In 1989, at the age of sixteen and armed with a fresh new driver’s license, a Ford Taurus wagon, and the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, I drove over to the Coventry district of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to buy an album I’d never heard by a band I’d only read about. And I found it, for the then-steep price of $9.99, at the little hole-in-the-wall record store that was next to Grum’s Sub Shoppe. In 1989, before I had any access to a computer (much less the internet, mp3s, Youtube, Wikipedia, or the Hype Machine), finding new music was much more difficult. Those without the requisite music geek older sibling or cousin had to rely on their friends (who listened to the same crappy radio stations you did, watched the same crappy MTV you did, and bought the same crappy albums everyone else did)—either that, or find other bored loners willing to conduct a little empirical research. I am being a bit unfair to my older sister, who introduced me to the Smiths (thanks, Amy!) and Oingo Boingo (I take it back, Amy), but other than some of the slightly more adventurous late-night programming offered by WNCX and WMMS, I was on my own. And so I did what any normal bookwormish loner and future music geek would do: go to the library. I found the Rolling Stone Record Guide in the St. Ignatius High School library, and checked it out so many times that I ended up just stealing it (sorry, St. Ignatius); from the Cleveland Heights Public Library, I found Robert Santelli’s Sixties Rock: A Listener’s Guide (which I did not steal), the mantic ravings of Lester Bangs, and the undiagrammable sentences of Robert Christgau. In other words, I wanted new music, so I did my homework. I think part of the reason so many music geeks my age get so misty about their beloved cult records is that we grew up when it was difficult to find out about the buried-treasure records out there, and even more difficult, not to mention costly, to actually hear them. Now, in the space of about two minutes I can find, download, and listen to albums the mere mention of which would have caused, in 1989, some kind of aural salivation. It took me years to finally get my dirtied fingers on the Kinks’ sublime Face To Face.
The record in question bought on that Autumn day in 1989 was Love’s Forever Changes. As with a small handful of life-changing records, I can still clearly remember the moment I gently nudged the cassette into the tapedeck (for in those days, I was a tape man), heard the cascading guitars of the opening track, and immediately knew that I was going to like Love. Twenty-two years and hundreds of plays later, 1967’s Forever Changes sounds as fresh and wonderful, as dark and deep and cryptic, as endlessly listenable, as it ever did. It was, after all a five-star album, a classic, according to Dave Marsh then, and to me now. And if I hadn’t taken the plunge, by buying an obscure 1967 album by an obscure band just because some music critic said it ruled, then I would have missed out on years and years of deeply rewarding listening pleasure.
Soon I began to notice that a suspiciously large percentage of the records I loved camed from one specific year, 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Are You Experienced, John Wesley Harding, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Something Else By The Kinks, Mr. Fantasy, Disraeli Gears, Magical Mystery Tour. There must have been something in the water that year, which is actually probably true. Once I discovered Nuggets, it was all over: I devoted my spare time to tracking down obscure 60s artists, in search of acid-fried concept albums, fuzzed out guitars, amateur sitar playing, and the unsolicited spiritual advice so common to pop songs of the time. My college roomates quickly grew tired of all five volumes of The Genuine Basement Tapes (and grew irritable when I played Trout Mask Replica or Uncle Meat, which I put on when I wanted some privacy). Since my early years of being a 1967-phile, I have collected (though ‘accumulated’ or ‘piled up’ might be better words) dozens and dozens of records by bands both big and small, simply because I thought they might have some of that 1967 magic. I didn’t even care what genre the record was: if it came out in 1967, it was worth at least a listen. Genre can be important, inasmuch as a record tagged as ‘psychedelic’ is guaranteed at least some sales among cultists; such is the science of collecting now that terms like psych, popsike, freakbeat, garage, and psychsploitation, if improperly used, can get you into a fistfight at the Pasadena City College Flea Market & Record Swap. But the genres and labels are not as important to me as the actual music. And while I Iove the cover art (this nerd has a Forever Changes LP hanging on his wall)—and 1967 is an amazing year for album covers—the best music is not the rarest obscurity, but rather the music you like to sit down and spend some time with.
Time marches on. The young music geek finds more obscure bands in order to brag about having found said bands, even bands that broke up before said geek was born. The internet rolls down the road, bringing convenience and misinformation in equal doses, and soon, like so many beehives, websites are constructed to store information about long-lost bands. MP3s make them digital, and accessible; now almost anyone can get their hands on the rarest of rarities. Bootlegging is, for the most part, a thing of the past (having been replaced by its older brother, Theft). If only due to convenience, the weather forecast is clearer than it’s ever been for the student and devotee of 60s rock.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. We tend to invent things when what we’re looking for doesn’t exist; trawling through the internet, I couldn’t find a decent chronology of the albums released in 1967 that was comprehensive enough for my trainspotterish collector mentality. While there are tons of lists out there (for example, on Wikipedia and Rateyourmusic.com), I was looking for a month-by-month chronology, an overview that took in the nooks and crannies and detours of 1967 music, not just the acknowledged peaks and mountaintops. Not finding it, decided to roll up my sleeves and do it myself. This was foolhardy. I quickly learned that, while the music produced in 2010 alone must number in the millions of hours, even in that more primitive and limited era, there were at the very least several thousand LPs pressed in 1967. Not even accounting for classical music opera, easy listening, spoken word, self-help, and other chaff, there are hundreds of records which would probably count as ‘pop’, but which would send the average rock music fan into a tailspin of despair (Connie Francis, for example, released four albums in 1967).
So, enter the process of weeding out. I envision this site as a place where fans of late 60s rock and pop can find good albums. While the focus will be on rock (by which I mean guitars, bass drums, and hollering, in all of the various permutations), I will also include music from genres which overlap, intersect, collide, and collude with rock, such as folk, blues, jazz, and other experimental weirdness. Some genres probably deserve to be included, but I need to draw the line somewhere; thus country music is off the menu, even though 1967 produced classic work by, among others, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones. Likewise, soul music, as exemplified by the hit machines at Motown, Atlantic and Stax-Volt (all of which had a killer 1967), will not be included here, partly because that era of soul music is already pretty well-documented, and partly because it was much more singles- than album-oriented (my apologies to Aretha’s immortal I Never Loved A Man). There are far, far too many jazz albums to cover, and I'm not any kind of jazz expert; I will include only those records that I think might appeal to fans of 60s rock. For the most part, only LP-length releases will be included, and greatest hits collections (with a few important exceptions) will be excluded.
My personal taste is obviously going to work the rudder, so if I steer past rock toward the sharp rocks of bubblegum pop, commercial cheese, anything with sitars, and psychsploitation records, then it’s because I have big ears, a sweet tooth, and a soft spot for Peter, Paul, & Mary. While I prize the artistic triumphs of 1967, I am also fascinated and amused by the also-rans, the failed projects, the shameless copycat crimes.
So, on this blog you will find my (re)views of albums released in 1967. Following the tradition of my beloved 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, I use the five-star rating system, as I find Professor Christgau’s letter grades too redolent of the classroom, and Pitchfork’s decimal points frankly absurd (how exactly does one differentiate between a 7.7 album and a 7.8??). Grading is subjective. Let me repeat: my rankings are my own; yours will be different, unless you’re me, and I change my mind as often as I feel necessary. But if you like any of the records I’ve mentioned above, we’ll probably avoid fisticuffs. I discuss elsewhere my grading criteria; if you find yourself violently disagreeing with me, so be it. One important point I would like to make clear is that I am not putting definitive, encyclopedia-ready, absolute aesthetic scores on albums, but simply marking them as either more or less enjoyable. Music can be very difficult to describe, and I will do my best to provide informative descriptions rather than senselessly effusive praise or heated irrational tirades. In addition, since this blog’s content is limited to the specific temporal context of 1967, I will make an effort to set albums in the context of the peers, as if we are walking together into a record store in 1967 to browse the new releases.
So consider this blog a sort of musical map of 1967, compiled by a humble cartographer who has spent a lot of time getting lost there. It is my hope that any readers who stop by will have the experience of finding a new album friend, made possible by the boundless freedom of discovery on the internet. And, to quote the album that sent me along down this path, All of God’s children gotta have their freedom.
