Tag: 1967

More music from 1966/1967

Song referencing Long Island

Here’s more of my mixed CD for 1966/1967.

Somebody To Love – Jefferson Airplane. Surrealistic Pillow was the first Airplane album with Grace Slick.

 I’m Ready For Love – Martha and the Vandellas—a Holland-Dozier-Holland song. On my greatest hits CD, “I’m ready” in the bridge repeats, then “right now” does the same. It’s a failure of the pressing process, not a skip; it’s too precise.

 I Second That Emotion – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Smokey explains that the title line was a mistake. Some of the guys were in a store deciding something, and one wanted to say, “I that that motion,” but misspoke.

 Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – the Buckinghams. I heard the Cannonball Adderly version much later.

(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher – Jackie Wilson. Some of the Funk Brothers, who played on the Motown hits, went to Chicago to play on this track to make more money.

 My Baby Must Be A Magician – the Marvelettes. The first voice you hear is Melvin Franklin from The Temptations. This song was written and produced by Smokey Robinson.

 Wang Dang Doodle – Koko Taylor. It’s a Willie Dixon song.

 Big Noise From Speonk – the Lovin’ Spoonful. This is the final cut on the group’s Daydream album, which I got from the Capitol Record Club when I failed to return the postcard in time. I love the collection. Speonk is a hamlet in Southampton, Suffolk County, NY.

 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Otis Redding. A cover of a British band’s song.

19th Nervous Breakdown – the Rolling Stones

Obscure Motown

No More Water In The Well – the Temptations. Written by Warren Moore, Bobby Rogers, and Smokey from the Miracles. From my all-time favorite Temps album, The Temptations With A Lot o’ Soul

Love’s Gone Bad – Chris Clark. I found this Holland-Dozier-Holland song on two Motown compilation albums I own. Here’s her IMDb page.

The Mission: Impossible television theme. This was one of my father’s favorite shows at the time. I have at least seven albums with TV theme songs.

Five O’Clock World– the Vogues. This was the theme for the second season of The Drew Carey Show.

Boris The Spider – the Who. Because I like to say, “Boris, the Spider.”

At The Zoo – Simon and Garfunkel. I wrote a blog post about it.  

The Mixed CD cavalcade

“new” music

The Mixed CD cavalcade solves two of life’s little problems for me. But first, what IS it?

In 2005, when I first started blogging, I went to my friend Fred Hembeck’s roster of links. I visited several of my fellow bloggers, often leaving comments.

One of them, Lefty Brown, organized a mixed CD swap with a bunch of us, including Fred, Eddie Mitchell, SamuraiFrog, Mike Sterling, and even Greg “living in a desert”  Burgas. I reviewed some of these collections back then in my blog. We almost always created a list of the enclosed songs. 

Fred and I also had our private exchange of music. Several of Fred’s involved Beatles covers, so I reciprocated.

Then, I got so into curating music that I started making mixed CDs for myself. Oddly, though, I never included a playlist. So I have about 30 discs, and I have no idea what’s on them other than the title. (1966/67, War, Troublemakers)

Also, I need “new” music to augment the playing of albums tied to the artists’ birthdays. So I’ll play some of these, and they’ll become blog content. And when I run out of mine, I’ll play those discs from Fred and probably the others. Some of them are very good. Some are weird. These are not mutually exclusive terms.

One reality is that I have no computer with a disc drive presently, so I can’t make more of these. I suppose it could make me sad. Instead, I’m grateful for the ones I already created. Call it a smidgen of musical nostalgia.

1966/67

If I had to play only one year of music, it would be 1966. It was the year I turned 13. When I used to listen to an oldies station in the early 1980s that played songs from 1955 to approximately 1974, about 30% of my favorites were from 1966. I’m not saying the music was better, but it did resonate more for me.

Here are the first ten, with the remaining 16 coming up soon—all of them I still own on CD.

Cool Jerk – the Capitols. I wrote a whole post about this track. My, I love this song. Incidentally, Grammarly wanted to change Cool to Fantastic.

Keep On Running– The Spencer Davis Davis Group. This song has long been in my head. This is the first song of an unauthorized collection called Winwood, which I bought in a store then.

Along Comes Mary– the Association

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer – John Lee Hooker

Till The End Of The Day – the Kinks

I Feel Good – James Brown

Got To Get You Into My Life – The Beatles. It’s probably my second favorite Fab Four song.

Hold On, I’m Coming – Sam and Dave

Everlasting Love – Robert Knight. This song by Jamie Dornan was one of the best things in the movie Belfast.

Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart – the Supremes. This is my favorite Supremes song, and I never understood why it only went #9 pop, #7 RB on the Billboard charts. I have this extended version from a Supremes anthology.

M is for the Monkees: 1967

In 1967, the Monkees had the #1 album far longer than any other group, and More of the Monkees was #1 longer than any album, including Sgt. Pepper.

 

1967 was a stellar year in popular music. According to Robert Christgau and David Fricke, the former billed as the “dean of American rock critics”, the “40 Essential Albums” of that year included albums by the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Who, the Velvet Underground, and, of course, the Beatles. As it turns out, none of the albums released by the Monkees made the list.

The Monkees was a band formed by television executives to have a loony TV program in the tradition of the Beatles’ first movie, A Hard Day’s Night. The program which ran from 1966 to 1968 was quite popular, and even more so in eventual MTV reruns. I watched it occasionally, I will admit. But the group was derided as the “pre-Fab Four,” as opposed to the “real” Beatles.

Interestingly, the listening public did not seem to care about the controversy. On this weekly list of number #1 albums of 1967, the 1966 album The Monkees continued as #1 for five weeks (plus 8 weeks at the end of the previous year). It was replaced by More of the Monkees, which was #1 for 18 straight weeks. After a week of the Tijuana Brass, and a week by the Monkees’ Headquarters album, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper ruled for 15 weeks. Then two weeks of Ode to Billie Jo by Bobby Gentry, and five weeks of Supremes Greatest Hits. The last five weeks of the year, the top-selling album was the Monkees’ Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

In other words, in 1967, the Monkees had the #1 album far longer than any other group, and More of the Monkees was #1 longer than any album, including Sgt. Pepper.

Fast forward to the early 1980s. One of my co-workers gave me some Monkees’ greatest hits album. I must admit that I liked it enormously. I wrote it off as a “guilty pleasure,” but now I proclaim that there are lot of songs by the Monkees that I enjoy a lot.

And BestEverAlbums.com even gave the group a modicum of respect, with Headquarters considered the 38th best album of 1967, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. at 39, and More Of The Monkees at 85.

From More of the Monkees
Mary, Mary (Michael Nesmith). The song was first recorded by The Butterfield Blues Band for their 1966 album, East-West. The Monkees were derided for doing a Butterfield song until it was shown that a Monkee had actually written it.
(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone (Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart). Boyce & Hart wrote a number of Monkees songs. This went to #20 in the US, making it the first Monkees B-side to chart.
I’m a Believer (Neil Diamond). #1 in the U.S. for the week ending December 31, 1966, and remained there for seven weeks, becoming the biggest-selling single record for all of 1967.

From Headquarters
Randy Scouse Git (Micky Dolenz). The songwriter says it was written about a party that The Beatles threw for the Monkees, with references to the Beatles (“the four kings of EMI”) and to others such as Cass Elliot of the Mamas and Papas.

From Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.
Words (Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart). One of my favorite songs by the group.
Pleasant Valley Sunday (Gerry Goffin, Carole King). The single got to #3 in the US. Even though it’s about a street in New Jersey, I always pretend that it’s from upstate New York, where I have visited often. And how can I not love the lyrics: “And Mr. Green, he’s so serene. He’s got a TV in every room.”
***
And for no reason except that it would have been John Lennon’s 72nd birthday: Strawberry Fields Forever – the Beatles (1967).

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

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