Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1967
by Scott Miller

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

"I See the Rain" - The Marmalade
Probably like a lot of people, I didn't know this one until the U.K. Nuggets, and the social resonance of it for me is that it was one of those songs Michael Quercio, Susanna Hoffs, and the early eighties L.A. people cherished—in relative isolation. She and Matthew Sweet did a good cover of it recently, and it was in, I believe, a Volkswagen commercial! 1967 is probably tied with 1977 for the very year itself bearing the most indelible cultural stamp, and the salient utilitarian character of the Summer of Love CD is, surprisingly, its kid-appropriateness (I have 5 and 2 year old girls). There's a convenient overlap between the work of raving acid-heads and that of Julie Aigner-Clark where you get songs about cows running in from the rain to put their coats on. Set in this case to the big, big chunks-of-haggis sound of the Marmalade's two-bass-guitar lineup.

"Penny Lane" - The Beatles
The cheapest stance among music critics in my lifetime has been that Paul McCartney is a lightweight. Wrong, on so many levels. To start with, Paul is by all indications an actual tough guy and they aren't—if they ever have to scratch out a living among thugs and swindlers on the Reeperbahn, I don't want to watch. More importantly, though, the axiom that no one should produce good-time, populist fare seems not only wrong, but a betrayal of rock and roll. For me, "Penny Lane" is a powerful piece of music, the more so for first establishing a tone that's just whimsical. At the point of the three snare hits at "very strange," you're reminded this is a band capable of deploying a lot more power, and just that hint is enough to charge the moment with an anything-can-happen resonance.

"If I Were a Carpenter" - Tim Hardin
This spot wants a quiet song, and it was among this, "8:05" by Moby Grape, and "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. I now appreciate the Cohen song, but all through my youth I considered it dreary, and I want to stay minimally true to that category of impressions. Nothing wrong with the Grape one, maybe not quite a classic. I started out knowing "Carpenter" from romanticized covers; Hardin's version is an austere, bluesy, beatnik affair.

"Sunshine Of Your Love" - Cream
I relate to Cream more respectfully than affectionately. To this day I look at the cover of Disraeli Gears and flash, "oh yeah, one of my older brother's albums," and I don't even have an older brother. As goofy as the cover art wants to be, I can't not think of Mount Rushmore. Besides the famous riff and—excuse me?—"woman tone" guitar solo, the points for me are for the really odd added vocal at "to be where I'm going," and the slowed down "Apache" drum beat, which I am here to tell you cannot be dropped into just any song.

"If the Night" - The Kaleidoscope
This is the David Lindley Kaleidoscope, from a very hard-to-find album called Side Trips. I believe you can actually find new vinyl pressings, but if you can't, a substitute fun-with-nihilism number with acetate-shredding vocal harmonies and organ is the Strawberry Alarm Clock's hit "Incense and Peppermints."

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" - Procol Harum
This is the first of a class of songs milking a certain British rock cliche that I'm an absolute sucker for: the music hall descent with the twist. This one doesn't have much of a twist yet, except for sounding vaguely like Bach's "air on the G string" (not the real title, don't make me Google it) and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman," which was more or less the descent with no twist. Later examples would be "Life On Mars," "Bell Bottom Blues," "All the Young Dudes." At their best, these take a wacky turn at the end that leaves the impression of utter invention.

"San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" - Scott McKenzie
You don't want a song like this to be about what coming to Haight-Ashbury was actually like—a decades-long excuse for a lot of people to exercise bad manners—but rather what the song was: a lovely ideal. I'm hippie-dippy enough that any song that can get away with "You're going to meet some gentle people there" is okay with me. There's an arrangement coup I've never heard done quite as well, where coming out of the bridge back to "For those who come," there are some extra chord changes tossed in that wake my ears right up as good drama.

"Wonderful" - The Beach Boys
I've formed the possibly wrong impression of this being the most intact as-it-happens artifact from Smile among those that mean a lot to me, which lets out "Heroes and Villains," for which I'm not enthusiastic at that level. On balance I probably like the 2004 version even better, but it's so certainly the product of rare musical genius that decisions only Brian could make like the threadbare accompaniment and whispered vocals don't seriously threaten to get in the way. I want to take the lyrics as not darkly ironic in some way; with Van Dyke Parks I harbor suspicions.

"Carrie Ann" - The Hollies
This is in some ways the benchmark power pop song. It's very simple, for one thing. Anything by the Raspberries is a concierto by comparison; for the first British Invasion bands, the soil hadn't been farmed to death yet. I mean, the chorus hits, there's a big vocal fourth, right on the downbeat, with the word "hey"! All power pop wants to do this. Then, but for the Hollies having done it first, it wants to say a girl's name. Then, ask her what her game is. And then it could hardly be expected to stop itself from wanting to play.

"Citadel" - The Rolling Stones
Andy Partridge picked this in some magazine forum where artists got to choose a favorite Stones song. Q, I think. Yeah! I was one of those people who didn't know I was supposed to just not like Satanic Majesties, so I kept trying to get it. What was it about, sci-fi adventure? Half the songs are just plain great, and as for the rest, when the mother ship visits and calls select earthlings with some notes from "Gomper," I'll be ready. The two girls' names (Candy and Cathy) were a hypnotic mantra for me, and Keith's guitar at the beginning has such a yummy ground glass crunch.

"Windy" - The Association
There was a time before the eternal and perfect, "Who's tripping down the streets of the city?"; but it's honestly hard for me to imagine it not existing. Neglected as an artistic achievement, it's one of those I start thinking barely makes the best-of-year list, then I realize I consider bumping other songs, but never this one.

"Alone Again Or" - Love
The consensus of critics' favorite rock era albums started taking shape around 1975, and despite not being a big seller, this was one of the usual suspects from the beginning, along with Astral Weeks, What's Going On, Pet Sounds, Blonde On Blonde. This elaborate, delicately Latin-influenced production is the stand-out, but not to get to know leader Arthur Lee's songs like "A House Is Not a Motel" would be a shame.

"The Crystal Ship" - The Doors
Probably my favorite Doors cut—the prettiest of the full-blown Jim Morrison cuts. I like the Jim Morrison thing. The idea of a room full of people at a rock show finding themselves in a sort of candle-and-incense frame of mind where everyone's just a little more reflective and serious than anyone expected is entirely appealing to me.

"I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You" - Aretha Franklin
Truth be told, I don't like "Respect" all that much. It's a fine vocal performance, but I like almost every other song on the Never Loved a Man album better, the title song most of all. In my mind it's the first ultra-cool Wurlitzer riff, and to have all of Wurly, piano, and organ building the chord definition is bold and well-executed. "My friends keep telling me you're no good/ But they don't know that I'd leave you if I could" is terrific enough by itself, but Ms. Franklin makes it absolutely singe.

"Fairest Of the Seasons" - Nico
Nico's singing is practically undecidable; I... guess I like it? Mainly, it's the composition here. As delicious as the Jackson Browne music is, the lyrics are its match or better. The whole sequence of "Now that I'm almost not so very far behind," "Now that I feel it's time to spend the night away," etc., creates quite an incisive little vocabulary, the kicker for me being, "Now that it's real, now that the dreams have given all they have to lend." For even suggesting in popular entertainment that there's something more real than your dreams, this deserves the Nobel prize.

"Waterloo Sunset" - The Kinks
Under the radar, a world of hearts has been won in united concern for Terry and Julie not being afraid as they gaze at evening. An emotional couple of seconds to me, don't ask me why, are the guitar whacks just after, "Every day I look at the world through my window."

"Somebody To Love" - Jefferson Airplane
Worked up the year before, there's at least a sentimental case to be made for the epicenter of psychedelic music being located at San Francisco at the crack of dawn of 1967, with the Jefferson Airplane thumping out this rock-folk monster, and Grace Slick stepping up to the mike with that thousand-yard stare and preaching, "When the truth is found to be lies..."

"Daydream Believer" - The Monkees
Here's a mouthful: it's almost as hard to pick only one Monkees tune in 1967 as it is to pick only two Beatles tunes. And to have that pick be a Davy Jones number? The Nesmith-sung "Door Into Summer" would be my second choice. And what about "Pleasant Valley Sunday"? It's hard to articulate what is so perfect about the chorus of "Daydream Believer." Unlike "Carrie Ann," it's sly; it backs in. "Cheer up, sleepy Jean," the way Davy slams the compressor with it, is certainly a world-class hook by itself, but holds back on a tentative minor chord, then "Oh what can it mean," sidesteps to another minor. At "to a...," there's still a rest on the next big downbeat! Only on the last syllable of "daydream" (on a lowly three-count) does it all hit. Masterful deployment.

"Venus In Furs" - The Velvet Underground
There was a time when I was the only person I knew who liked this record, then only one of two, then four, and I have lived to see the day when I have to complain that it's overrated. "Run Run Run" is just plain bad, for instance. About half the songs have content so unprofessional sounding as to take some explaining. But everything about "Venus In Furs" is a knockout. Lou's vocals are a tour de force, first for finding the perfectly-tuned dramatic delivery of the S & M narration, and second for sheer flourish: check that vibrato on "in the dark." The ringing guitar and booming toms are just exactly right, and it can't have been easy to play that viola part so precisely through the whole take.

"Lucifer Sam" - Pink Floyd
It's mind-boggling enough that Syd Barrett and Roger Waters once co-existed, and even odder that nearly Syd's entire legend rests on the few songs on Piper At the Gates of Dawn, about a third of which are borderline throwaways. It's easy to appreciate Syd on the obviously dead-cool "Lucifer Sam," and easy to appreciate Rick Wright's always-showcased echoey, modal keyboards. It's not as easy to notice how good Roger's bass playing is, but listen to the run after "always by your side." "See Emily Play" is another, more obvious bass triumph, inaugurating his octave heartbeat style.

"Manic Depression" - Jimi Hendrix Experience
This is nearly the fullest sounding hard rock track of the era, and it's just a three-piece. Mitch Mitchell is obviously serious about meeting the challenge, but so much is Hendrix himself that one marvels. When he throws in little leads, those aren't overdubs; he goes back to the rhythm in the intervening microseconds to keep the energy going. One of the two gob-smacking song appearances in the movie "Shampoo" (the other was "Wouldn't It Be Nice.")

"A Day In the Life" - The Beatles
The mere fact that the Beatles didn't intend Sergeant Pepper to be a concept album doesn't mean it isn't. The concept was an inducement of their times and their sensitivities, and it is this: a systematic breakdown of exclusionary principles. I'm in the habit of crediting Allen Ginsberg with pioneering the observation, but it's obvious enough once you think to test it. "Billy Shears" is okay even though he "[goes] in and out of style." As much as the girl in "She's Leaving Home" is the heroine, the feelings of the parents are at least as real and important. The "Sergeant" isn't a reviled authority figure, he's part of the sympathetic community with his lonely hearts club. Same for Rita the Meter maid. The singer in "Getting Better" blurts out an admission that he is a reforming wife abuser. It's really so revolutionary the old chemical litmus tests that use us-vs-them positioning don't pick it up. In a way, the album before "A Day In the Life" is setup, and that song, the delivery system. The album sketches the new post-exclusion world, and "Day In the Life" illustrates how it might feel for the old quotidian reality to give way to the new. You read the news as if experiencing, for instance, the weight of tragic loss of life for the first time. It will be a bigger deal than anyone realizes to come up with a better album. It won't happen tomorrow, or the next day.