CROSSROADS

The Roots Of British Psychedelia

2007-06-20T05:44:00.001-07:00

British Psychedelia: By Richie Unterberger

Taken From AMG

Did psychedelic rock start in the United States or Great Britain? It's very much a chicken-and-the-egg question. Like folk rock, punk, and blues rock, the form was developing simultaneously, along very similar paths, on both sides of the Atlantic. It's also apparent that although there were a great many similarities between American and British psychedelia, British psychedelic music evolved along somewhat different lines, with striking and distinctive characteristics of its own. While both branches tapped heavily into Indian and eastern music, jazz/improvisational/experimental elements, and drug-inspired imagery, the British brand was usually perkier, more playful, and sunnier in disposition, although just as freaked-out and forceful.

It couldn't really be said that there were any out-and-out British psychedelic records before 1966. But in the previous year, there were quite a few recordings by the best British groups that helped point the way for the style—more so than there were in the United States. The Who, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds all pioneered guitar distortion and feedback that year via such experimental (and hit!) singles such as "My Generation" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere." The Kinks and the Yardbirds didn't just fuzz up their riffs, but added middle eastern motifs on "See My Friends" (by the Kinks) and "Heart Full of Soul," a Yardbirds hit with a sitarish riff by Jeff Beck that was originally recorded with an actual sitar. On Rubber Soul, the Beatles introduced a genuine sitar on "Norwegian Wood," and on the same album's "The Word," they voiced the drug-influenced peace-and-love sentiments that would color many psychedelic lyrics.

The honor of the first psychedelic British single—and indeed, probably the first psychedelic single of all time—might go to the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things," with its wild intertwining of feedback and snaky middle eastern melodic lines during its blistering guitar solo (delivered by Jeff Beck), its abrupt tempo changes from verse to chorus, and lyrics that ruminated over the future of mankind itself. The group had already employed unnerving guitar "rave-ups" on its 1965 studio recordings, and haunting Gregorian chants on the hit single (in Britain only) "Still I'm Sad." Their 1966 album Roger The Engineer, anchored by another single that featured a meltdown eastern guitar riff ("Over Under Sideways Down"), was an inconsistent but oft-thrilling effort that did much to pioneer psychedelic territory, shifting from blues-rock raveups to doom-laden dirge waltzes to piercing jazzy guitar solos to pensive piano ballads, sometimes within the course of the same tune. The late '66 single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (their only one to feature both Beck and Jimmy Page) was their psychedelic summit, with air-raid siren guitar duels, spooky harmonies, lyrics about reincarnation, and inscrutable, half-buried spoken word fragments. A relative commercial failure, it also signaled the end of the band as a creative force, Beck departing soon afterwards, and the group struggling with second-rate material and production during much of their final phase (with Page taking over lead guitar).

With hindsight, the Yardbirds' 1966 recordings are considered psychedelic landmarks. But at the time, far more listeners gained their first exposure to psychedelic music via the Beatles' 1966 releases. The "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single served notice that the Beatles had assimilated all the guitar, lyrical, and production innovations of the previous year, especially on the B-side, with its hazy, droning guitars and backwards vocals on the fade. The album that followed in the summer, Revolver, owed much to mod pop and the sort of orchestral production Brian Wilson had recently devised for the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album (which itself had some psychedelic elements). But it was also, in many respects, one of the very first psychedelic LPs—not only in its numerous shifts in mood and production texture, but in its innovative manipulation of amplification and electronics to produce new sounds on guitars and other instruments. Specific, widely heralded examples would include the backwards riffs of "I'm Only Sleeping," the sound effects of "Yellow Submarine," the sitar of "Love You To," the blurry guitars of "She Said, She Said," and above all the seagull chanting, buzzing drones, megaphone vocals, free-assocation philosophizing, and varispeed tape effects of "Tomorrow Never Knows."

One other truly psychedelic album emerged from the United Kingdom in 1966 which, while not viewed with as much respect by subsequent critics, was nearly as influential and popular in its own time as Revolver. The record, Donovan's Sunshine Superman, was also a much more unlikely leap than the efforts by the Beatles and the Yardbirds, who had done much to lay a bedrock for their innovations with their work in 1965. In that same year, Donovan was not even using electric instruments on his records, but making a bid to become the British Bob Dylan, with troubadour musings (very well done, it should be added) much closer to the spirit of Bert Jansch than Lennon- McCartney. It's hard to say what made Donovan quick to embrace cosmic mythology and sitars—drug-inspired revelation, humiliation at being outclassed by Dylan himself during a head-to-head hootenanny in the documentary Don't Look Back, or, more mundanely, a correct realization that he'd need to electrify and complicate his sound to compete in the intensively competitive British pop scene.

Sunshine Superman, along with the lighter psychedelia of Revolver and the elegant but powerful mod commentary of the Who and the Kinks, helped introduce some of the whimsical traits which most distinguished British psychedelic rockers from their American counterparts. The arrangements on Sunshine Superman were exquisitely symphonic. They may have used exotic (for the time) blends of sitars, harpsichords, hard rock guitar, bongos, and mellotron, but at heart the songs were very much pop-rock, with hummable, cheery melodies. The lyrics were acidic visions of the benign sort, heavy on Olde English touches and fairytale imagery. Those who value angst and earth in their rock'n'roll have chastised Donovan for being too florid, even fruity, criticisms that are somewhat justified, but overriden by the charm and beauty of his best recordings. Ironically, the man responsible for much of Sunshine Superman's cosmic aura was not Donovan himself, but producer Mickie Most, who would—oddly, in retrospect—do much to ensure the demise of the Yardbirds after taking over their production in 1967, saddling them with bubblegumish songs and sugary arrangements. In a further irony, Sunshine Superman made much of its initial impact not in the U.K., but in the U.S. Donovan was embroiled in a complicated label dispute that found him unable to release material in his homeland for a time, and his early electric recordings appeared quite a few months earlier in the States.

While there were not many out-and-out full-length British psychedelic albums in 1966, the psychedelic influence was felt in key singles and album tracks by some of the best groups. The Rolling Stones were quick to appropriate the sitar for "Paint It Black"; John Lennon would later charge the Stones from having nicked the idea from "Norwegian Wood," but the consensus is that "Paint It Black" is the best use of sitar in a rock'n'roll song. Another 1966 single, "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?," may not have been designed as an explicit stab at psychedelia, but it certainly could have passed for one, with its dense web of guitar rumbles, horn crescendos, and make-what-you-will-of-these! lyrics. The Kinks were not one to follow trends, but "Fancy," from their 1966 LP Face To Face, made effective use of sitarish note bends. Face To Face was one of the first full-length statements that could be labeled (however vaguely) a concept album, and the Who made their first serious effort along this direction in late '66 with the lengthy "A Quick One While He's Away," a suite-like mini-opera.

1966 also saw the first psychedelic rumblings from bands who had not only not previously established themselves as commercially viable outfits, but had not even previously recorded. Much of what made this possible was the blossoming of a full-blown psychedelic underground in London, which found a home in the UFO club, and a voice through the countercultural journal International Times (often abbreviated to IT). In the UFO's early days, the Pink Floyd (and they were always called The Pink Floyd back then) were the house band of sorts. The best and most prominent of the first-generation British psychedelic bands without roots in the British Invasion, they took psychedelic music to further, freakier extremes. Song structures became looser, lengthier, more adventurous; steel balls were run up and down guitar strings to produce eerie electronic sounds; ghostly, spectral organ hovered over electronically distorted guitar. Many of the Floyd's early sets were dominated by instrumental freakouts, but their best achievements were actually grounded in the inspired melodies and wordplay of their eccentric original leader/singer/songwriter/guitarist, Syd Barrett, who had as much of an ear for fairytale whimsy and pop hooks as electronic experimentation.

Another important band held in high regard by UFO crowd were the Soft Machine. Although they would later branch out into avant-rock and jazz-rock, in their first incarnation they blended flower-power pop with genre-stretching instrumental chops and surreal songs. In the Pink Floyd biography A Saucerful Of Secrets, one UFO regular recalls that the Floyd and the Softs "were like the Beatles and the Stones of alternative music." The third notable early underground psychedelic band, and by far the least well-remembered, were Tomorrow, who adhered to conventional song structures more than their rivals, but also indulged in archetypically English character sketches and frequent experimentation; today, they are most famous for featuring guitarist Steve Howe in his pre- Yes days. The Pretty Things, though not as aligned with the UFO scene, made a few singles in '67-'68 that hold up well with Syd Barrett's Floyd efforts as examples of druggy psychedelia with equal footing in pop character sketches and experimentation.

Much more obscure, but on the same level, were the Misunderstood, actually a Californian group that moved to England at the urging of expatriate DJ John Ravenscroft (who would move back to his homeland and become the nation's top on-air rock personality as John Peel). Together for only a short time, the small batch of recordings they produced at their peak—some of which made it onto flop singles, some of which were only released many years later—have been belatedly recognized as some of the greatest early psychedelic music. These took the Yardbirds prototype to greater extremes with searing-but-gliding guitar electronics and heavily eastern-influenced original material of an overtly cosmic nature, but exhilarating quality.

The mod movement, with its emphasis upon autodestruct guitar riffs, outrage, and smart pop hooks, was also evolving in psychedelic directions. Long after the fact—a good 20 years later—some collectors dubbed this school of sound "freakbeat." Freakbeat was mod pop in psychedelic clothes, with some garage ethos thrown in. Young bands saw their musical heroes and social climate changing, and determined to keep up with a reckless enthusiasm that was often naive, but often made for some impressive records with their strainings against unwritten rules of pop and songwriting. Mod groups like the Smoke and John's Children made some great psychedelic records by adding adventurous songwriting and wild guitar flights to their pop base.

In the manner of American garage bands of the same era, quite a few British bands managed to record only a few singles or demos in a rush to tap into the zeitgeist of a special moment in musical evolution. There weren't nearly as many British freakbeat/psychedelic singles of this kind as their were in the American garage movement: Britain's a much smaller country, and at that time was dominated by four major labels, leaving little room for indie/regional/local releases. Just as there were many generic American garage singles, there were many generic British psychedelic singles, distinguished chiefly by ridiculous names like Ipsissimus, Edwick Rumbold, Aquarian Age, and the Penny Peeps (and that's just off one compilation).

But just as there were many great American garage singles, there were many great unknown British psychedelic singles, only fully appreciated long after the fact when they were assembled for collectors on anthologies like Chocolate Soup For Diabetics and The Perfumed Garden. Groups like Dantalian's Chariot, One In A Million, Tintern Abbey, Wimple Winch, and Syn recorded one or two psychedelic classics without ever managing to make a full album, let alone a hit song. It would be a mistake, though, to think of these British acts in the same way as U.S.U.S. psychedelic garage bands. This British sound was more refined, more carefully arranged, and benefited from more elaborate production values (being that many of them were actually recorded for major labels). They also frequently used keyboards (and occasionally mellotrons), and were far more apt to deal with prim, arty pop than adolescent angst. garage bands, or even

In doing so, these groups were following the lead of the biggest band of all, the Beatles. Their early '67 single, "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever," was not just, in all likelihood, the strongest double-A-sided release of all time, but the prototype of British pop-psychedelia. As much as the lyrics and musical settings may have inspired by lysergic substances, they were equally concerned with evoking states of child-like innocence (and, in this specific example, the very specific, real neighborhoods of John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's Liverpool childhoods). The Beatles' other 1967 releases largely followed this course, on the Sgt. Pepper album, the 1967 singles "All You Need Is Love" (psychedelia at its most anthemic and utopian) and "I Am The Walrus" (the cacophonous bad trip in the Beatles' 1967 catalog), and the Magical Mystery Tour songs (an EP in Britain, released with '67 singles as an LP elsewhere). On these productions, hard guitar rock (though not totally ignored) took a back seat to ornate, baroque instrumentation and arrangements, often using keyboards, mellotrons, and a barrage of unusual instruments, sound effects, and electronic manipulation (the use of which was greatly facilitated by producer George Martin). The early rock and R&B influences that had inspired the Beatles in the first place were, for the time being, deeply submerged in their work.

The Beatles' influence was such at the time that where they led, many followed. The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request (not to mention their "We Love You"/"Dandelion" single, which included some actual Beatle harmonies) is still seen by many as their Sgt. Pepper imitation/ripoff. The imperfections of the album (recorded at a time of great stress and conflict within the band, and between the Stones and their management) have worn very badly. But in fact the Stones pursued some interesting and, indeed, highly successful experiments with electronics, strings, and African rhythms on tracks like "She's A Rainbow," "2000 Light Years From Home," and "In Another Land," and one wishes that the avalanche of criticism with which the album was greeted hadn't discouraged them from exploring these avenues further. Among other top British groups, the Small Faces embraced the good-time vibes of psychedelia the most heartily, on singles like "Itchycoo Park" and the full-length story-concept album Ogden's Gone Nut Flake. The Who couldn't be said to have been heavily influenced by Sgt. Pepper, but their 1967 album, The Who Sell Out, expanded their lyrical and sonic ambition without comprimising their power, as well as offering a concept LP of sorts (with having the tracks linked by fake and real British radio jingles, and offering another mini-opera in "Rael," which would be recycled in Tommy).

Most British bands didn't have the resources to offer full-length albums of psychedelic adventurism. Some, such as the Hollies, the Move, and Manfred Mann, incorporated mild psychedelic influences into specific tracks to add a slightly hip dimension to their essentially pop material. Others took on the task whole-hog, and largely embarrassed themselves ( Eric Burdon and his New Animals). More difficult to classify is the Zombies' final LP, Odessey And Oracle; if it didn't exactly offer incense and sugarcubes, it certainly had plenty of imagination and rarefied atmosphere, and used the mellotron more than just about any other previous rock album. And there were obscure bands that managed to produce entire psychedelic albums that remain little known to this day. The Blossom Toes, whose debut conjured up visions of the Kinks on acid, were probably the best of these, and indeed offered some of the finest meldings of symphonic pop and psychedelic British whimsy (though they went in far more progressive and somber directions on their second and final album).

Lest the impression be given that British rock was dominated by clever trickery, there were a couple of British hard rock superstar outfits that made major contributions to the psychedelic era. Although Jimi Hendrix was not British, his backing musicians in the Experience were, and it was Britain where he first became a star, not America. Debates have raged about whether Hendrix should be considered a blues-rock guitarist, a jazz-rock guitarist, or an entity unto himself. But the fact remains that his work with the Experience—as captured on their three studio albums, Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland—could hardly be considered anything but psychedelic. Along somewhat similar lines were Cream, which started out as a stone-cold blues-rock outfit, but quickly evolved into a hard rock group with strong psychedelic overtones, particularly on their second and best album, Disraeli Gears. Traffic, featuring Stevie Winwood, were the best at blending hard rock drive with more idiosyncratically British eclecticism, especially on their first two albums, Dear Mr. Fantasy and Traffic. If you're looking for the best British hard rock/psychedelic one-shot, go no further than The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. The fire-helmeted, overtly theatrical weirdo topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic with "Fire," and his sole album was an excessively demented but demonic slab of acid rock, with some of the best and loopiest organ to be found on any rock record.

There were also a few major efforts from the psychedelic era that are equally apt to be characterized as early progressive rock because of their heavy classical, symphonic influences and the generally overarching seriousness of their ambitions. Certainly the debut albums by Procol Harum, the Nice, and the Moody Blues (who took the Mellotron to greater heights of excess) could fall into this category. The early progressive bands gave the first indication of the fissure that would split the psychedelic bands into differing camps by the end of the 1960s: ones that returned to rootsier, earthier sounds, and ones that entertained progressively more grandoise ambitions.

It's been postulated that Bob Dylan's rustic John Wesley Harding was the signpost that motivated other rock kings to re-embrace their roots. Whether that's true or not, the first 1968 singles by the biggest British groups, the Beatles ("Lady Madonna") and the Rolling Stones ("Jumpin' Jack Flash"), found them deliberately scaling back to a more basic approach. By and large they would retain this throughout the rest of the '60s, refocusing on guitar rock and more concise songs, though the Beatles in particular never eschewed experimentation on their final recordings.

On the other hand, some of the major early psychedelic bands, such as Pink Floyd (after Syd Barrett departed due to mental instability), would grow increasingly more serious, symphonic, and electronic in their approach. The Soft Machine, as previously noted, headed into jazz-rock and experimental rock after some personnel changes; they and various spinoff bands ( Caravan, Kevin Ayers, Gong) would head the wing of humorous and whimsical progressive rock that became known as the Canterbury sound. A veteran of Tomorrow, guitarist Steve Howe, would become instrumental to the success of one of the biggest art-rock groups, Yes. The Pretty Things went very progressive with 1968's S.F. Sorrow, arguably rock's first true concept album, which helped inspire the Who's Tommy.

But some of the major psychedelic pioneers didn't so much choose sides as fizzle out. By the end of '68, Jimi Hendrix had made his final recording with the Experience, and Cream had broken up, as had Traffic (for an extended hiatus, anyway), the Zombies, and the Yardbirds (from whose ashes Led Zeppelin would arise). Donovan was still offering flower-power homilies, but he'd never truly expanded upon the achievements of Sunshine Superman, offering increasingly tired variations of the same theme.

Although many of the musicians that were integral to British psychedelia would have long careers—continuing in some cases right up to the present—it's fair to say that almost all of them have never created better and more imaginative work than they did at the height of the psychedelic era. Sometimes viewed by critics (and the musicians themselves) as embarrassingly naive and trendy, the best of the music endures as some of the most ambitious and euphoric produced in the whole of rock—which should be a source of pride, not shame.

22 Essential British Psychedelic Rock Records

The Beatles, Revolver (Capitol)

The Yardbirds, Roger The Engineer (Edsel)

Donovan, Sunshine Superman (Epic)

The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol)

The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (Capitol)

Pink Floyd, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (Capitol)

The Soft Machine, Jet-Propelled Photograph (Charly)

Tomorrow, Tomorrow (Decal)

The Misunderstood, Before The Dream Faded (Cherry Red)

The Blossom Toes, Collection (Decal)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced? (MCA)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold As Love (MCA)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland (MCA)

The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request (ABKCO)

Cream, Disraeli Gears (Polydor)

Traffic, Dear Mr. Fantasy (Island)

Traffic, Traffic (Island)

The Small Faces, Ogden's Gone Nut Flake (Sony)

The Zombies, Odessey And Oracle (Rhino)

The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (Polydor)

Various Artists, Chocolate Soup For Diabetics Vol. 1-3 (Relics)

Various Artists, Perfumed Garden Vol. 1-3 (Reverberation)

Jazz For You : Joshua Redman

2007-06-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

Joshua Redman, one of the most consistently creative musicians of his generation, a fiend on whatever saxophone he chooses to pick up, and a thoughtful, imaginative person, is at it again.

He’s not re-inventing the wheel, he says with a chuckle when discussing Back East (Nonesuch, 2007). But this exploring musician has gone back to an acoustic format. Specifically, a piano-less trio, the type of thing Sonny Rollins wowed critics with in the 1950s. Others have done it too. It’s not even new to Redman, but it’s a change after playing for the last couple of years in a larger band —the SFJazz Collective—and his more groove-based Elastic Band that features guitar, keyboards and other electronics.

Back East is at once an examination of the trio format, a dabbling into Eastern music elements that have intrigued Redman over the years, a tribute to some of his great influences of the past—Rollins, Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter— and a re-acquaintance with some present day saxmen that have been an inspiration to him. It also, even if inadvertently, presents some poignant musical moments with his father, Dewey Redman, the saxophonist extraordinaire who died months after the recording. The Back East is the last time the pair played together. It was the last time Joshua saw his dad except for just prior to his death when the extent of the illness beckoned the son from his California home to New York.

Redman isn’t new to this trio format. He played it a lot jamming around the Boston scene while going to school at Harvard University. After graduating summa cum laude, then deciding to turn down his acceptance to Yale Law School and move to New York to pursue music, he experienced the trio setting there as well. “But it’s never been a format that I’ve chosen to tour extensively with or to record with. I think part of the reason is I never really felt ready. I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready now,” he says with a disarming chuckle.

Redman, always one who likes a musical challenge, was looking for another project. He said his work in the last couple of years in aggregations that were thick with sound, by the sheer number of players and by context, led him to seek out something more stripped-down.

As simple as it may seem, the piano-less trio is not an area where players should tread lightly. Redman approaches it with respect. In his playing and writing there’s introspection that leads to invention. There’s experimentation that leads to discovery. There are thoughtfully written schemes over which to improvise. And there is a good fit with the three rhythm sections he chose to help carry out his ideas. This is done by the teams of Christian McBride on bass with Brian Blades on drums; Larry Grenadier on bass and Ali Jackson on drums; and the bass of Reuben Rogers with drummer Eric Harland. They are not musical strangers to Redman, and so there is a cohesiveness achieved. The guest artists, saxophonists Joe Lovano, Chris Cheek and Dewey Redman, are all people who Redman respects a great deal.

As Back East implies in the title, it’s an album that has Eastern musical influences on many of the tunes, whether it’s Coltrane’s “India” or Redman’s own “Zarafah.” But that’s not the whole disk. He said he heard Rollins’ classic Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) for the first time in years and it inspired him to investigate some of that music (“I’m An Old Cowhand” and “Wagon Wheels”). There are also nods to Trane, Shorter and Getz. But through it all, Redman remains himself. His facility on the horn, as always remarkable, enables him to spread his sound across the arrangements with power, when need be, but also with of and interesting phrasing befitting some of the music he heard growing up.

“I guess I craved the intimacy and the openness of trio,” says Redman. “I felt like maybe I had gotten to a place, musically, where I felt ready to take on a project like this. That’s kind of how it started.”

The music makes a strong statement and further entrenches Redman as one of the most captivating artists on the scene, always worthy of one’s attention. His reworking of songs done by Rollins is superb, because it is re-working, and Redman carries his own sound and attitude. His playful lines with Lovano show two saxophonists who love to see what is going on in the moment. And his work with his father shows a simpatico between the two, and yet shows two distinct artists in their own right. The support by all three rhythm sections is excellent.

Not many people are making albums like this. But Redman is one who puts his passion for the music first and not business considerations. He realizes that to be a successful artist, music has to be done for the love of it. He has always looked for ways to be creative, to step forward. He’s succeeded here.

Just prior to going out on tour in support of the new music with a trio—a journey that will take him to places like the Montreal Jazz Festival, as well as several dates in Europe—Redman spoke with All About Jazz about the music on his eleventh recording as a leader.

All About Jazz: The new CD is not only a return to acoustic, but a piano-less trio. How did it come about for you? How did it get in your mind that you wanted to do it?

Joshua Redman: It’s always been an exciting context for me to work in because of all the freedom there is. Without piano or guitar, or a dedicated harmonic instrument, there’s a tremendous amount of freedom that’s available to all of us, the saxophone player in particular. There’s a lot of harmonic freedom and along with that comes a great deal of melodic freedom. It’s a very open context, but it’s also kind of raw, naked and intimate context as well. But it’s really challenging, because when you don’t have a dedicated harmonic instrument, all the harmonic responsibility essentially falls upon the saxophonist and the bassist. It can be intimidating. It took me a while before I thought I was ready to do a whole project devoted to that sound and that approach.

The time just felt right. The two main bands I had been working with before this, the Elastic Band and the SF Jazz Collective, were very thick bands. In the case of the Jazz Collective, it’s an eight-piece ensemble with a four-horn front line, vibes and piano. You’ve got a lot of harmony. In the Elastic Band, even though it was only three or four musicians, once again there was a lot of sound. Lots of keyboards, guitars, effects.

Originally, I thought I just wanted to do a trio record. I had some material and I’d get deeper into that and craft some songs for that format. Then these other concepts started to take shape. This idea of doing these arrangements of these tunes Sonny Rollins had done on Way Out West. Then it took on all these other concepts that started to emerge.

AAJ: I was listening to Sonny’s Way Out West to see the contrast. It was interesting.

JR: Yeah. [laughs]. When I was working on this music, I kind of heard that (Way Out West) again for the first time in maybe ten years. I was really inspired to immediately try my own takes on some of that music. But I don’t really like to listen to myself next to Sonny Rollins. [chuckles] It’s a pretty humbling experience. I try not to play the music back to back. I don’t play my record at all so that makes it easy.

AAJ: It sounds good, and you didn’t give the exact same feel to it.

JR: That was really important. That would have been musical suicide if I tried to do the same arrangement and approach of Sonny Rollins. Obviously his influence is huge on me. He’s probably my biggest influence as a saxophonist and as an improviser. But the way I tried to approach the music was with different grooves, different tempos, different arrangements. In the case of “Wagon Wheels,” a completely different coloration. Sonny Rollins did it slow, loping, kind of cowboy-ish song. My approach has more of a Middle Eastern flavor to it. It has a different time signature, a different key.

AAJ:You have a lot of Eastern feel and influence in some of the tunes you use on the recording.

JR: It’s there. It’s something that is part of my musical upbringing and musical roots. But not in a studied way at all. My mom [Renee Shedroff] exposed me to all kinds of music at a very early age. Not just Western music, like jazz and classical and rock and funk—which I was exposed a lot to. She was a dancer and she loved Indian dance and music and Indonesian dance and music. She took me to a lot of concerts. In the Bay area [Oakland area, where Redman grew up] in the early ‘70s, there was a lot of opportunity to experience those non-Western art forms.

“Without piano or guitar, or a dedicated harmonic instrument, there’s a tremendous amount of freedom that’s available to all of us, the saxophone player in particular”

I feel like those sounds are there. They’ve always been there, kind of a part of my musical perspective; the way my ears are tuned to harmony and to melody. But I never really studied that music. To the extent that those sounds come out in my music—and in this record they come out in a lot more explicit way than in previous projects—it’s not through a deep knowledge or analysis of those forms. It’s not in a formal way. I don’t know different ragas, I don’t play with different beats cycles that come in a structural way from these musics. It’s more just a feel and a flavoring that in a certain sense have to do more with these musical sounds that have been in my ears for a long time, since I was very young.

I should stress that there are a lot of jazz musicians out there that have immersed themselves in these musics and really know them. I’m not one of those musicians. I haven’t studied the form.

AAJ:Some of the other tunes taken from Wayne Shorter, Coltrane. That’s obviously from their influence on you as a saxophone player.

JR:Yeah. Originally when I started working on the material, I was focusing mostly on original compositions. Then I had this burst of inspiration to arrange those Sonny Rollins Songs from Way Out West. After I was done I felt … not satisfied, but like: Wow. I can do this now. I can take these songs that were recorded and played by these iconic saxophone players and do them in a way that wasn’t just repetition, re-creation. I could do them in a way where I felt I could really have my own sound and identity through them.

Once I did the Sonny Rollins songs, it opened the door to involving myself musically with some of my other saxophone influences, so I decided to do a Coltrane [“India”] song and the Wayne Shorter song [“Indian Song”]. “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” even though Stan Getz didn’t write it, it’s a song I associate with him. I know it from a record he did called West Coast Jazz (Universal, 1955), which also fell into this east-west concept.

This idea of influences, saxophone influences in particular, became a part of the project. Through that I was inspired to ask some great saxophonists who I knew, who were influences—my father and Chris Speed and Joe Lovano—to play with me.

It started because I just wanted to do a trio record. Little by little these other concepts started to emerge to the point where there are so many different layers. It’s nice. I’ve always shunned the idea of a concept record, in the sense that I never want the concepts to dictate the music, I want the concepts to flow from the music. In this sense I kind of felt like they did. But in the end, the only value, if there is value, is the music itself.

AAJ:How much time do you spend writing? Is it difficult? Is it something that you do just when you feel it? Or can you sit down and write when you have to on a deadline?

JR:Yes. [laughs]. I don’t have a method. When I started working on the music for this project, some of the music was already written. But there were a few months when I kind of created all of the music, whether it was original or arranged. It came in that burst. With writing it comes in waves for me sometimes. I’ll go through long periods when I don’t write anything, and then I might have a burst of creativity, or I feel inspired or focused to do that.

I’m starting to realize that writing doesn’t necessarily have to be this mystical creative process that I used to think it was. I used to think, “I can’t write anything until I’m inspired.” And I can’t summon inspiration. So it just kind of has to happen when it happens. Part of me still feels like that, but a part of me also feels like part of it is just making the commitment to write. If I say I’m going to just sit down and write, that doesn’t really mean I’m going to sit down and immediately write this incredible tune, but… Part of it is just the process, committing yourself to the process, and through the process you’ll find something. I might start writing a tune that may get jettisoned, but there’s some kernel that comes out of it; it becomes the seed for something else.

If I want to be more prolific as a writer, it’s kind of simple. I just have to write more. [laughs].

AAJ:Which isn’t always easy.

JR:: Which isn’t. Especially when you have a kid.

AAJ:I know that…The rhythm sections you picked, you know them and have played with them. Was it a certain feel you wanted from them? Why did you pick them?

JR:I picked each rhythm section first of all because individually, these guys are among my favorite musicians. But also because I had played with each rhythm section a fair amount in different contexts. I’d also played with of them in trio. They’re all great and they’re all very different. I like the idea of a variety of sounds and approaches for this record. I still wanted it to be very focused, and hopefully it is. But because it’s such a simple format from an instrumental standpoint, one of the challenges is having variety, having different tunes sound and feel different. Because when you don’t have the chords, you sometimes run the risk of everything sounding the same. I like the idea of having these different flavors and this variety. I thought having different rhythm sections would help. I knew each one would have a unique approach and hopefully bring something exciting to it.

AAJ:Joe Lovano, Chris Speed and your father, how was that planned? Especially with your father. Did you say, “Yeah. I want him to be on this record,” or did it evolve differently?

JR:At a certain point I thought about having some special guests and in particular having some saxophonists who had been big influences on me at different times in my musical development. It fit with the concept of playing the music of these great master saxophonists like Coltrane and Rollins and Shorter and Getz, who I had never met or interacted with, but were big influences. I liked the idea of bringing in some saxophonists who were huge influences, but in a more direct way. Musicians I had played with, saxophonists I had listened to and played with. I naturally thought of each of these guys. Each them is from a different generation. Each has been a big influence on me in different ways at different times.

As far as my Dad, I asked him to play a tune on my next record. I wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Every time we played together before this, it was always, as it should have been, in one of his projects, in his band or on his record. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but he said yes. At that point I asked Joe and Chris and they both said yes.

AAJ:That has to be one of the last recordings your father made.

JR:Yeah. I don’t know that he did another recording after that. He recorded that in the middle of May [2006] and passed away very early in September.

AAJ:I know he was still out playing.

JR:Yeah, he did some gigs. I don’t know that he went into the studio after that. It was the last time that we played together. It was the first time we recorded together for over ten years and the first time we played together for, I think, five. It was the last time we recorded together and played together and actually the last time I saw him until right before he passed away.

AAJ:Those two songs must have a special feel for you.

JR:Yeah. “India,” that was the tune we were supposed to do. I came up with an idea for a simple arrangement that I thought would be nice for us to play together. I was really happy with the way it turned out. We both had a lot of fun. It was nice to play a Coltrane tune, which was appropriate. I really liked the interaction that happened between us.

That’s true with all the saxophone players. I really tried to structure the tune so it wasn’t really just about two tenor players playing a bunch of tenor player stuff. I really wanted each song in a different way, in its own way, to feel like a conversation. That worked out really well with my Dad.

“GJ” was kind of a surprise. He asked to record something without me. He did it one take. I wasn’t even there. I stepped out of the studio. It’s a dedication to his grandson, to my son, who was born in February (2006). He had met time one time, in April. So that song, originally, I didn’t know what we were going to do with it. I didn’t know if I was necessarily going to put it on the album. But after he passed away, it has a lot of significance and I thought it would be a nice coda.

AAJ:The disk sounds great. You have gigs with that format?

JR:I’ve got a gig in Boston coming up with Christian and Brian. Right after that I go to D.C. and play four nights with Larry and Ali, then in June I start touring with Reuben and Eric, so I’m actually gigging at different times with all three rhythm sections.

AAJ:Any idea about future projects?

JR: I haven’t toured that much over the last year and a half. Mostly with the Jazz Collective and that’s only been about a month and a half out of the year. So I want to focus on getting back out there with the trio and playing the music, and hopefully writing some new music.

I have a lot of ideas about future projects, but I kind of don’t like talking about them until I start to do them. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I try to be in the moment as much as possible.

Selected Discography

Joshua Redman, Back East (Nonesuch, 2007)
SFJazz Collective, SFJazz Collective 2 (Nonesuch, 2006)
Joshua Redman, Momentum (Nonesuch, 2005)
SFJazz Collective, SFJazz Collective (Nonesuch, 2005)
Kurt Rosenwinkel, Deep Song (Verve, 2005)
Roy Haynes, Love Letters (Columbia, 2003)
Joshua Redman, Elastic (Warner Bros., 2002)
Yaya3, Yaya3 (Loma, 2002)
Joshua Redman, Beyond (Warner Bros., 2000)
Joshua Redman, Passage of Time (Warner Bros., 2001)
Joshua Redman, Timeless Tales (For Changing Times) (Warner Bros., 1998)
Chick Corea, Remembering Bud Powell (Stretch, 1997)
Joshua Redman, Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard (Warner Bros., 1995)
Joshua Redman, Moodswing (Warner Bros., 1994)
McCoy Tyner, Prelude and Sonata (Milestone, 1994)
Joshua Redman, Wish (Warner Bros., 1993)
Paul Motian and the Electric Bebop Band, Paul Motian and the Electric Bebop Band (Winter&Winter, 1992)

Taken from All About Jazz Website

Jazz For You : John McLaughlin

2007-06-14T00:46:00.001-07:00

Few tasks are more daunting than picking just ten of a great jazz artist's albums for a library collection. Each record adds in its own way to the appreciation of any artist. But in the case of guitarist John McLaughlin , choosing representative albums is made an even more difficult chore because so many of his records run at odd angles to each other. He seems to change styles so often that just keeping track can be a daunting task.This set of records spans thirty years and a huge variety of approaches. It's a fine place to start if you're curious about McLaughlin's many angles on improvised music.

	1969 John McLaughlin, Extrapolation (Polydor 841598) The guitarist's first efforts as a leader led to a classic recording which showcased the musician's European jazz roots in a modern jazz vein.
	1970 Miles Davis, A Tribute To Jack Johnson (Columbia CK-47036) McLaughlin exploded onto the jazz scene with his ferocious playing on Miles Davis' 1970 record. The Jazz-blues-funk power chords McLaughlin unleashes on this recording still deserve attention.
	1970 John McLaughlin, My Goal's Beyond (Knitting Factory 3010) It's hard to believe the same man that blew the fuses on Davis' album quieted down and produced the truly remarkable acoustic My Goal's Beyond.
	1971 Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia/Legacy 65523) The Mahavishnu Orchestra came next with its debut album, The Inner Mounting Flame, which rocked both the jazz and popular music worlds. This was McLaughlin's true coming out party.
	1976 Shakti with John McLaughlin, Shakti (Sony International 9178) Shakti introduced yet another John McLaughlin, a musician who had immersed himself into Indian music. This record presented a hybrid of jazz and far eastern modes that literally helped introduce the world music movement.
	1978 John McLaughlin, Electric Guitarist (Columbia 46110) This record is noteworthy for the disparate styles and guest stars it featured.
	1981 John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, Paco DeLucia, Friday Night in San Francisco (Sony 65168) The guitar trio's debut record was a live performance which revolutionized the way the acoustic guitar is viewed in the pop world. Its influence is still felt today.
	1994 John McLaughlin, After the Rain (Verve 527467) This organ trio with Joey DeFrancesco and Elvin Jones offered a significant showcase for McLaughlin to perform in a more straightahead jazz format. Many of these tunes are Coltrane compositions.
	2000 John McLaughlin and The Heart of Things, Live In Paris (Verve 314 543 536-2) The Heart of Things showed the world that fusion music could still be exciting, and that Mr. McLaughlin was still its King.
	2001 Remember Shakti, Saturday Night in Bombay (Verve 014164) Coming almost full circle, this Remember Shakti album references the excitement of the Guitar Trio from 20 years earlier, as well as McLaughlin's approach to world music and jazz. It exemplifies how the guitarist continues to strive to incorporate all of his musical knowledge into a fresh outlook.

Taken From All About Jazz : Building Your Jazz Library
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=2157

Jazz For You : Pat Metheny

2007-06-14T00:43:00.000-07:00

If Pat Metheny never plays another single note, he would have already lived a “bright size life.”

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City in 1954 and first picked up his guitar at the age of twelve. By age fifteen, he was already playing with the top jazz musicians in town. In 1974, he became a part of the international jazz scene and joined a band led by vibraphonist Gary Burton. During this three year stint, he not only made some remarkable albums with Burton, like Passengers and Dreams So Real, but also produced his own debut album as a leader for ECM Records in 1976.

If there is one thing that Metheny cares for as much as playing and composing, it is education. He was the youngest teacher ever at the University of Miami at age eighteen. He achieved the same accolade at the age of nineteen at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. In 1996, he received an honorary doctorate from Berklee. Metheny has also taught various musical workshops and clinics all around the world in locations such as the Dutch Royal Conservatory, the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz, and parts of South America and Asia.

Metheny is also quite an engineer when it comes to the guitar. He has pioneered different kinds of guitars for different sounds and purposes, stretching the ever-versatile instrument to new horizons. At the time of this article (2006), he has already performed on the soprano acoustic guitar, the 42-string Pikasso guitar, the Ibanez 1-S PM-100 jazz guitar as well as many other custom made instruments.

The name Pat Metheny is known worldwide and he has an almost religious following that would follow him to the ends of the earth. He has deep and profound respect for jazz music, the tradition, and the ever-evolving process of improvisation. He has won more Grammy awards than Elizabeth Taylor has had husbands. When Metheny is not recording, writing, engineering a new type of guitar, winning another award to add to his dozens, or giving clinics, he usually performs around 120-240 shows a year and has done so since 1974.

Some dig Pat Metheny's music and others simply do not. Some people love the Pat Metheny Group projects, but can't stand his other output. One must look at the entire scope of this artist to fully understand the depth of his genius. In interviews about the process of jazz improvisation, his logistics echo that of Bill Evans. As far as early immersion in tradition, he was born in Kansas City, the birthplace of many jazz greats. He is also reminiscent of Miles Davis' ever-changing, ever-evolving persona, always in search of the next creative horizon. You can hear one line from his guitar, and know that you are listening to Pat Metheny.

In chronological order, the high points of Pat Metheny on record:

	Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life (ECM, 1976) Metheny's recording debut as a leader, in a trio with bassisst Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses. Essential from start to finish, offering such classics as “Bright Size Life,” “Midwestern Nights Dream,” “Sirabhorn,” and “Unity Village,” all composed by Metheny, as well as “Round Trip / Broadway Blues,” written by Ornette Coleman. Given Metheny’s lyricism, Pastorius' insatiable lines, and Moses' delicate, empathetic dynamics, people will still be talking about this record in 2076.
	Pat Metheny: Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978) The debut of the Pat Metheny Group on record. The original lineup of Metheny, Lyle Mays, Mark Egan and Dan Gottlieb made history and a set of new, contemporary standards with this album. Not long after the release of Bright Size Life, Metheny cast six new originals that have become anthems to his dedicated following. You need only a few strains of “San Lorenzo,” “Phase Dance,” “Jaco,” “April Wind,” “April Joy” or “Lone Jack,” laced with optimism and the joy of discovery, for a smile to creep across your face from ear to ear. This is where the PMG madness all started, and for good reason.
	Pat Metheny: New Chautauqua (ECM, 1979) Metheny's first solo record. On this project, Metheny chose to use overdubs in many different ways. Although it is labeled a “jazz” record due to its improvisational nature, it features many and various influences: Americana and Spanish flamenco stylings alongside folk, Indian music, and tinges of bluegrass, all intertwined into a musical cornucopia.
	Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays: As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (ECM, 1981) Mainly focused on the Metheny and Lyle Mays writing duo, which has been compared to Lennon & McCartney as well as Ellington & Strayhorn, plus help from multi-percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. This album showcases the writing genius of the two in a musical twist of African, Latin, and Americana rhythms and melodies. It also feautures a somber, wistfully beautiful tribute to pianist Bill Evans (”September Fifteenth”—the date Evans passed away). A classic that will stand the test of time.
	Pat Metheny Group: Travels (ECM, 1982) This two-disc set catches the Pat Metheny Group on the road, live in concert, featuring fresh renditions of familiar favorites plus some new favorites for the listeners' musical palette to savor—Compositions like “Farmer’s Trust,” and “Travels” became instantaneous favorites among listeners and musicians alike. Absolutely nothing compares to the music and collective spirit of discovery delivered by a live show given by the Pat Metheny Group.
	Pat Metheny: Question and Answer (Geffen, 1990) Another trio, with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Roy Haynes. In his liner notes, Metheny claims that he actually wanted Holland on bass for Bright Size Life, but felt that he was not musically “ready” for Holland in that he rarely plays roots. (Holland figures that everyone should know the music well enough that he doesn’t need to anchor the piece.) Here, Metheny proves more than ready for Holland. The three players sail through the tunes (half standards, half originals) effortlessly, putting unique twists on “All the Things You Are,” “Solar” and “Old Folks,” as well as originals like ”Question and Answer,” “Three Flights Up,” and “H&H,” which are sure to become standards in the near future. A totally different trio record from Bright Size Life, more focused on a traditional jazz setting, and showing how easily Metheny excels in this arena, too.
	Pat Metheny: Zero Tolerance for Silence (Geffen, 1994) The album no one seems to understand: Some have called this Metheny’s version of a musical joke; some have hailed it as an avant-garde textural masterpiece; others just call it noise. Whatever his reasons for recording it, the main thing to remember is that this is a far cry, stylistically, from any of Metheny's other projects. Pat Metheny is an artist who is always changing and doesn't have to answer to anyone.
	Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny: Beyond the Missouri Sky (Verve, 1997) “Pure beauty” are the best two words to sum up this duo album. It features plenty of versatility, but beauty is the recurring element. Numerous Haden originals are all laced with infectious simplicity and breathtaking qualities. “Waltz for Ruth” opens it up (with Metheny quickly quoting his composition “Minuano” in the beginning strains of his solo), followed by other Haden originals, “Our Spanish Love Song” and “First Song (for Ruth),” and ending with “Spiritual” written by Josh Haden, Charlie’s son. The amazing duo also puts their spin on Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso,” Mancini’s “Two For the Road,” Jim Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and Roy Acuff’s “The Precious Jewel.” Want to know “pure beauty”? It’s as easy as looking Beyond the Missouri Sky.
	Pat Metheny Group: Imaginary Day (Warner Bros., 1997) This album challenges and appeals to listeners across many broad categories. The tracks and title of the album must be decoded using the symbol key on the inner lining of the CD case. No matter: The challenged listener quickly comes to favor such wonderful compositions like the Eastern-flavored “Heat of the Day” and “The Roots of Coincidence,” with its industrial and rock tinges, all conjured from the dynamic and masterful minds of Metheny and Mays. Metheny again struck Grammy gold again, claiming the Best Rock Instrumental Performance for “The Roots of Coincidence,” as well as Best Contemorary Jazz Album.
	Pat Metheny : Trio 99-00 (Warner Bros., 2000) The ever-evolving artist includes some young lions on this recording, surrounding himself with arguably the best drummer and bassist from this period: Bill Stewart (Charlie Haden, Larry Goldings) and Larry Grenadier (Brad Mehldau Trio). Not as traditional as Question and Answer, nor as ethereal as Bright Size Life. This trio conjures up musical images of a Sonny Rollins trio setting as Metheny soars through ”Giant Steps,” “Capricorn,” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do,” plus exquisite flights through his originals “Lone Jack,” “Travels,” “What Do You Want?,” “Soul Cowboy” and “(Go) Get It.” Proof that even in 1999-2000, Metheny was still ahead of the rest... full throttle.
	Jim Hall & Pat Metheny: Jim Hall & Pat Metheny (Telarc, 1999) The classic pairing of two jazz guitar giants, Metheny as the young lion standing steadfast with the wise elder Hall, and a dream come true for Metheny to play with one of his guitar idols. Democratically divided into four tunes from Metheny, four from Hall, four standards, and five “free” improvisational pieces. After all, Hall was among the first to help start the “free” movement with Chico Hamilton in 1955, so Metheny swims the empathetic waters between the two. No matter which brand of jazz you prefer, there is something on this duo performance you will absolutely love.
	Pat Metheny: One Quiet Night (Warner Bros., 2003) Metheny’s most recent solo guitar album and a primal display of the speed and brilliance of his genius. After purchasing a new baritone guitar and finding a rare free evening at home with his multi-track recorder, he freely created this solo outing (with no overdubs), a Grammy-winner and a beautiful soundscape for all of us to enjoy. He takes on tunes such as “Don’t Know Why,” made popular by Norah Jones, Keith Jarrett’s “My Song,” “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” and old and new originals. Hailed as Metheny's most contemplative record to date.
	Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman: Song X (Nonesuch, 2005) Mastermind Charlie Haden brought Metheny and Ornette Coleman into the studio for this masterpiece. This 1985 recording was a far cry from his usual Pat Metheny Group projects of the time; it featured Ornette on sax and violin, Haden on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Denardo Coleman on percussion. It raised a lot of eyebrows back in 1985; Nonesuch released a 20th Anniversary edition of Song X in 2006 with six new bonus tracks. This release still raises eyebrows with its fresh and inventive improvisation, twenty years later. Only truly gifted improvisers such as Coleman and Metheny could make such an album.
	Pat Metheny Group: The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005) The latest release as of this writing (2006) from the genius minds of Metheny and Mays. Hailed as their most ambitious work by far, this magnum opus is only three movements long (four if you count the intro) and clocks in at more than 68 minutes. Its ever-blasting sonic rhythms, key shifts, tightly knit time and tempo changes make it for the ages. Features the dynamic duo on guitar and keyboards plus Cuong Vu on trumpet and voice, Gregoire Maret on harmonica, Antonio Sanchez on drums, and Steve Rodby on acoustic and electric bass, plus cello. From Bright Size Life to The Way Up, there is only one single word to describe the music of Pat Metheny: quantum.

History Rocks # The Rolling Stones

2007-06-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Rolling Stones

When the Beatles ceased to exist in 1970, the title of “World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” fell with very little dispute to the Rolling Stones, who by then were in the middle of such a wondrous creative peak that they might have challenged the Fab Four for the title anyway. It’s a title the one-time “anti-Beatles” haven’t relinquished since. Not only have the Stones been the greatest rock band in the world for more than 30 years, but they have been a functioning rock ‘n’ roll unit for more than 40, the longest run in history.

Boyhood friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, along with guitarist Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, formed the first version of the Rollin’ Stones in 1962, and with the crack rhythm section of Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass soon on board, were ripping it up in an eight-month residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club shortly thereafter.

A young and ambitious Andrew Loog Oldham saw them there: “I saw them April 23, 1963 and then I knew what I had been training for,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Colombia. “The main thing they had was passion, which has served them to this day,” Oldham continued. Oldham’s first act as manager was to demote the shambling Stewart from the band’s live act for not keeping with his image of a lean, mean and sexy Stones (Stewart was the band’s road manager and recorded with them until his death in 1985).

At the time the Rollin’ Stones (named for the Muddy Waters song, Oldham added the “g”) were a ragged R&B cover band, but their run at the Crawdaddy had generated much attention, and with the Beatles on their way up no one wanted to miss the next big thing. Oldham quickly got them signed to Decca Records, which was still smarting from having turned down the Beatles.

In June of '63 the Stones’ first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” went to No. 21 in the UK. The follow-up in November was a cover of the dreaded Beatles’ “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which rose to UK No. 12. By February of '64, they reached the UK Top 10 with Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” which also cracked the Top 50 in the U.S. — the bad boys were on their way.

Oldham split with the band amid the insanity and media frenzy of drug busts in 1967, but he and the band generated some amazing music during the two years between the squirmingly lascivious “Satisfaction” — considered by many the greatest rock song ever — released in May 1965, and the hit-filled “Flowers” compilation, released in July '67. Included was the incredibly self-aware narcissism of “Get Off Of My Cloud,” chamber music gentility and vulnerability of “As Tears Go By,” bemused urban modernity of “19th Nervous Breakdown”; and the Stones’ first classic album, “Aftermath,” with the simultaneously mocking and empathetic drug song “Mother’s Little Helper,” deeply groovy and misogynistic “Under My Thumb” and “Out Of Time,” lovely “Lady Jane,” and exotic, roiling “Paint It Black.”

Then came the Stones classic late-'60s/early-'70s period between “Beggar’s Banquet” and “Exile On Main Street,” possibly the most productive run in rock history, when the Stones turned an unequaled alchemy of rock ‘n’ roll, blues and country into something dark, dangerous and enduringly deep.

The 1967 busts seemed to spur Jagger and Richards to another creative level, but Brian Jones appeared beaten and sinking fast. He was absent from the devilish, riff-rocking “Jumping Jack Flash” single. He barely worked on 1968’s exceptional, bluesy “Beggar’s Banquet” (seductive, percussive and stinging “Sympathy For the Devil,” guitar-pounding “Street Fighting Man,” slashing and sinful “Stray Cat Blues”), was out of the group by June '69, and dead at the bottom of his swimming pool less than a month later.

Young Mick Taylor joined as Jones’s replacement, and his hefty bluesy leads were the perfect foil for Richards’ open-tuned rhythm work, and the sound and imagery grew darker and harder still on “Let it Bleed” (the sex and death apocalypse “Gimme Shelter,” Robert Johnson’s anguished blues “Love In Vain,” mysterious “Monkey Man,” the druggy camaraderie of the title track, powerful and murderous "Midnight Rambler,” and the oblique, uplifting coda “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”).

The band’s dance with the devil bore bitter fruit when they put on a free concert at Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco on December 6, 1969 (just three months after Woodstock) where a fan was stabbed to death in view of the stage by Hell’s Angels (all the mounting bad juju was captured for posterity in the film “Gimme Shelter”).

“Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out” (1970), one of the most satisfying live rock albums ever, focused on their '68-'69 hits, including an extended, definitive “Midnight Rambler,” and showed how integral Mick Taylor had become to the Stones’ roaring live sound.

The band’s first release on their own Rolling Stones Records was the druggy, shambling, brilliant “Sticky Fingers” (1971), with the infamous working-zipper cover by Andy Warhol. Taylor again sparkled and the Jagger/Richards songwriting continued at the highest level: swaggering “Brown Sugar,” plaintive “Wild Horses,” jazzy grooving “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” horn-rocking “Bitch,” chilling “Sister Morphine” and countrified “Dead Flowers.”

The murky, dense, jumbled double album “Exile on Main Street” closed the era of Stones invincibility in 1972. A yeasty blend of all the band’s roots influences — blues, country, soul, gospel and rock — “Exile” yields fresh revelations more than 30 years later, and “Rocks Off,” “Rip This Joint,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Sweet Virginia,” “Happy,” “All Down the Line” and “Shine a Light” are among the band’s best work.

The Stones have been a different band ever since: Mick Taylor left in 1974, replaced by the stalwart Ronnie Wood. They have released a couple great albums: “Some Girls” (1978), their rough response to the challenges of disco and punk (“Miss You,” “Some Girls,” “Respectable,” “Beast of Burden,” “Shattered”), and “Tattoo You” (1981, their top-charting album ever — nine weeks at No. 1) with standouts “Start Me Up,” “Hang Fire” and “Waiting On a Friend.” They have also released a lot of simply good albums: the '70s were better than the '80s, which were better than the '90s.

But they have soldiered on, taking breaks but focusing more and more on getting the music out to the fans live, becoming particularly reinvigorated with the “Steel Wheels” album and world tour in 1989. I caught that tour in Los Angeles and the Stones came on with an air of eager assurance. All of the elements clicked: the guitars cut and slashed, the rhythm section locked in and rode it out, the songs were a perfect blending of old and new, the band was abundantly enthusiastic.

Jagger didn’t exhibit a drop of Cool Star attitude: he worked, talked, sang with energy and attention to detail. He was obviously happy to be liked again. The collective joyous relief of the stadium buoyed Jagger to childlike vulnerability:“Do ya like the new songs?” he almost pleaded of the throng.”We love them, Mick!””We love you!””Yeahh!”

Maybe Mick was reminded of his quote from the '70s, “Sometimes I prefer being on stage, sometimes I prefer orgasm.” That night, I’m pretty sure the stage won. In the 1990s, the band took in a staggering $750 million from three tours. When I watched them live from Madison Square Garden on HBO early last year my eyes confirmed that these craggy, gaunt guys are about 60 years old, but when the cameras pulled back 30 years melted away and the magic was real and grew in intensity as the night wore on.

What a great show! The Stones are a better band live now than they were in the '70s when their lives, bodies and minds were a quagmire of sex, drugs and alcohol. Age has focused them, yet taken away very little of their maniacal energy, and Keith Richards is still the greatest rhythm guitarist who ever lived.

Long live rock ‘n’ roll — long live the Rolling Stones

History Rocks # The Beatles

2007-06-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

The Beatles

In February 1964, (from left) Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon brought Beatlemania to the United States, forever changing the face of music.

The Beatles are unquestionably the best and most important band in rock history, as well as the most compelling story. Almost miraculously, they embodied the apex of the form artistically, commercially, culturally and spiritually at just the right time, the tumultuous '60s, when music had the power to literally change the world (or at least to give the impression that it could, which may be the same thing). The Beatles are the archetype: there is no term in the language analogous to “Beatlemania.”

Three lads from Liverpool — John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison — came together at a time of great cultural fluidity in 1960 (with bit players Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best), absorbed and recapitulated American rock ‘n’ roll and British pop history unto that point, hardened into a razor sharp unit playing five amphetamine-fueled sets a night in the tough port town of Hamburg, Germany, returned to Liverpool, found their ideal manager in Brian Epstein and ideal producer in George Martin, added the final piece of the puzzle when Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums, and released their first single in the U.K., “Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You,” all by October of 1962.

Their second single, “Please Please Me,” followed by British chart-toppers “From Me to You,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” (all Lennon/McCartney originals), and the group’s pleasing image, wit and charm, solidified the Fab Four’s delirious grip on their homeland in 1963.

But it was when the group arrived in the U.S. in February 1964 that the full extent of Beatlemania became manifest. Their pandemonium-inducing five-song performance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 is one of the cornerstone mass media events of the 20th century. I was five at the time — my parents tell me I watched it with them, but I honestly don’t remember. I do remember, though, that the girls next door, four and six years older than I, flipped over that appearance and dragged me into their giddy madness soon thereafter. I loved “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the Beatles’ first No. 1 in the U.S. (they had 19 more, still the record), more than any other song I have ever heard, or almost assuredly will ever hear, with a consuming intensity that I can only now touch as a memory.

The Beatles generated an intensity of joy that slapped tens of millions of people in the face with the awareness that happiness and exuberance were not only possible, but in their presence, inevitable. They generated an energy that was amplified a million times over and returned to them in a deafening tidal wave of grateful hysteria.

A partial result of that deafening hysteria was that the band became frustrated with their concerts and stopped performing live after a San Francisco show on August 29, 1966. Yet even this frustration bore fruit, as the four musicians, aided almost incalculably by producer Martin, turned their creative energies to the recording studio, producing ever more sophisticated and accomplished albums “Rubber Soul” (1965, “Drive My Car,” “Norwegian Wood,” “You Won’t See Me,” “Nowhere Man,” “Michelle”), “Revolver” (1966, Harrison’s “Taxman,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “And Your Bird Can Sing”), the majestic and epochal “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967, title track, “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “A Day In the Life”).

Though centrifugal force began to take its toll, they still managed to produce three more album masterpieces, double-album “The Beatles” (1968, a.k.a. “The White Album,” with “Back In the USSR,” “Dear Prudence,” “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,” Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Blackbird,” “Birthday,” “Helter Skelter”), “Let It Be” (recorded in early 1969 but not released until 1970, with the title track, “Two Of Us,” “Across the Universe,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Get Back”), and the fitting climax “Abbey Road” (1969, Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden,” “Come Together,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “I Want You,” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”).

They made an incredible promise and instead of backing down from that promise they delivered and delivered and delivered for eight years until the full implications of the promise finally hit them: they were staring into the jaws of an insatiable, ravenous beast that was no less beastly because it smiled and waved and gave them money. The Beatles finally suffered a collective inability to pretend that the beast was not a beast, and in 1970 they broke up and returned to being human.

Beatlemania redux

A small but significant slice of the Beatles’ magic came back in 1986 with release of the classic John Hughes teen flick “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” wherein Matthew Broderick’s title character lip-syncs the early Beatles classic “Twist and Shout” (ironically, a song they didn’t write) from the top of a float in a downtown Chicago parade.

John Lennon sang “Twist and Shout” as though the words were joyful corrosive poison, that his only hope of survival was to expel them with all the vehemence that his rhythm-besotted body could muster, and so does Ferris in the scene. Paul and George’s responses matched John’s zeal at the end of each stanza with their delirious “Ooohs.” They were enjoying themselves so much that this song seemed the most important thing in their lives at that moment. The Beatles knew the awesome responsibilities of pleasure.

Ferris lips lustily, the frauleins on the float shimmy and shake and bounce off of Ferris like electrons, the thousands in the crowd sing along from the pits of their pelvises. Chicago jams as one, recreating the Beatles’ amazing real-life feat of a unifying mass-madness that changed people’s lives for a time.

When they saw the movie in the theater in ‘86, people actually stood up and danced in the aisles. How could they not? The “Twist and Shout” segment was the most exciting and joyous musical moment in a movie since the Beatles own “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), and was the perfect climax to Ferris Bueller’s film exploits.

The public was so wistful for Beatlemania that “Twist and Shout” returned to the charts for 15 weeks that year, a brief but sweet reminder of the real thing.

From Msnbc

New Releases # Year Zero - Nine Inch Nails

2007-05-17T10:24:00.000-07:00

Year Zero - Nine Inch Nails Released: April, 17, 2007 Record Label: Halo

Album Review

Nine Inch Nails' 2007 release Year Zero will undoubtedly go down in rock history for the way the recording was marketed before its release. It may mark the first time that the advance strategy -- conceived of and executed, for the most part, by NIN auteur Trent Reznor himself with 42 Entertainment -- became part and parcel of the edifice that is the album's concept: an alternate reality game and a possible film project that lasts three years in total make up the rest. Months before the recording's actual issue date, T-shirts appeared with highlighted letters in code that spelled out "I Am Trying To Believe."

Hip fans added a dotcom to the words and found a website discussing "The Presence," a shadowy four-fingered hand on the set's cover that appears throughout the booklet, in web discussions of the set, and references to the drug "Parepin," which was allegedly introduced into the water supplies of large cities to make them safe against bio-terror yet induced mass hallucinations as a side effect. There were other websites as well which described the "Church of Plano," the confessions of a government murderer for hire, and more, as well as a phone number that played the spooky beginning of the track "Survivalism." There were several thumb drives placed strategically in bathrooms of NIN concerts around the world that contained entire tracks from the album.

What's more, this guerilla "marketing" campaign has not been commented on by Reznor except to say that it is not marketing, but part of the concept of Year Zero itself and not meant to induce consumers to buy the record. Right. Given this ambitious schemata for Year Zero's release along with the concept -- a dystopian, paranoid, angry and schizophrenic look at life in the United States circa 2022 -- it is the music contained on the disc and only the music that is the bellwether of whether or not the ambition and effort were worth it.

Year Zero comes virtually on the heels of 2005's With Teeth, and is a virtual sprint for Reznor who is known to take notoriously long breaks between recordings. A large portion of the album's rough tracks were recorded with a laptop setup while on tour, and it feels like it. There are hidden sounds, textures, shadings, passages, and more in virtually every cut where heavy metal, industrial , ambient, hip-hop, post-futurist balladry and strings rub up against each other and punch one another in a glorious rawk din. Melodies are asserted and turned inside out, added onto with other segments, and either returned to or not. And yet, the sound of Year Zero is cohesive, adventurous, full of dynamics, tension and character.

The songs sound like songs. There are discernible hooks in "The Beginning of the End," "Survivalism," "The Greater Good," and the utterly moving and brilliant "Zero-Sum," which closes the disc. While many of the Nine Inch Nails recordings after Downward Spiral relied on sheer force to bludgeon listeners into submission, the atmospheres on Year Zero are far more seductive and and inviting. This doesn't mean there isn't a powerful blend of electronics and in-the-red vanguard rock, along with mutant science-fiction funk, from the opening "Hyperpower!" and "The Beginning of the End," where guitars squall against glitches, beeps, pops, and blotches of blurry sonic attacks. Percussion looms large, distorted, organic, looped, screwed, spindled and broken.
It's as if Reznor spent some real time listening to the Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy's sound architects for inspiration. His notion of the same doesn't borrow from them so much as extrapolate and shove to the margin the idea of sound as the driving force that carries a song's structure, and not vice-versa: check "Survivalism" and "Me, I'm Not."

It comes down to something both prophetic and age old: Year Zero is an album that more accurately reflects its time period than any other in the pop pantheon. Its paranoia and rage are well founded by the lack of choices. Near the end of "The Good Soldier," Reznor's protagonist emerges shattered and bewildered by the bloodshed in all this world and his personal one intones: "No one's even sure/What we're fighting for/Or who we even are anymore/I feel/so far away...."
In the faux-hip-hop funky rock in "Capital G" amid the scree and feedback, this character with his ragged singsong rap offers: "Well I used to stand for something/But forgot what that could be/there's a lot of me inside you/maybe you're afraid to see/Well I used to stand for something/Now I'm on my hands and knees/Traded in my god for this one/signs his name with a capital 'G'," while a horn section bleats and burns, treated and mutilated by bleeps and glitches with a deep, scathing bassline.

In the universe of Year Zero, apathy, though desired, is never enough. This is portrayed in "My Violent Heart" and "The Warning," sonically as well as lyrically. In the latter track, beats shift with huge electronic and guitar drones, pushed by the confounded emotion inherent in the lyric to the place of the apocalyptic entrance of the "presence" coming down from the sky -- is it an hallucination, an actual vision of retribution, or willful destruction by the protagonist? -- "....We've been watching you with all of our eyes/And what you seem to value most/so much potential/or so we used to say/your greed, self-importance, and your arrogance...your time is ticking away."

The burning electronic funk in "God Given" reveals the urgency of a situation with no choices but to look straight in front of you." Apocalypse and some frightening future of absolute control have been seeded and watered in the present day, from one American generation to the next as societal disintegration has resulted in the willful acquiescing of freedom, all done to monster beats, scratches, chants and completely sick rock & roll freak-out.

You can find the tension whipped to frenzy pitch in "Meet Your Master," where the new boss is some grainy reality that acquits no one, offers no mercy, and where forgiveness is a concept rather than a definition of anything real. In the bass throb and guitar caterwaul in the middle, Reznor dispassionately intones, "come on down down, come on down, come on down..."

It's echoed endlessly as layers of noise and feedback assert themselves over the shuffling bomb of the bass loop. What all this schizophrenic fright, political and cultural nausea and social paranoia add up to is a future of no choices because those choices were all pissed away in our gluttonous use of the environment, of other societies for our own purposes and sheer hedonism. The strange sound of marimbas and vibraphones slip ethereally from one song to the next, as if to belie the absence something that was; it has been placed under erasure; it's a collective past whose trace is barely recognizable in the future of no choice "freedom."

Year Zero is the finest Nine Inch Nails recording since Downward Spiral. Its songs are memorable, beautifully constructed and articulated. Reznor's manner of writing on a laptop and recording as he went on the road was beneficial in that it provided a larger context for his lyric ideas as they matched up to the splatter and crash of his musical ones. This is Reznor's least "personal" album," and hence it becomes his most personal; because as his vision widens to embrace an entire generation inside the conceptual reality of Year Zero and "The Presence," he embraces the things he dreads, fears and bristles at most with complete conviction -- even if that conviction is rooted at times in irony (and thank goodness for that).

Certainly the album is bleak and doesn't make for bland entertainment, but then, his records never do. This one is as fully realized as a rock & roll album for the post-9/11 world can be, even if its totality is not held in the zeros and ones of binary code, but in extraneous web sites and alternate reality gamesmanship: in other words, the music stands on its own no matter what else accompanies it.

Year Zero is bloodied but unbowed rock with a capital "R"; it's a serious and marginal pop treatise on the lack of political and social awareness inherent in the current and perhaps near future culture. It reveals in song and sound the helplessness bred in the individual's eminent collision and collusion with a perceived enemy. It becomes a kind of manifesto, a Jeremiad prophecy of what may arrive, however metaphorically, if these shadows do not change. It's brilliant, disturbing, necessary.

~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Boss & REM : Killer Combo

2007-03-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

Man on The moon

Born to Run

Because the night

John Mellencamp's : Our Country - Chevy Ad

2007-03-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Original

The Funny One

John Mellencamp's tune: 'Forgiveness, understanding'

2007-03-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

John Mellencamp's philosophy: "I'm optimistic, but I always expect the worst."

Freedom's Road, his 21st album in 31 years, surveys the worst in human nature from the Midwest to the Middle East, yet the singer's optimism trumps cynicism in songs that encourage compassion.

"I wanted to make a record of hope," he says. "There has to be forgiveness and understanding. I'm proud to say I'm one of those bleeding-heart liberals."

His appraisal of contemporary America finds heartache in the heartland as Mellencamp jumps from political defiance in the title track to confronting racism in Jim Crow (with a guest vocal by Joan Baez) and a faulty justice system in Rural Route's chilling tale of a deranged killer, which ends with a plea for tolerance.

"It always seemed crazy to punish people in need, whether they're homeless or mentally ill," he says. "I live in a place where you see these misguided, desperate folks on crystal meth, and all we can figure out to do is throw them in jail."

In a throwback to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, one song has been misconstrued as red-state red meat. Rather than a flag-waving anthem, The Americans "talks about my personal disappointment in who we pretend to be and who we really are," Mellencamp says. "The line 'I try to understand all the cultures of the world' applies to some, but there are more who don't know where Iraq or Iran or Syria are and don't care. Another part addresses the Hollywood idea of turning dreams into a way of life, but when you pull down the pants of the West Coast, it's sad. Can't we do better than this?"

At 55, this lifelong Hoosier has no fear of speaking out, despite the sharp attacks and death threats sparked by the anti-war To Washington, his 2003 reworking of Woody Guthrie's Baltimore to Washington.

"I didn't anticipate the problems, but it wasn't as bad as what the Dixie Chicks got," he says. "I had made 20 albums. They had made two. It's hard to chastise someone who's been around as long as me. They were a little animal being aggressive."

A scrappy rebel not known to back away from a fight, Mellencamp exhibits dovelike contempt for U.S. war policies and leadership, underscored in the Bush-bashing Rodeo Clown.

"I'm a peacenik, which is not to be confused with a pacifist," he says. "I was doing radio interviews right after 9/11, and when I said we need to go over there and find out why (the terrorists) thought this was a plausible solution, the guy went berserk. He said, 'You gotta be crazy. We gotta nuke these guys.' That was the first time I got a sense of the mob mentality out there.

"People were eaten up with fear and revenge, but they didn't even know who to get even with. 'We're America, and we'll come over and kick your (butt).' We barely pulled that out in World War II. That doesn't even work in a bar. Why would you run the world that way?"

Our Country, a rousing anthem akin to This Land Is Your Land, may prove to be the album's most controversial track, owing to its use in a Chevy truck ad campaign. It's a corporate dance Mellencamp long opposed, but changes in the music industry changed his mind.

"I agonized," he says. "I still don't think we should have to do it, but record companies can't spend money to promote records anymore, unless you're U2 or Madonna. I'm taking heat because no one's ever done this before. People have licensed songs that have already been hits, but nobody's licensed a brand-new song to a major company, and people don't know how to react."

Chevrolet made the deal attractive, offering priceless exposure and creative input: Mellencamp chose images for the TV spots, including clips of Rosa Parks, Nixon's resignation and Katrina flooding.

"In 10 years, this will probably be the way it's done," he says. "I'll have taken crap for it, and people will forget I was the first guy."

Despite the reach of Our Country (which just re-entered the country singles chart at No. 56), Mellencamp is not expecting the platinum heights he scaled with 1982's American Fool, 1985's Scarecrow and 1987's Lonesome Jubilee. Freedom's Road made its debut at No. 5 in Billboard, his first top 10 in 10 years, but with a modest take of 56,000 copies. It has sold 131,000 copies in five weeks, according to Nielsen SoundScan. He's just happy to be happy making music again.

An organic acoustic/electric confluence topped by raw twangy vocals, Road "is the first record I've made in a decade that I really enjoyed," Mellencamp says. "I didn't feel I had to do anything for anybody other than myself. Universal said, 'Do what you want,' and they didn't interfere."

During the '90s, "the fun had gone out of making records. It had turned into hard work with no cooperation from the record company. I made a huge mistake in the early '90s when I left PolyGram (absorbed by Universal) and went to Columbia. I thought the grass was greener. But they would tell me, 'Can you make a record like Hurts So Good?' That was 20 years old. Why would I do that? It was insulting and non-productive."

For Road, Mellencamp sought '60s sonics that had been lost to the digital age. He used vintage gear, an echo unit and old guitars, mastering the album to vinyl and then to compact disc.

"And that's why the finished version sounds so warm and inviting," he says. "It's a math problem. X's and O's don't merge. With analog, all these echoes and drum sounds get squooshed together in a magical way.

"The Rolling Stones were going to engineer their album this way and chickened out. Not me. I'm old-school, baby."

Pink Floyd: Set the controls for the heart of the sun

2007-03-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

1968 pink floyd performs 'set the controls for the heart of the sun', short introduction by frank zappa... hope you enjoy the vid.

Waters Interview

2007-03-09T12:57:00.001-08:00

Bread - If (1971)

2007-03-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can't I paint you?
The words will never show the you I've come to know.
If a face could launch a thousand ships,
Then where am I to go?
There's no one home but you,
You're all that's left me too.
And when my love for life is running dry,
You come and pour yourself on me.

If a man could be two places at one time,
I'd be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.
If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I'd spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away

EMERSON LAKE & PALMER C'EST LA VIE

2007-03-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

U2 - Window in The SKies

2007-03-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

MY FAVS # DCFC - What Sarah Said

2007-03-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

and it came to me then
that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
as i stared at my shoes in the ICU
that reeked of piss and 409
and i rationed my breaths as i said to myself
that i'd already taken too much today
as each descending peak on the LCD
took you a little farther away from me
away from me

amongst the vending machines and year old magazines
in a place where we only say goodbye
it's done like a violent wind that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds
and i knew that you were a truth
i would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
and i looked around at all the eyes on the ground
as the tv entertained itself
cos there's no comfort in the waiting room
just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
then the nurse comes round and everyone lifts their head
but i'm thinking of what sarah said,
that love is watching someone die

so who's gonna watch you die
so who's gonna watch you die
so who's gonna watch you die

Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 10-1

2006-12-30T03:23:00.000-08:00

10: Scott Walker
The Drift
[4AD]

Like a malcontent Santa Claus, Scott Walker's gift to the music world this year was a sack of coal-black art songs, dumped centerstage and set on fire. It's strong stuff: Ghosts of European and American political crimes howling from the grave, percussion constructed from gut punches to a side of beef, scary string arrangements that tilt the floor downward, and heavy guitar sludge that hits like first-wave Swans. Presiding over this palace of gloom is Walker's gnarled, throaty croon, a gallows moan that braids sweetness and violence. His trembling vibrato can be overwhelming, but Walker's histrionics are kept on a short leash of meticulous control. Amid the endgame of microscopic sub-genres and unconvincing pastiches that is contemporary music, Walker's hard slap reminds us that music can be both High Art and utterly new. --Drew Daniel

09: Boris
Pink
[Diwphalanx/Southern Lord]

Pink's liner notes peel apart into small individual squares resembling either Pantone chips or acid tabs, but the implication was surely meant to be ambiguous: Whatever you were looking for, you would find. This meant gauzy, billowing meditations; disembodied vocals and dirt-caked guitar tones; and an echoing thicket of colliding feedback and gong reverb. For a trio so ready to fall on its collective face, they found a way to make vertigo their chief strength. Attempting everything at once, all elements magically congealed; only on Pink will you hear three musicians committed so deeply to going exactly where their songs took them. --Zach Baron

08: Grizzly Bear
Yellow House
[Warp]

2005's Horn of Plenty earned Grizzly Bear a number of comparisons to Brooklyn brethren Animal Collective, but Yellow House outed the band as its very own kind of critter. The album was recorded in Edward Droste's mother's Cape Cod home, and that familial, clean sheets, cookies-baking warmth is weirdly palpable: Yellow House is cozy, nuanced, and lovingly produced, as delicate as a fistful of dried flowers. Tracks like "Little Brother", with its acoustic intro, wisps of flute, and slow descent into psychedelia, and vintage waltz "Marla" (written by Droste's own grandmother) are dense with dizzying vocals, plucked banjo, and dusty, room-filling arrangements, all showcasing Grizzly Bear's strength for imbuing scratchy, archaic sounds with a sense of safety and warmth. --Amanda Petrusich

07: Clipse
Hell Hath No Fury
[Jive]

You could file it in the last two years' "crack rap boom" if you want but you'd be selling Clipse's climactic second album short. Hell Hath No Fury might detail crack-dealing and all its ugly vagaries, but it's also an exercise in self-awareness: Its street tales follow two balls-of-fire rappers (Pusha and Malice) for whom the game-- and the society that helped them into it-- has turned frigid. Hardly a glorification of the drug dealer lifestyle, Hell Hath No Fury's immediacy, no-future misanthrope, and grim delivery feel borderline apocalyptic. Even tracks like "Dirty Money" and "Trill", which are supposed to be about "fun," ring like death knells for materialism. Pharrell's gruesome, impersonal space beats may sound futuristic, but these lyricists' tales are as old-- and maybe as effective-- as Greek tragedy. --Julianne Shepherd

06: Liars
Drum's Not Dead
[Mute]

Brooklyn-to-Berlin trio Liars have one of the strangest career arcs in recent memory, but even their staunchest champions couldn't have anticipated the avant-rock masterstroke of their third album, Drum's Not Dead. Following through on the murky promise of 2004's widely panned concept album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the band hunkered down in an East German radio facility, using the varying acoustics of different rooms to naturally inform the atmosphere of each song.

The result is an album cut with dark, devastating simplicity, colored by ritualistic percussion, translucent guitar figures, and Angus Andrew's unearthly falsetto, which hovers like a phantom. The fabric of tracks like "Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack" or "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" is rent with shadowy turmoil, depicting an ongoing conflict that finds fragile resolution in the exquisite album-closing ballad "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack". Gorgeous and unfathomable, Drum's Not Dead is a landmark achievement from a group that many had virtually left for dead, but whose prospects now seem more limitless than ever. --Matthew Murphy

05: The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America
[Vagrant]

Almost every description of the Hold Steady invokes alcoholic imagery: a bar band with drinking songs. But such condescension doesn't do Boys and Girls in America justice; it isn't so much a dashed-off, beer-soaked record as an unflinching and literary document of social intoxication, from its Kerouac-quoting thesis statement-- "Boys and girls in America/ Have such a sad time together"-- to the 11 one-acts that repeatedly drive the observation home.

Craig Finn fills his dioramas with characters using substances to stave off boredom and fuel desperate, fleeting collisions with people in similar states; in most songs, the drugs get equal billing. The only way to accurately depict these interactions was to reach back to an era of bigger rock sounds-- not just Bruuuuce, but also Thin Lizzy and the Band-- that do the alchemy of making the everyday seem momentous. If alcohol's most seductive effect is making one feel like they're the main character in a movie of their own life, the Hold Steady made the bombastically bipolar soundtrack for that feeling. --Rob Mitchum

04: Ghostface Killah
Fishscale
[Def Jam]

Fishscale was officially released in March, but unofficial versions were devoured and crapped out on blogs for months prior. Upon hitting stores, it was showered with praise by critics from your local paper to NPR-- trusted sources of hip-hop since never. In other words, no matter when you heard it or in what form, Fishscale became your favorite rap record, maybe for hours, maybe forever.

Exactly how it became Ghostface Killah's most lauded is more difficult to explain. It's not his most compelling album lyrically, nor his most progressive album sonically. Still, Fishscale most vividly displayed Ghostface's versatility. Even when forced into revision by his abiding (but impatient) fans, he retained his signature faculties-- ludicrous imagination, elaborate storytelling, tortured soul singing, and dirty jokes for days-- all while evolving into a wiser, gentler armchair hustler whose charisma spanned race, class and creed: He was still Ghost, but now he was everybody's. --Pete Macia

03: Joanna Newsom
Ys
[Drag City]

Ys is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious albums on this list, which is not always a good thing. But Newsom's ambition is the quiet, professional kind, and complaining about it feels a little like standing at the finish line of a marathon and pointing out that the runners look a little haggard. She's summoned up every shred of her compositional training, refined her voice from a curiosity to an expressive marvel, and shot past the average singer's confessionals into a complex personal mythology of manipulative circus animals, astronomer siblings, and one "awfully real gun." She directs arrangements that veer from shades of Chinese opera to a sort of Broadway baroque.

As fans and detractors talk about fairies, debate the validity of the pronoun "thee," and argue the aesthetics of it-- as if she's on her deathbed and can't just try something else next year-- what slips quietly, professionally under the radar are the triumphs of her songwriting and craft. In the middle of this record, she sits alone with her harp for 10 minutes, asking stuffed birds "Why the long face?"-- it feels like four minutes, tops, and you can spend at least two of them right up toward the edge of your seat. --Nitsuh Abebe

02: TV on the Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
[4AD/Interscope]

This could be the only record this year I never tired of. Each time I heard it, I liked it more-- and I heard it a lot. In one sense, it's a fairly conventional rock record, with big chords, hummable refrains, chorus hooks, and even a few bridges. Peter Gabriel, U2, and other none-too-hip references are spread out for everyone to hear, though the fantastic singing gives TV on the Radio their own spin on the rock anthem. Still, David Sitek's production-- sounding like nothing else out there at the moment-- wormed its way in between the songs' cracks, all thick and sludgy and opaque, ensuring that the biggest moments never hit all at once. Of course, even after all this time and so many listens, I still don't really know what the songs are actually about. But I guess that'll come in 2007. --Mark Richardson

01: The Knife
Silent Shout
[Rabid/Mute]

Entering the year, could there have been a more unexpected consensus pick for 2006 than the Knife? OK, so the Swedish brother/sister duo got a boost from the Sony Bravia commercial featuring José Gonzalez' rendition of their brilliant "Heartbeats", and that exposure served as unintended cross-promo for Silent Shout, helping anoint them among the upper echelons of this year's blog-rock royalty. But nothing else on the blogs sounded like this. Masters of their own record label, Rabid, the Knife may be indie, but nowhere would their shuddering trance arpeggios and steely technoid programming qualify as "rock."

Vocals aside, Silent Shout is deeply rooted in contemporary European techno at a moment when techno remains deeply unfashionable among American listeners, for all but a few Europhilic holdouts. Retaining the merest echo of their last album's electro-pop perk, Silent Shout plunges into the darkest thickets like a Japanese horror flick, turning sunny-day steel drums into instruments of harmonic torture and processing vocals in a way that decouples the "human" from "expression."

Perhaps what stuck out for listeners, despite the shivering digital luster of it all, was the obvious attention to old-school notions of musicality: Here, no matter the synthetic nature of its source, a sound is never a static thing but a breathing, heaving presence that pushes air across the room helter-skelter. It didn't hurt that, no matter the studio-bred nature of their music, the Knife built their popularity the old-fashioned way, by touring-- embellishing their playback-heavy concerts with suggestive video projections and ominous theatrics.

Ultimately, Silent Shout thrives on its uncomfortable balance of mystery and transparency. The way they structure their tracks, every sound sticks out like a lone wire waiting to be stripped, but the more you tug on any given strand, the more all the rest-- unstable harmonics, queered pitches, android shanties, looping tales of forest families-- is plunged into the most addictive kind of inscrutability. --Philip Sherburne

Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 20-11

2006-12-30T03:03:00.000-08:00

20: Man Man
Six Demon Bag
[Ace Fu]

Indie's finest nickelodeon act grew into a silver screen star on Six Demon Bag, maturing their sound beyond Zappa/Beefheart hijinks and delivering a surprisingly stark, cinematic mood. Not that frontman Honus Honus exactly spills his guts all over the record: Between mindfuck numbers like "Engrish Bwudd" and sweeping busker elegies like "Van Helsing Boombox", Man Man span both ends of the emotional spectrum. Plus, Honus seems to have a one-liner ready for any occasion. The countless Kodak moments here-- from the drunken lament of "Feathers" to the Noreaga shoutout on "Black Mission Goggles"-- only attest to Man Man's ability to power pawnshop ditties with a ramshackle classic rock bigness. --Adam Moerder

19: T.I.
King
[Grand Hustle/Atlantic]

Predictably lauded for its triumph, King doesn't really do anything Tip Harris' other albums haven't done before-- he just does it moreso here. "King Back" and "Talkin' to You" spoke to those who wanted the epic, Epicurian, and Eastern, while "Why You Wanna" and "Live in the Sky" held down women and the warm-hearted. And "What You Know" pleased damn near everybody-- DJ Toomp's production is one of the finest in years. But the rough-hewn backend of King-- especially the whistling "I'm Straight", the lock-jawed "You Know Who", and the near-perfect posse cut closer "Bankhead"-- provides the backbone of an album that was conceived as a something of a genre-hopping risk. Working with Just Blaze seems like a no-brainer, but for an artist as locale-specific as Tip, it was bold. All coronation gags aside, this is a marriage of attitude and atmosphere that stands up against nearly any other rap album released this year. --Sean Fennessey

18: Destroyer
Destroyer's Rubies
[Merge]

On the expansive and unhindered Destroyer's Rubies, Dan Bejar finally gave his innate musical strangeness some room to breathe. In a sense, it's the most accessible record ever released under the Destroyer moniker, elegantly produced and sharply melodic. But without the constraints of a deceptively "weird" aesthetic regime, the distinctiveness of Bejar's songwriting and performance is much more striking. I'm still not entirely sure how these songs make sense, but they do-- convoluted structures, lavish arrangements, vocal tics, and all. For the first time in his career (with the possible exception of the criminally underrated This Night), Bejar doesn't sound like he's fighting against his own instincts; even if his vision can be impenetrable, it's presented here with tremendous generosity and grace. --Matt LeMay

17: The Thermals
The Body, The Blood, The Machine
[Sub Pop]

When a rock group that's made it a point to keep things brutally simple tries to change its formula for success, there's naturally some cause for some concern. Yeah, the Thermals might've exchanged their balls-to-the-wall guitar attack for a more measured approach, and yes, some of their charming lo-fi grime and grit has been scrubbed away. But working with the subjects of God, war, and power, these high-brow brat-beaters show no mercy. And when Hutch Harris strikes his Jesus Christ pose on the album's opening blitzkreig, he launches a bloody crusade from which, in the heaving finale, the noble young band conquers all. --David Raposa

16: Beach House
Beach House
[Carpark]

The house was clearly abandoned around the end of the second World War: These songs are empty, drafty, and lazy, with sand blowing up in the corners, late-autumn clouds blotting out the sun, and the seasonal power long disconnected. It doesn't hurt that Beach House paint with the barest of colors-- drum machines tick, organs drone, guitars slide, echoes wander-- or that their sweet, broken-down drawl has the same dead elegance as scratched-up waltz LPs, Nico, or old country music. But the album is more elegant than spooky, and when singer Victoria Legrand gets all "Blue Velvet" on "Master of None", it's like we've finally found the Atlantic-coast equivalent of Julee Cruise playing the "Twin Peaks" roadhouse. --Nitsuh Abebe

15: Sunset Rubdown
Shut Up I Am Dreaming
[Absolutely Kosher]

Much more than a "side project" or any other lo-fi, run-of-the-mill indie, there's something wonderfully naive about Spencer Krug's truisms, like a quiet wide-eyed child in the backseat absorbing everything. With its occasionally bleak picture of romance ("The Men Are Called Horsemen There"), Shut Up I Am Dreaming can make you somehow nostalgic and guarded at once. The album's dry, peculiar production and brief minor-key themes make childhood sound like a scary and dangerous time, and it's easy to picture the eccentric Krug behind out-of-tune pianos and toy keyboards, maniacally banging out his eccentric calliope shit. But take these grand statements, sung in his affected drawl, and add oddly flashy guitar tricks like speedy arpeggios and bottomless reverb, and the album becomes a poignant, unflinching portrait of growing up. --Jason Crock

14: Tim Hecker
Harmony in Ultraviolet
[Kranky]

Separating Harmony in Ultraviolet into 15 separate "tracks" dampens Tim Hecker's blizzard symphony. What makes the album brilliant-- not merely gorgeous-- is the gradual accrual of power that occurs throughout its 50-minute duration: Submerged, sinking synths are steadily woven into stuck-between-stations radio static, floating from a patient, natural-world meander until, in the last 20 minutes, the dam breaks and angels swirl. This is the ambient album of 2006, one of Canada's most celebrated sound artists imbuing electro-magnetic b-rolls with humanity and grace. --Brandon Stosuy

13: Phoenix
It's Never Been Like That
[Astralwerks]

Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum called Phoenix the "soft-rock Strokes," which is as accurate as it is damning. But where Julian and his boys are so self-consciously cool it hurts, Phoenix effortlessly walk the walk. Their songs work their foggy notions shamelessly, regardless of whether they take their cues from former dictators or Heloise, and what initially seem like inconsequentially doughy ditties turn out to be hearty pop-rockers that won't leave your head. --David Raposa

12: Band of Horses
Everything All the Time
[Sub Pop]

Listening to Band of Horses' big, hazy atmospherics feels a little like steering your 1987 Corolla through 100 miles of white-hot desert, blindly navigating a landscape that feels simultaneously comforting, strange, and infinite. Everything All the Time, the brainchild of Seattle's Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke (both formerly of Carissa's Wierd), is an unexpectedly epic collection of high, lonesome rock songs. But despite obvious comparisons to My Morning Jacket and the Shins, Band of Horses have carved out their own sonic niche: This is 2006's perfect comedown record, each lulling guitar and strained, earnest vocal hitting like a puff of warm breath on your cheek, reassuring and sweet. --Amanda Petrusich

11: Junior Boys
So This Is Goodbye
[Domino]

Without the stuttering, r&b-influnced beats of their debut, it's harder to prop up So This Is Goodbye as bold or innovative pop. Rather, it aims for a distinctly different yet similarly difficult route: Music so smart, yet so obvious, that it must have been there all along, waiting for someone to snatch it from our collective subconscious and make it our soundtrack for late-night driving and pre-party preening. Not to say this isn't a dance-minded record-- one listen to "Double Shadow" or "In the Morning" firmly proves otherwise-- just a surprisingly classicist one. More than blazing a trail, Junior Boys are simply a half-step ahead on the same path, finding the most predictable and logical rubbery synth or icy croon just a moment before we think of it. --Jason Crock

Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 30-21

2006-12-30T03:01:00.000-08:00

30: Belle and Sebastian
The Life Pursuit
[Matador]

By the time of The Life Pursuit, most people probably thought they had Belle and Sebastian figured out. The Scottish group's sixth album followed within a few short months of a live recording of If You're Feeling Sinister and an essential 2xCD compilation of their seven Jeepster-era EPs. Then again, most people slept on those records the first time around. So The Life Pursuit was probably doomed to become the one-time D.I.Y. band's most misunderstood album, even as its exuberant soulfulness and L.A. polish also made it the group's most accessible. But rather than fade into the post-glory MOR that word implies, The Life Pursuit explodes with love-- for pop, insects, misfits, choirgirls, and a divine power that may not even exist. Stuart Murdoch's canny wordplay and bold melodies keep the faith, from the opening theatrics to the urban country-Stones ennui of "Mornington Crescent". Punk may be dead, but here are 13 frivolous reasons to believe in just about anything. --Marc Hogan

29: Lily Allen
Alright, Still
[Parlophone/EMI]

From MySpace rumor to gloriously gobby pop star in less than a year, Lily Allen's public profile at times threatened to eclipse her music. This would be a shame as Alright, Still proved to be one of 2006's most enduringly rewarding pop albums. It was a bawdy comedy of North London manners and romantic hangovers, with a soundtrack expertly sourced from the likes of Lord Kitchener, Althea and Donna, Shampoo, Terry Hall, and the Happy Mondays. While she'll always stand accused by some of being a mere stageschool style-biter of the rawer Lady Sov, the best of her debut suggested that Allen might actually turn out to be the heir of another mordant kitchen-sink pop storyteller (and daughter of a famous dad): Kirsty MacColl. --Stephen Troussé

28: Cat Power
The Greatest
[Matador]

When people go to Memphis to record, it's usually to escape into a simpler past; either from the coastal machinery of the music biz or personal turmoil. Chan Marshall doesn't sound like she quite succeeded in evading the latter on The Greatest; throughout the record, her own woozy vocal and ponderous piano seems somehow at odds with the Muzak-slick brass and strings. But rifling through a historical genre wardrobe (gospel, soul, brittle country) in search of a life preserver isn't a futile effort, whether she's coldly watching herself hit bottom on "Hate" or charting a path to redemption on "Living Proof" or "Love & Communication". By all accounts, Chan Marshall left 2006 in a much healthier place than she started it, but The Greatest lingers as an eerie souvenir of her emotional battle's homestretch. --Rob Mitchum

27: Califone
Roots & Crowns
[Thrill Jockey]

It didn't come easy: After touring behind Heron King Blues in 2004, Califone collapsed. Struggling with a lack of motivation and his place as a musician, frontman Tim Rutili moved to Los Angeles, where he busied himself with film scores until chancing upon a mixtape graced by Psychic TV's "The Orchids". Obsessing over the song, he began writing, fell back in love with music, and finally, resaddled the band. A paean to resurrection bathed in electro-acoustic manipulation and flanked by Jim Becker's violin, "The Orchids" is the sonic and thematic epicenter of Roots & Crowns, an album that ties the threads of Califone's existence. Rutili's songs have rarely said so much so freely, and here, the thoughts and melodies come rendered in perfect detail with conviction, clarity, and reignited devotion. --Grayson Currin

26: Hot Chip
The Warning
[DFA/EMI]

For all its sly tech-pop wit and style, Hot Chip's 2004 debut, Coming on Strong, suffered from the ancient English affliction of bathos. But with The Warning, they shook off all that irony and understatement, sincerely embracing British art-pop tradition-- from Robert Wyatt to Brian Eno and New Order-- and making good on their abundant potential. "Over & Over" was a smartly dumb, brilliantly addictive dancefloor juggernaut, while both the wistful "Boy From School" and the Willie Mitchell-style ballad "Look After Me" showcased Alexis Taylor's reedy but affecting vocals, tugging on heartstrings without sacrificing any of their hipster poise. --Stephen Troussé

25: Justin Timberlake
FutureSex/LoveSounds
[Jive]

Justin Timberlake has a powerful, serpentine voice, but it's not suited for superhuman r&b pyrotechnics. It has a soft, timorous vulnerability, a lost-little-boy quality. When he sings about heartbreak, he sounds like he wants to crawl into a hole and die. When he sings about dancing, he sounds like he's seeing nightclub lights for the first time. When he sings about pimping, he sounds like a kid playing dress-up. But here, Timbaland takes that voice and traps it in a hall of mirror-balls, surrounding it with glistening strings, dizzy sci-fi synths, and itchy funk guitars. The result is a disco album both dazzling in its technical trickery and enormously satisfying in its emotional sweep. If an album this ambitiously weird can be one of the year's biggest sellers, we're in good shape. --Tom Breihan

24: Peter Bjorn and John
Writer's Block
[Wichita/V2]

One of the year's most misleadingly titled releases, Writer's Block is by far the most studiously crafted of Peter Bjorn and John's three full-lengths. Channeling romanticized 60s U.S. pop through the D.I.Y. filter of 80s New Zealand indie rock, the Stockholm trio's songs are more charmingly inventive here than ever: "Young Folks" fashions bongos and whistling into an elastic groove that's simultaneously soaring and navel-gazing; "Start to Melt" lays guitars and distortion like brick and mortar; "Let's Call It Off" shuffles on a floor tom/handclap beat and a goofily catchy chorus; and every last note sounds basted in liberal doses of reverb. So PB&J aren't fooling anyone with that title: Writer's Block evokes a sense of crippled creativity without falling victim to it, capturing the feeling of being uncomfortable in your own skin and wanting to be anywhere but wherever you are. --Stephen M. Deusner

23: Yo La Tengo
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
[Matador]

Even if home-run opener "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind" were the only great track on I Am Not Afraid of You..., the album would still be among Yo La Tengo's best of the decade. That extended guitar blissout not only fits snugly in the Ira Kaplan Hall of Fame (right alongside "The Evil That Men Do" and "Blue Line Swinger"), it's also a loud, clear sign that Yo La Tengo have relit their own eclectic flame. Their winning streak might have seemed on the verge of running its course with 2003's spotty Summer Sun, but even if its final track claims to be "The Story of Yo La Tango", I Am Not Afraid of You proves this trio still has tales to tell. --Marc Masters

22: LCD Soundsystem
45:33
[iTunes]

Dear LCD Soundsystem: Please break up. Ok, ok... just kidding. I'm probably one of the few Pitchfork writers who hasn't yet heard LCD's new album, but the first one is nowhere near as boring as everyone's post-facto making it out to be. And live, LCD smoke-- the hands aloft, ridiculous transition from "Yeah" to "Beat Connection" to Paperclip People's "Throw" was one those moments this year that's kept me from chasing bourbon with barbiturates. As of right now, though, I have no idea how James Murphy is gonna top this quickie exploitation number for a little-known shoe company. A multi-part "suite" that moves like a smoothly mixed DJ set and nods to Ash Ra Tempel mastermind Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4 along the way, 45:33 encompasses everything from an original space-disco re-edit of an original Foreigner-esque rock song to the prettiest microhouse this side of anything by actual Germans to spastic HI-NRG-- and it should finally silence anyone who thinks Murphy's just a cranky pastiche artist. Also, apparently you can jog to it. --Jess Harvell

21: Be Your Own Pet
Be Your Own Pet
[Ecstatic Peace/Universal]

Grumps might complain that the best thing about Be Your Own Pet is that their minor success helps bankroll the weirder stuff on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, now that it's part of David Geffen's empire. But c'mon: These scruffy-shoed, dirty-faced teen angels might not be the second coming of X-Ray Spex, but little else this year ripped shit up with such screechy formalist glee. Fourteen shots to the dome of bratty pop-punk, with only one dip into "ballad" territory, Be Your Own Pet is snot as high art. Singer Jemima Pearl sneers the way only a teenage girl can, and she sounds just as good shouting things like "We wanna be friends with you! Everyone wants to have a good time!" And I've spent the better part of a year hearing the bridge to "Adventure" as "From MySpace to my place to castles to highways." Which, right or not, is about as 2006 a sentiment as I can think of. --Jess Harvell

Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 40-31

2006-12-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

40: Tapes 'n Tapes
The Loon
[Ibid]

It was not a great year for guitars and drums. Bearing little flash, no licks, and too much story, Tapes 'n Tapes used a kitchen-sink approach to guitar'n'drums slack (nicking bits of Pavement, Modest Mouse, and Wire) and combined it with an angry-young-man urgency. When Josh Grier's voice gets a little too emotive over The Loon's nervous tunes, it's against his better judgment: "I'll be had if I'm in your dress tonight" he sings on "Insistor", as if his jealous hand-wringing was directly wired to his bandmates fingers. Who cares if the band boxed CDs in their apartments, and walked them to the post office uphill? Cut their bootstraps and you're still left with an album that's richer for its frugality: just drums, just guitars. --Jessica Suarez

39: Fujiya & Miyagi
Transparent Things
[Tirk/Word and Sound]

It shouldn't have worked this well. Somehow, the British trio behind Transparent Things managed to quote "Dem Bones" (possibly the least hip song ever written), rip Damo Suzuki's vocal technique (possibly the easiest-ever influence to spot), combine motorik drumwork and long, major chord vamps (possibly the most Stereolab concept ever demonstrated by someone other than Stereolab), and still came out sounding like nobody else in 2006. The band's singles "Collarbone" and "Cassettesingle" painted them as groove addicts, but the heart within the record belonged to tracks like "Ankle Injuries" and the gentle closer "Cylinders", sounding like a motive sunrise and sunset, respectively. The record's title clues me in: Analysis and dissection is fun and all, but sometimes it pays just to listen to the nice music. --Dominique Leone

38: J Dilla
Donuts
[Stones Throw]

No, this is not a posthumous award for lifetime achievement. We wish James Yancey was still here, but we don't sit around crying over Donuts. We nod our heads. We tap our feet. We might even dance some. (Okay, a lot.) But more than anything, we marvel at the 31 tracks of synaptic soul Dilla left with us. Listening to Donuts is like listening to him daydream about his favorite records-- crackles and pops included-- each song a passing notion from a man in love with his sampler. He made plenty of better songs, but he never made an album like this-- one so personal it feels almost intrusive to listen to, and so generous it feels selfish to hold it up for glory. So yes, it makes a difference that he made this while he lay in bed dying. It should. --Peter Macia

37: DJ Drama & Lil Wayne
Dedication 2
[Gangsta Grillz]

As mixtapes continued their evolution from street corner myth to major-label marketing ploy, Wayne proved himself to be the medium's most riveting ambassador. Thanks to the peerless beat selection and pacing of Atlanta's DJ Drama and Wayne's magnetic mugging, Dedication 2 easily rose above all other tapes that hit over the last 12 months. The rapper's nonchalant dexterity works perfectly within the casual, anything-goes vibe of a mixtape.

"As far as this rap thing, I think I am better than everybody," he said on one of the record's confessional interludes. "I'm a competitor. I hope everybody else feels the same way about their craft. If you do it makes it better for the listeners." And when his ache to be the best involves flipping several silly flows over a tennis-ball beat ("Sportscenter"), contemplating calling a girl with the neurotic self-awareness of Woody Allen ("This Is What I Call Her"), and eloquently exposing government hypocrisy ("Georgia…Bush"), it makes you wish other rappers had a similar drive. Dedication 2 isn't a byproduct of fourth-quarter fiscal pressure as much as a gauntlet thrown down by a rapper who simply loves to rap. The difference is clear. --Ryan Dombal

36: Brightblack Morning Light
Brightblack Morning Light
[Matador]

Thick with swampy guitar twang, chocolate Rhodes organ, group chanting, deeply funky handclaps and flutes, and acres of smoked-out ambience, this was the record I turned to first thing in the morning and late, late at night. It feels so listenable, so effortless, and sooooo stoned that you don't notice how well sequenced and tightly constructed it really is: If Rachel's organ riffs are sneaking the instrument out of church and onto the corner, the soulful harmony singing is walking right back in and grounding the band in gospel's ecstatic discipline. Brightblack's ecological and Native American lyrical allegiances will garner curiosity from some corners and skepticism from others, but their musical momentum carries them beyond scenes and signifiers. The rhythmic upramp of Nabob's heavy riff in "Everybody Daylight" is one of my favorite moments in music this year, but it's tough to pick favorites because the whole album is just so damn foxy. --Drew Daniel

35: Herbert
Scale
[!K7]

Riding the momentum generated by his well-received collaborations with the likes of Björk and Róisín Murphy, Matthew Herbert hopped back into the lab and came out with one of the best albums of his career. Although it contained samples of a reputed 723 different items (including coffins, birds, gas pumps, mobile phones, and the sweet sounds of some unfortunate soul losing his lunch), Scale felt more like a digital composite of all the best parts from his own winding back catalogue. Combining the moody brass flourishes of his big band effort Goodbye Swingtime with the rhythmic invention evident in his remix collection Secondhand Sounds and the intimate, late-night murmurs of the lush Bodily Functions, Scale is joyously overpacked with one stunning moment after another. --Mark Pytlik

34: Girl Talk
Night Ripper
[Illegal Art]

Girl Talk's Night Ripper is not so much a compendium of the best bits from your favorite songs mashed up into an epic sample-a-thon as it is the best bits from your favorite parties. Remember that night those dudes in the back killed the keg to Boston's "Foreplay/Long Time"? Or how amused you and your middle-school friends were the first time someone played you 2 Live Crew's "We Want Some Pussy"? How about the college radio station mixer that introduced you to Pavement and Sonic Youth? Kind of blurry? Well, Gregg Gillis remembers them all for you, and vitally, makes you dance in the process. He cites Dr. Dre and Nirvana as his two favorite acts as if it was natural to mention them in the same breath. And, argues Night Ripper, maybe it is. --Joshua Klein

33: Mission of Burma
The Obliterati
[Matador]

Conventional wisdom says Mission of Burma first broke up in 1983 due to various logistical obstacles, but the high quality of Burma's output since their 2002 reunion suggests they were merely waiting for everyone else to play catch-up before moving the goalposts again. While art-punk progeny like Trail of Dead struggle to reconcile their aggressive and extravagant impulses, The Obliterati provides an exemplary model of tuneful atonality, with 14 songs that are as melodically precise as they are fierce. But what's really remarkable is that Burma aren't trying to play like men half their age; instead, they rage like the pushing-50 cranks that they are, seething at an American political landscape that sadly hasn't changed much in the past two decades. There's a big difference between reformation and revitalization, and The Obliterati makes that gap all the greater. --Stuart Berman

32: Lupe Fiasco
Food & Liquor
[1st and 15th/Atlantic]

Fairly touted as the great crossover hope by hip-hop reformists looking to reap philosophical gains from a repeat of the Kanye Effect, the heroically-delayed and oft-resequenced debut from Chicago's Lupe Fiasco ultimately scored a small victory by landing at #8 on Billboard's album charts. That it didn't sell much more beyond that was hardly an indictment of its content; stuffed full of rolling strings, lustrous horn samples, and bumping (if not slightly too tasteful) rhythms, Food & Liquor was one of the year's most decadent hip-hip albums. And at the core of it lie Lupe's impressively tricksy raps, equal parts virtuosic and virtuous, but never overly clever. What he does from here is anyone's guess. Lord knows, he's got the charisma and the Rolodex to full-court press for mainstream numbers, but I'd just as happily take three or four more records like this, provided he doesn't have 12 minutes worth of people to thank each and every time. --Mark Pytlik

31: Danielson
Ships
[Secretly Canadian]

A burning hard rock album disguised as a "Kumbaya", Ships didn't achieve the level of blog frenzy that Daniel Smith might have hoped-- but not for want of trying. With a cast of over 20 indie greats including Deerhoof and Why?, Smith delivered a majestic, melodic beast that's closer to Queen than to his better-known disciple Sufjan Stevens. The summer camp sing-along vocals-- which were probably the biggest obstacle to potential converts-- belie the rich arrangements and gigantic power chords that lift and heave the band: Dig the centerpiece, "Two Sitting Ducks", where they climb higher and higher until you think their metaphorical ship might break apart and spill uniformed twee-rockers into the sea. But Smith keeps their heads above water: He's always a step ahead of his massive ambition, and here, he doesn't falter for a second. --Chris Dahlen

Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 50-41

2006-12-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

Top 50 Albums of 2006

Staff List by Pitchfork Staff

2006 wasn't easily characterized by distinct seismic shifts in independent music's ever-changing topography, or by a select handful of burgeoning new genres. Instead, it was a year of true independence, in which listeners pursued broader palettes, spread music by word of mouth, and openly welcomed increasingly forward-thinking approaches to songcraft.

Even the artists seemed to approach the new year as a clarion call to abandon tradition and realize their own unusual visions: From Joanna Newsom's feudal harp odysseys and Scott Walker's claustrophobic night terrors, to the Knife's raven-black horror house and Boris' juggernaut grind, 2006 was a banner year for boundary-breaking. And yet, between 60s girl group revivalism, lovesick Swedish pop, and more homemade, meat-and-potatoes indie rock than anyone knew what to do with, perfect, chiseled melody remained the magnetic force that kept us crawling back for more.

And it's not over yet. Or at least, not quite: For those who didn't find exactly what they were looking for, or those who simply aren't content to quit exploring, Pitchfork closes out the year with its annual list of the year's finest full-lengths. Dig deep: The best may be yet to come...

50: Booka Shade
Movements
[Get Physical]

Between the hyperreal clarity of its production, the friendliness of its arrangements, and the diversity of its stylistic detours, Movements may have been the most deliberately inviting of 2006's dance albums. There's something intuitively dead-on about the German duo's exquisite production, the way their sinuous melodies and weedy synth riffs slide like plasma over the surface of their thick grooves, as if all recent German house and techno had been distilled into a single, charming sonic signature. True to the duo's restless form, Movements intermingled rousing anthems with atmospheric curios, but it's when the duo go in for the kill with expansive emotional juggernauts like the trance-inflected "Darko" and "In White Rooms" that enthusiastic comparisons to Orbital or Underworld suddenly make perfect sense. --Tim Finney

49: Ellen Allien & Apparat
Orchestra of Bubbles
[Bpitch Control]

More assured than Ellen Allien's solo work and more immediate than Apparat's, Orchestra of Bubbles is at heart a pop album, albeit one cloaked in techno's urgency. With both artists working at their moody best, the Bpitch Control label's typical stridency is tempered by an uncommon attention to warm, electro-acoustic sounds-- resonant strings, harpsichords, voices and analog synthesizers. Despite nominally four-to-the-floor cadences, Allien and Apparat layer long phrases in a way that creates a sense of suspended animation, with morphing tones extending to the horizon in undulating waves-- with the exception of one dubstep-inspired cut and Apparat's bashful foray into balladry, both of which usefully break up the record's horizontal sprawl. The whole album, ragged at the edges and bloody with tone, is swollen in the best way, and it crests from peak to peak across 13 tracks that are at once meditative and eruptive. --Philip Sherburne

48: The Long Blondes
Someone to Drive You Home
[Rough Trade]

The racks are cluttered with promising albums from British post-punk bands boasting charismatic singers, needling guitar work, and hollow, driving drums. But what separates the Long Blondes' debut album is lush-voiced frontwoman Kate Jackson's dexterity in exploring the complexities of women's relationships with other women. You'd have to reach back to the halcyon days of riot grrrl to find the subject probed this deeply. On songs like "Once and Never Again" and "Heaven Help the New Girl", Jackson is the wise survivor counseling her young, naïve sisters; on "Giddy Stratospheres" and "In the Company of Women" she competes for male affection; on "Separated by Motorways" she celebrates girl friendship. Turns out Jackson shares more with a certain Charlie's Angel than just a name. --Amy Phillips

47: Matmos
The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast
[Matador]

Physical objects have always played a central role in Matmos' music. On The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, the duo of M.C. Schmidt and Pitchfork contributor Drew Daniel use their typically esoteric collection of materials-- teeth, cigarettes, typewriters, a cow's digestive tract-- as instruments to embody their various biographical subjects. The album's resulting "sound portraits" draw links between cultural figures like novelist Patricia Highsmith, punk rocker Darby Crash, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Not that any of these high-concept reconstructions would matter much if listening to this record was not such an absolute blast. Tracks like the space-age surf instrumental "Solo Buttons for Joe Meek" or the mutant disco of "Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan" are entrancing even when heard apart from their contextual sources, and ambitious musique concrète narratives like "Rag for William S. Burroughs" are crafted with enough microscopic detail to foster endless fascination. Though directly animated by its two creators and 10 iconoclastic subjects, this brilliant and deceptively cohesive album contains multitudes. --Matthew Murphy

46: M. Ward
Post-War
[Merge]

M. Ward is the kind of guy who seems to sneak his way onto lists like this year in and year out-- but he deserves it every time. Post-War is a move away from lo-fi intimacy that finds Ward entering a more polished widescreen world in which his guitar virtuosity lends itself as ably to ragged fuzz riffs as it does to delicate acoustic duets. Yet even with the big arrangements and production, he still sounds like your friend singing you a song. That comfortable, gravelly croak is one of the most disarming voices out there, and it's never sounded better than it does on "Chinese Translation", a song you could throw a thousand adjectives at without getting it quite right. --Joe Tangari

45: Camera Obscura
Let's Get Out of This Country
[Merge]

"You're not a teenager," sang Tracyanne Campbell on Camera Obscura's 2003 album, Underachievers Please Try Harder. And on follow-up Let's Get Out of This Country, she no longer acts like one. With percussionist/singer John Henderson now out of the picture, Campbell takes on full vocal duties, her sweetly crestfallen presence giving a cozy glow to organ-glitzed ballads about loneliness, yearning, and Lloyd Cole. The band's sound has grown up, too, leaving behind song-for-song influence-spotting to pour Northern Soul shimmy, country melancholy, and twee-pop bookishness into a single, half-empty glass. "I don't believe in true love, anyway," Campbell sighs. Point is, she's lying. --Marc Hogan

44: The Pipettes
We Are the Pipettes
[Memphis Industries]

The Pipettes admit they were a concept before they were a band. The polka dots, the dancing, and the re-appropriation of 1960s pop were all apparently set before the band began writing songs. But if the songs came second in the band's grand scheme, they come first on We Are the Pipettes. With few exceptions, each one is polished, clever, and miraculously poppy. Whether singing about a boyfriend's "slightly unnerving" cleanliness, confessing to murderous thoughts brought on by envy, or considering ripping out a mother's spleen, the lyrics are slyly self-aware, offering cartoony twists on modern love. Meanwhile, producer Gareth Parton puts the uniformly excellent harmonies upfront while adding just the right amount of iPod-friendly, DIY-Spector flourishes underneath. Love or loathe their charming nostalgia, but navel-gazing backlashes are wasted on the Pipettes. --Ryan Dombal

43: Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped
[Geffen]

On Murray Street and Sonic Nurse, Jim O'Rourke pulled Sonic Youth out of a late-90s rut, spurring noise-rock jams that looked backward, forward, and somewhere in between. But even the biggest fan of those albums probably wouldn't deny craving a sequel to pop records like GooDirty, and on their first post-O'Rourke effort, Sonic Youth offer exactly that: Twelve shiny, beefed-up rockers that funnel noise into melody at a level not seen since The Year Punk Broke. The surprise isn't so much that the quartet made this move, but that they pulled it off so sharply. There's hardly a wrong turn here, just reams of revved-up rock with all the classic pieces-- Kim Gordon's voice, Thurston Moore's writing, Lee Ranaldo's poetry, Steve Shelley's energy-- locked together as tightly as a jigsaw puzzle. --Marc Masters and

42: Mastodon
Blood Mountain
[Reprise]

After going major label in the wake of 2004's epic masterpiece Leviathan, Mastodon could've gone melodic and recorded the metal Nevermind that many fans expected from them. Instead, the Atlanta quartet crawled even further into their death-gurgle aesthetic and still managed to churn out a transcendently violent opus. On first listen, Blood Mountain is a heaving, spitting, seething mass of throat-shredding screams and serrated riffage. And after listening a while, the details really begin to creep out, like the scrabbling pseudo-jazz noise-boxes at the beginning of "Bladecatcher" or the way Brann Dailor's drums tumble all over themselves in a flurry of speed but still manage to find their own pocket. Throughout, the band walks a thin line between technical complexity and outright brutality, never letting one overwhelm the other. There's also a vaguely mythical storyline about a mountain populated by one-eyed sasquatches and blood-sucking flies, if you're into that sort of thing. This is metal, after all. --Tom Breihan

41: The Decemberists
The Crane Wife
[Capitol]

The melodies are grand but stalwartly hummable, and Colin Meloy finds surprising soulful inflections in his reedy voice. Proggy epics blur seamlessly into poppy jangles, successfully drawing an implausible line between Jethro Tull and R.E.M. Meloy revisits a number of his favorite themes-- star-crossed lovers on "O Valencia"; imperiled children on "Shankill Butchers"-- but by drawing them together under the Japanese myth of the Crane Wife, he creates a more cohesive album than his erstwhile period pastiches. His well-heeled diction remains intact, but it's tempered now, more concerned with artfully framing the album's emotional payload than attempting to work turn-of-the-20th-century jargon into rhymed couplets. The Decemberists have always been an interesting band, but with The Crane Wife, they became a great one, and they did it without shedding an ounce of their oddball charm. --Brian Howe

My 2006 Picks # Highway Companion : Tom Petty

2006-12-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

Four years after he took Elvis Costello's advice and bit the music/radio biz hands that have simultaneously fed and frustrated him for decades on the scabrous The Last DJ, Tom Petty returned to the studio with more personally introspective matters on his mind.

Reuniting with producer/Wilbury sideman Jeff Lynne sans Heartbreakers for his third solo release proper, the veteran doesn't so much retool his trademark sound here as allow it the freedom to roam. The sonic landscape here is bluesier ("Saving Grace's opening shuffle, the haunting "Turn This Car Around") and more country-fried (the twangy energy of the blue collar lament "Big Weekend"), a return to familiar roots that produces subtly different results this time around.

That sensibility now seasons songs as different as the stoned-elegant languor of "Night Driver" and the playful "Jack," where Petty and Lynn give a knowing nod and wink to the contemporary pop milieu. The stately, pop-perfect closer "Golden Rose" may lean on the Beatle-y side of their familiar sound, but it's a cliché the duo use both sparingly and shrewdly throughout, forging one of the veteran's most free-ranging and warmly satisfying efforts in a decade.

Jerry McCulley

My 2006 Picks # Pearl Jam

2006-12-29T09:01:00.000-08:00

If its debut album 15 years ago made Pearl Jam apprehensive with success, the Seattle quintet better buckle in for a return to eminence. On its eighth studio release--and first since 2002--the band socks away the adventurous experimentation that dogged some of its most recent records to investigate a post-September 11, war-ravaged world overflowing with urgency and significance. "It's the same everyday in a hell manmade/What can be saved, and who will be left to hold her?" lead singer Eddie Vedder wonders in "World Wide Suicide," one of several contemptuous rants on the Bush administration.

Yet the album's spark is more than political. Songs like "Life Wasted," "Comatose" and "Big Wave" embrace the garage-rock past, as guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard play off each other with the primal lucidity of a decade ago and drummer Matt Cameron, one of rock's best, adds raw backing vocals to Vedder's polished craft.

But Pearl Jam also turns up some of its most harmonious works since "Daughter," including "Marker in the Sand," with its radio-ready chorus, the tuneful "Parachutes" paced by Gossard's divine strumming, and the burning narrative and Urge Overkill punch of "Umemployable." Finally Vedder pleads for a lover's return in "Come Back," a keyboard-soaked love song complete with a chilling Gossard solo.

It's got a soulfulness that begs for Sam Cooke to sing it and an originality that shows that a vibrant and cocksure Pearl Jam is back in town--and ready to retake the world.

--Scott Holter

My 2006 Picks # TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain

2006-12-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

Often when we say a record has "atmosphere," we mean it as a put-down. From Sgt. Pepper's to the present, a record's sonic appeal-- the effects, the mood, the spaces between the notes-- is inextricable from how it hits us. But when an artist pushes atmosphere in place of songs, it's frequently thought of as a crutch. Most listeners don't trust a mood to grab their hearts the way they trust, say, a human voice; nobody counts on production to deliver the "money note."

When I try to explain TV on the Radio to people who aren't into them, the first thing on the checklist is singer Tunde Adebimpe, a stoic romantic who falters but never whimpers. He's got about the best set of pipes in indie rock, yet on Return to Cookie Mountain his greatest strength lies in how well he stands back and blends in-- with the throatier Kyp Malone, guest singers including David Bowie, and, especially, with the atmosphere evoked by producer and noisemaker David Sitek. As the two founding members, Adebimpe and Sitek fit together like Jagger and Richards. But where the two Rolling Stones projected snarling sex, these guys express... what?

In the original version of Return to Cookie Mountain that leaked this spring-- the one that kicked off at full throttle with "Wolf Like Me"-- they sounded like victory. With that cut up front, you knew this was the great leap forward for which their last two records paved the way-- and when I say three records, I'm counting their scattershot sketchbook OK Calculator, which caught the band at its most "Hey, what can I do with this four-track?" They always claim they'd rather keep messing around with new ideas than settle down and crank out the hits that are at their fingertips, which is one reason 2004's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes felt more eclectic than excellent. (In retrospect, the other reason is that they were still using drum machines.) But this time, maybe they'd changed their minds.

But before Return to Cookie Mountain became their major label debut, its tracklist was reshuffled. Now it leads off with the fascinating "I Was a Lover", a sympathy card that carries the most emotional sample on the record-- a bellow like the sound of a sad elephant, which fits right in with the defeated verse. It takes skill to craft a tone that people can feel sorry for; maybe there is a money note locked in that pedal crouching under Sitek's shoe. But other times, the noise evokes an orchestra, or a rockslide. Abstract and electronic textures roll over acoustic sources-- bowed upright bass, sitars, flutes, backward wind chimes-- to reach a perfect consistency, all the way through to the closer, "Wash the Day Away", where white noise rises and swallows them all. But not a moment too soon: not only is the mix stellar (if a little too biased away from the vocals), but once you get used to the new setlist, the pacing is perfect as well.

The band cycles up like a centrifuge. Vocals spin on "Dirty Whirl" like wooden figurines on a Swiss cuckoo clock, while a shimmering piano figure chimes across "Province". Like their first albums, the songs build on loops, grooves, and drones. They feel familiar, but they've never sounded this good-- or this thick. Even the voices cascade on top of each other, which obscures much of the lyrics. Nothing can cut through except the sharp and vigorous rhythm section. Check out the way the air catches in Adebimpe's throat on "A Method", then shakes loose when Jaleel Bunton bursts in like a drum corps waiting in the parking lot for the parade to start.

But what's their message? They're not here to rock-- they use too many loops, too much repetition, and too little chaos. They can do the community-drum-circle thing, but they're too slick to try it more than once ("Let the Devil In"). And even Adebimpe's voice has never sunk this far into the music; we don't even get an a capella feature this time, because this isn't an album about standing out. He's still a failed romantic, a social conscience, a charmer, and a distant voyeur; but with every album he becomes less of a "persona" and more of a regular person.

Maybe that's why this album has such an incredible pull: It doesn't make an atmosphere so much as a space to spend time in, and Adebimpe doesn't become a narrator so much as a witness. We sidle up into his head and watch through his eyes the tyrants, the druggies, the cocky lovers, the losers, and those beautiful fools who still surrender to lines like "Love is the province of the brave." And TV on the Radio are standing in the center, watching it all go by again, and again, and again.

-Chris Dahlen, July 05, 2006

My 2006 Picks # Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldiers

2006-12-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

Smothered by the indulgence of his rock star ranking, Jack White steps into the eccentricities of the supergroup, and at first glance, this seems to be a band where White's imposing presence could overshadow the rest.

Not the case with these Raconteurs. Teaming with fellow Detroit songwriter Brendan Benson and Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, the rhythm section from Cincinnati band the Greenhornes, White exhales a bit, deferring enough to his mates to make Broken Boy Soldiers play like a team effort.

Following the Benson blueprint, "Steady as She Goes," which opens as a slice of 1960's radio pop, the record steers away from pigeonholing the rest of the way. White's in a Middle Eastern mood for the title track as he pulls off a wicked Robert Plant howl, while Lawrence and Keeler excel on the chorus-strong "Intimate Secretary" and the optimistic acoustic rocker "Yellow Sun."

Like so many all-star bands before them, The Raconteurs could be one and done. But don't place the blame on this fertile and genuine debut. --Scott Holter

My 2006 Picks # Neko Case : Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

2006-12-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

The voice looms larger than ever. It's almost unfair. Draped in luscious, acute reverb, every phrase is granted its own pitch-perfect spotlight, and each precious syllable stands alone as a singular accomplishment. On Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case's peerless cries crash through the mix with unprecedented force, their natural grandeur captured in sonorous surround sound.

But it's not all about the voice; songs are important, too. Case's lungs-for-days Dollywood boom may be as direct an emotional instrument as there is in contemporary music, but her increasingly prominent songwriting skills tend to eschew visceral connections for intellectual intrigue and poetic mystery-- and Flood features Case's most cryptic lyrics to date. The odd disconnect here between singer and songwriter is absorbing: Though shaded by finely-tuned, country-noir twang, the rapturous belter's high-minded lyrical aspirations often undermine her throat's unhindered veracity.

Given her former life as an art-school punk, Case's increasingly independent, non-traditional songwriting trajectory isn't totally surprising. Moving from the countrified mix of covers and originals of her solo debut, 1997's The Virginian, to 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby, which featured mostly originals co-written by Case, to 2002's Blacklisted, on which the singer wrote most of the alluringly bluesy songs on her own, Case's musical ambitions have evolved and taken greater definition with each successive album.

Flood finds Case continuing to write the lion's share of her material, while also producing and mixing. Appropriately, it's a logical extension of the themes, instrumentation, and mood of Blacklisted. Long gone are the relatively straightforward Furnace-era break-up laments with their simple-yet-effective couplets like, "Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', how can you forget/ All the love we had between us, now it's like we never met."

Removing herself from many of the album's David Lynch-like narratives, Case often embraces the role of omnipotent storyteller. One such twisty tale is the harrowing rich-girl/poor-girl opener, "Margaret Vs. Pauline". Strolling alongside a frolicking, Jon Brion-esque piano, wordy descriptors and odd details inform a striking gap between the song's haunting title pair. Describing the blessed beauty Pauline, Case sings, "And they placed an ingot in her breast to burn cool and collected/ Fate holds her firm in its cradle and then rolls her for a tender pause to savor." Lines like that don't roll off with ease, but within the scheme of the album, they can add up to something palpably uncomfortable-- a vague, inescapable sense of loss.

Confessional only in the most roundabout sense, Case's songs set up strange anecdotal skeletons that beg listeners to connect the dots between. "Star Witness" may be about a car accident, a shooting, a deep love wiped away, or all of those things. Bound together by an awe-inspiring, harmony-laden hook, the swaying waltz may seem like free-associating farce at first, but subsequent exposures offer slight turns.

There's no right answer to "Star Witness", but its keen open-endedness is an appealing destination in itself. Such complex examples of Case's unique songwriting string theory abound, from the ghostly, near-a cappella "A Widow's Toast", to the quasi-political, fable-based title track, to "Dirty Knife", a haunted-house elegy to madness. Each track relies on a starkly defined bleakness to guide its queasy understanding of an existence between the bitter end and its sometimes-sweeter aftermath.

What once again prevents Case from delivering a front-to-back classic is a perfectionist streak that accounts for Flood's mannered meticulousness. A nice-enough reinterpretation of traditional folk spiritual "John Saw That Number" rumbles along amiably but Case can't adequately summon the spontaneous affectations that the gospel-style track requires to truly transcend. Though she often cites churchly touchstone Bessie Griffin as a guiding influence, it seems as if Case's hard-line precision rarely allows her to encapsulate Griffin's untethered style and act in the moment. Such flawless phrasing can cause songs to become too treasurable, as if they're off-limits, encrusted under a thick glass casing.

Still, nobody today does eerie dust-bowl balladry and anachronistic rustic-murder milieu quite like Case. Combining country, folk, and old-school rock, she faithfully invokes scenes of late-night wandererings illuminated by a jalopy's lone functional headlight. As a refined version of Blacklisted, Flood provides alluring riddles and obsessive desolation, Case subverting her easy-access vocals with difficult abstractions and heady projections. Yet, after fishing through Flood's 12 intricate tracks, a plainspoken love song delivered in that voice would not be unwelcome.

-Ryan Dombal, March 07, 2006

My 2006 Picks # Modern Times: Bob Dylan

2006-12-29T08:25:00.000-08:00

As an artist and a conundrum, Bob Dylan is well-versed in semi-hysterical critical hyperbole. With each new record since 1997's stellar Time Out of Mind, music writers and editors have been tripping all over themselves trying to sputter out the best, most dramatic encapsulation of Dylan's rebirth (which, given the relative late-career flops of his peers and his own 1980s shitstorm, still seems strange and thrilling). Now, 45 years into a perfectly studied, over-anthologized, well-chronicled career, even talking about the cult-of-Dylan seems clichéd: Analysis of Dylan-love, Dylan-backlash, Dylan-histrionics, and Dylanology is moot. Books have been published, academic treatises have been defended, documentaries have been ordered and directed, cover stories have been savored and parsed-- but every time Bob Dylan cranks out a new record, we still try, again, to figure out what it all adds up to.

Modern Times is Bob Dylan's 31st studio LP, and an obvious companion piece to 2001's Love and Theft, offering new tracks of jazz-inspired, rockabilly-scamming, ragtime-aping rock'n'roll, more heavily indebted to blues and honky-tonk than Woody Guthrie and Folkways. The record does little to persuade disbelievers, will continue to infuriate those who cheered when Pete Seeger jerked the plug at Newport, and isn't entirely unfamiliar: Anyone who's seen Dylan play in the past five years will recognize the silhouette here, hunched over a keyboard, all crags and angles, brambles of hair puffing out from under a big black hat, pencil mustache combed into place, pounding keys, infinitely more compelled by his fellow players than his sycophantic audience.

Unsurprisingly, Modern Times is musically intricate, thick, and expertly played, more the product of a well-rehearsed-- but still gorgeously mellow-- band than an auteur. It also contains some of the softest, funniest, and most charming songs of Dylan's late career, as he snickers to himself, cooing about love, God, and doing it ("I got the pork chops/ She got the pie").

Dylan recently spat a series of (now-notoriously) curmudgeonly comments to Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone, pining that nothing sounds like shellac-- and while his complaints seemed depressingly stodgy, they were also promptly misconstrued and yanked out of context; as it were, Dylan was deriding contemporary production/studio techniques and not the whole of modern music, which becomes instantly and weirdly obvious to anyone who listens to the lyrics to raucous opener "Thunder on the Mountain" ("I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn't help from crying/ When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line/ I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be/ I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee"), or considers the fact that Dylan produced this record himself (under favored stage-name Jack Frost).

Still, it's obvious that Dylan's most beloved songs are old ones, and he borrows gleefully from Nina Simone, Memphis Minnie, Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters, and, in the grand tradition of AP Carter and John Lomax, plenty of unnamed songwriters whose work long ago slipped into public domain. "Rollin' and Tumblin'" (Muddy Waters famously recorded the song in 1950, but its origins date back to at least 1929) is given a new workup, infused with Dylan's signature clatter and wheeze and punched up with peppery guitar and even spicier lyrics ("I got trouble so hard, I just can't stand this dream/ Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains").

Meanwhile, "Nettie Moore" (a well-worn 19th century ballad) is staggering, a spare blend of vocals and light, airy instrumentation, Dylan's decaying pipes tut-tutting sweet proclamations of love: "When you're around me/ All my grief gives way/ A lifetime with you is like some heavenly day/ Everything I've ever known to be right has been proven wrong." "Workingman's Blues 2" is similarly gentle and lapping, and "The Levee's Gonna Break", with its familiar Zeppelin-via-Memphis-Minnie refrain ("If it keeps on raining/ The levee's gonna break"), seems almost self-referential ("I paid my time/ And now I'm as good as new…Some of these people are gonna strip you of all they can take").

The biggest disappointment here is that Modern Times is probably Dylan's least-surprising release in decades-- it's the logical continuation of its predecessor, created with the same band he's been touring with for years, fed from familiar influences, and sprinkled with all the droll, anachronistic bits now long-expected. Dylan's voice, sinking further into grit, is all wheeze and mew, rolled in salt but still instantly recognizable. And now that he's eyebrows-deep in the rock'n'roll canon, maybe the heart-stopping appeal of Bob Dylan has less to do with his output-- which, tangentially, remains outstanding-- and more to do with his cowboy boot-saunter.

Maybe we all want a little bit of Dylan's superhuman restraint, and whether it's real or brutally calculated doesn't actually matter: The fuck-off detachment, the unconcerned genius, the squinty-eyed disdain, the arid, gut-punching humor, the total (if feigned) disinterest in his growing superhero status. He's the boy who doesn't love us back, the one everyone yearns for, the Holy Grail, the last American hero.

-Amanda Petrusich, August 29, 2006

My 2006 Picks # The Crane Wife : The Decemberists

2006-12-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

For a few years now, the Decemberists' stagey, hyperliterate folk-rock has played well at indie labels Hush and Kill Rock Stars. The quintet has occupied a small community-theater space with gleefulness and confidence, but now it's accepted a scholarship to Capitol Records, which means a larger stage and a bigger audience. Can the band still project, or will its voices be lost in a cavernous auditorium, rejoined only by crickets and barely stifled coughs of boredom? Will nine-minute mariner epics play in Peoria?

Given the band's graduation from minor to major leagues, The Crane Wife may prove to be the most crucial record the Decemberists will release in their lifetime. Fortunately, their fourth album further magnifies and refines their strengths. Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted. The Crane Wife employs an impressive variety of styles and sounds to tell Meloy's imaginative stories: There's the band's usual folk-rock, honed to an incisively sharp point, but they also deploy a smuggler's blues ("The Perfect Crime"), a creepy lullaby ("Shankill Butchers"), a Led Zep stomp ("When the War Came"), and, perhaps most divisively, a multipart prog track ("The Island") that stretches well past the 10-minute mark. No epic chantey this time, though.

Meloy's inventive songwriting is the binding force, emphasizing character but remaining ever in thrall to stories, savoring the way they always play out to the same conclusions. Along with the homosexual undertones that have informed Decemberists songs from every album, he jettisons most of the archetypes that inspired Picaresque and cuts his characters loose in their own tales. They still do what they're fated to do-- the thieves thieve and run amok, the lovers love and die tragically, the soldiers soldier on and pine for peaceful homes-- but they seem to do it more out of free will than authorial design.

Meloy focuses mainly on matters of war ("But O did you see all the dead of Manassas/ All the bellies and the bones and the bile?") and love ("No, I lingered here with the blankets barren/ And my own belly big with child"). On the duet "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)", Meloy plays the part of an errant, possibly dead Civil War soldier while singer-songwriter Laura Veirs cameos as his "sweetheart left behind." It's Cold Mountain writ poignantly small, its sweet, wordless chorus perfectly life-size. Lumbering menacingly, the martial march of "When the War Came" smells of gunpowder and singed hair, although it sounds like it's anchored in Neverland despite trying to comment on real-world events.

Meloy's taletelling will always define the Decemberists, but The Crane Wife puts as much weight on the music as on the lyrics, and here the band gels into a tight, intuitive unit. The musicians give each song a particular spark and character, not just reinforcing the lyrics but actively telling a story. They create a breezy eddy of guitar strums and piano chords to enhance a windborne melody and an undercurrent of peril on "Summersong", and the tragedy of "O Valencia"-- any good song about star-crossed lovers must end in death-- is countered by the pep of the music, especially Chris Funk's ascending and descending guitar, which seems to take a particular glee in the inevitable denouement. The band isn't just able-bodied, but ambitious to boot. It makes the brainy prog of that monster second track, a distillation of the musical reach of their 2003 EP The Tain, sound like a natural extension of their base sound. They troll confidently from the rumbling overture and heated exposition of "Come and See" to the final rueful notes of "You'll Not Feel the Drowning". The song is chockablock with progisms-- organ runs, dampered cymbals, laser synths-- but manages to shake off the genre quote marks as the band jam with convincing menace.

Their range allows them to be precociously diverse, but everything fits naturally. The Crane Wife sounds like their most shapely album to date, resembling a spirited story arc in its set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution. In this structure the three title segments, despite essentially bookending the tracklist, form the album's thematic centerpiece, the music and story meshing gracefully and tenderly to retell a Japanese fable. "The Crane Wife 3" opens the album with a ruminative flourish as John Moen's drums push the sensuous thrust of the music and Meloy's delivery of the lines "each feather it fell from skin" colors the resignation of "I will hang my head hang my head low." It opens the album en medias res, setting up the subsequent story-songs as the narrator's rueful reminiscences.

"The Crane Wife 1 and 2" comprise a medley towards the album's end, starting slow and soft but gradually reaching crescendo in an unfurling finale, with Meloy breaking the word "heart" into multiple syllables over an unraveling drum beat. Restrained yet resonant, the song's (and album's) climax is a remarkable moment. As it segues into the rousing coda of "Sons & Daughters", the Decemberists sound like a band that knows exactly where they're going and won't be satisfied until you come along for the trip.
-Stephen M. Deusner, October 03, 2006

My 2006 Picks # Surprise : Paul Simon

2006-11-26T09:33:00.000-08:00

Since severing his epochal partnership with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon's solo career been characterized by restless reinvention. But while it's easy to see such disparate, cross-cultural collaborations as Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints as Simon's quest for new creative partnerships, beneath them lies a more crucial willingness to continually challenge the very assumptions and craft of his own songwriting. Six years after his sublime, underappreciated You're the One Simon has pushed that sensibility into a rewarding, if equally unlikely, partnership with Brian Eno.

The playful "Sure Don't Feel Like Love" argues Simon can still beckon his more traditional pop muse at will. Yet some of his best work here turns as much on hypnotic, if no less politically pointed, quasi-spoken word pieces (like "Wartime Prayers" and the gripping, post 9/11 rumination "How Can You Live in the Northeast?") as traditional songcraft.

Eno is credited with providing "Sonic Landscape" to Simon's production, but also co-wrote three tracks, infusing "Another Galaxy" with contrasting doses of bracing energy and ethereal elegance, while seasoning the more traditional folk musings of "Once Upon a Time There Was An Ocean" with infectious electro-funk rhythms. "Outrageous," their best full collaboration, suggests that while Eno and Simon may approach world music - and indeed most pop forms - from polar extremes, the common ground they find is truly elevated.

In an era when many of his peers are content to craft mere artistic comebacks, Simon's re-emergence here is a bold, compelling step forward. --Jerry McCulley

My 2006 Picks # We Shall Overcome: Bruce Springsteen

2006-11-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

The premise was simple. Bruce Springsteen invites a dozen or so New York City musicians--packing banjos, fiddles, accordions and the like--to his New Jersey farmhouse for a three-day hootenanny, and tape is rolling. The results are sublime, his 21st album featuring their versions of songs harvested from Springsteen's dog-eared LPs by Pete Seeger.

Not all written by Seeger, the songs are how the American folk icon interpreted them, and these organic recordings, with no rehearsals or overdubs, pay tribute with the simplicity and spontaneity he intended. It's not hard to link Springsteen's dissatisfaction with American politics to the protest song "We Shall Overcome" or even the Irish ballad "Mrs. McGrath," where he alters the lyrics to read, "I'd rather have my son as he used to be/Than the King of America and his whole navy."

But the beauty of these Seeger Sessions are pieces that underscore the mood of the bandleader, which borders on down-home amusement: the bluegrass outlaw ballad "Jesse James," the Dylanesque "Pay Me My Money Down" and the euphoric "Jacob's Ladder," a gumbo-and-whiskey-fueled romp that could pass for the closing hymn at the Church of Asbury Park. --Scott Holter

2006 My Picks # The Captain and the Kid : Elton John

2006-11-26T09:08:00.000-08:00

The degree to which you'll like The Captain & the Kid is going to depend on your personal history with Sir Elton John. If you're a resolute follower who was once reduced to a quivering mass of humility by "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" and then revived by the blast of pop liberation that was "Philadelphia Freedom" (a single that later appeared on the CD version of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the album to which this disc is a sequel) you'll have enough invested to appreciate the concept. If, on the other hand, you're a late arrival to the Rocket Man's repertoire, you'll have to adjust your expectations. Kid, unlike more recent efforts, isn't aiming itself at the lite-FM listening masses. What it's asking instead is that you return yourself to your 1970s-era childhood bedroom, flop on the bed, and lock the door, or at least fasten an elastic band around your MTV-addled attention span. This is total-immersion music, and it's got 30 years worth of stories to tell.

The Captain and the Kid are John and Bernie Taupin, his longtime songwriting partner. The music, a choir-enhanced swerve through genres including pop, rock, blues, folk, and country with signature piano riffs thrown in nearly everywhere, chronicles their splintery relationship. Innocence and hope ("Postcards from Richard Nixon") give way to success and joy ("Just Like Noah's Ark"), which eventually leads to discontent ("Tinderbox") and disaster ("And the House Fell Down"). A shot at redemption ("The Bridge") later finds the Captain; reflection ("Old 67") and a joyous reunion (the title track) follow.

Theirs is ultimately a simple story, but John and Taupin suffuse it with hypnotic sentimentality--along with the narrative, echoes of past hits wander into several classic-sounding tracks. "Tiny Dancer" darts through the cracked-voice beauty of "Blues Never Fade Away" and "The Bridge," for example, while "Wouldn't HaveYou Any Other Way (NYC)" works in hints at both "Candle in the Wind" and "Where to Now St. Peter." Other songs shake loose less likely influences ("I Must Have Lost it on the Wind" sounds like something off a vintage Linda Ronstadt album), but all are compellingly steeped in context; if you don't get the late-disc reference to fine silk suits and six-inch heels, you'll wish you did. --Tammy La Gorce

2006 My Picks

2006-11-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

Well Folks as we near the end of 2006 - am gonna be a bit more self indulgent. In the next few weeks and posts will put up reviews of albums which are my favourite releases of 2006.

I start with my current favourite Elton John's new album "The Captain & The Kid" !!!

Enjoy & Comments Welcome

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #10-1

2006-11-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

10. Desmond Dekker & The Aces: "Israelites"
(Desmond Dekker)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#9), UK (#1, #10 for 1975 reissue)
Available on Rockin' Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker

The dearly departed Desmond Dacres will have to argue with Toots Hibbert and Lee Perry over who actually invented reggae, but "Israelites" is as good a starting place as any. Dekker's mighty lament for the sufferer's woe of the titular tribe still rides ska's backbeat, but clipped to a stately lilt. The organ and stabbing guitar lock with percolator percussion for a groove that's irresistible, but never bouncy like prime ska.

The warm, glowing, muffled quality of Perry's recording-- a ghostly halo of echo and reverb-- was at least partially created by feeding seemingly paltry two-track recordings back into themselves. Dekker's voice produces Perry's nimbus all on its own. The swaying, heat-warped quality of "Israelites" feels like gospel and the blues, and considering the song links Biblical trials with the hustle of modern poverty, the comparison's not as far off as it might seem. "Get up in the morning/ Slaving for bread, sir/ So that every mouth can be fed/ Oh, oh, the Israelites."

And it was a huge hit, the first of Jamaica's exports to reach an audience off the island, going Top 10 in both the U.S. and the UK. It earned Dekker a tribute from a (rightfully) awed Beatles and made him Jamaica's first international sensation. Saint Bob would of course eclipse Dekker in popularity, but little in the Marley catalog has this kind of power. --Jess Harvell

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9. The Who: "I Can't Explain"
(Pete Townshend)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#8)
Available on My Generation

You could stop this song after four seconds and still hear why the Who's first single launched their career back in 1965, why they continued to open shows with it decades later, and why it remains a favorite more than 40 years on. Those syncopated bursts of contained explosion constitute one of the most perfect power-pop riffs ever strummed, and the only way to improve on it is to add Keith Moon's hyperactive drumming to fill in the charged silences between the chords. If that's all there was to "I Can't Explain"... well, it would have probably still made the list, but the snake attached to that head is a great song as well as a persuasive argument against originality in rock.

Written by Pete Townsend as a blatant Kinks rip-off, "I Can't Explain" ably replicates the Davies' herky-jerky rock rhythms right down to the handclaps, but the Who supe it up with American pop harmonies and a hooky chorus that hints at their meaty, beaty, big and bouncy singles to follow. Writing in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s, Townsend mused, "It seems to be about the frustrations of a young person who is so incoherent and uneducated that he can't state his case to the bourgeois intellectual blah blah blah. Or, of course, it might be about drugs." Either way it's also about the best song the Who ever recorded. --Stephen M. Deusner

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8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)"
(Johnny Cash)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#32), UK (N/A)
Available on At Folsom Prison

"Hello. I'm Johnny Cash." That opening line, so deadpan and needless-- everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is-- may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song "Man in Black". Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life-- definitely larger than prison-- and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.

Egged on by W. S. Holland's driving snare and Luther Perkins' breakout guitar solos, Cash gives a shout-out to the Razorbacks ("Soo-ey!") and after the second verse laughs a playful heidi-ho. But as the song progresses, his freewheeling energy becomes hurried and dogged, and he sounds like a truly desperate man, as haunted by the idea of confinement as any of the inmates-- a measure of how deep his identification with his audience went. The fear in his voice still resonates decades later, long after the man has died and the Man in Black has become a canonical American figure. --Stephen M. Deusner

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7. The Beach Boys: "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (N/A)
Available on Pet Sounds

Love songs in rock and roll can be many things-- lusty, lecherous, pining, resigned, anguished, sweet-- but "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is the rare one that feels genuinely innocent. It kicks in with a music box harp figure that's quickly obliterated by Brian Wilson's Phil Spector-sized drum sound-- it's the sound of reality briefly shattering fantasy. The reality for these lovers is that they're simply too young to be out on their own. But they can imagine, and their fantasy magnifies every child's naïve wish to become an adult-- freedom without the mortgage, cars that need fixing, and lack of adequate health insurance.

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" has everything you love about the Beach Boys in spades: the Wall of Sound Jr., the scarcely believable harmonies, the dreamtime prosody, and the imaginative instrumentation. It's the ultimate starry-eyed teenage symphony to God, and it perfectly captures the earnest devotion we only seem capable of in a small window of years. --Joe Tangari

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6. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on The Best of the Ronettes

Phil Spector hasn't descended into self-parody the way some others on this list have, but certainly not for lack of trying. Trigger happy, possibly unhinged, and now sporting a bizarre Hair Bear Bunch afro, if Spector had been a star in his own right, his trials and travails would be all over Court TV. Thankfully, he hid behind the mixing desk and the biggest, blackest shades this side of Jack Nietzsche, thereby preserving some of his legacy. (Like you can listen to "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" without a reflexive twinge of sadness.)

Critic David Toop has talked about the disconnect between hearing "Be My Baby" on record and seeing the Ronettes live on stage, lost in cavernous British theaters in their immaculate print dresses, their live backing bands not even able to approximate the force of Spector's Wrecking Crew. The first time I ever really heard "Be My Baby" was on a PBS special of all things, on a TV with a shitty mono speaker-- and even then it felt Cinemascope wide and THX intense.

But if "Be My Baby" birthed modern studio pop-- the point at which records became artifacts that could not be accurately (or at least easily) replicated in the real world-- then it would be merely impressive. What makes it soar, punch holes in hearts as well as walls, is the lead vocal by Ronnie Bennett. Bennett's voice was a little raw, unlike Darlene Love or Diana Ross, and her kittenish performance that strains slightly at the chorus transmutes the slightly sappy lyrics into possibly the best pop song of all time. --Jess Harvell

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5. The Beatles: "A Day in the Life"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles had attempted ambitious mosaics before ("She Said She Said", "Tomorrow Never Knows"), but Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's epic finale catalogues every explosive element of the Fab Four. George Martin's production revolutionized pop music with its avant-garde opulence. Lennon and McCartney's aural bricolage elevates and parodies itself, and their lyrics distance the group from naiveté and Summer-of-Love idealism. Lest we forget, the opening line notes how someone "blew his mind out in a car" and finds Lennon cackling at corpses, media saturation, and humanity's natural disposition toward violence.

When paired with hailing folk and piano, Lennon's portion is as wry and poignant as rock is ever likely to get. In fact, "A Day in the Life" is pretty much the archetype for the Lennon/McCartney duality, firmly distinguishing John as a nightmarish narcophilosopher and Paul as a pragmatic businessman with a schedule to keep. But with its startling juxtaposition of pop melodies and flowery experimentalism, "A Day in the Life" consolidates all of the group's audiences. Here is a song for preteens and acidheads, surrealists and Sinatra fans, the Monkees and the Manson family. That final crescendo, with all its disembodied screams and orchestral terrorism, is surely the most famous-- and strident-- ending of any song in the last 50 years: a caterwauling assemblage of Zen humming, instrumental flairs, and three monolithic pianos stacked on top of one another. Somehow the world's greatest musical icons closed their most famous album with a solid 30 seconds of morbid textural sculpture. By the time the dust settled, Paul was dead, atonalism had gone pop, and four Liverpudlian rockers became high-art heroes. --Alex Linhardt

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4. Bob Dylan: "Like a Rolling Stone"
(Bob Dylan)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on Highway 61 Revisited

From its first double-drum crack (which Bruce Springsteen later described as the sound of someone "kicking open the door to your mind"), to its mythical opening couplet (a perfectly seething "Once upon a time..."), "Like a Rolling Stone" is one of Dylan's strangest and most enthralling moments, a big, shambling statement that hovers on the verge of total dissolution, threatening to shimmy your record player (and, potentially, your entire life) off the shelf and onto the floor. One minute in, when Dylan finally hits the chorus, glibly hollering "How does it feeeel?" to an unnamed subject (or possibly himself), his sneer is so convincing it's difficult not to feel deeply ashamed of everything you've ever done, but still desperate for five more minutes of lashings.

It's hard to overstate the cultural heft of "Like a Rolling Stone", which puttered to #2 on the pop chart (the first song of its length to do so) and hovered there for nearly three months. In 2005's Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus exhausts 200 pages dissecting the socio-political context and lyrical nuances of "Like a Rolling Stone", ultimately christening the track "a triumph of craft, inspiration, will, and intent," and, more importantly, "a rewrite of the world itself." Certainly, the song transforms every time it's played, expertly adapting to new generations and new vices, just wobbly and amorphous and dangerous enough to knock us over again and again. --Amanda Petrusich

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3. Sam Cooke: "A Change Is Gonna Come"
(Sam Cooke)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#31), UK (N/A)
Available on The Man and His Music

Filtered through a vessel of honest hurt, message and moment meet modern gospel. Suffering from the recent death of his 18-month old son Vincent and troubled by the omnipotent specter of racism, Cooke caught the unsteady temperament of a nation. Struck by Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", the Mississippi native detected the folk movement's crucial sense of understanding; they "may not sound as good but they people believe them more," he once said. Sam Cooke sounds pretty great on "A Change Is Gonna Come".

After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Rosa Parks listened to "A Change Is Gonna Come" for comfort. The spiritual synergy between King's preaching and the song's painful vignettes is powerful. Both are battered, bruised but vigorous. Rene Hall's classic arrangement, bolstered by French horns, timpani, and a flowering orchestra is pure Hollywood magic but Cooke subverts the Disneyland pomp with anguished realism: "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die/ 'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky." "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released as part of a single only after Cooke's murky murder. He never felt its rapturous reception. Yet, as long as change aches for resolution, the song will stand. --Ryan Dombal

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2. The Jackson 5: "I Want You Back"
(Berry Gordy, Jr./Alphonso Mizell/Freddie Perren/Deke Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#2)
Available on Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5

Writers and producers Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards originally envisioned this as the backing track for a Gladys Knight and the Pips song, but Berry Gordy had other ideas. With a little rewriting he heard it as the perfect vehicle to introduce five kids he'd just signed from Gary, Indiana. And as was so often the case throughout the 1960s, Gordy was right.

What is it about this song that cuts through generations and trends and cynicism and makes everyone within its range prick up ears and loosen hips? I once thought my age had something to do with my deep love of this song (it hit the Hot 100 two months and a day after my birth) but here Pitchfork writers up to 15 years my junior heard something special just as clearly. Some of it is Michael Jackson's voice reaching beyond its years, some of it is the Five's supportive backing. But really I think it's the song's most basic structure, possibly the best chord progression in pop music history. The descending bit on the chorus is joy reduced to its molecular level: I / IV / vi / iii / IV / I / ii / V / I. --Mark Richardson

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1. The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#39), UK (#2)
Available on Pet Sounds

I'm sure you've read these: "the world's greatest song," "Brian Wilson's masterpiece," "the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded." Yes, the initiation into the Museum of Western Popular Music is always rough, as credible historians rush to summarize our collective experiences in short phrases. But for better or worse, "God Only Knows" is the kind of song that's almost impossible for me to talk about divorced from the way it makes me feel: sad, in love, honestly grateful, but also a little hopeless. Even in mono, it's like being swept up by a wave of compassion but still getting bruised.

The first words Carl Wilson sings, "I may not always love you," are already uncertain, so if you need a tie into the legacy of 1960s youth culture, glance no further than the naïve but strained optimism locked inside this song. Yet, Carl made this uncertainty sound gorgeous. The voices that sail behind his might just as well be a quartet of violas and cellos playing counterpoint that'd already been obsessed over a few times before they got it. "God Only Knows" is so ideally conceptualized and realized, critics can't help but support it. Somehow, even that can't turn it into an art exhibit; its humanity resists the attempt. To me, this song is a goodbye to being a kid, and hoping that love actually is the answer. And almost nobody knows if it is. --Dominique Leone

Taken From Pitchforkmedia Website

ww.pitchforkmedia.com

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #20-11

2006-11-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

20. The Shangri-Las: "Out in the Streets"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama

The Shangri-Las perfected pop melodrama, and their best songs feel like a synthesis of Douglas Sirk, Beatlemania, Hells Angels, and a support group for middle-aged manic depressives. Yes, the group addressed the most lurid elements of 1960s suburbia, from rape and death to skull-smashing bikers and abused dropouts. But "Out in the Streets" accomplishes the tremendous feat of transforming teen-beat puppy love and leather-laced fetishism into the foundations of adulthood: nostalgia, boredom, and guilt.

Surrounded by siren-like howls and orchestral plinks, the girls rue their own appeal and repent for sanitizing their bad-boy beaus. As a premise, this apology has the benefits of uniting pride and pathos: "He used to act bad/ He used to, but he quit it/ It makes me so sad/ 'Cause I know that he did it for me." The underlying message is that we should hate ourselves as penitence for our beauty, and this song is therefore the finest distillation of the teenage dream ever recorded. --Alex Linhardt

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19. The Beatles: "Tomorrow Never Knows"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Revolver

Where did this come from? Drugs, you say? Well, sure…Timothy Leary was involved, as he so often was in those days. His book The Psychedelic Experience, itself based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, served as an inspiration. LSD had come to the boys a year earlier and Lennon had imbibed and things were changing fast. In another year, the minds of John's fellow Beatles would begin to look rather small, Yoko was someone smart and hip to talk to, and the end was nigh. But here the Beatles are together-- Paul's the avant-garde one, as he'd later say, bringing in the tape loops-- and the band together is a serious force.

Never had pop swirled quite like this-- the seagulls, the sitar drone, the sped-up orchestral bits. It was music without edges, all porous borders, one sound bleeding into the next. But it wasn't some new age drift, either, what with Ringo compensating for all the space in his part by hitting each stutter-stop beat with double force, and the snarling backward lead zigzagging ribbon-like down the rabbit hole. Disorienting contrast is the power of this song-- a possible bad trip talk-down that happens to be scary as shit-- and explains why it loomed mightily above the nascent psychedelic movement. "Listen to the color of your dreams," Lennon suggested, and an army of baby boomers was ready to give it a try, for good or ill. --Mark Richardson

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18. The Crystals: "Then He Kissed Me"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#6), UK (#2)
Available on The Best of the Crystals

Some of the sweetest minutes in all of pop music. Lyrically, it couldn't be any less lascivious-- promises of fidelity, taking the boy home to meet the folks, and that kiss sounds more like a quick peck then a tonguebath-- but it's all so charming that it could melt the staunchest libertine's heart. The Crystals' indelible ode to chastity and monogamy gave license to a thousand indie pop bands who longed for a time when music wasn't so (eww) sexual, but its real legacy is in everything from the Jackson 5 to New Edition to a thousand teen pop hits from the last 40 years. They're songs for audiences trying to articulate the rush of a first crush before the sticky biological urges muck everything up. We may not live in a hand-holding world anymore-- it probably wasn't much of a hand-holding world even then-- but puppy love is still a helluva thing. --Jess Harvell

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17. Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Fortunate Son"
(John Fogerty)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#14), UK (N/A)
Available on Willy and the Poor Boys

For all the hype about the 1960s being a time when politics and music merged into a great shining sword that thwarted racism and ended war, few of the era's protest songs have retained significant power outside of their initial context. Yet "Fortunate Son" has lost none of the ferocity with which it was initially written and recorded. Sure, it's great to hold hands and sing "We Shall Overcome" together, but angry times call for angry songs, spelled out in blunt language and bold colors.

John Fogerty was perfect for this kind of righteous frustration, his voice strangled but defiant, punctuated by "Lord" invocations and slurring "it ain't me" into a garbled wail. Placed over a rhythm-section rumble and a pissed-off breakdown, and over in barely two minutes, it's enough of a middle finger to be rightly labeled as punk's cool uncle. The very fact of its continued political relevance only makes it sound even more livid, foaming at the mouth over how little has changed these last 40 years. --Rob Mitchum

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16. The Stooges: "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
(Dave Alexander/Ron Asheton/Scott Asheton/Iggy Pop)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Stooges

No, Iggy Stooge (not yet Pop) doesn't want to be your boyfriend. He wants to be your dog. Backed by fuzzed-out riffs and thumping bass, Ig speak-sings his intentions: "I'm so messed up/ I want you here." And by the chorus, he sounds as hollow as a zombie, insistently repeating: "Now I wanna... be your dog." With a single phrase, he turns the pop trope of puppy love into a disturbing ode to submission, self-effacement, and sheer animal instinct.

Having defected from the Velvets, the classically trained John Cale handles production by adding sleigh bells and an endlessly repeated single-note piano riff. Instead of deflating the grit and toughness of the music, it elevates the tension and enhances the mood of numbed detachment. And in the end, it's that unsettling sense of monotonous resolution in Iggy's pleas that makes this sound so dangerous. --John Motley

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15. Aretha Franklin: "Think"
(Aretha Franklin/Teddy White)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#7), UK (#26, #31 for 1990 reissue)
Available on Aretha Now

Franklin brings the funk with gospel fervor, and the Muscle Shoals rhythm section delivers it with a swing in its step. Forget girl power: Aretha was the ultimate woman, not to be pushed around, and "Think" brims with the confidence of a singer at the very top of her game. It's barely two minutes long, but the song is still a veritable suite, with four sections you'll never get out of your head. If the "freedom!" bridge doesn't shoot you full of energy and make you yearn for the highway, check your pulse. Aretha is dynamite, but this song is also a clinic in back-up singing-- the interplay between lead and accomplices is so ridiculously tight one can't even exist without the other. The group interplay cements the powerful women's lib message of earlier hit "Respect" (and doubles as a powerful race-relations message). "Think" is more than just another excellent Atlantic soul side. "Think" is power. --Joe Tangari

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14. The Beach Boys: "Don't Worry Baby"
(Roger Christian/Brian Wilson)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#24), UK (N/A)
Available on Endless Summer

We've all been there. Shooting our mouths off about our cars until, finally, it's time to put up or shut up. We hope that nothing goes wrong, but there's so much that could. We'd be sunk, really, if it weren't for the encouragement of that special girl. With her love riding shotgun, suddenly the makeshift drag strip at the abandoned drive-in theater doesn't seem quite so forboding.

OK, so maybe the appeal of this one has nothing to do with the specifics of the story, but surely we can all relate to the idea of support, how knowing that someone cares for you regardless of what happens gives you strength to do great things. And the music is such a perfect accompaniment to this theme, so damn cozy and warm, a tender respite from the stressful reality of the main narrative. It's that night in bed with your lover before the big day, that night you wish could last forever. --Mark Richardson

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13. The Band: "The Weight"
(Robbie Robertson)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#21)
Available on Music From Big Pink

Like so many 1960s stunners, "The Weight" has nearly been spoiled rotten by that culture-siphoning boom-boom-boomer trash The Big Chill, but the Robbie Robertson-penned tune is deeper and more biblical than pass-the-pain ibuprofen ideology. Led by drummer Levon Helm's slurry roar and hammered home by Rick Danko's shouty backup vocals, Robertson mirrored Christian allusions to the devil and the end of time with the emotional dismemberment of small town living. Certainly the Band's best-known song, "The Weight" is pushed along by a chummy saloon-style piano line and country-ish three-part harmonies making it a no-brainer sing-along jukebox highlight, capable of raising the spirits of even the damnedest drunks yet still complex enough to arouse even the most spiritually confounded. --Sean Fennessey

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12. The Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Let It Bleed

The Rolling Stones' most malevolent song is now indelibly linked to murderous riots and racist bikers. Of course, Altamont was merely a reflection of this song's apocalyptic politics. Bill Wyman's trembling bass and Charlie Watts' percussive lightning conjure up a fire-and-brimstone typhoon of blood, guns, and doom. Keith Richards' hands are covered in barbed wire and Mick Jagger laces together unremitting images with no concrete objects. They therefore connect all of our greatest psychopaths-- assassins, street fighters, My Lai soldiers-- into one swelling throng. Scalding harmonica and torrential guitar scatter like shrapnel, and Merry Clayton's feverish backup summons annihilationist gospel and risqué teen pop. In the last few seconds, Jagger proposes that, well, "Love, sister, it's just a kiss away." But no one actually believes that. There's a reason the Stones aren't known for their romanticism, and these sinners can't escape the damnation of their own hell. --Alex Linhardt

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11. Led Zeppelin: "Dazed and Confused"
(Jimmy Page)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Led Zeppelin

I don't care who you are. You could bring me to shows, give me all the best drugs, steal stuff from work for me; you could rock my shit in every other way, but if you're not down with "Dazed and Confused", I can't hang out with you. This is the numbest, blackest, taking-the-least-possible-amount-of-shit track any rock band ever recorded (next to "When the Levee Breaks"). Sure, we've all heard how Jimmy Page stole his licks and Robert Plant is just a big hippie, but that doesn't matter, does it? The bassline is what matters. Bonzo's triplet tom rolls into the second verse are what matters. Moaning, wailing smears of acid noise guitar that just happen to point down, and something that lets me know it's okay to be kind of evil sometimes-- these things separate the fun from the fundamental. It's the real shit. --Dominique Leone

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #40-21

2006-11-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

40. The Zombies: "This Will Be Our Year"
(Chris White)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Odessey and Oracle

Like the rose-colored finale of a feel-good musical, this proto-twee anthem has always felt over (the top) before it begins-- an incandescent, elegiac bit of closure. "Time of the Season"'s the more generally beloved track from Odessey and Oracle and has received the most Hollywood hippie lip-service, but this track's baroque pop brevity uplifts more grandly: Like "Happy Together" lined with rays of psychedelic sunshine (vocal-harmony mouthing piano, trumpets, ornate choral harmonies, and warm drums that link it in my head to Pet Sounds and Forever Changes). When singer Colin Blunstone says, "And I won't forget the way you said/ 'Darling I love you'/ You gave me faith to go on," he creates a smeared palimpsest that tugs my heart every time. It's ironic that the group who penned this eternally optimistic song had disbanded by the time the album hit the shelves. --Brandon Stosuy

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39. The Rolling Stones: "Sympathy for the Devil"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Beggars Banquet

It was a ballsy move for Mick Jagger to sing about Satan in the first person, and it was even ballsier to make him so damn likable, a charming rake with a sense of decorum and a way with words. "Sympathy" may be Jagger's finest lyrical moment; in a few quick strokes, he weaves the Crucifiction, the Hundred Years' War, the October Revolution, World War II, and the assassinations of the Kennedys into an interlocking tapestry of human cruelty, and then he takes credit for all of it. Even ballsier may be the Stones' use of the sort of rippling African grooves that palefaced rockstars usually deploy when they're trying to sound warm and life affirming. It's an exhilarating piece of work, especially as the song builds and Keith Richards starts using his guitar the same way the Bomb Squad used sirens, a trebly fuzzbomb exploding into the sinuous mess. --Tom Breihan

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38. The Meters: "Cissy Strut"
(Ziggy Modeliste/Art Neville/Leo Nocentelli/George Porter, Jr.)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#23), UK (N/A)
Available on The Very Best of the Meters

When the first moments of the first song of your first album are as crisp and chilling as the "Aaaaaa-yah!" and fat chords that open "Cissy Strut", hyperbole tends to abound. New Orleans demi-gods and house band for Allen freakin' Toussaint before they were out of their infancy, the Meters were the peak of precise, slashing through each other's instruments and whipping up funk like it was chicken salad-- thoroughly, deliciously, and fast.

Art Neville ran shit from on high behind that keyboard, but the interplay between guitarist Leo Nocentelli and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste is near impossible to compute. Which explains why the track has been flipped more than 20 times on hip-hop records ranging from Onyx's "Bacdafucup" to Raheem's "5th Ward". There are few songs that pop with the kind of instrumental arrogance "Cissy Strut" carries. In doing so, and basically laying the concrete for funk music, they set the standard for talking loud and saying nothing. In a good way. --Sean Fennessey

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37. Simon & Garfunkel: "The Sound of Silence"
(Paul Simon)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on Greatest Hits

"Hello darkness, my old friend." Few songs sink their hooks into a listener as instantly as this classic ode to alienation. Paul Simon's tautly crafted lyrics unfold effortlessly as his harmonies with Art Garfunkel grow in emotional intensity. Those elements were already in place when the duo recorded "The Sound of Silence" for its folk-damaged debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
But after that album flopped and Simon and Garfunkel called it quits (for the first time), producer Tom Wilson took the folk frame of the original and added a rock edge. Inspired by the Byrds and Dylan's evolution to electric, Wilson overdubbed electric guitars, bass, and drums. Not only did the new version reach #1, those additions also helped shed the original's choirboy wimpiness. --John Motley

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36. 13th Floor Elevators: "You're Gonna Miss Me"
(Roky Erickson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

I need to do the research, but I doubt the electric jug was ever put to such good use. For this convulsive harmonica-singed garage-psychedelia blast, Tommy Hall pilots it as a twittering army of sopping-wet percussive mini-moogs. Then, of course, come Roky Erickson's vocalizations, threats, and promises ("oh, you're gonna miss me") with patterns that feel less like rock lyricism and more like looped jazz frenetics (or, hey, Astral Weeks). This was the Austin band's first single and only real hit, and its history seems endless: Erickson recorded it once before with his earlier band, the Spades; forty-something years later, it's the title of Keven McAlester's documentary about the man's life/work. It even greets you on Erickson's website. He's unfortunately become one of those figures, like Daniel Johnston or Syd Barrett, fetishized by some for his mental illness. Fuck that. Listen to this track, recorded before he spent time in an institution and allegedly received shock therapy: Erickson was already possessed with rock'n'roll genius. --Brandon Stosuy

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35. Johnny Cash: "Ring of Fire"
(June Carter Cash/Merle Kilgore)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#17), UK (N/A)
Available on The Essential Johnny Cash

That Cash could adopt a goofy conceit like this (not just any ring of fire, a burning one), drape it in mariachi music, and still come out looking twice as big a man as your favorite uncle, father, and grandfather combined says more than any glorified MOTW ever could. If composure in the face of death is proof of character, composure in the face of love is downright molecular; here's a man singing about "wild desire" and "falling like a child" straight from the ashes at the bottom of his stomach. That "Ring of Fire" was one of his biggest hits is no easily explainable trick of the chorus either-- there's a booming posture to this that, 50 years removed, still extends out across his many decades. It's why people loved seeing him sing even more than they loved hearing him. --Mark Pytlik

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34. The Who: "The Kids Are Alright"
(Pete Townshend)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on My Generation

That big opening chord sounds like a challenge to the Beatles of a "A Hard Day's Night". Sure enough, the Who turn in a gorgeous, sophisticated pop song that focuses the band's sick instrumental prowess into three minutes of kinetic melancholy. Those vocal harmonies positively soar on Pete Townshend's guitar jangle, and the modulation at the end is brilliant, preceded by just a tiny snatch of raucous sturm-und-drang. Roger Daltrey's vocal has just the right tinge of sadness as he heaves the inner conflict stoked by his relationship on the table for all to see. --Joe Tangari

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33. James Brown & the Famous Flames: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World"
(James Brown/Betty Jean Newsome)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (#13)
Available on JB40: 40th Anniversary Collection

For all of its sweat-soaked machismo and fist-pump funk, Brown's most potent 1960s statement was a relatively quiet, distinctly feminine testament to intrinsic dependence. "A man who don't have a woman," squeals the conflicted soul man, "he's lost in the wilderness." It's as if he could foresee his post-70s wasteland, when allegations of domestic abuse outnumbered hit singles, but was utterly helpless to stop the spiral. The ballad's titular emphasis and man-made roll call only serve to underline its loneliness and desperation. Against arch string plucks, lagging piano, and snap rimshots, the man works his demons hard. And this direct feed into his struggle is as stunning as the ensuing wreckage is stunningly pitiful. --Ryan Dombal

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32. Ennio Morricone: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Main Theme)"
(Ennio Morricone)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music

Film was the most important medium of the 20th century, and Ennio Morricone was among its chief architects. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" didn't simply reinvent soundtracks; it reinvented movies. For even the most uncouth audiences, the titular theme-- hell, just the opening "wah-wah-wah"-- is synonymous with stoicism, murder, and pop-art delirium. Despite the Wagnerian crescendos and theatrical irony, every effect is critical and unforgettable: pacing boots, tribal flutes, flaring surf guitar, Indian warwhoops, field-recording flotsam, meth-mangled trumpet solos. In just under three minutes, Morricone condenses all the greatest elements of music-- from opera, garage, musique concrète, peyote songs, whatever-- and layers it over stampeding horses and shotgun blasts. It's kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and incontrovertibly badass. --Alex Linhardt

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31. Nico: "These Days"
(Jackson Browne)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Chelsea Girl

It's not hard to imagine hearing Nico's low register and ineffable sadness over a less extravagant combination of instruments on "These Days". This could well have been another coffeehouse folk song about day-to-day drudgery and the disappearance of passion-- especially because those damn strings, skipping around and over the delicate guitar, weren't supposed to be there in the first place. Producer Tom Wilson added them after the recording, much to the chagrin of Nico, who later called its parent album, Chelsea Girl, "unlistenable." Psssht. The grandeur of her melancholy is less restrained when there's a viola chipping away at the melody, but there's no gussying up or glossing over the punishing closing sentiment, perhaps an acknowledgement of the chanteuse's already intense heroin addiction: "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I had not forgotten them." --Sean Fennessey

30. The Shangri-Las: "Leader of the Pack"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Shadow Morton)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#11, #3 for 1972 reissue)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama

Teen melodrama was a valuable commodity in the 1960s, but few girl-groups did it as darkly or as well as the death-obsessed Shangri-La's. "Leader of the Pack"-- on which the Weiss and Genser twins spun spoken-word and saccharine singing into the tale of a local tough who's killed in a motorcycle crash on the night the narrator breaks up with him, per her father's orders-- is part concise musical theater, part novelty song, and all avant-garde, thanks in no small part to George "Shadow" Morton's inventive production. Every element of the song mimetically refers to its tacit catastrophe-- the cardiac percussion limns heart-pumping urgency; stately piano chords suddenly tumble as if they've hit wet asphalt; and while the crisis is never explicitly named, the throaty motorcycle revs, horrible crashing sounds and cries of "Look out look out look out!" leave little room for ambiguity. --Brian Howe

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29. The Kinks: "Waterloo Sunset"
(Ray Davies)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#2)
Available on Something Else by the Kinks

The protagonist's ritualistic observations have always reminded me of Death in Venice minus the overt dissipation: The "dirty old" Thames, Waterloo Station, and a 1960s orange-red nighttime London sky re-imagined as a private paradise by the window pane's light. Ray Davies' airy harmonies compliment the rarefied aestheticism: "Busy-busy" causes vertigo, taxi lights scald eyes, it's too cold to venture outside. This was supposedly the first track he produced on his own and every detail works to reconfirm a sensibility: The sporty intro sidesteps into the unmistakable vocal melody played first on guitar, then sung by Davies. Throughout, a scrappy rhythm guitar abuts an angelic harmonic web, balancing vicarious experience with the gorgeous hands-on pageantry of the city. --Brandon Stosuy

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28. Otis Redding: "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay"
(Steve Cropper/Otis Redding)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on Very Best of Otis Redding

Released at the beginning of 1968, Redding's posthumous hit was a lamenting-- and prescient-- cry of resignation after the Summer of Love. It's as immortal a song as r&b ever produced, renouncing all references to the transitory pleasures of love, rage, or infatuation. There's merely Redding's piteous hum, balanced by buoying guitar and slumberous horns. He sounds like a disappointed god, bored by infinity and captivated by his own constancy. The voice is soft and sleek, and traces of anger still disturb the serenity. The lyrics pass from calmness to sorrow, pleasure to damage, bemusement to barrenness. It's a repudiation of empty promises: Nothing's blowin' in the wind, no changes are gonna come, there's "nothing to live for, and looks like nothing's gonna come my way." He drives all the way to San Francisco just to remind himself that his life will never change. And then there's that final nonchalant whistle, the most haunting and elegiac sound you could ever hear from a dead man's #1 record. --Alex Linhardt

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27. The Velvet Underground: "I'm Waiting for the Man"
(Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

"The Man is never on time," William Burroughs typed in 1959's Naked Lunch. "First thing you learn is that you always got to wait," Lou Reed complained eight years later on The Velvet Underground & Nico. Buffeted by krautrockist guitar blocks and insatiable jackhammer drums, Reed's deadpan vocals makes a delinquent of early rock ‘n' roll piano and urban-twang lead licks. Dude takes the present-day 4/5/6 to East Harlem (that's "SpaHa" for the noobs), $26 in hand not adjusted for inflation, then oh look at the time splits cause hey I'm running late. To think in Jamaica they'll just plop heaping bags in your palm for a mere Andrew Jackson (I'm told)-- though context suggests it's probably the junk Reed's really on about. Whatever, he's feeling good, he's gonna work it on out, and that brownstoned walk home is easy to imagine even if most of us have never experienced it. Oh, also many people heard this and then formed bands. --Marc Hogan

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26. The Beatles: "I Am the Walrus"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Magical Mystery Tour

"I Am the Walrus" wasn't the first psychedelic song the Beatles recorded, but where the others were about the trip, this was about the destination: A tour of a surreal, strikingly vulgar place far out there (or far inside Lennon's head), following a march beat that doesn't quite fit your feet. Although the production is dense and full of disruptive voices and found sounds, your ear always knows where to go, thanks to that wobbly back-and-forth theme on the electric piano. And while Lennon barks the words, he also reminds us why the Beatles were the least scary available tour guide to this strange new place. After all, John (or was it Paul?) was The Walrus, a post-human growth on the collective subconscious-- but he still looked silly with those giant flippers. --Chris Dahlen

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25. The Rolling Stones: "Paint It Black"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Aftermath

Mick conjures his charm school squall and Brian Jones makes that sitar chirp like a newborn blue jay, but it's Charlie Watts' crashing kit that slugs most every other Stones tune out of the way of this depression-incarnate. Perhaps overplaying his hand too soon (subtlety has never been Mick's fastball), Jagger's lyrics bellyache from start, "No colors anymore, I want them to turn black", to finish, "I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky." But it's the persistent snare thumping and cymbal shattering that has led so many people to believe there's some sort of demonic undertone to the song. There really isn't. Seems Jags got dumped (or perhaps saw an emotional emptiness inside himself) and wants the whole world to look black. Kind of childish if you break it down to the literal, but to think about that swaggering cocksman now and imagine him crumpled and crying, scrawling, "Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts" in 1966 is kind of heartening. --Sean Fennessey

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24. The Supremes: "You Can't Hurry Love"
(Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Eddie Holland)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

"If you're not with someone, then they're not meant for you," Art Brut's Eddie Argos declared in the middle of "Emily Kane" at this summer's Pitchfork fest. So here we are, mustache-deep in love songs and hate songs and Rolling Stones songs, and "You Can't Hurry Love"-- a little Holland-Dozier-Holland bouncer about the pointlessness (and frustrating inevitability) of getting all broke up over heartbreak-- is still one of the few that tells us what we really need to hear. The ostinato bass, tingling tambourine chirp, shy Herman's Hermits guitar, and especially Diana Ross' suavely teenybop vocals (plus the hear-a-symphony backing oohs) stand in uneasy harmony. While the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Stones got all the white straight rock geek worship, the Supremes shimmied their way to pop perfection in 1966. Neither "Lust for Life" nor "Someday" nor any other beat-ganker does it better. Phil Collins can eat poop. --Marc Hogan

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23. Etta James: "At Last"
(Mack Gordon/Harry Warren)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#47), UK (N/A)
Available on The Essential Etta James

When love finally comes, Etta James meets it with the unhurried cool of someone shuffling to catch an early bus. Maybe she's too wounded, or maybe she's an ascetic, but probably she's just savoring-- too used to going without to remember how to be excitable. Instead she's content to stretch the moment out like taffy, itself a new kind of wait. But where her measured delivery suggests she's entering into this thing one limb at a time, as if slipping into an icy pool, the orchestration tells a different story. With "life is like a song", she even confesses as much. While she stands solid and resolute, dispensing her release in controlled bursts, the strings' backflips, twirls, and knots do the rest of her work. They're the butterflies, the relief and the joy, and they've never been more beautifully expressed than they are here. --Mark Pytlik

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22. Marvin Gaye: "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
(Barrett Strong/Norman Whitfield)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on The Very Best of Marvin Gaye

Not even the California Raisins could fuck this one up. Gladys Knight and the Pips took "Grapevine" to #2 in 1967, a full year before Gaye's was released, but when was the last time you heard Knight's version? Gaye's take on the song remains perhaps the darkest, fuzziest, most unglued moment in Motown history. Gaye's voice was usually an ecstatic lilt, but here it's a frozen paranoid sneer, the sound of a man collapsing inward into doubt and regret and hate. Gaye clamps down on the "you mean that much to me" line with so much venom that we know it isn't really true, not anymore. The murky Funk Brothers arrangement offers no respite: the organ bubbles, the Bernard Herrmann strings screech, the guitars echo and moan, and you know just as well as Gaye does that his life is about to end. There's no hope anywhere in the song. It's terrifying. --Tom Breihan

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21. The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations"
(Mike Love/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1, #18 for 1976 reissue)
Available on Endless Summer

The pressure to surpass Pet Sounds and keep apace with the ante-upping Beatles set the stage for this obsessive-compulsive, career-derailing masterpiece. Wilson amassed hours upon hours of tape at multiple studios to cobble together his intricately segmented, cut'n'paste "pocket symphony," reportedly spending anywhere between $16-50,000 to produce three-and-a-half minutes of weird yet accessible pop. Besides its haunting organs, shapeshifting riffs, and cubist harmonies, "Good Vibrations" introduced the electro-Theremin (now often known as the Tannerin, its interface involves shifting the pitch of a sine wave by sliding a knob across a dummy keyboard) to the world at large, its bright eeriness audibly echoing Wilson's knack for blending the mundane with the extraterrestrial. --Brian Howe

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #60-41

2006-11-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

60. Sly & the Family Stone: "Hot Fun in the Summertime"
(Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (N/A)
Available on Anthology

Sly Stewart's band could play anything, and here they lay out plush vibes over words that seem a bit realist (moral: things come and go?). No surprise, however, that it's the sweet and psychedelic soul sounds that win out. Or do they? Sometimes, this song becomes an actual source of nostalgia for me, making me think about someone's old summers when both the sun and fun were hot. But then the bridge happens, and the bass drops out, and even though I know that summer ends soon, and that I'm constantly running out of time, and that life is just a meaningless exchange of particles-- well, fuck it, things come and go. --Dominique Leone

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59. The Velvet Underground: "Sunday Morning"
(John Cale/Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvets rap is always about "influence," but how many artists influenced both the Strokes and Belle and Sebastian? The opener to 1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico has more in common with the latter, as John Cale's celeste tinkles beside the feedback wash of Sterling Morrison's bass-guitar plod, and Lou Reed's gentle melody explains what an early-morning comedown felt like before Crate & Barrel invented downtempo. It's a walk of no shame, solitary and serene despite submerged bursts of paranoia. Like their non-evil twins the Modern Lovers, the Velvet Underground introduced not so much a sound as an aesthetic, and that's pretty hard to bite. --Marc Hogan

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58. The Beatles: "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Meet the Beatles!

Something about a Kennedy dying, and an airplane arriving in New York. And though the Beatles got more consistently great-- or at least more self-consciously artistic after their initial impact-- they never really got much better than 1964 and "I Want to Hold Your Hand". People still won't shut up about Kurt Cobain mish-mashing the Beatles and Black Sabbath, but here are the Fabs themselves shaking up both twee and punk before either was invented. --Marc Hogan

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57. Tommy James & the Shondells: "Crimson and Clover"
(Tommy James/Peter Lucia)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on Crimson & Clover

Not gonna front: I loved Joan Jett's version first. But her cover rocks too hard. This song-- quite possibly the closest white pop musicians have ever come to approximating how making love actually feels-- is meant to be an afternoon roll in the hay, not an alleyway screw. Even though the climaxes are certainly there, "Crimson and Clover" isn't about the payoff, it's about the journey: those three chords descending like pieces of clothing hitting the floor, the sweaty droplets of reverb, the backbeat thrusts. Over and over, over and over. --Amy Phillips

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56. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot: "Bonnie and Clyde"
(Serge Gainsbourg)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Comic Strip

During his collaborations with then-lover Brigitte Bardot, Gainsbourg nurtured a near Warholian obsession with American iconography: Ford Mustangs (bang!), Coca-Cola, comic strips, and, of course, gangsters. Portraying himself as a cultural outlaw (which, in his most transgressive work, he undoubtedly was), Gainsbourg narrates the lives and deaths of the infamous bank robbers. For listeners who don't parlez français, it's one of Gainsbourg's most fascinating songs in that, from start to finish, it never really changes. Its acoustic foundation is miraculously filled out by a fat, creeping bass line, dizzy strings, and a bizarre hiccupping backing vocal, all of which turn simple strums into something hypnotizing. --John Motley

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55. Jackie Wilson: "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher"
(Gary Jackson/Raynard Miner/Carl Smith)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#6), UK (#11)
Available on The Greatest Hits of Jackie Wilson

It's no shock that the finest four-stringer to ever lay in the cut, James Jamerson, provided the base for Wilson's late-1960s resurrection. With the can't-miss arrangement, the then 33-year-old Detroit deity emotes with enough searing intensity to even explode through today's layers of post-pop cynicism. Truth is, there's not much depth. But Wilson's idyllic, soul mate destination is so inviting that, by the time the horns sweep in, you may stop snickering at Brangelina and start to appreciate their forever bond. The thing can move mile-high peaks-- or at least the Statue of Liberty. --Ryan Dombal

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54. The Monkees: "Daydream Believer"
(John Stewart)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#5)
Available on The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees

There's something extra-touching about a band that's ostensibly "for the kids" singing a song about the end of childhood. The lolling piano line and the big, bright chorus-- "Cheer up sleepy Jean"-- are irresistible to people of all ages, but there's something moving about the way the narrator's daydreams are ever-so-slightly punctured in the verses: even a young kid glued to the Monkees' TV show knows that the sweet comes with the bitter, so why try to hide it? --Chris Dahlen

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53. Led Zeppelin: "Whole Lotta Love"
(John Bonham/Willie Dixon/John Paul Jones/Jimmy Page/Robert Plant)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#4), UK (#21)
Available on Led Zeppelin II

According to Joy Press and Simon Reynolds' The Sex Revolts, American soldiers in Vietnam would ride into battle blasting "Whole Lotta Love", the part where it roars out of its fuzzed-out miasmic free-jazz middle section and back into its titanic brontosaurus riff. It's a terrifying image, bloodthirsty heavily armed children fueling themselves with the heaviest, most violent music available. But it's oddly exhilarating, too, and that's the genius of the song. Zeppelin turned teenage sex-drive into apocalyptic precision-tooled violence. Even in that experimental stretch, the peals of feedback sound like bombs falling. --Tom Breihan

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52. Ray Charles: "Georgia on My Mind"
(Hoagy Carmichael/Stuart Gorrell)
1960
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#24)
Available on Anthology

In its conception, "Georgia on My Mind" was about songwriter Hoagy Carmichael's sister, not the Peach State. But when native Georgian Ray Charles wrapped his sultry pipes around it, it became an obvious choice for official State song, despite the weird image of a landmass competing with "other arms" and "other eyes" for the singer's affections. (Come to think of it, that's a rather odd thing to write about one's sister as well.) The string section hovers just this side of schmaltz, and Charles' twinkling piano and supple inflections imbue the song with an elegiac sway, peaceful as those moonlit pines. --Brian Howe

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51. Ike & Tina Turner: "River Deep Mountain High"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#88), UK (#3)
Available on Proud Mary: The Best of Ike & Tina Turner

The lyrics are a string of weak, almost corny analogies, like something someone who's not much with words would write in a one-year anniversary card-- and so Tina Turner has no choice but to belt them from every inch of her lungs to get her point across. She holds her own against one of the biggest of Phil Spector's "wall of sound" productions, while the orchestra and chorus boom and clamor like a dictator's rally. As hair-tearingly overpowering as the love she describes, "River Deep, Mountain High" has nothing left to hold back. --Chris Dahlen

50. Love: "Alone Again Or"
(Bryan MacLean)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Forever Changes

Written by Love guitarist Bryan MacLean, "Alone Again Or" was in its original conception a simple, flamenco-tinged folk song. But as the opening and greatest track on Love's 1967 magnum opus Forever Changes, it became a perfect reflection of the L.A. group's unique and conflicted dynamic. Producer Bruce Botnick enlisted David Angel to supply the distinctive mariachi horn section and Nelson Riddle-like string arrangements that provide the song its strange, out-of-time luster. Meanwhile, bandleader Arthur Lee infamously mixed his own harmony vocals louder than MacLean's lead vocal to give the track an asymmetric wobble to match its elliptical title, and lending MacLean's heart-stirring, alone-in-a-crowd lyricism an added degree of poignancy. --Matthew Murphy

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49. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: "Some Velvet Morning"
(Lee Hazlewood)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#26), UK (N/A)
Available on Nancy & Lee

Even after thousands of listens, I still don't know quite what to make of this bizarre, creepy song. A country-outlaw singer drowning in a pool of reverb, constantly interrupted by dazed-hippie interludes, and haunted by a storm cloud orchestra. Sure, Phaedra is part of a Greek myth and all, but I prefer to think of "Some Velvet Morning" as a love song to drug rehab, Hazlewood longing for a time when he'll be sober enough to reminisce about his addiction (ephedra = amphetamine, natch) and Sinatra in the role of the drug-personified siren calling him back to her clutches. --Rob Mitchum

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48. David Bowie: "Space Oddity"
(David Bowie)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#15), UK (#5)
Available on Space Oddity

Bowie's first bona fide hit, "Space Oddity" was rush-released to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing. The lyrics, with their strong ties to 2001: A Space Odyssey, tell the sad and paranoid story of poor Major Tom, lost in the void of space. They've alternately been interpreted to be about drug abuse, and the psychedelic folk backdrop certainly supports the position that Tom's experiencing the bad trip to end all bad trips. But while the themes foreshadow the symbolic sci-fi narratives in Bowie's first true taste of super-stardom-- the Ziggy Stardust era-- the song stands on its own, showcasing Bowie's gifts for building atmosphere through arrangements and thematic elements. --Cory D. Byrom

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47. The Beatles: "Eleanor Rigby"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#11), UK (#1)
Available on Revolver

Big ups to George Martin, who wrote the score for the eight-piece string section (four violins, two cellos, and two violas) floating behind Paul McCartney's libretto (with assistance from John Lennon and George Harrison on the harmonizing and background vocals). The meditation on loneliness is just over two minutes long, but the characters are fleshed out so strongly that each individual feels packed with a novel's worth of details. When the stars come together-- "Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name/ Nobody came/ Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave/ No one was saved"-- think back to Rigby cleaning up the post-wedding rice. She and McKenzie partake in these solitary rituals constantly-- never finding a conscious overlap. Seems bizarre that it was released as a single with "Yellow Submarine": Let's paint the Revolver black. --Brandon Stosuy

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46. The Creation: "Making Time"
(D. Phillips/Kenny Pickett)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on We Are Paintermen

That riff's an instant mod flashpoint on par with "I Can't Explain" or "You Really Got Me", but only in the parallel universe ruled by Max Fischer did this song achieve the same legendary status. What differentiates "Making Time" from its peers is that it trades in teen angst for ennui: Kenny Pickett sings, "Why do we have to carry on/ Always singing the same old song," so after the second chorus guitarist Eddie Phillips obliges him and changes the tune, slashing a violin bow across his fret board-- years before Jimmy Page stole the shtick-- and inverting the song's riff into something far nastier. They may have been called the Creation, but they excelled at the art of destruction. --Stuart Berman

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45. Dusty Springfield: "Son of a Preacher Man"
(John Hurley/Ronnie Wilkins)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#10), UK (#9)
Available on Dusty in Memphis

Aretha Franklin famously rejected this song, only deciding to record it once she heard Springfield's version. Lyrically, it's clichéd, trite even. Good girl and equally good boy meet, sneak off, give in to each other: It's a Danielle Steele novel waiting to happen. But Springfield's quavering tenor is clear and warm enough to turn an underwritten character into an archetype, and it dissolves into the glistening guitars and hard-rolling horn riffs just perfectly. --Tom Breihan

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44. The Supremes: "Where Did Our Love Go"
(Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Eddie Holland)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

This No. 1-- the Supremes' first-- marked the beginning of an astonishing 1960s chart reign that included 12 pop toppers. Whereas many of their sister groups barreled with boldness, this trio veered away, mastering the seductive coo led by whispery glass goddess Diana Ross. As claptrap percussion gallops away, Ross sidles up to the typical teen heartbreak sentiments and instantly matures them with breathless pathos and sensuality. Punctuated by 15 seconds of blustery sax that hints at a full recovery, "Where Did Our Love Go" is a come down that comes on strong. --Ryan Dombal

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43. Vince Guaraldi Trio: "Linus & Lucy"
(Vince Guaraldi)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on A Charlie Brown Christmas

Perhaps inseparable from images of pathetic little Christmas trees and ice-skating puppy dogs, "Linus and Lucy" is, for many kids, still the first "jazz" they ever hear. (It was certainly the only "jazz" record in my household; my mom held jazz in disregard as weird dialectic beatnik music without a beat.) That 12-note main theme (with Guaraldi's left hand answering with five low notes) is possibly the most memorable melody on this list. Guaraldi's crates run deeper than his Peanuts work, obviously, but there are certainly worse things to leave as your legacy. --Jess Harvell

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42. The Band: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
(Robbie Robertson)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Band

Nothing like a group that's 80% Canadian singing about The War of Northern Aggression. Fortunately, the other 20% is Levon Helm, whose dramatic performance here turns a period piece that could have been a "Schoolhouse Rock" episode into a mournful piece of folk-rock. Helm's vocals alone are perfectly evocative of the song's character, but subtler and more crucial is his simultaneous drumming, skipping like a heartbeat whenever he gets to the really sad parts. With the rest of the Band bobbing and weaving within that perfect John Simon production, they get closer than ever to achieving their goal of escaping to a sepia-toned past. --Rob Mitchum

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41. Leonard Cohen: "Suzanne"
(Leonard Cohen)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Songs of Leonard Cohen

Cohen wrote this perfect ballad about a night with Suzanne Verdal, who was married at the time to the Montreal sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. It was initially a poem, "Suzanne Takes You Down", collected in Parasites of Heaven, and the drenched dreamscape language situates the listener via all senses: "And she shows you where to look/ Among the garbage and the flowers/ There are heroes in the seaweed/ There are children in the morning." Suzanne, holding a mirror, supposedly really did give Cohen tea and they had some sort of slinky walking tour of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, but, also supposedly, they didn't sleep together-- didn't want to ruin the wavelength. Still, even without the nookie, Cohen recasts the night as worthy of the Bible-- turning the simplest moment into something extraordinary. --Brandon Stosuy

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #90-61

2006-11-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

90. The Angels: "My Boyfriend's Back"
(Bob Feldman/Jerry Goldstein/Richard Gottehrer)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on The Best of the Angels

Not so much about a boyfriend than about one boy coming home to beat the living hell out of another boy, this 1963 single, originally meant for the Shirelles, is one of the most flat-out mean
girl-group tracks ever. College coeds will forever sing it when their high school beaus come to visit, but unless said beau is punching a few suitors in the face on arrival, he's missing the spirit of the whole thing. --Zach Baron

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89. The Stooges: "1969"
(Dave Alexander/Ron Asheton/Scott Asheton/Iggy Pop)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Stooges

The first thing you hear is the groove: tribal drums falling down stairs, guitar and bass flaring into an eternal Link Wray jungle-stomp, before the guitar flares up into a gooey, miasmic haze. If "1969" was an instrumental, it'd be a psychedelic-funk classic. But of course all anyone talks about is Iggy Pop's bored, detached sneer, the way he dismisses what looks in retrospect like a season of upheaval as "another year with nothing to do." When you've got a groove like that behind you, anything you say starts to take on a blasphemous weight. --Tom Breihan

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88. The Kinks: "You Really Got Me"
(Ray Davies)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#7), UK (#1)
Available on The Kinks' Greatest Hits

Van Halen's equally popular 1977 cover added an orgasmic breakdown chorus of "oohs" and "aahs," but that was just DLR being redundant. Because the original's caustic riff says it all: these guys are packing the biggest set of blue balls known to man. But what makes "You Really Got Me" so fearsome and ferocious after 41 years isn't its everlasting theme of unrequited teenage lust. It's that within Ray Davies' sneering, leering delivery, we hear the threat of violence that will result if he doesn't get what he wants. --Stuart Berman

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87. The Miracles: "The Tracks of My Tears"
(Warren "Pete" Moore/Smokey Robinson/Marvin Tarplin)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#16), UK (N/A)
Available on Tears of a Clown

The hit factory at Motown built songs to last and this Miracles tune is one of its most enduring. "The Tracks of My Tears" is so meticulously constructed that it rolls over the competition. And it's so deceptively simple that its genius actually isn't easy to trace. But from the moment the drums drop over the gentle, twanging guitar intro to Smokey Robinson's vocal improvisations over blasting horns as it fades out, every piece fits together perfectly. --John Motley

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86. The Left Banke: "Walk Away Renee"
(Michael Brown/Bob Calilli/Tony Sansone)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#5), UK (N/A)
Available on There's Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966-69

Double-edged sword: If the pseudo-classical pop-rock band the Left Banke's keyboardist, Michael Brown, hadn't been obsessed with guitarist Tom Finn's girlfriend, the band might've lasted longer, but never would've written the fey weeper about secret longing and unrequited love upon which the Left Banke made their name. The saturated strings and mincing harpsichord are moving in and of themselves, but Steve Martin's aching rendition of Brown's teary-eyed proto-emo lyrics are more essential to the song's longevity-- most everyone can identify with the gloomy romance of rain on empty sidewalks, and pining away for your buddy's girl never goes out of style. --Brian Howe

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85. Roy Orbison: "Crying"
(Joe Melson/Roy Orbison)
1962
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#25)
Available on For the Lonely: 18 Greatest Hits

Roy Orbison never shied from rockabilly swagger, but it was his ballads of unrequited love that made him a legend. In this pocket-sized soap opera, Orbison discovers he's far from over an ex when the touch of her hand sends him over the edge, wringing his eyes out in agony. He's not just "crying," either. He's "cry-i-i-ing" in an angelic falsetto-- with a cooing chorus of voices backing up his sob story. You'd never guess melodrama could be so wrenching until Orbison moves a couple octaves deeper for his show-stopping finale. --John Motley

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84. The Rolling Stones: "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Let It Bleed

Color me raised by a boomer, but this song contains one of the most important pieces of information to come out of the 1960s: Despite all the shit you go through to get what and who you want, and despite any good you might have accidentally done on the side, sometimes you just don't have it. This was a surprising thing to hear from the Stones, but it could have been a Zen koan-- "Try, and do not try. Nothing is achieved." And let's be real: This band never sounded better than in 1969-71. Listen to the girls singing backup. Really, anytime you have the Stones using maracas and bongos, something good is going to happen.* --Dominique Leone

* void after 1975

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83. Neil Young & Crazy Horse: "Down by the River"
(Neil Young)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Written in the throes of an illness, "Down by the River" grew into an epic fever-nightmare tortured enough to state more clearly than any other song why Young was so out of step with his idealistic peers. The silly hippie dreams of redemption-- "she could take me over the rainbow"-- are immediately quashed by murder imagery, sung in pained, off-key Crazy Horse harmonies. Then the rest of the song is a blank two-chord page for Neil to scrawl his jagged guitar tone all over, two marathon solos played with zero technical flash and every note taking another awful stab into that failed hope's body. --Rob Mitchum

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82. Elvis Presley: "Suspicious Minds"
(Mark James)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#2)
Available on From Elvis in Memphis

Perhaps controversially, I find late-period Vegas showman Elvis more thrilling than Elvis in his historic Sun Records days; it's an image that better lives up to the massive mythology he inspired. Fortunately, "Suspicious Minds" offers the best of both worlds: It's gritty and funky enough to recall those Memphis days, but laden with enough garish audio glitter-- the backup singers, the false ending, the swooping strings-- to befit a legend. --Rob Mitchum

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81. Sam & Dave: "Hold On, I'm Comin'"
(Isaac Hayes/David Porter)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#21), UK (N/A)
Available on The Very Best of Sam & Dave

Look, it's not brain surgery. You come up with an absolutely undeniable monster of a six-note horn-riff. You put it over a wound-tight funk vamp that breathes and lunges and builds to a fiery climax. You find a couple of guys to bray and scream and plead and rage over it with a sort of churchy zeal. That's it. You are now Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter, and you've written maybe the greatest southern soul song of all time. You'll start getting burger-commercial royalties in about 30 years. --Tom Breihan

80. Bob Dylan: "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
(Bob Dylan)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#39), UK (#9)
Available on Bringing It All Back Home

This flurry feels like a how-to farmer's almanac for the 1960s counterculture-- a speed-freak call from the streets and the Invisible Man's basement, offering tricks, warnings, puns, paranoia, LSD concoctions, protest, and fire-hose toting cops. It's famous for the cue-card toting video from Don't Look Back (complete with Allan Ginsberg cameo). I'd venture to say Dylan was ultimately the more interesting poet and this spazzed Beat stuffing breeds the blues with Jack Kerouac and Pete Seeger. Even the seemingly tossed-off notions-- writing in Braille or watching parking meters-- bloom into great thought lines. Everyone's trying to blend in one way or another-- the plain clothes cops, the hippies not wearing sandals. --Brandon Stosuy

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79. Gal Costa: "Baby"
(Caetano Veloso)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Gal Costa: Não Identificado

Knowing no Portuguese, I imagine Costa's singing not to a lover but to an actual baby-- a six-monther, cradled in her lap and listening to a voice that's loving and cool. And while she and the slow bossa nova are entrancing, the fantastic strings are the wildcard: dipping and flittering, they collide mid-air like two matched flocks of tropical birds. If it's sexy, it's laughing during the act, and the baby in the crib nearby doesn't mind. --Chris Dahlen

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78. Sly & The Family Stone: "I Want to Take You Higher"
(Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#60), UK (N/A)
Available on Stand!

Sly Stone's ode to letting music take hold is not about marching on Washington. And it's not about spitting in The Man's face. But it's definitely about freedom at any cost. The baton-pass of Rose, Freddie, and Sly Stone and the basso profundo of Larry Graham elevate what is in some ways Sly's most lyrically toothless number into a rapturous call-and-response jam that rocked thousands at Woodstock (or so Mom told us), and even more than that at supermarkets near you every day. But Sly knew what he was doing, slotting the amorphous and joyful "Higher" as the B-side to the more righteous "Stand!" It predicted everything about the next few years from Sly: joy and pain, fun and fire, truth and fucking, darkness and drugs. The perfect antithesis in a career marked by duality. --Sean Fennessey

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77. The Velvet Underground: "Heroin"
(Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

Another of Lou Reed's inner monologues detailing the poetry of negation, this depicts the solitary sacredness of a high, the ritual of shooting up/zoning: "I have made the big decision/ I'm gonna try to nullify my life." I could retitle it "I'll Be Your Shattered Mirror"-- the protagonist feels like a fucked-up everyman, despite the first person. Sonically, it builds like it could arc forever: Drink coffee, press play, feel the noisy viola inject a frenzy. All the sounds are intensely perfect, but Moe Tucker's drums are the manic pulse: If she stops, the high's kaput. --Brandon Stosuy

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76. BBC Radiophonic Workshop: "Doctor Who (Original Theme)"
(Ron Grainer)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album

Where the U.S.'s "Star Trek" sent a sleek vessel into "the final frontier," Britain's "Dr. Who" began with a cranky old alien hurtling around in a phone booth-- and the theme song couldn't be a better fit. While Ron Grainer's swooping melody and throbbing beat have seen slicker arrangements over the decades, this first version is an incredible piece of primitive electronic music. Delia Derbyshire constructed it in 1963 by manipulating sounds from test tone generators and mixing them together almost note by note, yet the cobbled-together, almost mismatched timbres come together in a lumpy, throbbing-- and definitely futuristic-- whole. --Chris Dahlen

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75. Simon & Garfunkel: "The Boxer"
(Paul Simon)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#7), UK (#6)
Available on Bridge Over Troubled Water

Two reasons this is the best of many good S&G songs. First, Paul Simon never wrote a better melody. It bends and turns-- and yes, drifts-- like it's going to lose its way until he tugs it back in for a chorus that every kid in the 1970s memorized before grade school. And then the lyrics, from a guy given to saying too much, are terrifically restrained and open-ended, with only the barest hints of the story fleshed out. It's an impressionistic, painterly approach not far from where Bob Dylan would be a few years later on Blood on the Tracks. --Mark Richardson

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74. James Brown & the Famous Flames: "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"
(James Brown)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (#25)
Available on JB40: 40th Anniversary Collection

Almost everyone with even a passing interest in JB knows the story of how, while stopping off on tour to record a new single, the raggedy, exhausted band inched as if waist-deep in swamp water through a slower, more grinding version of "Papa's" than the one everyone knows. Someone got the bright idea to get nice with the razor blades and the knob marked "speed everything up," and funk got one step closer to becoming its own genre. Like a lot of music on this list, "Papa's" can seem overfamiliar, but Brown's shift from one of the best ballad singers and soulmen of the early 1960s to the Godfather is still one of the most remarkable transformations in pop history, and this is one of its key moments. --Jess Harvell

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73. Bob Dylan: "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
(Bob Dylan)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

With the millions of words written on the political and cultural significance of Bob Dylan's career, it's easy to forget that dude could write a pretty damn fierce breakup song, when he wanted to. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" may be the most venomous of Dylan's "so long, honeybabe" tracks, in part due to the laid-back, icy delivery of its original version. When he gets to the cruel punch line of "you just kinda wasted my...precious time," it's shrugged off like a business transaction, a relationship diss track he can hardly be bothered to sing. --Rob Mitchum

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72. Van Morrison: "Sweet Thing"
(Van Morrison)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Astral Weeks

Surely, scores of grass-kissing, mass Romantics have tried to hole away with a couple of their jazzbo buds for a couple deep nights in search of the next Astral Weeks. Such is the seduction of the quick muse. Of course, it's going to sound like shit because, however hard your scatman broheim tries to grimace and spasm like he's feeling the force, he's not channeling his past with folky pathos set to stun-- he's not Van Morrison. "Sweet Thing" is that one thing; sprightly bows sloping down streets, flutes searching through the mist, and elated bass leading to a fountain of youth. "It feels right, but I can't say for sure what it means," Lester Bangs said of it. Of course he can't. --Ryan Dombal

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71. Jimi Hendrix: "Manic Depression"
(Jimi Hendrix)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Are You Experienced?

A showcase for Hendrix's wholly original guitar techniques, "Manic Depression" is dizzying with its odd time signature and winding, cyclical melody. And while Hendrix will always be the focal point of his songs, the Experience shouldn't be entirely written off. Drummer Mitch Mitchell is a beast here, pounding every drum in the kit, often leaving bassist Noel Redding to keep things grounded. Lyrically, the song is typical Hendrix-- women, drugs, music, and just getting along, man. But that's neither here nor there: When you're watching the World Series, what the announcers are saying is beside the point. --Cory D. Byrom

70. Patsy Cline: "Crazy"

(Willie Nelson)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#9), UK (#14)
Available on 12 Greatest Hits

With top 10 performances on both the country and pop charts, "Crazy" was the first indication that Patsy Cline's appeal is pretty damn universal. On this Willie Nelson-penned heartbreaker, the music-- all loping bass and twinkling piano runs-- plays it cool, but Cline's voice is so cuttingly clear and emotive it's like she's right there in the room with you. As she sings, "I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted/ And then some day, you'd leave me for somebody new," there's palpable sorrow and self-loathing in her delivery that makes misery sound exquisite. --John Motley

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69. Dick Dale & the Del-Tones: "Misirlou"
(Milton Leeds/Nicholas Roubanis/Chaim Tauber/Fred Wise)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on King of the Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale

According to headshop t-shirts, Charlie don't surf, but if he did, this is what would've been blasting out of his Victrola. Dick Dale made surf music for bikers: "Misirlou" isn't an occasion to catch a wave, it's an invitation to a knife fight, and that bee-swarm guitar line takes on all comers--- a cha-cha rhythm, a trumpet chorus, even a piano solo-- and slays them all. "Misirlou" wasn't just punk rock before punk existed-- it was punk rock even before rock'n'roll became boring enough to make punk necessary. --Stuart Berman

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68. The Shirelles: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"
(Gerry Goffin/Carole King)
1960
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#4)
Available on 25 All-Time Greatest Hits

Carole King was a better songwriter than singer/songwriter, though Tapestry is probably about due for a too-ironic revival. On this 1960 release, the Shirelles take the Brill Building doo-wop and enchantment-under-the-sea strings of King's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and sanctify it with modest, youthful wisdom. Other 60s girl-group ballads would be huger, or more dramatic, but the understated pathos of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is singularly combustible. I feel the earth move. --Marc Hogan

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67. Neil Young & Crazy Horse: "Cinnamon Girl"
(Neil Young)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

The "riff" in this one is a sludge of lumbering power chords and the solo is a single note; even at the beginning of his Crazy Horse era in 1969, Young's guitar playing had already started to crystallize into something shambolic and occasionally counterintuitive. The sweetness in the burr is all the melodic things happening: the conversations between the vocal harmonies, the guitars and bass, the high and low ends. So what if it's one of Young's most superficial songs-- in so many other ways, its ragged musculature perfectly encapsulates everything he ever did best. --Mark Pytlik

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66. The Paragons: "The Tide Is High"
(John Holt)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on On the Beach With the Paragons

Violin isn't common in reggae, but damn it sounds good on this gem from the rocksteady era. I'm amazed you can fit this much melody in one song-- John Holt's lead vocal swoops and dives, his phrases expanding and contracting like the very tide itself, while the doo-wop interjections of his mates weave around him like chips of glass in a kaleidoscope. Duke Reid's band lays down a classic track stuffed with details-- a muted guitar hook, a ridiculously sublime violin solo, the way the chorus sounds great no matter what order its halves are sung in-- and the result is one of the best Jamaican tracks in pop history. --Joe Tangari

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65. The Mamas & the Papas: "California Dreamin'"
(John Phillips/Michelle Phillips)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#4), UK (#23)
Available on If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears

Apparently it's so dreadful not to live in California, it drove the Mamas & Papas to create one of the most beautifully eerie harmony-pop songs in rock history. Thanks to the limitations of 1966 production, John and Michelle Phillips' reverb-waterlogged four-part arrangement sounds apocalyptically choral, making the experience of actually suffering through four seasons sound positively ghastly. --Rob Mitchum

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64. Del Shannon: "Runaway"
(Max Crook/Del Shannon)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Greatest Hits

So spare it's almost not there at all, Shannon's masterpiece is teen heartbreak in haiku, winnowed down from a 15-minute vamp into a perfect 2:20. A #1 smash in 1961, rock'n'roll through and through, "Runaway" is also a proto-synth pop hit, introducing the electric musitron with a wicked solo. Shannon's hiccuping, froggy falsetto details the most basic of breakup stories, and yet it resonates like cosmic truth. Despite lacking the "yeah, well fuck you too" vitriol of garage groups like the Seeds, hundreds of punks and proto-punks heard, for better or worse, a whole aesthetic universe in "Runaway". It's one of the most coverable songs of all time. --Jess Harvell

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63. Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim: "The Girl From Ipanema"
(Vinicius de Moraes/Norman Gimbel/Antonio Carlos Jobim)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#5), UK (#29)
Available on Getz/Gilberto

While the titular object of desire is described as walking "like a samba," the breezy wisp of a song she saunters through has become synonymous with bossa nova, which emphasizes subtle melodic phrasing over dance-oriented cadence. Bossa nova pioneer Tom Jobim's bittersweet ode to the unattainable allure of youthful beauty turned the still-young Brazilian genre into a household name in the United States. Astrud Gilberto's dreamy lilt and João Gilberto's succint flecks of guitar describe the mesmerizing syncopation of rolling hips, while Getz blows his sax as sweetly as any drug-crazed wife-beater ever did. --Brian Howe

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62. The Rolling Stones: "Street Fighting Man"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#21)
Available on Beggars Banquet

On this searing call-to-arms the Stones set the impending revolution under an appropriately intense summer sun, and heat rolls off of it in waves. Brightly jagged guitars glitter like blacktop mirages; thunderous percussion cracks asphalt; Jagger's voice is a wowing police siren. The music is emphatic; the prognosis is dire but vague; and the upshot, ambivalent: "What can a poor boy do except sing for a rock ‘n' roll band?" Thankfully so: If they cared too much, they wouldn't be the Stones. --Brian Howe

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61. The Supremes: "You Keep Me Hangin' On"
(Lamont Dozier/Eddie Holland/Brian Holland)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#8)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

This Motown masterpiece has been rerecorded as rock, country, and new wave pop. No wonder: Its unceasing beat, bright guitar chirping, horn blasts, and bubbling bass line make it arguably the most rock-influenced hit of the group's career, and suited for any setting. Nobody has sold it better, however, than Diana Ross, who somehow manages to sound heartbroken and sassy at the same time. --Cory D. Byrom

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s# 100-91

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100. The Isley Brothers: "It's Your Thing"
(O'Kelly Isley/Ronald Isley/Rudolph Isley)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#30)
Available on Ultimate Isley Brothers

A molten guitar-and-piano strut bleeds over some serious locked-groove drums and a few perfectly placed horn-stabs, Ronald Isley growls some second-wave feminism, and then the whole vicious lope explodes in a euphoric storm of woozy, joyous psych-funk. The Isleys already had more than a decade of hits behind them in 1969, but they still managed to completely internalize both James Brown's rigorously amorphous stomp and former sideman Jimi Hendrix's tumultuous squall, squishing it all into a triumphant marvel of precision-engineering, every musician involved hitting his notes hard at exactly the right moment. --Tom Breihan

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99. Jimi Hendrix: "All Along the Watchtower"
(Bob Dylan)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#20), UK (#5)
Available on Electric Ladyland

This belongs to the most exclusive class of cover versions: One that not only improves on the original, but makes you forget who wrote it in the first place. The words-- a comment on class disparity as represented by jokers, thieves, and princes-- belong to Bob Dylan, but it's Hendrix's despairing performance that lend them continuing relevance, that aching first line ringing truer with each coffin that comes back from Baghdad. And the guitar solos are arguably the most dramatic that Hendrix ever laid down, sounding less like displays of technical virtuosity than pleas for sanity in a world gone to hell. --Stuart Berman

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98. The Zombies: "Care of Cell 44"
(Rod Argent)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Odessey and Oracle

Fact: "Care of Cell 44", which opens the Zombies' psych-pop masterpiece Odessey and Oracle, is the sunniest song ever written about the impending release of a prison inmate. At the end of the first ineffably sing-song verse, Colin Blunstone tells his sweetie, "You can tell me about your prison stay" -- and sounds positively tickled. To be fair, describing the song's lush arrangement and ecstatic melodies as "sunny" is a vast understatement. Every time Blunstone belts out, "Feels! So! Good! You're coming home soon!" after the lull of a Beach Boys-style multi-part harmony, it sounds like his heart's burst with joy. --John Motley

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97. The Maytals: "Pressure Drop"
(Frederick Hibbert)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Sweet and Dandy

"Pressure Drop" was covered by the Clash and the Specials, but the definitive version is still the original, performed by the Maytals (later to become Toots and the Maytals after their lead singer, Frederick "Toots" Maytal gained some post-incarceration notoriety). Toots' opening melody alone is almost too sweet and desperate to bear-- always faster than you remember it, far stronger than you thought possible. He less sings than rips through the rest of it. It's a revenge song-- "when it drops, oh you gonna feel it, know that you were doing wrong"-- but when Toots cries, "It is you," it sounds like love. --Zach Baron

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96. The Shangri-Las: "Give Him a Great Big Kiss"
(George Morton)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#18), UK (N/A)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama

"When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love-- l-u-v!" Sadly bereft of the ambient effects that feature so distinctively on Shangri-La's singles, "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" nevertheless features one of the foursome's most striking spoken-word sections. One girl asks her friend how her man dances; she replies: "Close...very, very close." The fear and excitement in those four words could make anybody want to kiss him-- and enough handclap ra-ra in the chorus (plus a kiss sound-effect!) to make everybody else jealous. --Zach Baron

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95. Sam Cooke: "Cupid"
(Sam Cooke)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#17), UK (#7)
Available on The Man and His Music

It's not the dumbest lyrical conceit ever, but it's up there: Sam Cooke is worried that the girl he loves doesn't know he exists, so he asks the Roman god of erotic love to smooth things out for him. But in the hands of Sam Cooke, it sounds as natural as breathing. The gently rippling drums, the soft and plaintive trumpet, and the frosty hum of the strings mesh together into a luxuriant bed for Cooke's gorgeously airy falsetto. Cooke had the preternatural ability to turn any cliché into gospel truth, and that searching, wounded coo just melts over everything. --Tom Breihan

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94. Simon & Garfunkel: "Mrs. Robinson"
(Paul Simon)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#4)
Available on Bookends

The disparity between "Mrs. Robinson"'s jaunty music and elegiac lyrics might stem from the circumstances of its creation-- asked for music for The Graduate, Paul Simon dusted off an unfinished instrumental, dropped in the jailbait-seducing lead's name, and built a requiem for America's lost idealism around it. Slinky acoustic rhythm guitars, bluesy licks, and pattering congas give out to an infectious 4/4 stomp slicked with the folkies' seamless harmonies. An odd but true-ringing amalgamation of religious piety, stern pedantry, and suburban circumspection fills out the twilit corners of this shrine to our nation's mythological age of innocence. --Brian Howe

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93. Can: "Yoo Doo Right"
(Holger Czukay/Michael Karoli/Jaki Liebezeit/Malcom Mooney/Irmin Schmidt)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Monster Movie

Can were digging out beats from the mud with the muscle of Community and Industry behind their electro-acoustics and MANIA ROCK POWER. Forget "krautrock"-- this was actual, in-the-resonance acid-truth music; stuff that might send your buttoned-downs into the next room, but made much easier any ideas you wanted to entertain regarding quantum mechanics. Liebezeit is of course bigger than Jesus. Tape loops are the self-contained shit. "Yoo Doo Right" is the kind of thing that should keep people at shows way too late, filling the street with freak drug youths night after night. And Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. --Dominique Leone

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92. Nick Drake: "River Man"
(Nick Drake)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Five Leaves Left

Two albums before his solemn swan song Pink Moon, Nick Drake was already meditating on some oppressively heavy topics. With its fixation on the relentless passing of time, "River Man" is the loveliest and most delicate of those from his debut, Five Leaves Left. Over plaintive strums, Drake's mournful voice paints images of fallen leaves, passing seasons, and the flowing river. What Drake does with his voice and an acoustic guitar is haunting enough, but it's Harry Robinson's string arrangement that makes it absolutely chilling. Singing the "Prufrock"-inspired refrain of "How they come and go," Drake's voice is swallowed up by the strings, which swell like a rising tide. --John Motley

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91. The Who: "Substitute"
(Pete Townshend)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#5, #7 for 1976 reissue)
Available on Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

While rumors have long been snuffed that "Substitute" stems from Pete Townshend's Rolling Stones-fueled inferiority complex, this self-righteous power-pop lament never took America by storm like similar rockers "Satisfaction" or "Day Tripper", and it's difficult to understand why. Maybe we weren't ready for the cunning lyrics, Keith Moon's whopping fills, or, my lord, John Entwhistle's anachronistic, shredding bassline. Even more salient with today's listeners, Roger Daltrey turns the sunny 60s frontman persona on its head, howling about superficiality, duplicity, and social class. Ultimately the song taps just the right amount of angst, hitting that sweet spot between libertine classic rock and the austere, self-important grunge movement it no doubt helped inspire. --Adam Moerder

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s# 110-101

2006-08-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

110. The Four Tops: "It's the Same Old Song"
(Lamont Dozier/Eddie Holland/Brian Holland)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#5), UK (#34)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

Oh, that groove-- it's so irresistible an entire orchestra had to get involved. Levi Stubbs pumps anguish into the tortured lyric about a guy who can't escape the song he and his girl once shared. Once loved, now it's the pain in his heart going out on the airwaves. --Joe Tangari

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109. The Byrds: "Eight Miles High"
(Gene Clark/David Crosby/Roger McGuinn)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#14), UK (#24)
Available on Fifth Dimension

Calling this psychedelia's greatest pop moment will probably ignite a shitstorm from the peanut gallery, but what the hell, I'll say it anyway. Normal adjectives like "serpentine" do violence to the guitar playing on "Eight Miles High"; 12 strings manage to snare John Coltrane modal chaos, Indian ragas, and chiming bucolic folk. Not bettered by the (very fine) Hüsker Dü cover, even for those like me who prefer their freakouts to sound like heavy weather. --Jess Harvell

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108. Harry Nilsson: "One"
(Harry Nilsson)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Aerial Ballet

It opens with a single note over and over and we know the song immediately, no matter who's performing it. I grew up on Three Dog Night's r&b bombast so returning to Harry's original I forget how wispy and ethereal this tune could be. Definitely the loneliest version out there. --Mark Richardson

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107. Bob Dylan: "Visions of Johanna"
(Bob Dylan)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Blonde on Blonde

A song that never really ends, about a girl he's never really gonna find, in a place that he'll never really leave. Joins fellow Dylan track "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" as one of the most immaculate songs about being eternally, existentially, stuck in the same place. "He's sure got a lot of gall, being so useless and all..." --Zach Baron

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106. Desmond Dekker & the Aces: "007 (Shanty Town)"
(Desmond Dekker)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#14)
Available on Rockin' Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker

The King of Ska brought this loping anthem, about rudeboys that "bomb up de town," to hordes of tenderfoots. But with a voice as compact and emotive as his, Dekker was capable of enrapturing even the biggest xenophobe. The only reason people can get away with loving ska is still Dekker. --Sean Fennessey

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105. Simon & Garfunkel: "America"
(Paul Simon)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#97), UK (#25)
Available on Bookends

A short, wistful trip, Bookends' soft-focus acoustic highlight "America" wasn't actually a single until it appeared on 1972's Greatest Hits. Whenever. Dewily harmonious Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel do the she's-leaving-home myth maybe half as good as Nabokov, but it's priceless for the gabardine spy alone. --Marc Hogan

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104. King Crimson: "21st Century Schizoid Man"
(Robert Fripp/Michael Giles/Greg Lake/Ian McDonald/Peter Sinfield)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on In the Court of the Crimson King

King Crimson announced itself to the world with this seven-minute hellstorm of gonzo guitar, shifting meters, and nasty sax. Greg Lake sounds like he's being eaten by robots, and there's hardly anything more fantastically filthy than Robert Fripp and Ian McDonald's opening guitar/sax riff. --Joe Tangari

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103. Merle Haggard: "Mama Tried"
(Merle Haggard)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Down Every Road

Why David Allan Coe felt the need to pen the perfect country song (his attempt was the 1975 hit "You Never Even Called Me by My Name") is baffling, as Haggard had done it seven years previous. It's all here: trains, prison, mama, and the outlaw thread that ran through the country movement for most of the 70s. --Cory D. Byrom

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102. Sly & the Family Stone: "Everyday People"
(Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#36)
Available on Stand!

Family Stone member Larry Graham claims that the first chart-topping single from one of the first racially integrated mainstream bands also includes the first instance of slap bass. Sly smoothed out his incendiary funk into a couple minutes of gently buoyant pop leavened with nursery-rhyme bridges and soaring choruses, bringing his message of tolerance to less adventurous ears. --Brian Howe

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101. Pink Floyd: "See Emily Play"
(Syd Barrett)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#6)
Available on Relics

The highest-charting Syd Barrett-era Floyd single, and the recently deceased star's most accessible song, "See Emily Play" evokes lost childhood as bluntly as anything in his repertoire-- it gets wistful right on the second line-- but the stabs of steel guitar and the sped-up piano solo transcend cliché. --Chris Dahlen

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s# 130-111

2006-08-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

130. John Coltrane: "My Favorite Things"
(Oscar Hammerstein II/Richard Rodgers)
1960
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on My Favorite Things

John Coltrane never stopped finding new things in this song. By Live in Japan it was going on for an hour with blistering solos that could peel paint. But this first take is delicate and lyrical, soft but never frail. And the key change after the chorus is among the most joyous sounds in recorded music. --Mark Richardson

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129. Harry Nilsson: "Everybody's Talkin'"
(Fred Neil)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#6), UK (#23)
Available on Aerial Ballet

It's still shocking to me that Nilsson didn't write the harrowing "Everybody's Talkin'". A notoriously conflicted guy, Nilsson recorded the Fred Neil song for his 1968 album Aerial Ballet, but it didn't blow until it became the theme for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. It remains one of the truest recordings of emotional distress ever recorded. Too bad Forrest Gump screwed it up for everyone. --Sean Fennessey

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128. Buffalo Springfield: "For What It's Worth"
(Stephen Stills)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#7), UK (N/A)
Available on Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield

Originally a Stephen Stills track about a club closing in West Hollywood, "For What It's Worth"-- like Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"-- ended up more symbol than song. Neil Young's insistent, single-note echoes are the sound of a conflict begun; the sides are forgotten-- only the flavor of dissatisfaction and dissent remains. --Zach Baron

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127. George Jones: "She Thinks I Still Care"
(Steve Duffy/Dickey Lee Lipscomb)
1962
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Best of George Jones (1955-1967)

Elvis Presley and the Flying Burrito Brothers have recorded this masterpiece of self-delusion, but it forever belongs to Jones. Not only is he able to wring out every drop of sad-sack pathos but he's able to do so with enough natural charisma for listeners to fully sympathize with the song's vaguely creepy proto-stalker narrator. --Matthew Murphy

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126. Led Zeppelin: "What Is and What Should Never Be"
(Jimmy Page/Robert Plant)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Led Zeppelin II

Skip the circular medieval hippie-isms, the coital dynamics, the pinging flytrap slide solo, and Plant's underwater sound effects for a moment. Skip to the 3:33 mark, right when it seems about to disembark. At that exact point, just try not to flail off Page's staccato sucker punch. --Ryan Dombal

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125. Miles Davis: "Shhh/Peaceful"
(Miles Davis)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on In a Silent Way

From Davis' cosmic In a Silent Way, "Shhh/Peaceful" forecast a time when only the blur of motion and pulsating waves of rhythm could describe what was happening outside one's window (or through one's monitor). Musically, it's colored with blue ambience and the electric ghosts of drone. But is it jazz? Nobody cares. --Dominique Leone

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124. The Velvet Underground: "Venus in Furs"
(Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

John Cale's screechy viola buzzes like a beeline through trebled guitars and Maureen Tucker's slow-plod drums. Lou Reed's lyrics reference Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's 19th century novel, Venus in Furs, in language and imagery that matches (and then laps) that book's late-romanticism: "Whiplash girl child in the dark/ Clubs and bells, your servant, don't forsake him/ Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart." The sound is lusciously decadent. The march itself feels so perversely languorous-- a parade for fur-wearing women and those who desire to submit to them. --Brandon Stosuy

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123. The Supremes: "I Hear a Symphony"
(Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Eddie Holland)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#39)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

You can't blame Holland-Dozier-Holland if this sounds like "Where Did Our Love Go?"-- after a rare lackluster performance by a Supremes' single, Berry Gordy released an inter-Motown memo telling his staff that this group will release nothing less than #1 singles. In response, one of the greatest songwriting teams in American history wrote a soaring anthem that encapsulated the greatness of their entire body of work within one perfect three-minute single that, naturally, reached the top of the charts. --David Raposa

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122. Patsy Cline: "I Fall to Pieces"
(Hank Cochran/Harlan Howard)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#12), UK (N/A)
Available on 12 Greatest Hits

Patsy Cline had a "one of the guys" reputation-- she supposedly could drink, cuss, and fight with the best of them. You'd never know it from this weepy pop-country gem. Of strong personal significance for Cline, "I Fall to Pieces" allowed her to break through on her own terms; the walking bass, dry snare, and vocal harmonies were the perfect backdrop for a booming voice that was best heard on heartbreakers. --Cory D. Byrom

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121. Glen Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"
(Jimmy Webb)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#3), UK (#7)
Available on The Glen Campbell Collection (1962-1989): Gentle on My Mind

Campbell's 1968 hit, penned by Jimmy Webb, helped define his career with its slick production and strong melody. The underlying sadness in his smooth vocals was pure country, but the sweeping strings and sparkling production were a fresh pop addition. --Cory D. Byrom

120. ? and the Mysterians: "96 Tears"
(Rudy Martinez)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on Cameo Parkway 1957-1967

On the smartest/dumbest two-note Farfisa riff in history, ? and the Mysterians rode into history. "96 Tears" went to No. 1 at a time when a couple of shifty looking guys from Saginaw, Mich., with a shaky grasp on rock'n'roll could do such a thing. I read somewhere, possibly apocryphally, that once at a Suicide show before they performed "96 Tears", Alan Vega screamed "your national anthem, whether you know it or not!" Works for me. --Jess Harvell

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119. Silver Apples: "Oscillations"
(Simeon/Warren Stanley)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Silver Apples

Where Morton Subotnick's "Silver Apples of the Moon" congealed, the Silver Apples' shiny electro-acoustic baubles actively grooved. Their penchant for quivering electronics-- and the self-conscious content of their lyrics, paying tribute to same-- laid the groundwork for Krautrock (not to mention American Tapes) with a dazzling, not-quite-three minutes of tribal drumming, gamelan timbres, folky modal harmonies, train whistles-- and of course those pesky waveforms, oscillating wildly. --Philip Sherburne

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118. The Bobby Fuller Four: "I Fought the Law"
(Sonny Curtis)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#9), UK (#33)
Available on The Best of the Bobby Fuller Four

Bobby Fuller sits in the prison yard with not a hair or a note out of place, and his guitar shines like the sparks off the bullet that ended his life as a free man. As cool a killer as any in rockabilly, he makes the sing-along confession of the title iconic in a song that's fast, hostile and, doomed-- just as Fuller's own legend was sealed when he was found dead at the height of his stardom, in a suicide that's still believed to be murder. --Chris Dahlen

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117. Ben E. King: "Stand By Me"
(Ben E. King/Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#4), UK (#27)
Available on The Very Best of Ben E. King

I always thought this song was longer. King's telling us that he can endure the end of the world if he has the love of a good woman. But with that steadfast bassline behind him, he doesn't sound like he needs help-- just that he's looking for a more perfect union, the kind of love that makes us more than just men and women. You hear what that sounds like in the strings, which are almost too beautiful-- and stop right before they get mushy. --Chris Dahlen

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116. Jefferson Airplane: "White Rabbit"
(Grace Slick)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (N/A)
Available on Surrealistic Pillow

Don't pay attention to the lyrics. Just don't. Pay attention to the snaking guitar line, the bolero beat, and Grace Slick's tremulous voice. And even if you hate hippies as much as I do, pay attention to the closing crescendo. It slays everything in its path: hippies, punks, yuppies, metalheads, even Jefferson Starship. --Amy Phillips

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115. The Kinks: "Victoria"
(Ray Davies)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#33)
Available on Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

With "Victoria", Ray Davies turns the social critique that always lurks in his songcraft to take on, well, the history of the British Empire-- in under four minutes. And as the song moves from wistfully nostalgic verses to soaring, patriotic choruses, he pretty much nails it. God save the Kinks. --John Motley

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114. Nancy Sinatra: "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"
(Lee Hazlewood)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Boots

The descending bassline that opens the song feels like a playground taunt, and so does everything else: Sinatra's blithe and flirty delivery, the skeletal tambourines, even the glorious, stomping horn riff that bursts into the song in its final 20 seconds. "Boots" is maybe the finest bitchy kiss-off in pop history. Take notes. --Tom Breihan

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113. The Easybeats: "Friday on My Mind"
(Henry Vanda/George Young)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#16), UK (#6)
Available on The Very Best of the Easybeats

Bursting out in fab psychedelic Technicolor, Australia's Easybeats sounded the horn for anyone who's ever pined for the weekend. Angels at the chorus go, "toniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhht," and if only for a few seconds, tease visions of the city and everything that's going to happen there. "Friday on My Mind" is the jam. --Dominique Leone

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112. Steve Reich: "It's Gonna Rain"
(Steve Reich)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Early Works

Steve Reich's most famous tape-loop finds a frothing black-magic Pentecostal minister prepping for street-riot Armageddon. With the assistance of Reich's gap-ridden tape splicing, his voice transforms into a series of beeps, springs, fans, and artillery fire. Occasionally, it approaches something that resembles serrated doo-wop or the Psycho theme. Fluttering pigeons turn into marching boots. Despite all the violence, "It's Gonna Rain" is a testament to man's ability to wrest melody from speech and rhythm from insanity. --Alex Linhardt

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111. Stevie Wonder: "I Was Made to Love Her"
(Henry Cosby/Lula Mae Hardaway/Sylvia Moy/Stevie Wonder)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#5)
Available on I Was Made to Love Her

For much of his career no one could fill the world with silly love songs as superlatively as Stevie Wonder. The sunshine soul of 1967's "I Was Made to Love Her" easily shows up the emptiness of most modern melisma, as the 16-year-old singer's churchy rejoicing lends a happy ending to a choir-and-harmonica Romeo and Juliet tale of parental disapproval and all-conquering hubba-hubba. --Marc Hogan