By PopMatters Staff
November 26 2008
Edited by Bill Gibron / Produced by Sarah Zupko
Nowadays, it's just easier to compartmentalize things. It's
especially convenient when it comes to describing a specific era or
decade. Looking backward, we slight the '70s, referring to it with
buzzword terms like 'Watergate', 'Disco', and that introspective
insult, 'Me'. We turn the '80s into an example of greed, a personal
step into a desktop technological progression, or an oblique blend of
New Wave, Hair Metal, and the King of Pop. The '90s, sadly, looses
all focus, filtered through ambiguities like dot.com, grunge, and the
rise of the Neo-Con. But no period gets more mediocre coverage than
the '60s. While you can argue over the enormous amount of scholarship
on the subject, the truth is that no single overview can accurately
sum up a specific time and an ever-changing place. For many, it will
always represent peace and love, hippies and radicals, the
counterculture and the Establishment, and without question, the band
that set the score to it allthe Beatles.
But most music fans know that there was much more going on in the
musical landscape than the frequent masterworks released by those
Lads from Liverpool. All around the world, artists took inspiration
from the British Invasion (and the American reaction to it) to
redefine their sound and explore the possibilities within the medium.
Some ended up suspiciously similar to the muse. Others went beyond
the boundaries of commerciality to offer up something unheard and
quite extraordinary. As we celebrate the Fab Four's stunning
premature career culmination, otherwise known as The White Album,
we'd be remiss in not mentioning a few of the other noted classics
that came out the very same year. While the selections may seem
subjective, the featured essays explain their necessary inclusion
quite clearly.
It's important to note that, as with any list, there are certainly
other important records to consider, and it's a shame that they all
couldn't be discussed. A cursory glance over the outstanding efforts
of 1968 finds Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the Byrds serenading the
Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Sly Stone asking his family to help
everyone Dance to the Music. In '69, the public was introduced to
John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the folksy James
Taylor, saw the media-made Monkees release the soundtrack to their
beautifully obtuse film Head, and jammed along with Iron Butterfly as
they spent 17-plus minutes intoning "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The ten
albums chosen by the PopMatters staff represent the sonic equal of
the Beatles' brilliant double LP. In remembering the other examples
of excellence being offered at the time, perhaps we can broaden the
perspective of the oft-marginalized era.
Bill Gibron
--------
Day One: Frank Zappa to The Band
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/66084-day-one-frank-zappa-to-the-band-1/
Separate But Very Equal: The (Other) Important Albums of 1968
[25 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: We're Only in It for the Money
Like all superficially idealistic youth movements, the love- and
drug-crazed rebels of countercultural naïveté circa the late 1960s
were incredible hypocrites. The gap between the utopian, free-loving,
nature-attuned neo-transcendentalists that entranced timid teen
squares and scared the equally-stereotypical caricatures of their
stern and stoic postwar parents, and the real lives of the
VD-infested and woefully self-centered societal dropouts is well
chronicled in media artifacts from the time. For film, see the
commune of psych-folk cabaret travelers in Easy Rider; Joan Didion's
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a fascinating literary chronicle of
the grim realities of Haight-Ashbury. When it comes to musical
representations of the true free-thinker's reaction to this
faux-enlightened mess, it all ties together perfectly on We're Only
in It for the Money.
The thing to remember about 1968 is that the Beatles were
untouchable. So, when the Mothers elected to include a cover image
with Money that lampooned the psychedelic flower-celebrities that
adorned the cover of the recently-released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band, there was another kind of iconoclasm at work. It
was all too easy for the "freaks" to direct their damnation at LBJ,
parents, people over 30the usual cast of squaresbut another thing
entirely for the Mothers to scoff at the meaningless antics of the
counter-cultural types who were probably their majority demographic.
Unsurprisingly, the powers that be in the record-releasing industry
objected, and the intended cover art was remanded to the gatefold
until reissues decades later. Not that the cover headshot of male
band members in dresses in deadpan seriousness was such a turnover to the Man.
Where most of the Haight-Ashbury soundtrack of 1968 fit the "Rhythm
and Blues + LSD" mold, Frank Zappa took great inspiration from
legendary experimental composer Edgard Varese, whose declaration,
"the present day composer refuses to die!", was included in the
original liner notes. Zappa is a composer, and Money is his
mad-genius masterworkpart song-cycle, part experimental freak-out,
yet strangely cohesive. A number of pieces on Money bear the obvious
influence of Varese's percussion arrangements and electronic
experiments. "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music" is a challenging freak
out, distorted musique concrete and disorienting stereo panning,
breaking briefly toward the end into generic surf rock. Chaotic,
challenging music for similar times, and the kind of truly
experimental noise that makes psychedelic contemporaries look tame by
comparison.
Money's emotional core is in Zappa's lyrics. There's sarcasm and
skepticism, directed mainly at the shallow hippie freaks; "I will
love the cops as they kick the shit out of me in the streets" says
the dropout protagonist of "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", blissfully
unaware of the important issues at hand in the world outside of his
self-centeredness. It's another artifact of the time, that Zappa had
to fight an uphill battle to include any profanity on Money, leaving
much of it backmasked or removed entirely. "Concentration Moon" and
"Mom & Dad" are a back-to-back examination of the generation gap, the
former from the perspective of the disgusted and confused flower
child. "Mom & Dad" is a startlingly tender look at the potential for
true tragedy amongst the young freaks, as the depressed parents
reflect on the deaths (by cops) of kids they couldn't understand.
Meanwhile, the parents remain either ignorant of or unwilling to see
the genesis of the generational issues in cold parenting. Money is
full of such vignettes of social observation, from the meathead spawn
of a Congressman and a hooker on "The Idiot Bastard Son" to the "Bow
Tie Daddy", an out-of-touch, elderly alcoholic who is instructed
"don't try to do no thinkin' / just go on with your drinkin'".
It wouldn't be a Zappa album without pop music put through the ringer
of unfamiliar structures. Witness "Flower Punk", an aggressive number
in the truly-psychedelically confusing alternating 7/4 and 5/8 time
signatures (good luck dancing, teenyboppers!), which aptly collapses
into a freak-out of effect-laden squeals. Riffing on '60s standard
"Hey Joe", the titular Punk is another in a long line of Zappa's
misguided free-love casualties, "going to the love in to sit and play
my bongos in the dirt." "Absolutely Free", meanwhile, refuses to
stick with one theme, time signature, or key. The closest thing to
guidance is a menacing voice declaring "flower power sucks!" The
Beatles get theirs on "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body",
complete with nasally flat backing vocals (The ugliest part,
concludes Zappa's sarcastic narrator, must be "your mind").
In the end, no one escapes the Mothers' criticisms, but nor is anyone
without redemption. The Mothers' ultimate goal is to inspire true
nonconformist self-expression, to peel back layers of society-imposed
self-doubt and constrictive hypocritical morality. In what I can only
imagine is a rare moment of genuine optimism, the Mothers' gleefully
explain to listeners, "We are the other people / You're the other
people, too!" Unless you're only in this for the bottom line.
David Abravanel
--
Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul
Sitting among hundreds gathered at New Temple Missionary Baptist
Church in Los Angeles, California on the night of January 13, 1972,
the world renowned minister C.L. Franklin struggled to contain
himself as his talented daughter Aretha delivered one of the most
amazing performances of her career. Singing with deep conviction and
supreme intelligence on such gospel classics as "Precious Memories",
"Amazing Grace", and "Oh Mary Don't You Weep", Franklin showcased not
only her artistic genius, but her deep spiritual roots. Testifying
profusely to the transformative power of God, the talented songstress
gloriously wed the prophetic vision of the black church, the
optimistic spirit of the Civil Rights era, and a philosophical
perspective born of personal struggles and triumphs. If there were
any doubts regarding Franklin's religiosity and existential
intactness, her powerful testimonials, soaring notes, triumphant
shouts, and guttural moans erased them all in dramatic fashion.
Five months after Franklin touched the hearts of those gathered at
New Temple, Atlantic Records released her live performance,
appropriately titled, Amazing Grace. Critics and fans alike hailed
the recording as Franklin's return to her church roots, but the
singer's father railed against the idea that Aretha had abandoned her
religious past. "Truth is", C.L. Franklin thundered, "Aretha hasn't
ever left the church!" To a large extent, Reverend Franklin was
correct, for the "church" had informed not only his daughter's
musicianship but the gospel impulse that pervaded many of her biggest
secular hits. Not simply an entertainer, Franklin was the caretaker
of her nation's soul.
Maybe no cultural artifact proves this fact more than her 1968
classic, Lady Soul.
If her Atlantic Records debut, I Never Loved a Man , stands out for
its affirmation of Franklin's talent and commercial viability, Lady
Soul's cultural significance flows from its confirmation of her
genius as a skilled alchemist capable of bringing fragmented worlds
together. Not long after its arrival in record stores on January 22,
1968, Lady Soul dashed up the pop and soul charts, largely due to the
popularity of four smash hits, "Chain of Fools", "Natural Woman",
"Since You've Been Gone", and "Ain't No Way". Cultural and political
differences fragmented the nation, but everyone seemed to arrive at
the same conclusion when it came to Franklin's genius. Time and Ebony
celebrated 1968 as the year of Aretha, probably the only thing these
radically different magazines could agree upon. All at once, Negroes,
blacks, white hippies, and bra-burning second wave feminists
worshiped at the altar of Lady Soul.
One surmises that this had a great deal to do with Franklin's role as
the carrier of the gospel impulse. Sustaining faith in the
possibility of a brighter day had been made exceedingly difficult by
the tensions and divisions magnified by war in Southeast Asia, the
assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, race riots,
the most vitriolic forms of white backlash, and mounting levels of
poverty. Yet something about Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul created a
spiritual space in which the many personalities who comprised our
variegated nation could expand their imagination of the politically
and spiritually possible.
Out of the chaos of 1968, Franklin gave us hope with substance, along
with a musical masterpiece that has withstood the test of time. Fresh
yet rooted in the same blues impulse that inspired Jimi Hendrix's
Electric Ladyland, Lady Soul was a musical gumbo spiced with the
right amounts of hard knock country blues, good news gospel,
captivating pop, and rock 'n' soul. Freely asserting her
individuality, Franklin put her own unique spin on James Brown's
"Money Won't Change You" and Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready",
reached deep into the ethos of the blues with "Good to Me As I Am to
You", breezed through a killer rendition of "Niki Hoeky", and
transformed "Chain of Fools" into a prophetic declaration of
deliverance that would be heard from the riot-torn streets of Newark,
New Jersey, to the battlefields of Vietnam.
So expansive was Lady Soul's message that the album belonged to no
one in particular, but it did have a special place in the hearts of
black women. Undoubtedly, Franklin narrated deeply personal stories,
but there was something profoundly familiar about her tales of love
and heartache. Listening to "Ain't No Way", "Natural Woman", or "Good
to Me As I Am to You" conjures up images of women, young and old, who
inhabit our communal spaces, exchange stories on our front porches,
and find solace in our loving arms. One couldn't escape the realness
embodied in Franklin's songs. "You couldn't jive," wrote poet Nikki
Giovanni, "when Aretha said, 'Woman's only human.'" Nor could you
jive when she demanded her propers on "Good to Me As I Am to You", a
self-penned song that drips with the kind of flesh and blood reality
found on Aretha Arrives' "Prove It". Accompanied beautifully by the
soulful guitar licks of Cream's Eric Clapton, Franklin updates the
Delta Blues for her sisters and brethren living in the inner cities
of Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and Atlanta.
Not just a great musical portrait of one individual living, loving,
and growing during one of the most chaotic periods in American
history, Lady Soul was a work of synthesis that introduced and
reintroduced of all the black women who've crossed the American
cultural landscape, from Zora Neale Hurston's Janie to Nina Simone's
"Peaches" to Bob Dylan's "Hattie Carroll".
So prodigious was Aretha Franklin's output during the 1960s and early
'70s that a general consensus on her best work will probably never be
reached, but I strongly suspect that we can all conclude that the
cultural twists and turns of 1968 cannot be fully understood without
reckoning with the genius that is Lady Soul.
Claudrena Harold
--
The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat
The Beatles' White Album isneedless to saya sprawling mess, filled
to the brim with classic songs, one-off experiments, and a
kitchen-sink attitude that more than justifies its audacious
90-minute running time. As a result, it's often easy to forget about
1968's other White album: that lo-fi, distortion-filled epic that
changed the very definition of what a pop song could be over the
course of six not-so-simple tracks.
1968 wasn't a particularly good year for the Velvet Underground, but
you would be hard-pressed to find evidence of the band noticing.
Following 1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico, Lou Reed and co.
dropped Andy Warhol's enigmatic song siren (Nico would go on to do
some solo discs of her own), andas suchlost contact with Warhol.
Yet Reed and avant-garde maestro John Cale weren't bothered by this;
if anything, it allowed them to go to dark musical places that they
had only hinted at before. Oh sure, they could still write rollicking
piano-rock numbers (the title track), but the lyrics here were
depicting the effects of amphetamines on the body, once again flexing
the anti-commercial tendencies that the band inhibited. "The Gift",
meanwhile, rode a seductive bass groove to which Cale recited a short
story about the man who decides to mail himself to his love, only to
have his loving gesture end with disastrous results.
When anyone writes about White Light/White Heat, much ink is
automatically devoted to the spiraling 17-minute noise-rock epic that
is "Sister Ray", a convention-shattering jam that dared and teased
listeners in ways that had never been touched on before. Though the
song's length was unprecedented in its own right, it was far from its
most noticeable feature. Here, Reed snarled out the line "sucking on
my ding-dong" without the safety net of irony, his guitar chugging
along with a sleazy strut, andin the processembodying every aspect
of the term "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll". It can be safely argued
that no one has come close to topping it since.
Yet perhaps the greatest revelation that White Light/White Heat
provided was perhaps its least talked about aspect: slowly unearthing
the vulnerability that was at the bottom of every Reed composition.
"Here She Comes Now" was the kind of wounded guitar pop that the band
did best, wrapping surreal lyrics around a simple, un-amplified
guitar coda, Reed talking about the woman that never comes (all
Godot-like) in a way that's defiantly anticipatory, revealing more
depths about its narrator than it has any right to. Of course, on the
band's following album, Reed would be penning iconic ballads like
"Candy Says", but, really, those highlights would not have been
possible were it not for his work here.
In retrospect, White Light/White Heat is often looked at as the
Velvet's least accessible album, what with its noise-rock epics and
explicit lyrics and the like. Yet this is also the album where we get
to see the band push the envelope in ways that they weren't able to
before, and by redefining their own boundaries, they redefined the
limits of all of rock music in the process.
Evan Sawdey
--
Simon and Garfunkel: Bookends
Beginning with President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the '60s
became one of the most tumultuous, explosive, eye-opening times in
American history. It was a time when Baby Boomers were forced to grow
up and face the future in a way that generations before never
hadwith the confidence to change and rebel, the bravery to search
for themselves and life's meaning and the uncertainty of where that
search would lead them.
By 1968, the realities of the Vietnam War had set in completely with
America's youth. Boys in their late teens received their draft cards
to fight in a war that had no clear definition. Robert Kennedy would
meet the same fate as his brother five years earlier, as would Martin
Luther King, Jr. Hippies protested the war and their government, and
the civil rights movement became increasingly more violent.
Simon and Garfunkel released their musical masterpiece Bookends in
late March of that year; a collection of interweaving songs that
focuses on lossloss of identity, loss of innocence, and loss of
youth. It was their most literary and accomplished album to date.
Like the characters in "Voices of Old People", Art Garfunkel's audio
experiment and social message, the youth of the '60s would inevitably
face the same fateold age. Bookends is the well-lived life starting
at birth and ending at death.
"Save the Life of My Child", the most "rock and roll" song of the
album, cuts off the quiet lull of "Bookends" the way a rowdy teenager
might interrupt a grandparent mid-story. Paul Simon's thumping bass,
the gospel-like voices in the background, and the brief hint of
"Sounds of Silence" tease and cure and taunt the delicate nature of
the 30-second instrumental introduction that creeps in and out of the
album as a reminder that old age, and eventually, death, is inevitable.
Though earlier songs such as "I Am a Rock" and "Sound of Silence"
both portray dark themes, there is still a naiveté , a lack of
maturity that can only be gained through the turbulent and
controversial experiences of the late '60s. Bookends the album is the
insightful, old man counterpart to Simon and Garfunkel's earlier work.
It was a decade full of change. not only in music but in politics,
American society, and popular culture as a whole. It left the Baby
Boomer generation, by decade's end, with a power unbeknownst to any
generation before thema power that left them searching, much like
the couple in the song "America", for a different kind of country
than the one they inherited from their parents.
The Summer of Love had come and gone, Bob Dylan had gone electric,
the Beatles were certifiable geniuses, thanks to their innovative,
psychedelic, waking dream Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and
Jimi Hendrix was setting his instruments on fire as rock and roll's
first official guitar god. And then there was Simon and Garfunkel,
the sage-like minstrels of the '60s, who translated easily the
conscious of '60s American youth into songs that are just as relevant
in 2008 as they were 40 years ago.
Charles Moss
--
The Band: Music from Big Pink
By the time Music from Big Pink was released in July, 1968 had
already seen both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
assassinated. All the hope and change and love in the decade was
teetering, though not yet crumbled by the events at Altamont in '69.
We were a people in pain, but still pushing on, still trying to make
things better.
But, if the lasting recordings from that year are any indication, we
weren't able to capture our own feelings on record. The Kinks, the
Rolling Stones, and, of course, the Beatles were all at the top of
their powers and releasing undeniably important records that year. As
a culture, we seemed to be looking outside our country for the voices
of that generation. Sure, we had Simon and Garfunkel and the Velvet
Underground making great and lasting records that year. Yet both
records, Bookends and White Light/White Heat, though exceptional,
were set outside of what was going on. The preciousness of Simon and
Garfunkel and the stubborn art house aesthetic of the Velvet
Underground let those groups touch on the signs of the times without
tapping into them. Their music was observant of the zeitgeist, but
not necessarily representative of it.
It took a group of Canadians, and Levon Helm, to truly capture the
sound of America in 1968. Music from Big Pink is soulful and hurt and
hopeful and heartbreaking from beginning to end. Having toured as Bob
Dylan's backing band, the Hawks, in 1966, the Band must have taken in
the whole country as they traveled it and poured all that roaming
feel, all that collective want, into this one record. Even when they
use Dylan's words, particularly on opener "Tears of Rage" and closer
"I Shall Be Released", they make the songs more universally relevant.
Where Dylan's verbose songs felt cluttered and hyper-thoughtful in
their anger, the Band stretch them out into warm, keening
declarations of an alienated country. The melding of Americana,
rhythm and blues, folk, and countless other influences made for a
sound that was dusty with tradition, but still new and laid back and inviting.
However, Music from Big Pink doesn't get enough credit for being so
damn strange when it wants to be. What is that guitar sound in "Tears
of Rage"? Or the organ dirge at the top of "Chest Fever"? Why does
Richard Manual's voice fall so hauntingly off-key in "Lonesome
Suzie"? And what is with just about every weird sound and swirl of
faux-strings on "This Wheel's on Fire"? Perhaps it is easier now not
to address these questions. Better to let the giant shadow of "The
Weight" fall over the album and call it laid-back country and leave
it at that.
But why? It is those strange moments that make the record so germane
to its time. As recognizable as the country feel of the record is,
the Band always come along and knock us sideways in our skin with
some strange sound. They never let us get settled. This isn't
leave-your-worries-behind, front porch music. Music from Big Pink is
a reminder that the world around us can be recognizable one second,
and completely alien the next. Sometimes, it can feel strange and
familiar at the same time. But the key, and what the Band does on
this album, is to recognize our hurt, and even embrace it, without
giving in to it.
"I Shall Be Released" is exhausted and pained, but its straining hope
is the perfect end note to an album that captures that time in
America so well. Because by record's end, they haven't been released,
and neither have we. The world is still out there to change. And
while, any day now, any day now, that release is coming, Music from
Big Pink is the vital sound of a weary country pushing forward with
hope. We had every reason to look across the pond for great music,
for great culture, for inspiration. But, in 1968, if we wanted a
beautiful, heartfelt rendering of what was going on in America, all
we had to do was look north.
Matt Fiander
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment