead of The Monkees themselves. And no publicity was ever better than having your own weekly TV show which spotlighted 2 or 3 songs per episode. The show debuted in September of 1966. The initial album zoomed to #1 around the world as well as it's single Last Train To Clarksville
The teenybopper magazines fawned over them but the more mature rock press that existed then dismissed them as fakes and sell outs. Other musicians gave them little respect and their was obvious jealousy between how hard they had to work for a living compared to having fame and fortune handed to you on a plate. Without a doubt, The Monkee phenomenon was Rock's biggest controversy
And of course the real world was having it's own problems too. 1966 saw the War In Vietnam and America's involvement escalate. By the end of the year close to 400,000 U.S. troops were in Nam. The compulsory student draft was on every teen's mind. The Civil Rights movement was also heating up across the nation. Between riots and protests dealing with race and student demonstrations against the war, 1966 streets in the big cities were quite active. Tensions in the Middle East were making headlines and war seemed inevitable
1966 would look like a picnic compared to what was to come
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 31, 2017 5:31:29 GMT -5
Before leaving January 1967 ,here are some other highlights from that month
The Doors release their 1st album, simply titled The Doors
The Rolling Stones appear on the Ed Sullivan show and forced to change the lyric to their single Let's Spend The Night Together to Let's Spend Some Time Together
The Byrds release their single So You Wanna Be A Rock N Roll Star
20,000 people gather at S.F.'s Golden Gate Park for a free concert with The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver
The Rolling Stones release their new single Ruby Tuesday
Next up will be a look at February 1967
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 31, 2017 8:10:14 GMT -5
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 2, 2017 3:59:04 GMT -5
50 Years Ago Today- Week 1 February 1967
Once again, for the 6th straight week, The Monkees' I'm A Believer remains at the top of the charts. What certainly helped was the flip side of that single. Monkee hardcore rock
Debuting into the top 10 was this song, ultimately selling a million copies. Keith, as he was known, was a one-hit wonder. I remember reading rumors that he wound up getting drafted and killed in Vietnam to explain his disappearance. Thanks to the internet, I now know that was false
This song broke into the top 20 and the lyric's certainly captured the times
This classic was about to drop off the charts. let me post it before it disappears
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 2, 2017 10:06:28 GMT -5
An album I always wanted for the cover art. Never heard one song by the group. Still haven't.  |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 2, 2017 10:12:41 GMT -5
An album I always wanted for the cover art. Never heard one song by the group. Still haven't. Excellent San Francisco band from the late sixties. Their best known song would be this. And I know you've heard it |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 2, 2017 12:29:45 GMT -5
Jukeboxes still fascinate me.  |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,197 
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Post by Confessor on Feb 2, 2017 19:09:02 GMT -5
An album I always wanted for the cover art. Never heard one song by the group. Still haven't. Yeah, that's a great album cover. It was designed by George Hunter, who was an artist and member of fellow San Franciscan psychedelic band, The Charlatans. Interestingly, in the same year (1969) Hunter also designed the cover for the debut album by another SF group, It's A Beautiful Day, and it appears that both album covers feature the same lady...  I like Quicksilver Messenger Service quite a bit, but Happy Trails isn't their best album by a long chalk. It's mostly recorded live and consists of a length jam on Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love", which takes up the whole of side 1 of the original LP. Side 2 then features a 7 minute rendition of Diddley's "Mona", meaning that most of the album has the same, chuggy "Bo Diddley beat" to it. Now, while I like Bo Diddley as much as the next guy, the over-reliance on his distinctive "beat" renders this album quite a monotonous listen. Quicksilver's self-titled debut album is a much better listen, but my absolute favourite song of theirs is the Dino Valenti penned, counter-culture anthem "What About Me?" Great lyrics in this and they're still sadly very relevant... This song was released in 1971 and gives lie to the oft-repeated "fact" that the trouble at the Altamont festival in December 1969 brought the Hippie movement to an end. Now, while Altamont may have symbolically represented the beginning of the end of the Hippie era, even a cursory look at what was going on in the youth movement, rock music or fashion in 1970 and 1971 will show you that the counter-culture was still alive and well, although it had become ever more militant and less "peace, love & flowers". As far as I can see, it's not until about 1973 that the Hippie era really began to wind down in a major way. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 2, 2017 19:57:04 GMT -5
As far as I can see, it's not until about 1973 that the Hippie era really began to wind down in a major way. Yep, just in time for me to graduate high school and start college in 1974. I could still find underground comix in head shops at that point, but it was a visibly dwindling scene and a few years later they were all gone. |
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Post by berkley on Feb 2, 2017 20:06:10 GMT -5
I too often used to see that Quicksilver Messenger Service album cover with the cowboy but had never knowingly heard a song of theirs until now - I don't remember having hearing the one Ish posted, haven't played the Confessor's video yet (will do so after the cd I'm listening to is finished).
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 3, 2017 1:11:59 GMT -5
As far as I can see, it's not until about 1973 that the Hippie era really began to wind down in a major way. Yep, just in time for me to graduate high school and start college in 1974. I could still find underground comix in head shops at that point, but it was a visibly dwindling scene and a few years later they were all gone. It was my observation, back then before social media and the internet, that many cultural trends would start either on the East or West coast in the U.S. and slowly catch on into Middle America. By 1973/1974 the hippie movement began to decline in NY and California and segue way into the Disco era. Which kind of made sense as the original hippies were now growing a bit older and had jobs and families to support. Plus the Vietnam issue that bound them was at an end. However in middle America, young kids were now long hairs Altamont was seen more as a quick end to the Woodstock dream of giant crowds living together non-violently for days on end and sharing with each other. Not so much the entire Hippie ideal. In fact, the Charles Manson slaughters were used by hippie-haters to point out their violence Federal and state laws late in the Nixon administration about the outlawing of drug paraphernalia sold in stores also caused the demise of the head shops |
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Post by berkley on Feb 3, 2017 1:57:09 GMT -5
Having listened to What About Me I can now say I like at least one QMS song. Don't remember ever hearing it before, though.
Every now and then I'll hear or read something that brings home in an unexpected way how very big the hippie thing was as a (counter) cultural movement. For example, I was reading once about George Lazenby, the guy who played Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and he said that the reason he never did any more Bond films was that he and his friends thought the whole idea of the suave, well dressed, well-groomed leading man was on the way out, and permanently. They thought that stuff like, say, Easy Rider (can't recall if he used that specific example) would provide the typical heroes of the immediate and foreseeable future in pop-culture, so why bother tying himself to a character type that had no future. How wrong he was, of course; but the very fact that he and others could feel that way shows how powerful the counter-culture movement was and how much it had penetrated even the cultural mainstream.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,197
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Post by Confessor on Feb 3, 2017 2:02:57 GMT -5
Yep, just in time for me to graduate high school and start college in 1974. I could still find underground comix in head shops at that point, but it was a visibly dwindling scene and a few years later they were all gone. It was my observation, back then before social media and the internet, that many cultural trends would start either on the East or West coast in the U.S. and slowly catch on into Middle America. Yes, by and large that's exactly how pop culture movements have happened in the States, certainly up to at least the early 2000s. It may've changed because of the internet over the last 15 or so years. There are plenty of bands that were big on either coast who never really caught on with middle America at all. By 1973/1974 the hippie movement began to decline in NY and California and segue way into the Disco era. Which kind of made sense as the original hippies were now growing a bit older and had jobs and families to support. Plus the Vietnam issue that bound them was at an end. However in middle America, young kids were now long hairs A hardcore of Hippies continued on into the late '70s and beyond, but after about 1973, it could no longer be called the dominant youth culture trend. If you watch Martin Scorsese's film of The Band's 1978 farewell concert, The Last Waltz, you'll see plenty of Hippies in the audience, dressed much like the audience at Woodstock were. Likewise, if you watch Led Zeppelins 1980 Knebworth concert, there's an ocean of denim wearing Hippie types -- and this was 4 years after Punk Year 0! But, of course, those kinds of bands attracted those few Hippie holdouts, who were becoming fewer and fewer with each passing year. Altamont was seen more as a quick end to the Woodstock dream of giant crowds living together non-violently for days on end and sharing with each other. Not so much the entire Hippie ideal. I think to most commentators on the events of Altamont and it's aftermath, the dream of giant crowds living together in harmony and the Hippie ideal are more or less synonymous. I have to say, I think the effect of Altamont on the counter-culture is continually overstated. For one thing, I'm not convinced that it was actually particularly widely reported at the time. I mean, sure, it was big news on the West Coast FM stations like KSAN and KMET, and music publications like Rolling Stone certainly reported on it, but it wasn't picked up by the mainstream media particularly. Likewise, over here in the U.K. the death of Meridith Hunter and the Hell's Angel's violence were a foot note in the UK music press and certainly no reason to think that the Hippie dream had ended. Of course, Altamont gained wider exposure with the release of the Stones' 1970 film Gimme Shelter, but it's only in looking back that the incident has taken on such significance. And, as I say, that significance is often overstated. I know that it's nicely convenient to say that the Hippie dream died along with the '60s themselves in December 1969, but history's not neat and tidy like that, and, as I say, a cursory glance at the counter-culture in 1970 and 1971 show it to have still been a major youth movement. |
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