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Post by jk on Nov 12, 2021 3:42:05 GMT -5
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Post by jk on Nov 24, 2021 10:48:11 GMT -5
It was this documentary that prompted me to reevaluate "River Deep – Mountain High". Although credited to Ike & Tina Turner, Spector had given Ike $20,000 up front on condition that he stay away and mind the kids. Reaching #2 in the UK, "RDMH" bombed in the States, where both white and black radio stations refused to play it as being out of their respective musical areas. It fell between two stools, so to speak. Its failure in the US hit Spector so hard he never really recovered. He always considered it his biggest and best production. I'm persevering. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_(2021_film)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Deep_–_Mountain_High
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Post by jk on Dec 20, 2021 16:49:08 GMT -5
The Sandpipers were a breath of fresh air on the radio in '66. First "Guantanamera", a transatlantic top ten hit, and then "Louie Louie", a most unlikely cover for an easy listening trio but it works, even for this massive fan of The Kingsmen's version. Robie Lester provided the hallmark (if uncredited) female voice on their biggest hit so it may be her on "Louie" too: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandpipers
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Post by jk on Jan 6, 2022 15:04:58 GMT -5
Towards the tail end of '66 I found myself working for high street chain store W.H. Smith in the record department. It would have been great fun if there hadn't been any customers (I hated being in the public eye). There was masses of music to listen to without buying, classical stuff but also many fantastic singles (some of which I did buy) and some of the greatest pop albums ever made, including Pet Sounds, Revolver and Dylan's 2-LP Blonde on Blonde. Of that double album, side four is given over to a single track, the 11-minute-plus epic "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Eyed_Lady_of_the_Lowlands
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Post by jk on Feb 16, 2022 5:00:22 GMT -5
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Post by jk on Apr 24, 2022 3:21:00 GMT -5
I remember Crispian St. Peters best for a remark he made about wanting (or expecting) to be bigger than Elvis! His finest hour internationally came in mid 1966 with his transatlantic top five hit "The Pied Piper": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispian_St._Peters
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Post by jk on Apr 25, 2022 9:39:20 GMT -5
Johnny Rivers got a mention or two in another thread and I was wondering what he'd got up to, if anything, in 1966. Well, "Poor Side Of Town" gave him a North American #1 towards the end of the year (check out the roster of accompanying musicians): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Side_of_Town
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Post by jk on Apr 26, 2022 4:11:10 GMT -5
Paul Revere & the Raiders were another big US act that, like Johnny Rivers, failed to make any impression on the UK charts. Back then, Mark Lindsey and company were on the very edge of my radar (they got little to no airplay this side of the Atlantic) but my biggest PR connection came later after learning of the rivalry between them and The Kingsmen when the two bands’ versions of "Louie Louie" were recorded and released virtually simultaneously in 1963. I believe Paul Revere's version won out on the West Coast at the time. This is "Kicks", which peaked at #4 in May of 1966: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kicks_(song)
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Post by jk on Apr 27, 2022 4:17:56 GMT -5
The Grass Roots got occasional plays on the UK pirate stations but looking at my Complete Book of the British Charts they are most conspicuous by their absence. "WWYWINY" is as memorable as many a Byrds tune -- once again, perhaps it was just too American, to say nothing of the many British acts active at the time and the sheer number of 45s being released. (If 1967 is often regarded as the year of the album, then its predecessor must surely be the year of the single.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grass_Roots
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Post by jk on Apr 28, 2022 14:13:42 GMT -5
My first pop hero was Del Shannon. In 1961, "Runaway" opened my pre-teen ears to the possibilities of pop other than jangly guitars and three chords. Five years later and with his career flagging, Del recorded "The Big Hurt", a #3 US hit for Toni Fisher in 1959, which carried him into the lower reaches of the US top 100 (he would enjoy one more hit in 1981). Both versions incorporate phasing (or, more correctly, flanging), Ms Fisher's original marking something of a breakthrough, not least for Gold Star who produced it. I see Leon Russell had a hand in producing Del's wonderfully atmospheric cover. Sadly, all three artists are no longer with us. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Shannon
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Post by jk on May 3, 2022 5:19:23 GMT -5
What was happening in the world of "classical" music in 1966? The French serialist composer Jean Barraqué (1928–1973) had the great misfortune of having some over-the-top praise heaped on him by André Hodeir in his book La Musique depuis Debussy (1961), whose translation (as Since Debussy) I recall reading with raised eyebrows some time in the mid '60s. I can't find it online, but at one point Hodeir says something about the music of Sibelius and Shostakovich not being able to hold a candle to Barraqué's shining universe! Senseless remarks like this could only harm his reputation, and indeed, it's only recently that his music has been brought out from the shadow of that of his more famous contemporaries and reappraised in the context of the avant-garde of the 1950s and '60s. His wiki page reveals a complex man at odds with the world. Jean Barraqué's last completed work was Chant après chant (1966) for soprano, piano and six percussionists, performed here by Claudia Barainsky (soprano) and Klangforum Wien conducted by Peter Rundel, whose name will be familiar to Zappa fans from Frank's swan song album The Yellow Shark: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Barraqué
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Post by jk on May 11, 2022 15:23:22 GMT -5
Singer-songwriters Donovan and Vashti Bunyan were already friends when they made plans in 1968 to meet at a commune Donovan was setting up on the Isle of Skye. Vashti and her then-boyfriend were to travel there from London by horse and cart! This they did, but decided to continue on to the Outer Hebrides. Regrettably, Vashti never attained the kind of success granted to Donovan in those years. Her turn would come, but astonishingly she would have to wait until the next millennium. Well here they are in 1966, Donovan with "Season Of The Witch" from his transatlantic hit album Sunshine Superman... ...and Vashti (no surname in those days) with "Train Song", her second single, which like its predecessor received little attention and went nowhere: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashti_Bunyan
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Post by jk on May 15, 2022 14:43:06 GMT -5
Back in '66, soul music was my jam, so to speak. In that year, UK disc jockey Mike Raven hosted three intelligent shows for an offshore station then called (if my spies have got it right) Radio 390. One was devoted to soul music (the other two featured blues and classic rock'n'roll) -- it was the place to pick up on stuff you'd never hear on the more pop-oriented UK programmes and stations. I recall it was Raven who that same year single-handedly gave obscure US soul singer Roy C an unlikely UK #6 hit with "Shotgun Wedding". This was another he used to play: Darrell Banks' joyous "Open The Door To Your Heart". My good memories of that time are tempered by the recent discovery that Darrell was killed in a crime passionnel four years later aged just 32. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Banks
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Post by jk on May 16, 2022 6:15:45 GMT -5
One of the major contenders for "first psychedelic song" is Count Five's US #5 hit "Psychotic Reaction" (linked without comment earlier in this thread), whose success spawned their lone 1966 album of that name: "By 1969, the Count Five had broken up, but their memory was immortalized in a 1971 essay by rock journalist Lester Bangs, entitled 'Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung'. * In the essay, Bangs credited the band for having released several later albums (after Psychotic Reaction): Carburetor Dung, Cartesian Jetstream, Ancient Lace and Wrought-Iron Railings, and Snowflakes Falling On the International Dateline -- each displaying an increasing sense of artistry and refinement. However, none of these subsequent albums actually existed except in Bangs' own imagination." [ Source] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotic_Reaction* I recall ruining a family holiday laughing at passages in Bangs' book of that name, particularly when he gets onto the subject of Lou Reed.
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Post by boogieboarder on May 16, 2022 9:45:47 GMT -5
I had the good fortune to see the San Jose, California band Count Five perform for a small crowd of people at an informal backyard festival of local bands in the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose a few years ago, and of course they played “Psychotic Reaction.”
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Post by jk on May 16, 2022 16:40:23 GMT -5
I had the good fortune to see the San Jose, California band Count Five perform for a small crowd of people at an informal backyard festival of local bands in the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose a few years ago, and of course they played “Psychotic Reaction.” Wow -- you lucky fellow!
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Post by jk on May 24, 2022 4:33:48 GMT -5
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Post by lizzielooziani on Jun 5, 2022 14:03:25 GMT -5
One of my favorite soul/r&b singers was Lou Rawls. He had a number of hits -my favorite came out in 1966, Love is a Hurtin Thing.
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Post by jk on Jun 5, 2022 15:12:18 GMT -5
One of my favorite soul/r&b singers was Lou Rawls. He had a number of hits -my favorite came out in 1966, Love is a Hurtin Thing. Ah, well here you go, Lizzie. Thanks for the memory! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Rawls
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Post by jk on Jun 7, 2022 16:37:30 GMT -5
"Come Up The Years" was one of three tracks from 1966's Jefferson Airplane Takes Off to be included on the (for me) thoroughly underwhelming UK release of the Airplane's US follow-up album Surrealistic Pillow (the other two being "Chauffeur Blues" and "Don't Slip Away"). The tracks from the US version of Pillow to get the chop were "She Has Funny Cars" (much too heavy for the UK market!) and, one suspects for purely commercial reasons, the then single "White Rabbit" and its B-side "Plastic Fantastic Lover". (I bought both records at the time, followed by my third and last Airplane acquisition "The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil".) In 1966, Jefferson Airplane was Marty Balin (vocals, rhythm guitar), Signe Toly Anderson (vocals, percussion), Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar), Paul Kantner (rhythm guitar, vocals). Jack Casady (bass guitar) and Alex "Skip" Spence (drums). Anderson and Spence both left later that year. Takes Off sounds pretty good to me. It makes so much more sense to hear the two albums as they were originally intended. Who in the UK would have known back then that the oddly un-Grace-like vocalist on "Chauffeur Blues" wasn't Grace Slick at all? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Airplane_Takes_Off
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Post by jk on Jun 12, 2022 4:48:48 GMT -5
Funny what time can do. Folk music meant nothing to me in 1966. Even Dylan largely passed me by. I recall someone from my former school coming to the record department where I worked and buying a Joan Baez album, much to my bemusement. Another folk artist I had no time for was Judy Collins. Yet all these years later, here she is in '66 singing a Donovan song, "Sunny Goodge Street", a location familiar to me from my years working in London: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_My_Life_(Judy_Collins_album) PS: This thread and another I launched down the road at BBT are in many ways exact opposites. This one is fixated on a single year, whereas the other one is working its way steadily up through successive numbers in song lyrics and titles (next up is 300!). What they do have in common is to confront me with tracks I'd never play otherwise -- with often surprisingly pleasant results.
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Post by jk on Jun 12, 2022 16:31:13 GMT -5
Oops. I seem to have forgotten The Mothers of Invention's debut album Freak Out!, maybe because I bought it the next year and forever associate it with the summer of 1967. A double LP in the US, one of the first, it was released in an abridged form on a single disc in the UK with (to the best of my knowledge) the following track list: Side one: 1. "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" 2. "I Ain't Got No Heart" 3. "Who Are the Brain Police?" 4. "Motherly Love" 5. "Wowie Zowie" 6. "You Didn't Try to Call Me" 7. "I'm Not Satisfied" 8. "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" Side two: 1. "Trouble Every Day" [45 version] 2. "Help, I'm a Rock (Suite in Three Movements)" • I. Okay to Tap Dance • II. In Memoriam, Edgard Varèse • III. It Can't Happen Here" 3. "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet (Unfinished Ballet in Two Tableaux)" • I. Ritual Dance of the Child-Killer • II. Nullis Pretii (No Commercial Potential)” This is the slightly retitled 45 version of "Trouble Every Day", as used on the UK album. That’s guitarist Elliot Ingber on the nasty repeating riff (Frank's solo was one of the bits that got left off): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_Out!
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Post by boogieboarder on Jun 12, 2022 20:28:58 GMT -5
The debut Mothers album is a strange LP that a Frank Zappa biographer later said previewed every style and element Frank Zappa would eventually incorporate into his music. I saw the U.S. double album in late 1966 in the record stores (amazing they even displayed it!), and bought it after hearing an interview with Frank Zappa on the radio, and he sounded so intelligent. I "freaked out" one of the members of my high school rock band by suggesting we learn "Help, I'm a Rock."
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Post by jk on Jun 23, 2022 10:58:37 GMT -5
To quote the wiki page for 1966 in music, "For the first time since its January 18, 1964, issue, the Billboard Hot 100 chart fails to have an artist from the UK with a Top 10 single, ending a streak of 117 consecutive weeks." The week in question was that of 23 April. Here is that top ten: 1. "(You're My) Soul And Inspiration" ~ The Righteous Brothers 2. "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" ~ Cher 3. "Secret Agent Man" ~ Johnny Rivers 4. “Daydream" ~ The Lovin’ Spoonful 5. "Time Won't Let Me" ~ The Outsiders 6. "Good Lovin’ "~ The Young Rascals 7. “Kicks" ~ Paul Revere & The Raiders Featuring Mark Lindsay 8. "Sloop John B" ~ The Beach Boys 9. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry ~ B.J. Thomas And The Triumphs 10. "Monday, Monday" ~ The Mamas & The Papas Six of these acts (at #1, #3, #4, #5, #7 and #8) have already featured in this thread. One that hasn't is The Young Rascals (they dropped the “Young” in the winter of ’67/’68). "Good Lovin'" took them to #1 in the spring of 1966: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rascals
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Post by jk on Jun 24, 2022 5:40:37 GMT -5
It only occurred to me yesterday to check whether my second-favourite version of "Louie Louie" had been released in 1966, and indeed it had. If The Kingsmen's version was unprecedentedly raw in 1963, The Sonics gave it a good run for its money three years later on their second album, aptly titled Boom. I'd read a description in a pop magazine (which I spent an hour last night vainly searching for to get the correct wording) that described their "Louie" as "so underdeveloped it still has gills and fins"! Four years ago we were holidaying on the Cape Verde Islands (long story) and upon our arrival by boat at Santo Antão, the second island on our stay, I bumped into this bloke wearing a Sonics T-shirt! Apparently, he'd seen them perform not long before and they still kicked @ss. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sonics
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