1965 in music. • Page 3

i meant more the three guitarists they managed to have and then their singer dying bc an amp wasn’t grounded, but yes that too haha

 

I thought recapping that part of the story would be redundant. Haha

 

I'd never heard the story about the amp. That's crazy.

 

1. The Beatles: Rubber Soul
2. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited
3. Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home

Highway 61 and Bringing It All Back Home are on pretty equal ground for me now, but Highway 61 was the first Dylan album I was into which gives it the edge. Rubber Soul could make a case for my favorite Beatles album. Pretty much everything @Craig Manning said about it is how I feel. In my head, Help! is them perfecting their pop formula, Rubber Soul is where they realized they could experiment more and still deliver incredible results. Help! has my favorite song of 1965 though which is "I've Just Seen a Face"

So far I've also listened for the first time to:
The Kinks - Kinda Kinks
The Kinks - The Kink Kontroversy
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Whipped Cream & Other Delight
The Supremes: More Hits by the Supremes
The Rolling Stones: Out of Our Heads
The Who: My Generation

I thought the Kink Kontroversy saw the band really come into their own. I really like Something Else and Lola, but it's fun listening to how they got to those. More Hits by the Supremes is maybe the most apt album title I've heard. They deliver exactly that. Enjoyed the Who and the Stones - both bands I've dabbled in but never really committed to listening to. And the Whipped Cream album was good fun too - definitely felt like a different kind of jazz than what I'm used to (i.e. a lot more accessible)

Also going to try to get through:
Joan Baez: Farewell, Angelina
The Byrds: Turn! Turn! Turn!
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme
Nina Simone: Pastel Blues
Nina Simone: I Put a Spell On You
Donovan: Fairytale
The Temptations: The Temptin' Temptations
The Temptations: Sing Smokey
The Yardbirds: For Your Live
Donovan: Fairtyale
Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington: Ella at Duke's Place

 

Bert Jansch is great. I listened to that album a lot at the beginning of the panny, it seemed to fit the mood.

“Needle Of Death” is a classic, I dig “Running From Home” and “I Have No Time” a lot too.

The next album, Bert and John, is not as good, but the first song, “East Wind” has some great playing from him and John Renbourn

(John Renbourn’s a trip; way way waaaaay too Ren Fair for me, but the first song on The Hermit is unreal. Amazing guitar song)

 

i like john a lot haha

essential “im learning how to fingerpick” stuff

 

It makes me weirdly happy how many of us have listened to that Herb Alpert album all this week. Must be making Spotify's algorithms tweak slightly.

 

For those unfamiliar with Herb Alpert, he has a great story in the music business. He co-founded A&M Records, which was the world's largest independent record label... he got something like $350 million when it was sold. He's probably one of the top five richest musicians (up there with Jay-Z and Paul McCartney).

Two random facts about him:
- His song Rise was sampled in the Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotize
- He's the only musician to hit number 1 in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist

 

Hah yeah count me as one of those listeners, favorite new find of ‘65

 

I listened to The Sonics debut, Here are the Sonics today.

They take classic rock n roll tunes and plays them faster and sloppier and much more raucous. Very easy to see them as the middle ground between something like Buddy Holly and The Stooges. Rough around the edges for sure, and basically sounds like a live record not a studio one, but that’s where the appeal is.

Great stuff here.

 

I had to do a quick check that the vocals were intentionally distorted and I wasn't blowing out the semi-expensive Bluetooth speaker.

 

me too! Homer also approves lol

 

it’s so close to my top 3 , that and The Sonics likely round out my top 5

 

Doing this year a disservice if I didn’t mention one of the most world-changing singles of all time: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”. The exact moment when funk was invented out of R&B/Soul. His early career is much better to own on the Star Time box than his spotty albums, but that song is as big as anything else that happened in ‘65.

 

Yeesh what a year

1. Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
2. Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas
3. The Beatles - Rubber Soul

 

It’s also the single most quotable Dylan song for my money. “You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows” might be the most instructive lyric of the 60s.

 

Song is incredible - not sure how we missed that on the first few pages. Absolutely essential.

 

1 Otis Redding - Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
2 The Beatles - Help!
3 The Beatles - Rubber Soul

4 Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
5 Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
6 Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
7 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
8 Nina Simone - I Put a Spell On You

Otis is probably my all-time favorite vocalist; Otis Sings Terms & Conditions would be in the running for this, let alone an album of soul classics he almost invariably elevates.

Help and Rubber Soul are so, so close but I have to go against the grain and give the edge to the former; just too many undeniable, all-timer pop singles. Title track is my favorite Beatles song many days.

 

Dance Party by Martha and the Vandellas is honestly one of the best '60s Motown albums I've heard. Just wall-to-wall dance jams and the band is absolutely on fire from first to last. Easily the best of the 4 albums I've heard from them.

The Sound of Music is basically the Thriller of musicals. Every single song is a hit you already know. Not sure what else to say. If you think you'll like Julie Andrews singing the greatest hits of the theater, you will. "Climb Every Mountain" is absolutely one of the best epics to ever grace a stage. I will say, more experiences ears fell in love with the suspended chord they land on with the title line in "The Sound of Music" that I didn't notice when I saw the film.

Marvin Gaye's How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You is a rock-solid Motown record from one of the greatest singers of all time. Great single, solid album tracks, killer production.

The Grammy AotY winner for the year, Frank Sinatra's A Man and His Music is more of an instructional listen than one I'll come back to a lot. It goes chronologically through the music that's defined his career and it bridged by narration that ranges from interesting to a nuisance depending on the song. The music that's there is awesome, but it's a comp and all the early material is re-recorded from later records. Some of the re-recordings are awesome. Some he ruins with his worst '60s affectations (changing "crazy" to "cuckoo" in "Witchcraft"). It was cool to get a kind of narrative picture of his career to that point though.

 

The Sound of Music was my high school musical when I was a sophomore. I played Friedrich, the older of the two Von Trapp boys. That entire soundtrack is burned into my brain.

 

This makes me think of maybe my biggest guilty pleasure movie, The Pacifier

 

By far the most common reason I think of that movie is the Sound of Music link. Haha

 

I quote “It wasn’t union, but it was GOOD” ALL the time

 

HAHA, the director's tirade is the best part of the movie. Man, I had forgotten about that line.

 

Oh shit, Otis Blue was this year? That's my #1 then.