Criteria: With instrumental originality, sound exploration, studio effects and extended improvisation as the central elements of psychedelic music, these albums were chosen as the best examples that helped define the genre. Impact & lasting influence were primary factors with lyrical content considered to a lesser degree. Those artists known specifically as vocal groups were excluded.
Jun 16, 2017 In honor of the 50th anniversary of Monterey Pop Fest and the Summer of Love, here are the 50 best psychedelic rock records of 1967, from Jefferson. The Moody Blues classic 1967 album Days Of Future Passed is regarded as one of the foundation stones of the progressive rock genre. In 2017, the band headed out on the album’s 50th Anniversary Tour including the wonderful show captured at the Sony Centre For The Performing Arts in Toronto accompanied by a full orchestra.
Editor's note: As with all lists, this is a subjective list & makes no claim of an official nature.Newly added names are in Red. Electric Music For The Mind & Body - Country Joe & The Fish 2. Piper at The Gates of Dawn - Pink Floyd 3.
Strange Days - The Doors 4. Anthem Of The Sun - Grateful Dead 5. United States of America - United States of America 6. Electric Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix Experience 7.
After Bathing At Baxter's - Jefferson Airplane 8. Angel's Egg - Gong 9. Surrealistic Pillow - Jefferson Airplane 10. Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix Experience 11. Lovecraft - H.P.
Lovecraft 12. The American Metaphysical Circus - Joseph Byrd & The Field Hippies 13. Beacon From Mars - Kaleidoscope 14. Spirit - Spirit 15.
Fifth Dimension - The Byrds 16. DeCapo - Love 17. Balaklava - Pearls Before Swine 18. 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus - Spirit 19. I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die - Country Joe and The Fish 20.
Aoxomoxoa - Grateful Dead 21. Dear Mr Fantasy - Traffic 22. Velvet Underground & Nico - Velvet Underground 23. Tomorrow - Tomorrow 24. Easter Everywhere - 13th Floor Elevators 25. Crown Of Creation - Jefferson Airplane 26.
S F Sorrow - The Pretty Things 27. Music In A Doll's House - Family 28. Forever Changes - Love 29. Volume 2 - West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band 30. Parable of Arable Land - The Red Crayola 31. The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - The Incredible String Band 32. In Search of The Lost Chord - The Moody Blues 33.
Clear Light - Clear Light 34. Roger The Engineer - Yardbirds 35. Cauldron - Fifty Foot Hose 36. The Amazing Charlatans - The Charlatans 37. L - Steve Hillage 38. A Child's Guide To Good & Evil - West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band 39.
Present Tense - Sagittarius 40. Lovecraft II - H.P. Lovecraft 41. Magical Mystery Tour - The Beatles 42. The Twain Shall Meet - Eric Burdon & The Animals 43. Earth Opera - Earth Opera 44. A Saucerful Of Secrets - Pink Floyd 45.
Quicksilver Messenger Service - Quicksilver Messenger Service 46. Behold and See - Ultimate Spinach 47. Camenbert Electrique - Gong 48.
Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd 49. Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donavan 50.
Side Trips - Kaleidoscope 51. Inner Mystique - The Chocolate Watch Band 52. Quark, Strangeness and Charm - Hawkwind 53. The 5000 Spirits/Layers of The Onion - The Incredible String Band 54. Barrett - Syd Barrett 55.
Volume One - The Soft Machine 56. Freak Out - Mothers of Invention 57. Younger Than Yesterday - The Byrds 58. Steppenwolf the Second - Steppenwolf 59. It's A Beautiful Day - It's a Beautiful Day 60.
Sunshine Superman - Donavan 61. Begin - The Millenium 62. Caravan - Caravan 63. The Madcap Laughs - Syd Barrett 64. The Cycle Is Complete - Bruce Palmer 65.
Jet Propelled Photograph - The Soft Machine 66. Hawkwind - Hawkwind 67. Fever Tree - Fever Tree 68. Space Ritual - Hawkwind 69.
Use of Ashes - Pearls Before Swine 70. Space Hymn - Lothar & The Hand People 71. Flash - Moving Sidewalks 72. Their Satanic Majesties Request - Rolling Stones 73.
The Great Conspiracy - Peanut Butter Conspiracy 74. 25 O'Clock - The Dukes of Stratosphear 75. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - Small Faces 76. Transmissions From The Satellite Heart - The Flaming Lips 77. Psychedelic Lollipop - Blues Magoos 78.
Oar - Alexander 'Skip' Spence 79. These Things Too - Pearls Before Swine 80. Before The Dream Faded - The Misunderstood 81. Gandalf - Gandalf 82. Underground - The Electric Prunes 83. Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - Arthur Brown 84. Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond 85.
Contact - Silver Apples 86. Monster Movie - Can 87.
Everybody's Here - Lost & Found 88. Long Years in Space - Neighb'hood Childr'n 89. Strictly Personal - Captain Beefheart 90. Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera 91. Outsideinside - Blue Cheer 92. The Yellow Balloon - The Yellow Balloon 93. Renaissance - Vanilla Fudge 95.
Journey To The Center Of The Mind - The Amboy Dukes 96. SRC - SRC 97. I Am The Cosmos - Chris Bell 98. Another Time/Another Place - Fever Tree 99. Mad River - Mad River 100.
We Are Ever So Clean - The Blossom Toes.
Robert Christgau: The 40 Essential Albums of 1967Writings:Web Site:Carola Dibbell:Venues:The 40 Essential Albums of 1967By Robert Christgau and David Fricke January 1967The Doors: The Doors (Elektra)In a year of historic debut albums, no record by a new American bandso immediately electrified the world as The Doors, the firstand best documentation of singer Jim Morrison's Byronic fury and thelocomotive jazz-inflected drive of organist Ray Manzarek, guitaristRobby Krieger and drummer John Densmore. The band was just a year oldwhen it recorded these eleven songs in six days in August 1966. But inthe crisp funk of 'Soul Kitchen,' the extended pop art of 'Light MyFire' and the Shakespearean violence of 'The End,' the Doors perfectedan airtight resolution of their live prowess (refined nightly thatsummer at the Whisky a Go-Go) and Morrison's improvised explosions oflyric transgression.Donovan: Mellow Yellow (Epic)'Mellow Yellow,' a Number Two hit in the U.S., was a burlesque-brassgrind a la Bob Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,' scored by JohnPaul Jones (later of Led Zeppelin) with whispering vocals by PaulMcCartney. The rest of Mellow Yellow is gently magnificentintrospection, rooted in the modern acoustic folk scene then emergingin Britain ('House of Jansch' refers to guitarist Bert Jansch) anddraped in John Cameron's pastoral-jazz arrangements. Donovan laternoted that 'Hampstead Incident' was partly inspired by Nina Simone andthe chord progression in 'Anji,' by British guitarist DavyGraham.
Ironically, the beauty of Mellow Yellow was obscured bythe rumor that the title single advocated smoking banana peels as alegal alternative to marijuana. In fact, the 'electrical banana' inthe third verse is a vibrator.The Rolling Stones: Between the Buttons (London)Accused of psychedelia, Beatlephobia and murky-mix syndrome, thisunderrated keeper is distinguished by complex rhymes, complex sexualstereotyping and the non-blues, oh-so-rock-&-roll pianos of IanStewart, Jack Nitzsche, Nicky Hopkins and Brian Jones.
Like allBeatles and Stones albums till that time, it was released in differentAmerican and British versions. The surefire U.S.-only 'Let's Spend theNight Together'/'Ruby Tuesday' single parlay is almost too muchbecause its greatness is understood-'Backstreet Girl,' bumped to theFlowers compilation released later that year, more closely resemblessuch gemlike songs of experience as 'Connection,' 'My Obsession' and'She Smiled Sweetly.' Capper: Mick and Keith's zonked music-hall'Something Happened to Me Yesterday,' the Stones' drollestodd-track-out ever. February 1967The Byrds: Younger Than Yesterday (Columbia)The Byrds that made this album in late 1966 were a mess: reeling fromthe loss of singer-composer Gene Clark and the tensions betweensinger-guitarists Roger McGuinn and David Crosby.
Yet Younger ThanYesterday was the Byrds' first mature album, a blend of space-flighttwang and electric hoedown infused with the imminent glow of 1967 yetunderlined with crackling realism. The galloping 'So You Want to Be aRock 'N' Roll Star' mocked overnight success, including the Byrds' own(the teen screams were taped at one of their gigs). Crosby's ballad'Everybody's Been Burned' hinted at the stress that soon culminated inhis firing. And in 'My Back Pages,' McGuinn's stoic vocal captured thecrisis and experience in Bob Dylan's lyrics, a lesson reflected in hisown determination to keep the band alive.Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow (RCA)When vocalist Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane in the fall of1966, she came with two songs from her old band, the Great Society -'Somebody to Love,' written by her brother-in-law Darby, and 'WhiteRabbit,' her psychedelic translation of Alice in Wonderland - thatbecame Top Ten hits in the Airplane's grip, dosing America with SanFrancisco utopia. The rest of this second album is a definitivecatalog of the Airplane's acid-rock dynamics and rare composing gifts:Jorma Kaukonen's metallic-snarl guitar and Jack Casady'sgrumbling-funk bass; the beautiful agony of singer Marty Balin'sballads (he wrote 'Today' with Tony Bennett in mind); theweave-and-soar interplay of Balin, Slick and singer-guitarist PaulKantner. The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia attended the Los Angelessessions as a 'musical and spiritual advisor,' suggestingarrangements, playing the delicate acoustic leads in 'Comin' Back toMe' and coining the album's title when he remarked, 'This is assurrealistic as a pillow.' March 1967Otis and Carla: King and Queen (Stax)The epitome of raw soul, Otis Redding made better albums than anyother R&B artist of the Sixties.
Carla Thomas was daughter to RufusThomas of 'Funky Chicken' fame, with the teen novelty 'Gee Whiz' andgraduate school in English behind her. Together whenever conflictingschedules didn't compel Carla to overdub, the sparrow and the bearchuckled and moaned through the greatest duet album this side of Ella& Louis. In addition to reconceiving Clovers and Sam Cooke oldies anda bunch of current soul hits, they turned 'Tramp' into their ownclassic and 'Knock on Wood' into everybody's.Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (Atlantic)Aretha Franklin didn't emerge fully formed from the head of JerryWexler - she had many minor hits on Columbia before Atlantic made hera goddess. But with its mix of superb new soul songs (Franklin helpedwrite four) and perfect old R&B standards (from Ray Charles, KingCurtis, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding), this is a living monument to asinger and the style she first epitomized and then transcended. Wexlerwanted the Stax band to ground his great hope but was refused, so heturned to the white guys down the road in Muscle Shoals - who cutmost of the album in New York.Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead (Warner Bros.)One of the year's few supposedly psychedelic LPs that wasn't actuallya pop LP (cf Sgt. Pepper, Forever Changes, MellowYellow), the already legendary San Francisco band-collective'sdebut stood out and stands tall because its boogieing folk rockepitomizes the San Francisco ballroom ethos - blues-based tunesplayed by musicians who came to rhythm late, expanded so they wereequally suitable for dancing and for tripping out.
It's also the onlystudio album that respects the impact of Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan, whodied in 1973 of cirrhosis of the liver. McKernan's organ is almost aspervasive as Jerry Garcia's guitar. And although Garcia and Bob Weirboth take vocal leads, their singing styles are still in Pigpen'swhite-blues thrall.The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve)The hippies and the marketplace both passed on this NYC classic, whichproved as prophetic stylistically as Sgt. Pepper was conceptually. Itsflat beats, atonal noise, bluesless singing, 'urban decadent' subjectmatter and bummer vibe proved the wellspring of punk - which,culturally if not stylistically, leads directly to the entire alt-rocksubculture. Great songs here include the disillusioned 'SundayMorning' and 'There She Goes Again' and the jonesing 'Heroin' and 'I'mWaiting for the Man.' 'Venus in Furs' and 'The Black Angel's DeathSong' remain subcultural in a rather specialized way.
April 1967Country Joe and the Fish: Electric Music for the Mind and Body (Vanguard)At first, Country Joe and the Fish were indie rockers. Three tracks onthis trip-music classic, including the stoner's hymn 'Bass Strings'and the drifting instrumental 'Section 43,' were initially cut by theBerkeley band for a 1966 EP on singer-songwriter Joe McDonald'sagitprop label, Rag Baby. He started the Fish as a protest jug band(the name combines nods to Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung) but heretemporarily kept his left-wing zest in check. Flanked by the electricorgan of David Cohen and Barry Melton's biting-treble guitar, McDonaldspread with a preacher's zeal and spearing wit the local gospel ofchemical travel and carnal freedom in 'Flying High,' 'Happiness Is aPorpoise Mouth' and 'Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine.' In fact, Vanguardinsisted the Fish not include one of their most popular tunes, aMcDonald zinger that later became a singalong pillar of the anti-warmovement: 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag.' Howard Tate: Get It While You Can (Verve)Macon-born and Philadelphia-raised, Howard Tate never went Top Teneven on the soul charts but is remembered along with James Carr as thegreat lost soul man.
'Ain't Nobody Home' became a B.B. King perennial,'Look at Granny Run Run' was the best thing to happen to senior sextill Levitra, and 'Get It While You Can' was taken up as a showstopperby none other than Janis Joplin.
The album didn't chart at all. ButTate had a supernal falsetto shriek to complement his rough howl, andwriter-producer Jerry Ragovoy knew how to milk them both - amongother things, by adding two blues standards to his own sharp songs,which even for a guy who retired on 'Piece of My Heart' got prettypeaky here. June 1967The Rolling Stones: Flowers (London)The Stones were cresting so high around 1967 that even thispieced-together hodgepodge of singles and tracks left off theU.S. Releases of Aftermath and Between the Buttons has adistinctness of style and invention about it. Right, it re-recycles'Let's Spend the Night Together'/'Ruby Tuesday,' which shouldn't havebeen on Between the Buttons to begin with.
It disrespects the rightfulowners of 'My Girl' (the Temptations) and the target of 'Mother'sLittle Helper' (yo mama). As for 'Lady Jane,' what's that about?Nevertheless, every track connects. That's more than can be said ofTheir Satanic Majesties Request, which is better than its repeven so.Moby Grape: Moby Grape (Columbia)Armed with three virtuoso guitarists and five members who could allsing and write, Moby Grape had the greatest commercial potential ofany San Francisco band in 1967. They quickly blew it all thanks tointernal tensions, the acid-intensified psychological collapse ofguitarist Skip Spence and Columbia's hysterical hype, which includedreleasing five simultaneous singles from this debut album. The irony:All five deserved to be hits. Moby Grape was that good - apop-smart whirl of blazing white R&B, country twang and psychedelicballadry, mostly cut live in the studio in three weeks for$11,000. The cruel truth: Of those five singles, only one, Spence's'Omaha,' charted.
It peaked at Number Eighty-eight.The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol)One of the many remarkable things about the Concept Album Heard 'Roundthe World is how modest its individual parts are - as modest as theantiquely unhip touring band they pretended to be. Beyond the cosmic'Within You Without You,' the all-encompassing 'A Day in the Life' andthe overtly fanciful 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,' everyunforgettable song is literal and legible, and not one truly rocksout. Another thing: This consciously cross-generational youth-culturesummum is at its very strongest in Side One's three maturation texts- 'With a Little Help From My Friends,' 'Fixing a Hole' and 'GettingBetter.'
Another: It runs under forty minutes, climactic diminuendoincluded.The Hollies: Evolution (Epic)'Carrie Anne' is the only hit on this forgotten gem, which with noapparent effort or self-consciousness - you barely notice the Frenchhorn here and violin there - achieves the adolescent effervescenceand lovelorn sentiment that indie-pop adepts of the Elephant 6 ilkspend years laboring after. Signature tracks: 'Ye Olde Toffee Shoppe,'which concerns candy and features a harpsichord, and 'Games We Play,'which concerns teen sex and features a knowing grin. August 1967James Brown: Cold Sweat (King)The modal title milestone one-upped Wilson Pickett's 'Funky Broadway'and introduced JB's funky drummer number two, Clyde Stubblefield.
Butthe uptempo oldies Brown added to the hit to make an album - LloydPrice's 'Stagger Lee,' Wilbert Harrison's 'Kansas City,' Little WillieJohn's 'Fever' and Roy Brown's 'Good Rockin' Tonight' - smelled alittle fishy at the time. Now, however, they're caviar - JB's fullvoice and flawless time yoking proven classics to some of the tightestbig-band blues ever recorded. The slow side pits Brown's balladfalsetto and ballad scream against some of the most elaborate R&Bstrings ever recorded. Especially on the two Nat 'King' Cole numbersand an over-the-top 'Come Rain or Come Shine,' the falsetto wins by amile.Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Columbia)The twin peaks of British psychedelia - Sgt. Pepper's LonelyHearts Club Band and this historic debut album - were bothrecorded in the spring of 1967, in adjacent studios at Abbey Road inLondon.
But where the Beatles' album was a hermetic studio triumph,Piper (produced by ex-Beatles engineer Norman Smith) re-createdthe nuclear improvisation and double-edged whimsy of the Floyd'sonstage freakouts. Singer-guitarist Syd Barrett was already fadinginto the acid-fueled mental illness that forced himout of the band inearly 1968.
But Piper was his triumph, dominated by hisincisive songs of paradise gained and endangered, and charged with hisslashing outer-blues guitar.Big Brother and the Holding Company: Big Brother and the Holding Company (Mainstream)Janis Joplin's first band is still dissed for its crude musicianship,and its pre-Columbia album is still patronized for failing to showcaseJoplin the blues singer. Only she wasn't a blues singer, she was arock singer - a rock singer who learned to conceal her country twangafter she cut these ten crazed songs. Most are by her bandmates, whosefolk-schooled garage-blues licks provide goofy hooks. One that isn'tis the definitive Joplin original 'Women Is Losers.'
She sensed whatwas coming - you know she did.Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced? (Reprise)Jimi Hendrix's first album is one of the most exciting and importantrecords ever made, a reconception of the electric guitar as asymphonic instrument that still sounds fresh and unprecedented.
Sodoes Hendrix's fusion of galactic imagination, intenseself-examination and deep-blues roots in the raging 'ManicDepression,' the R&B sigh 'The Wind Cries Mary' and the sexywhiplash 'Foxey Lady.' Hendrix, bassist Noel Redding and drummer MitchMitchell made Experienced? On the run, on rare days off theroad.
Hendrix wrote 'Purple Haze' backstage at a London club; 'RedHouse,' a blues on the British version of the LP, was cut in fifteenminutes. But Hendrix also spent several sessions building theorchestral howl of 'Third Stone From the Sun,' with the passionatediligence he would soon apply to his magnum opus, 1968's ElectricLadyland.Arlo Guthrie: Alice's Restaurant (Reprise)No one captured hippie politics better than Woody's twenty-year-oldson on the title cut, an autobiographical tall tale that for eighteenminutes reduced pacifist anti-authoritarianism to a diffident,confident, skillfully timed cops-and-longhairs routine. The B sidecuts four forgettable song poems with two more jokes, one of them 'TheMotorcycle Song,' not yet the comic turn it became. NB: Guthriere-recorded the entire album thirty years later. The new 'Alice' isfour minutes longer - and four minutes funnier. September 1967Procol Harum: Procol Harum (Deram)The success of Procol Harum's debut single, 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'- Top Five in the U.S.
In the summer of '67 - has long eclipsed thehard-rock might of the group's first album. That is partly because ofits muddy sound - the band was recorded live in the studio, inmono.
Nevertheless, lyricist Keith Reid's surrealist studies inmelancholy and mortality rumble with a heavy-R&B noir powered byMatthew Fisher's ruined-church organ, the haunted-Hendrix scream ofRobin Trower's guitar and singer-pianist Gary Brooker's white-soulgrowl. British progressive rock rarely sounded this bold and bruisingagain.The Beach Boys: Smiley Smile (Brother)In the year of Pepper-mania, the Beach Boys' Smile wasexpected to gallop out of the West and reclaim the honor of rock forits nation of origin. But Smile didn't materialize until 2004,stitched together from old bits and pieces and revived as repertory bya solo Brian Wilson and his enablers. Instead, Wilson retreated intohis lonely room and oversaw this hastily recorded half measure - 'abunt instead of a grand slam,' groused brother Carl.
Towering it'snot; some kind of hit it is. Without this product-on-demand, we'd lacksuch impossible trifles as the wiggy 'She's Goin' Bald,' the potted'Little Pad' and 'fall Breaks and Back to Winter,' a transitionalbagatelle featuring squeezebox and imitation woodpecker.Tim Buckley: Goodbye and Hello (Elektra)Tim Buckley's second album was a far cry from the folk-rockconventions of his 1966 debut, rich in acid-Renaissance trimmings(harpsichord, harmonium) and dominated by the elaborate titlesuite. Compared to the radical vocal freedom and liquid sadness ofBuckley's imminent classics (1969's Happy Sad, 1971'sStarsailor), Goodbye and Hello - produced by Lovin'Spoonful guitarist Jerry Yester - was a triumph of form, withBuckley's light tenor voice curling through 'Hallucinations' and'Morning Glory' like incense smoke. But Goodbye and Hello wasalso a deeply personal album, even though Buckley wrote lyrics to onlyhalf of the ten songs (he co-wrote the others with Larry Beckett). Inthe thrilling gallop and stratospheric scat-singing of 'I Never Askedto Be Your Mountain,' Buckley soars in desperate need yet defends thewanderlust that was breaking up his marriage.
The song was soimportant to him - the child in the second verse, 'wrapped in bittertales and heartache,' was his then-infant son, Jeff - that Buckleydid twenty-three vocal takes, singing live with the studio band.The Kinks: Something Else by the Kinks (Reprise)Conceptually bound only by the compact genius of Ray Davies' writing,Something Else was the Kinks' last great album of songs beforeDavies became consumed by operatic studies of a disappearing Britain(1968's The Village Green Preservation Society, 1969'sArthur). The schoolyard romp 'David Watts,' the delicate envyof 'Two Sisters,' the plaintive rapture in guitarist Dave Davies'vocal on 'Death of a Clown,' the young lovers bathed in Londontwilight in 'Waterloo Sunset': They are all complete dramas, concisein their emotional detail and depiction of fading majesty and morals,with harpsichord and brass adding shades of loss and yearning to theKinks' basic spunk. A shocking commercial stiff (it peaked at Number153 in Billboard on its U.S. Release in early 1968),Something Else may still be the best Kinks album you've neverheard.The Doors: Strange Days (Elektra)The Doors' second album lacks the shock value and cohesion of thefirst, mostly because they made it in the manic wake of their NumberOne hit, 'Light My Fire,' and in the precious time between livegigs.
'Moonlight Drive' and 'My Eyes Have Seen You' were already twoyears old, first cut as demos in 1965. But the Doors channeled thedaily chaos of their new fortunes into fierce performances - 'StrangeDays,' the headlong lust of 'Love Me Two Times' - climaxing with'When the Music's Over,' an anthem for change driven home by JimMorrison's ferocious, outraged demand: 'We want the world and we wantit - now!' Van Morrison: Blowin' Your Mind! (Bang)Van Morrison's well-known distaste for the record business startshere. Fresh from leaving the Belfast band Them, he spent three days ina New York studio with producer Bert Berns in search of a hitsingle.
When the cantina-beat lust of 'Brown Eyed Girl' went Top Tenthat summer (after he and Berns put it through twenty-two takes),Berns rushed out this eight-song quickie from the sessions,infuriating Morrison. But it catches him in heated, searching form,halfway between his demon bark on Them's 'Gloria' and the Celtic-dreamsoul of 1968's Astral Weeks. (Later issues of the Bang tracksrevealed early stabs at that album's 'Beside You' and 'MadameGeorge.' ) The real mind-blower here is 'T.B.
Sheets,' whichcrystallizes Morrison's roots and future in nine minutes of slow-burnblues and brutal honesty. October 1967Dionne Warwick: Golden Hits/Part One (Scepter)By 1967, 'Alfie' and the like had Warwick on the road to divahood, butthat didn't mean this best-of, marked circa 1962-1964 in gold on thecover, was perceived as an oldies record. Girl groups weren'tconsidered quaint yet, and Warwick has never been more tuneful orcharming than when she and Bacharach-David had them to contendwith. The selling points here are Warwick standards like 'Walk On By'and 'Don't Make Me Over.' But obscurities long vanished from her canonare only a shade less compelling: the delicate 'Any Old Time of Day'or her proud, quiet cover of the Shirelles' 'It's Love That ReallyCounts.' The Serpent Power: The Serpent Power (Vanguard)Think of the Serpent Power as the Bay Area's version of the VelvetUnderground. Led by poet David Meltzer, with Meltzer on untutoredpost-folk guitar, Meltzer and his wife, Tina, singing his songs, poetClark Coolidge clattering behind on drums and the soon-vanished JohnPayne fixing a hole on organ, their music was minimalist folk rockwith noise - the climactic, electric-banjo augmented 'Endless Tunnel'goes on for thirteen minutes.
Some songs began as poems, othersdidn't, but all feature notable lyrics - some romantic, some gruff,some both. And all but a few are graced by excellent tunes, none morewinsome than that of the lost classic 'Up and Down.' November 1967Cream: Disraeli Gears (Atco)Cream's best album distilled their prodigious chops and rhythmicinterplay into psychedelic pop that never strayed far from their bluesroots. Except for the electricity, 'Outside Woman Blues' is nearlyidentical to Arthur Reynolds' 1930s original.
And the riff to'Sunshine of Your Love,' written by bassist Jack Bruce, is Delta bluesin jab and drive. But Disraeli Gears decisively broke with Britishblues purism in the ecstatic jangle of 'Dance the Night Away,' theclimbing dismay of 'We're Going Wrong' (driven by Ginger Baker'scircular drumming) and the wah-wah grandeur of 'Tales of BraveUlysses.' Producer Felix Pappalardi and engineer Tom Dowd contributedsong sense and studio expertise; lyricist Pete Brown was unique in hisunion of Dada and confession.
When Bruce sang 'And the rainbow has abeard' in 'Swlabr,' you knew that didn't come from Robert Johnson.Buffalo Springfield: Buffalo Springfield Again (Atco)Fractious from the moment they formed, Buffalo Springfield made theirsuperb second album in fits and starts alternately dominated bycombative singer-guitarist-song-writers Stephen Stills and NeilYoung. The latter predicted the wild eclecticism of his solo careerwith the California-Stones-style fury of 'Mr. Soul' and the symphonicrestlessness of 'Expecting to Fly,' written after Young briefly quitthe group in the summer of 1967.
A gilded spider web of guitars andharmonies, Stills' 'Rock & Roll Woman' pointed to his subsequentlifetime with Crosby, Stills and Nash: David Crosby is an un-creditedvoice on the track. It was left to singer-guitarist Richie Furay, wholater co-founded Poco, to lament the internal warring in the stonecountry of 'A Child's Claim to Fame,' written in frustration withYoung's coming and going. Young took no offense, contributing vocalsand sharp down-home guitar.Jefferson Airplane: After Bathing at Baxter's (RCA)Singer Marty Balin was so alienated by the acid-fueled indulgence ofthe sessions for the Airplane's third album - four months in LosAngeles, where the band stayed in a mansion that once housed theBeatles - that he co-wrote only one song, 'Young Girl Sunday Blues.'
Yet Baxter's was the Airplane at their most defiantlypsychedelic, exploring outer limits of despair and song form in thedark urgency of 'The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil,' Grace Slick's'Rejoyce' - a protest-cabaret adaptation of James Joyce'sUlysses - and the nine-minute instrumental improvisation,'Spare Chaynge.' The raw challenge of Baxter's was also a requiem forthe Day-Glo life promised a few months earlier by the Airplane'sSurrealistic Pillow. In the closing medley, 'Won't You Try/SaturdayAfternoon,' Paul Kantner looked back in longing at the Human Be-In ofJanuary '67, a new dawn that already seemed a lifetime ago.The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour (Capitol)Because it begins with the lame theme to their worst movie and thesappy 'Fool on the Hill,' few realize that this serves up three worthyobscurities forthwith - bet Beck knows the sour-and-sweetinstrumental 'Flying' by heart.
Then it A/Bs three fabuloussingles. 'Penny Lane'/'Strawberry Fields Forever' may be the finesttwo-sided record in history. Goo goo ga joob, so may 'HelloGoodbye'/'I Am the Walrus.' 'Baby You're a Rich Man'? OK, not in thatleague. Which is why it bows humbly before 'All You Need Is Love.' The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed (Deram)In September 1967, the Moody Blues were asked by their label to recordan adaptation of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony - as a stereo-demonstrationLP.
The struggling Moodies, a former white-R&B band that had gonewithout a hit since 1965, instead created their own orchestral songcycle about a typical working day, highlighted by singer-guitaristJustin Hayward's ballads, 'Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)' and 'Nightsin White Satin.' Days of Future Passed (released in theU.S. The following year) is closer to high-art pomp thanpsychedelia. But there is a sharp pop discretion to the writing and atrippy romanticism in the mirroring effect of the strings and MikePinder's Mellotron.Love: Forever Changes (Elektra)Once unjustly ignored although it charted for ten weeks, now lionizedbeyond all reason although it's certainly a minor masterpiece, thethird album by Arthur Lee's interracial L.A. Pop band voiced Lee'scrazy personal paranoia and paradigmatic political paranoia. Itspretty, well-worked, somewhat fussy surface masks lyrics ofunfathomable if not unhinged darkness.
Rooted in existential despairand occult folderol, its aura of mystery is earned and indelible, itssongcraft undeniable and obscure. December 1967The 13th Floor Elevators: Easter Everywhere (International Artists)Pioneers have it tough everywhere. But these Texas acid eaters paidespecially hard for their zealotry, harassed by local lawmen to thepoint that in 1969 singer Roky Erickson went to a mental facility on amarijuana-possession bust. In 1967, the Elevators were still truebelievers and just back from a spell in San Francisco, reflected inthis title's promise of heaven on earth and the sinewy raga guitar allover the record. The Elevators were punks, too, and the spiritualismwas salted with the rare intensity of Erickson's wolf-man bleating andthe bubbling-lava menace of Tommy Hall's electric-jug blowing.
Fortyyears later, when Erickson crows, 'I've got levitation,' you still getliftoff.The Beach Boys: Wild Honey (Capitol)Produced mostly by Carl Wilson, this twenty-four-minute album followedSmiley Smile by three months and got no respect from those whobelieved trick harmonies and arcane changes were what made the groupartistic. Called their 'soul' album, perhaps for its Stevie Wondercover or its use of the Negro term 'out of sight' but more likelybecause it emphasized emotive lead vocals, its special gifts are anachieved naivete and irrepressible good humor as Southern Californianas baggies and woodies. There's not a deep or wasted second on it.The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Axis: Bold As Love (Track)Jimi Hendrix left the original finished masters for Side One in a taxiand had to mix all of the tracks again in one session. Today,Axis is Hendrix's most overlooked album.
But it has some of hisbest writing in the mighty 'If 6 Was 9' and 'Spanish Castle Magic,' areflection on his boyhood in the Pacific Northwest. There was also theheavy soul of 'Little Wing,' which Hendrix later told a reporter he'dstarted writing when he was playing clubs in New York's GreenwichVillage. 'I don't consider myself a songwriter,' he said. 'Not yet,anyway.' He was wrong.Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (Columbia)Recorded in Nashville in three sessions, Bob Dylan's first album afterthe electric warfare of his 1966 tour and subsequent retreat toWoodstock was shockingly austere: an almost crooning Dylan with just asoft-shoe rhythm section and a few sighs of steel guitar. But thatcalm was a perfect contrast to the sermonizing fire he unleashed in'All Along the Watchtower' and the crossroads parable 'The Ballad ofFrankie Lee and Judas Priest.' The moral fiber and martyr's temper inthese songs were fierce and immediate.
Dylan wrote 'Frankie Lee,' 'IDreamed I Saw St. Augustine' and 'Drifter's Escape' en route to thefirst session, on the train from New York. But there was unembarrassedloving, too: 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight,' recorded on the last day,pointed the way to the country comfort of his next album, 1969'sNashville Skyline.Mississippi John Hurt: The Immortal (Vanguard)Of all the rediscovered bluesmen of the folk revival, Mississippi JohnHurt was the least diminished by age because he was so unassuming tobegin with. Having first recorded at thirty-five in 1928, he wasseventy-three when he cut this posthumously released collection, whichshowcases his intricately unflashy fingerpicking, begins and ends withhymns and reprises both his moral take on 'Stagolee' and his ownfashion-conscious 'Richland Woman Blues': 'With rosy-red garters/Pinkhose on my feet/Turkey-red bloomers/With a rumble seat.'
The Who: The Who Sell Out (Decca)While making a full meal of their most delectable concept, apirate-radio broadcast, the Who's finest album exemplifies how popthis famously psychedelic year was. The mock jingles - for pimplecream, deodorant, baked beans - are pop at its grubbiest.
Thefictional singles, typified but not necessarily topped by the actualhit 'I Can See for Miles,' are pop soaring like the dream of youth itis - exalted, visionary, even, in their crafty way, psychedelic. Allthe rest is English eccentricity.Rolling Stone, July 12, 2007.