The best thing about the 60's

You can say a lot of things about the 1960s and a lot of people have, but for me the best thing about the 1960s was still the music. Without the music you wouldn’t have the cultural revolution and all the icons that go with it. But having said that, a lot of the music produced in the 60s was pretty horrid and it hasn’t stood up too well over time. In fact, most of the key figures in 60s music actually annoy the hell out of me.

Bob Dylan – what the hell is he on about? His voice barely rises above the spoken word and his harmonica playing is like nails on a blackboard. There are a handful of his songs I can deal with but on the whole, too much to say and no blues to give it any feeling. Icon one down.

The Grateful Dead? OMFG no. Apparently you had to see them live to appreciate them. The tabs would have helped too so you could at least watch the light show, because musically they are so lame they are lifeless. Mock soul vocals, pomped out lyrical drivel and wimped out guitar solos that go on and on and on and on without achieving anything. All the Dead Heads that have followed them around for 50 years qualify for a big three-foot-high, gold-plated get-a-life trophy. Icon two down.

Jefferson Airplane. I own a copy of Surrealistic Pillow. It has a lot of good songs and a good atmosphere that was lost on everything else they did subsequently. Their biggest problem, apart from Marty Balin’s stoned out, mock soul vocals, is the fact that Jorma Kaukonen came up with THE worst guitar sound in recorded history. Whoever told him that putting an extra pick-up on a semi acoustic guitar then feeding it into a fuzz box was a good idea should have been shot. It produced the tinniest lead guitar sound imaginable and it has the same effect on the nervous system as Bob Dylan’s harmonica. Surrealistic Pillow is good because there are very few guitar solos on it and those they do are played clean. Everything they did subsequently is plagued by Jorma and Marty’s shortcomings. I don’t want to sink the boot in too much because their song writing is so good, but I honestly find most of their stuff unlistenable. Icon three down.

So who do you like Alvis? Come on. You spent most of the last post railing against the state of the Universe - tell us something good already.

Okay, okay. Sinking the boot into icons is actually a lot of fun, but I’ll get back on topic. And I didn’t even get around to the Beatles.

I’ll spend the rest of this post hooking you up with my favourite tracks from the 60’s. Yes tracks. Because in a lot of cases it’s just the odd track that people did that floats my boat, not their overall legend or output (with the exception of Jimi, but that’s a given – they could dig him up now and he’d still be cooler than anyone else treading the boards). So here goes. In no particular order, you need to hear these:

Section 43 – Country Joe and the Fish. Not the version on their first album, but the one on their first EP. If any 1966 track qualifies as ‘psychedelic’ this is it. The whole thing seems to come from a place further than far east, and it sounds like it is being played in a key of its own. It’s actually just an ordinary minor key, but the languid baseline uses a musical language outside anything ‘rock’ had produced up to that point, and ever since too for that matter. Truly music to trip to. Even the silly country twang in the middle makes sense in this world.

A Beacon from Mars – Kaleidoscope. Music to trip to is a theme across these tracks actually. This is the title track from Kaleidoscope’s second album, recorded in 1968. What is particularly mind-blowing about this track is that the band recorded it  live in the studio. Starting out barely audible with a slow take on Howling Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning it develops over 12 and half minutes into a nocturnal journey through forgotten parts of America and outer/inner space. It simmers and bubbles away with a hypnotic momentum, highlighted by an incredible feedback solo halfway through. This is one of my favourite pieces of music full stop.

Music – Kaleidoscope. Not the same Kaleidoscope as above, but I couldn’t resist putting them both in. This is the English band of the same name but of very different flavour. These guys were serious intellectuals, and this is what you get when you let four Cambridge types loose in a studio with a bunch of tabs, a phaser unit, and some musty opera samples. Not as pompous and dated as it sounds, it’s actually a genuine assault on the senses. Another pure one-off.

Wind Chimes – Mad River. Not the version on their first EP this time, but the one on their first album. The EP version has some inexplicable Hare-Krishna chants in the middle that just piss me off. The album version has none of that and features some incredibly deep ‘acid rock’ guitar soloing across it. ‘Acid rock’ actually just translates to the use of minor keys in a rock setting but what the hey. Everything needs a good marketing term doesn’t it. Their first album is the best thing that came out of San Francisco in the late 60’s and is recommended in its entirety. Laurence Hammond is one of hippiedom’s best vocalists and all of these guys were seriously talented on their instruments of choice. The only draw back is that the album was mastered at the wrong speed so it’s a bit chipmunked, but there is probably a speed corrected version available by now so get googlin’.

1983, A Merman I Should Turn to be – Jimi Hendrix. No sinking the boot in here. Jimi is, was and always will be, my main man. Ironically this track isn’t full of guitar playing – it’s Jimi stretching out in the studio in his favourite sci-fi/fututistic/fantasy mode, creating a movie for the mind. Almost every instrument is played by Jimi overlaid track by track, including wind noises made by his mouth. I have listened to this in a lot of different settings in a lot of different states. If I get the choice it will be what I listen to on my death bed. It’s THAT good.

Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic? – Funkadelic. Yes indeed – we need some funk in here. This just scrapes in on topic as it came out late 1969. The first track on Funkadelic’s beyond-mere-classic first album has weed smoke wafting off it as soon as you put it on. The album should have come with its own little bag. Slow paced and kinda sleazy, it hits the spot whenever you are in the mood for something a little warped. The only drawback is the thin guitar sound and slightly out of time drums in places – but who knows, that might have been intentional (or unavoidable).

The Fool – Quicksilver Messenger Service. One of the common features across these tracks is the lack of vocals or lyrical content (Funkadelic don’t really write lyrics!). This one is the only ‘song’ in the list, but it’s a long one, clocking in at around eleven minutes. The lyrics and vocals aren’t the most memorable feature it has to be said. The high notes are cause for any cats in ear shot to run out the door, but these guys were jammers so give them a break. It’s guitars to the fore this time. Brilliant solos all across it, with a nice little percussive wah-wah break taking it to places a little other-worldy. Spaced out tarot-rock anyone?

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – The 13^th Floor Elevators. What happens when you take a Dylan song, give it some decent vocals and overlay it with floating guitar lines of the sort the Grateful Dead can only dream of? You get this. I had to include an Elevators track because they are genuine 60’s icons for all the right reasons – chemical overindulgence, free thinking and musical talent taken to illogical extremes with an enduring cult following to match. Roky Erikson is a survivor of bizarre proportions given what he put himself through in the late 60s, and he was still able to put out stand up music into the 1980s when all of his contemporaries had either sold out or completely lost the (musical) plot. This track is from their second LP Easter Everywhere – a work of beauty that stirred the frantic garage rock of their classic debut into a smoother paste without wasting the crucial blues chunks. If they had kept it together they would have been huge, but they burnt out and joined the canon of 60s what-might-have-beens instead. Sad, but almost inevitable.

Trust Us – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. I need to double check when this came out but it was before Trout Mask Replica and that was 1969 so I think we’re good. The list ends with the most indescribable song. Everything that makes the good Captain great is included here. Lyrics that sound profound, but are really just nonsense. Bluesy guitar licks and wild production. It sounds mad and it probably is (although word has it the Captain was putting it on most of the time). It makes me laugh every time.

I’ve left out tracks by Frank Zappa, Fleetwood Mac and Santana because their best stuff starts around 1970, and none of it has the same vibe as the above, mainly because the atmosphere of lysergic experimentation that produced them was starting to fade away.

As usual I’ll try and link these back to our stuff. In reality its something of a stretch this time around, although we aren’t strangers to slow, spaced out instrumentals so I don’t feel too dishonest. Try Nullarbor and Void and Light Well on Posts from Planet Earth as a starting point. They probably come up to the belly button of the above tracks. And phasers and samples? – Well, that we can do!

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