Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1966
by Scott Miller

Listen to a sample of the songs on the list - thanks to Steve Holtebeck

"Batman Theme" - Neal Hefti
The first song on these collections will always be intended to speak the authentic feeling of the time—and also suggest a party I think I'd want to join at any point in my life. A representative truth known to the people of 1966 but since lost: the real Batman has nothing to do with brooding introspection, it has to do with cheap fun. This gem of a theme song perfectly mirrors the genius pop art visuals of the TV show and the era with its half-steps and second-interval harmonies. My CD edits and compresses the Neal Hefti album version to emulate the sound and length of the TV theme.

"Paperback Writer" - The Beatles
By 1966, the Beatles' influence is enormous; jazz, folk, and blues as we knew them are virtually obliterated—one could almost say loved to death by them. Such is the Beatles' magnitude that I won't be repeating artists except for the Beatles, in whose case the three main writers are eligible in parallel. "Paperback Writer" was and is impossibly cool sounding—arguably the birth of the hard rock guitar riff.

"Big Spender" - "Sweet Charity" Original Cast Recording
I think of this Broadway vamp schtick as the jumping-off point for the whole Bob Fosse world of art-school cabaret choreography, and also an entry in the top ranks of the century's memorable tunes, one that flirts confidently with dissonance.

"Solitary Man" - Neil Diamond
This very demanding rhyme scheme is a risk to come off sing-songy, but in Neil Diamond's hands its effortless world-weariness is all payoff. "Don't know that I will, but until I can find me/A girl who'll stay and won't play games behind me"—that's "will" rhyming with "until," "stay" rhyming with "play," and "find me" rhyming with "behind me." Try composing one line like that if it you think it's easy. The stand-up bass is a beautiful touch.

"Wild Thing" - The Troggs
Who ever gets tired of "Wild Thing," the first and best garage rock tune? It distills teenage kicks to such a perfect primal essence (a straight love song to a girl called only "Wild Thing" is rather nervy when you think about it) as to do a bit of injustice to the Troggs, who actually had some range: "With a Girl Like You" was an almost equally great bubblegum hit.

"Big Fat Silver Aeroplane" - Roy Harper
Not many worthwhile obscurities from 1966 have escaped exploration, but for how strangely pretty it is, not many people know this one. Roy Harper is an obsessively anti-Christian British eccentric, something of a prototype for Julian Cope. His immense catalog contains the occasional stunner, this being the earliest. These ranting, surrealistic lyrics about hating everyone on an airplane for no good reason pretty much paint the Roy picture.

"Shapes of Things" - The Yardbirds
This dark military-march premonition is the signature Jeff Beck Yardbirds cut, introducing some of the earliest Eastern-edge guitar work I think of as psychedelic.

"For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" - Simon and Garfunkel
Paul Simon was the brains, but what any given Simon and Garfunkel album needed was always less Simon, more Garfunkel. Anything you could hear Art Garfunkel fairly well on would tend to be exceptionally beautiful, like this. "Frosted fields of juniper and lamplight" is an incredibly tight evocation of the luminosity of everyday experience.

"Summer In the City" - The Lovin' Spoonful
Terrific production touches—I want to say slightly mambo influenced. The tension released when the hot day ends and "at night it's a different world" has real power, as for some reason does the way "in the summer, in the city, in the summer, in the city" repeats.

"Remember You" - The Zombies
Here's another obscure one, although with the number of Zombies obsessives growing all the time, probably not for long. The breathy perfection of Colin Blunstone's singing and Rod Argent's scalding piano are, as usual, the focal points of what is actually a Chris White number.

"Georgy Girl" - The New Seekers
My impression is that this is a wholly critically dismissed song, or at least type of song, and I'd like to go on record as committing unreservedly to its quality. This is light entertainment, but its energy and centeredness succeed in demanding of me that an introverted person in need of coaxing to blossom a little be taken seriously alongside those concerning themselves with drugs, doom, war.

"Walk Away Renee" - The Left Banke
Adolescent longing rendered with amazing vividness via harpsichord, flute, and string quartet; it's not obvious why all hipsters tend to be okay with the Left Banke, but good for them.

"Making Time" - The Creation
Here's one of my favorite high-volume listening experiences. Probably obscure enough that most of you haven't heard it, and you must. It's like the Who with everything up two notches, and when that bowed-string guitar solo hits, the brain cells start perishing.

"Good Vibrations" - The Beach Boys
Giving the Beach Boys two cuts here violates rules I've set for myself, but I'm not going to be the one making a 1966 list and leaving out the original teenage symphony to God. But—and I've been dying to say this for years—those tape edits of legend are some of the least seamless splices I've ever heard on a major release!

"Season of the Witch" - Donovan
I'm arranging the songs in ascending quality order; I loved radio countdowns as a kid. The last ten songs will usually be in strict order with the best last; earlier, the rule is relaxed for the sake of listenability. About here they start to each be a little cut above. Donovan was fabulously successful but critically slighted—unjustly. Steve Wynn converted me to the greatness of this song, which it's easy to imagine was crucial to, say, the Doors, and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." Winningly proto-Girardian theme, and he projects a bit of a twit vibe on the verses, then nails the choruses to the back wall.

"Hey Joe" - Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix's brilliance is all present in this advance single from the mighty "Are You Experienced." It's as creepy as just about any murder ballad; while Jimi didn't write this, of course, I kind of wish he didn't throw in "shoot her one time for me." The compelling moment for me is the half-step ascent riff introduced in the middle.

"(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" - The Monkees
Fortunately the world has mostly forgotten how reviled the Monkees once were for being cast for a TV show about a rock band, but when your track can follow Hendrix and sound bigger, I'd say you get to be in the real band club. Mickey Dolenz was among the best rock vocalists and how about Peter Tork freakin' giving it up in the right speaker? (This is a minor cheat as the almost-as-good "I'm a Believer" was really the advance single from January 1967's "More of the Monkees," but I've swapped "Stepping Stone" to avoid Neil Diamond duplication and highlight the outstanding Boyce and Hart).

"Visions of Johanna" - Bob Dylan
I was too young to get Blonde On Blonde when it come out; this was the first cut where, later, in my teens, I received something like the mature impact, a sense of being in the presence of the genuinely prophetic. For the record, it was the "He writes 'everything's been returned that was owed'" sequence (that made my conscience explode).

"God Only Knows" - The Beach Boys
Everyone ought to know that this is a recurring candidate for most beautiful pop song ever. It will always be slightly weird to me that Brian Wilson didn't write the lyrics to these quintessentially Brian Wilson songs, yet they're still him—no doubt in about the same way that it's weird how Shakespeare never composed an original story line.

"Eight Miles High" - The Byrds
"Eight Miles High" has some of the most memorable sheer sonics of any pop recording. The harmonies are as angelic as in '65, but with a certain otherworldly aridity to the counterpoint and ripping sevenths. And that guitar; it's clearly influenced by jazz, but what jazz? Coltrane? Ornette Coleman? Slightly Wes Montgomery if you want to pick a guitarist? From my perspective it was as formative for something like fusion as it was derivative of anything before it.

"Ruby Tuesday" - The Rolling Stones
Even when they seem for all appearances to be attempting a minuet, they sound like louts. The Rolling Stones are practically unique in their ability to be utterly appealing in that kind of situation. "Ruby Tuesday" is so gorgeous its status has never threatened to dip below classic, but it's in a category of mid-sixties material like "Back Street Girl" or "2000 Man" that was once taken for lack of focus, but now reads as unexpected consistency of quality across a curious range of styles and moods.

"And Your Bird Can Sing" - The Beatles
On top of all that glorious 1966ness, there's John Lennon. It took me a long time to realize how intensely I love this song (and it certainly hurts to choose anything over "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said She Said.") It's one Lennon used to dismiss, as if the words are throwaway—they're not—and the craft is hollow. But it's not for him to realize that if achievements like these spine-tingling harmony guitar cascades don't issue from the clock-punching labor of a reigning musical genius, there is no wishing them into being with all one's idealistic might. And no one else would ever get to the lines "You may be awoken; I'll be round." Others would know it was important for you to be awoken, but not that it was key for them to be around.