Albums Of The Month-February 1967

50 years ago today, here are some highlights





Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow (RCA) [RS]

When vocalist Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane in the fall of 1966, she came with two songs from her old band, the Great Society -- "Somebody to Love," written by her brother-in-law Darby, and "White Rabbit," her psychedelic translation of Alice in Wonderland -- that became Top Ten hits in the Airplane's grip, dosing America with San Francisco utopia. The rest of this second album is a definitive catalog of the Airplane's acid-rock dynamics and rare composing gifts: Jorma Kaukonen's metallic-snarl guitar and Jack Casady's grumbling-funk bass; the beautiful agony of singer Marty Balin's ballads (he wrote "Today" with Tony Bennett in mind); the weave-and-soar interplay of Balin, Slick and singer-guitarist Paul Kantner. The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia attended the Los Angeles sessions as a "musical and spiritual advisor," suggesting arrangements, playing the delicate acoustic leads in "Comin' Back to Me" and coining the album's title when he remarked, "This is as surrealistic as a pillow."

This is one of those rare albums where I feel each and every track was magical













The Byrds: Younger Than Yesterday (Columbia) [RS]

The Byrds that made this album in late 1966 were a mess: reeling from the loss of singer-composer Gene Clark and the tensions between singer-guitarists Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. Yet Younger Than Yesterday was the Byrds' first mature album, a blend of space-flight twang and electric hoedown infused with the imminent glow of 1967 yet underlined with crackling realism. The galloping "So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star" mocked overnight success, including the Byrds' own (the teen screams were taped at one of their gigs). Crosby's ballad "Everybody's Been Burned" hinted at the stress that soon culminated in his firing. And in "My Back Pages," McGuinn's stoic vocal captured the crisis and experience in Bob Dylan's lyrics, a lesson reflected in his own determination to keep the band alive.

That particular Bob Dylan song Confessor and I mentioned earlier bears   posting the lyrics


Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues Lyrics

from Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963




I saw it advertised one day

Bear mountain picnic was comin' my way

"Come along 'n' take a trip

We'll bring you up there on a ship

Bring the wife and kids

Bring the whole family"

Yippee



Well, I run right down 'n' bought a ticket

To this bear mountain picnic

But little did I realize

I was in for a picnic surprise

Had nothin' to do with mountains

I didn't even come close to a bear



Took the wife 'n' kids down to the pier

Six thousand people there

Everybody had ticket for the trip

"Oh well," I said, "it's a pretty big ship

Besides, anyway, the more the merrier"



Well, we all got on 'n' what d'ya think

That big old boat started t' sink

More people kept a-pilin' on

That old ship was a-slowly goin' down

Funny way t' start a picnic



Well, I soon lost track of m' kids 'n' wife

So many people there I never saw in m' life

That old ship sinkin' down in the water

Six thousand people tryin' t' kill each other

Dogs a-barkin', cats a-meowin'

Women screamin', fists a-flyin', babies cryin'

Cops a-comin', me a-runnin'

Maybe we just better call off the picnic



I got shoved down 'n' pushed around

All I could hear there was a screamin' sound

Don't remember one thing more

Just remember walkin' up on a little shore

Head busted, stomach cracked

Feet splintered, I was bald, naked

Quite lucky to be alive though



Feelin' like I climbed outta m' casket

I grabbed back hold of m' picnic basket

Took the wife 'n' kids 'n' started home

Wishin' I'd never got up that morn



Now, I don't care just what you do

If you wanna have a picnic, that's up t' you

But don't tell me about it, I don't wanna hear it

'Cause, see, I just lost all m' picnic spirit

Stay in m' kitchen, have m' own picnic

In the bathroom



Now, it don't seem to me quite so funny

What some people are gonna do for money

There's a bran' new gimmick every day

Just t' take somebody's money away

I think we oughta take some o' these people

And put 'em on a boat, send 'em up to bear mountain

For a picnic

This song is, perhaps unsurprisingly, based on a real life incident, in which a Father's Day cruise up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain ended in tragedy as a result of the sale of counterfeit tickets and subsequent overcrowding.

To keep things in perspective, here's the news from the real world

50 Years Ago

The federal minimum wage is raised to $1.40 per hour
The formation of the 10 team American Basketball Association is announced
War seems impending between Russia and China as the USSR announces increased troop levels in Mongolia
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour makes it's debut
Muhammad Ali defeats Ernie Terrell in a 15 round decision
The 25th amendment to the US constitution is ratified regarding presidential succession and disability
The first of seven victims of the "Kenosha Killings", a 17-year-old girl, disappeared after leaving her home to walk to a drugstore. All of the people murdered between 1967 and 1981 lived between 64th Street and 67th Street in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and all would disappear at or near an alley that ran between those streets. The serial killings would remain unsolved fifty years later.
The first counterattack by the Chinese army against the student's Cultural Revolution movement
25,000 pounds of tear gas are dropped on Viet Cong positions. It's then discovered the Viet Cong had already left
J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, dies of throat cancer
Simon Weisenthal tracks down the Nazi commander of the Treblinka concentration camp who is now working at a Volkswagen factory in Brazil. The commander was responsible for over 900,000 deaths
Lunar Orbiter 3 takes the first pictures of the dark side of the moon
Kurt Cobain is born
Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, escapes from a mental institution. He's recaptured the next day
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison surprised reporters when he said at a news conference that, after he and his staff had investigated the Kennedy assassination, "We solved it weeks ago. There remains only the details of evidence, and there is no question about it. We have the names of everyone. We have all the details."
The Pontiac Firebird from General Motors is introduced
Martin Luther King begins to speak out against the Vietnam War
Mario Andretti wins the Daytona 500
President Johnson sent a message to the U.S. Senate, asking for the introduction of what would become the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. "I am convinced," the President said, "that a vital and self-sufficient noncommercial television systerm will not only instruct, but inspire and uplift our people." [118] The creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be signed into law on November 7 and would create public funding for the existing National Educational Television network. On June 23, 1970, the corporation would be sufficiently funded to for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to be created.

Randomn list of my Top 10 favourite Scottish bands or musicians in no particular order...

1. Donovan (gentle folk rock & psychedelia singer-songwriter from the 1960s)
2. The Jesus & Mary Chain (cool as f**k '80s & '90s indie rock noise merchants)
3. The Incredible String Band (wildly eccentric & quirky '60s acid folk group)
4. Primal Scream (retro flavoured, influential indie rock/dance act)
5. Bert Jansch (arguably Britain's greatest baroque folk practitioner -- Hendrix for the acoustic guitar, according to Neil Young)
6. The Vaselines (cartoonish, low-fi '80s indie pop with catchy choruses)
7. Goodbye Mr. McKenzie (anthemic '80s wannabe stadium rockers who never quite made it to the stadiums)
8. The Poets ('60s freakbeat & psychedelia group who only released a handful of singles)
9. Cosmic Rough Riders (early 2000's hippy, psychedelic throwbacks, with jangly guitars & gorgeous harmonies)
10. Teenage Fanclub (superior purveyors of '90s indie rock)

I'll have to look up some the ones on that Scottish list I'm not familiar with. Cosmic Rough Riders in particular sounds like my kind of thing.

I would probably include The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Nazareth on my list, even though I only know one album by each really well (The Impossible Dream and Razamanaz, respectively).

I just realised that without really thinking about it I've been assuming Slade was from Scotland all these years because Noddy Holder used to wear those tartan outfits. Naturally, when I looked them up to check I saw they're from England. Conversely, I don't think I knew Donovan was Scottish, or if I ever did I forgot it.

How about posting some double takes?