Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1969
by Scott Miller

"Long Time Gone" - Crosby, Stills, and Nash
1969 was the cresting of culture as universally conceivable by Western youth: the moon landing, the last Beatles album, Woodstock. My experience of Woodstock was seeing the movie. As aerial shots assess the scope of the engineering project, CSN assess the scope of the task of reversing social injustice in the bluesy verse, then lay those angelic harmonies on us for "it appears to be a long, long time before the dawn." Very powerful.

"The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back" - Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Not very representative of Trout Mask Replica, which mostly sounds like Howlin' Wolf singing over what figure to be composed sections of free jazz, "The Dust" is an a capella piece apparently recorded line by line as it was composed, using a portable tape recorder. The rustic characterization and intensely tactile and visual rendering make a deep, immediate impression, and provide the easiest way I know to make the case for the dotty, irascible Captain being an exotically gifted communicator.

"Something" - The Beatles
"Something" could be the song most globally accepted as surpassingly beautiful; I certainly vote that way. The first thought it occurs to me to add is to note Ringo's highly imaginative, fill-based drumming, which can only be described as majestic.

"I Want To Take You Higher" [edit] - Sly and the Family Stone
The singalong from this was a key Woodstock moment, and for the first part of the seventies, with its hard rock riff, it was on the A-list of songs it occurred to teen bands to cover (normally non-singing members didn't need much selling on the idea of getting to do some "boom shaka lakas").

"Cymbaline" - Pink Floyd
For some reason I fretted this inclusion; I came very close to replacing it with: "21st Century Schizoid Man," "Can't Find My Way Home," "Hello Suzie," "Doing That Scrapyard Thing," and "Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague" (Zappa is very hard for me to commit unreservedly to). But I think despite some painful lyrics (really—"butterfly with broken wings"—really?), this has the most specialness to it. The chorus really is very catchy, and trusty Rick Wright seals the deal with a nice major seventh piano chord in said chorus as well as that other-worldly organ drone ending. I'm also tempted to call this the first important David Gilmour vocal success.

"Forget All About It" - The Nazz
The singer is Paul "Stewkey" Antoni, but the occasion here is the dropping of the first major Todd Rundgren bomb ("Open My Eyes" is... okay). He's really bringing the art rock, too; it's very hard to follow along to that drum intro part—it must be good. The verse and chorus and guitar solo are all winners, but the epicenter of Toddness here is the bridge, with all the soul chords and especially the ur-Todd aside, "But that's just one of my own personal crusades."

"Goodbye" - Mary Hopkin
This is a Paul McCartney give-away, and despite being decidedly non-rock, sounds noticeably less phoned-in than any of his material from Abbey Road to me. The horns on this are cheesy, but everything else sounds big and fat and good. Those first guitar notes are some of the biggest, fattest, 10:1 compressed old notes you could ask for.

"Candy Says" - The Velvet Underground
The third VU album has always been my favorite, although I feel I should say I don't have any dislike for their loud, crazy side; "I Heard Her Call My Name" is amazing. Almost all the songs on the third record are phenomenal, and deeply musical in a conventionally recognizable way. Something about the Doug Yule sung "Candy Says" strikes just the right note of emotional complexity: "I've come to hate my body and all that it requires" is unexpectedly direct and believable, especially balanced with the wistful but equally believable "I'm going to watch the bluebirds fly over my shoulder/I'm going to watch them pass me by/Maybe when I'm older..."

"Christmas" - The Who
I remember as a nine-year-old being thrilled to pieces with the idea of Tommy as a "rock opera," where the songs were part of a story. About a year into knowing about it—it was my first knowledge of the Who, too—it occurred to me I pretty much didn't know what was going on at any point whatsoever of the plot. He had a feeling '21 was going to be a good year; he's deaf, dumb, and blind; he is a pinball wizard; listening to him, someone climbs the mountain, or vice versa. Good! Like it!

"Frank Mills" - Shelley Plimpton, "Hair" Original Cast Recording
Considering my devotion to Tommy, it's a little odd I've remained so ignorant of Hair, but somewhere along the line I discovered and fell in love with this monumentally endearing little piece. I wouldn't like my chances of pulling off sung free verse, and this charms you into not only not noticing the lack of rhymes, but accepting it as a hook. It's hard not to smile just thinking of the exactly right delivery of lines like, "I love him, but it embarrasses me to walk down the street with him," and, "Tell him Angela and I don't want the two dollars back, just him."

"Whole Lotta Love" - Led Zeppelin
This is where Zeppelin bought themselves their reputation among some rock critics for being thuddy and bombastic, which they aren't at all; everything about the considerable power of this track is well-earned, well-crafted, and well-educated. This is a good place to start appreciating Robert Plant. It's one thing to write lyrics that are among the best—Zeppelin don't do that; it's another thing, learned from blues, to make a recording where simple things are all you need to say to connect strongly.

"Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus" - Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin
After years recording plenty-respectable jazz, loose cannon par excellence Serge Gainsbourg turned to pop, and was alarmingly good at it, if apparently motivated almost exclusively to provoke scandal. "Je T'Aime" is a sublimely affecting pop instrumental over which Jane sings and acts whispered ecstasies, and a blase Serge delivers dismissive asides as if off-camera, one infers for comic effect. It's mildly amusing on the intended level, yet so indifferent to good taste the greater achievement is a sort of elevated pathos, as if demonstrating that earnest emotions define their own universe which endures the parallel presence of cynicism.

"Come and Get It" - Badfinger
This was the signature song from a now Peter Sellers (and Ringo Starr!) comedy called The Magic Christian. I liked it quite a bit, and loved this song, which is effectively a Paul McCartney record.

"Gimme Shelter" - The Rolling Stones
There were plenty of dark aspects to 1969, pretty well captured by the Stones with this song, particularly with its associations with the Altamont free concert that resulted in a fatal melee involving the Hell's Angels, who the film portrayed as being hired as security. 1969 was also the year of the Manson murders, which became unwittingly associated with the Beatles' "Helter Skelter," and the what-the-hell Paul Is Dead rumor. Supposing you're the Stones in '69 trying to corner the dark market, you could have been considering it tough to catch a break.

"Venus" - Shocking Blue
They were actually a very solid group, not one-hit wonders: excellent drums, excellent guitar. "Send Me a Postcard" from the previous year was another high point, as was "Love Buzz," the original of the first Nirvana single. But the goddess on the mountain top, burning like a silver flame, was "Venus." Man, this song knocked me out when I was a kid, and still does. The most inspired of the numerous uses I've seen over the years was for the scene of Marcia stepping out in a Brady remake.

"Fortunate Son" - Creedence Clearwater Revival
One of the San Francisco bay area's proudest moments was this cry from the El Cerrito bayou. The guitar comes on here low, lean, and understated; nothing starts out sounding like it's getting ready to dust the competition. But it sort of does. That little two-note answer from a second guitar at the end of the riff somehow summons a lot of momentum. Fogerty takes it from there. I'm not sure the house looking like a rummage sale is damning evidence of class hypocrisy, but just about every other salvo in this song is right on target: the draft is an abomination to begin with, but to some extent it manifests a more general potential for oppression. "When the band plays 'hail to the chief', ooh, they point the cannon at you." Talk about nailing it.

"Victoria" - The Kinks
Here's an incredibly enjoyable song, and a reminder of how good Dave Davies was: the varied riffing, that great little walk down and then slide up on the extended chorus near the end. Ray gives an interesting put-on of a vocal; you're not exactly sure how much irony is there at any given time, be it celebrating "croquet lawns" or Victoria battling the world into submission.

"Something Better" - Marianne Faithfull
This was a huge find for me: another writing triumph from Carole King and Gerry Goffin, produced by Mick and Keith, with gorgeous slide guitar from Keith. With its 5/4 section—and is that a piccolo trumpet?—we have my kind of prog-out going on here. Marianne Faithfull's talent is no longer a secret after Broken English, and this is the number one from the past to revisit. It's mysteriously and almost aphoristically engaging with "Nothing can compare to something that's almost there," and "Smile on your jailers until they grow weak." Then come beautiful vocal harmonies on the elegantly dissolute chorus: "Say, hey, have you heard, blue whiskey's the rage?/I'll send you a jug in the morning."

"Down By the River" [edit] - Neil Young
No doubt about it, this one gets the dark side of 1969 right, too. This is one great chorus attached to one creepy song. "Be on my side, I'll be on your side" is a chilling way to start a murder ballad; throughout the song it's as if half of the singer's mind is reckoning with the enormity of the situation and half isn't, the latter half is just bugged by people giving him grief and making too much of things and so forth. I'm using poetic license here of course; I think I heard that Neil even said this isn't a literal murder ballad, just that the singer shot his chances with is baby. Whatever the claim: yeesh!

"Come Together" - The Beatles
It's fantastic. The way it melds with a section of one's life to share its flavor between the two is uncanny. Is it the coolest groove ever? It's doubly amazing how that's pulled off with no breath in the low end; it's solid bass with no rests—usually a formula for muddy, cotton-head sound. Here it just works as the libidinous undertones of the Rhodes. Why do the lyrics work so well? "He shoot Coca Cola"; "Got to be good lookin' 'cause he's so hard to see"; "He say one and one and one is three." What is even good about any of that? What does "Come Together right now over me" even mean? But good it is; better than.