Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #2 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 1974!
The Greatest Albums of 1969
I had expected 1969 to be the pinnacle of the “halcyon” 60’s music explosion. It was, after all, the year of Woodstock, the most identifiable icon of that era. Upon closer examination, however, ’69 was something more of a transitional year. It makes sense, too, since Monterrey was the real cultural highpoint of the 60’s and Woodstock was a bit of a mess, stray Santana or Sly & the Family Stone performance aside. In fact, ’69 saw no release from Hendrix, a country album from Dylan, and the universally accepted worst Doors album. It’s tough to call a year quintessential 60’s with that kind of resume.
None of which is to say that it was a bad year for music. I mean, look at that top 5! It’s going to be hard for another year to stack up to that. There were plenty of good-to-great releases and in a pretty wide variety of genres. Psychedelic rock had started going further afield of its initial wave (Grateful Dead’s two contributions, in particular), and so had avant-garde jazz. Soul was in its adolescent stage, a few years behind rock in terms of a focus on albums over singles. You had the beginning of AOR music (Free, Three Dog Night) and nascent prog rock (King Crimson, Genesis) that would go on to dominate the 70’s. Folk music had shifted as well, from the Woody Guthrie-inspired simplicity of prior years to something more dark and complex a la Tim Buckley and Nick Drake. And, of course, you had the explosion of Led Zeppelin on the scene, who most perfectly encapsulated many of the major trends of the 60’s but presented them in a fresh manner.
In such a transitional year, it’s no surprise that a premium has been placed on music that pushed boundaries. There is one boundary-shattering album released in 1969 that is so revered that you would be led to believe that it is objectively great. Of course “objectively great music” is not a thing that exists, and naturally my opinions don’t live in lockstep with the canon. Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band is an album that I’ve tried, and failed, to appreciate. Sure, 99% of the general public has never heard of it before, but for music nerds, not liking this seminal art rock masterpiece is quite the scarlet letter. I struggled with articulating why I find it unpalatable, but honestly, I think the onus is on its fans to articulate why it’s good, not the other way around. All I can come up with for the counter-argument (why I think it’s bad) is “well… just listen to it” which is probably not constructive. I know that’s flippant, but I thought I’d bring it up since the only sin worse than not liking Trout Mask Replica is not knowing about it, and I have to maintain some level of cred throughout this project.
Abbey Road – The Beatles
It’s interesting at the time in which the Beatles were reportedly the most at odds with each other, that they were able to produce their most cohesive and fluid work. You can still tell the George tracks from the John tracks, et cetera, just like you always can with Beatles albums, but somehow they all build together into a piece of work that is both incredibly warm and refreshingly focused. In some ways, it seems a shame that this was the last album the band recorded together (the far inferior Let It Be was recorded prior to Abbey Road, but released afterwards), but ultimately it’s nice to go out producing your best work.
It’s been my experience that the real, die-hard Beatles fans (the ones for whom the existence of other influential music is seemingly a blind spot) prefer John Lennon to Paul McCartney by a fairly wide margin. I’ve heard and read a lot of grief get handed down to Paul for songwriting that is perceived as corny and maudlin, and often times it’s well deserved. But sometimes he turns in a masterpiece, such as “You Never Give Me Your Money”, probably my favorite Beatles track, or at least something agreeably cheeky and fun like “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”. In fact, you could say that McCartney is the star of this album, contributing other stellar tracks like “Carry That Weight” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and producing no duds to speak of. Of course, the other three chip in with their share of great material as well (actually, Ringo only gets his customary lone contribution, but it’s the best of his tunes.) The whole album is constructed in the same way as a great recipe. The ingredients are all really good, but alone they don’t have the impact that they do when combined in the right order and proportions. Ultimately, a lot of credit has to go to the recently deceased George Martin for his masterful production, and probably even just keeping the boys from coming to blows.
This was the first album I heard by the Beatles that really made me sit up and take notice. It became my favorite for weeks, perpetually playing in my room (I was a late bloomer when it came to the band, senior year in college). In my opinion, one of the very finest albums I’ve ever heard. Even if I still don’t care for “Come Together” very much.
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In a Silent Way – Miles Davis
When we describe music that is meaningful to us, it’s common to use language like “It really transports me”. In most cases, that’s simply code for nostalgia. I listened to this album constantly during x time of my life, or this song was playing during memorable event y. Very few albums actually possess truly transportative properties (yes that’s a fake word), meaning you can listen to it for the first time and still feel like you’ve been swept to another place. Tijuana Moods by Charles Mingus is a good example of one that does just that. In a Silent Way, however, is the unique album that transports you to another dimension, or at least another galaxy.
Davis constructed less of a jazz record and more of a soundtrack for an alien world. There are sonic layers constructed to inform and interact with each other, but never quite harmoniously, which is why the music is paradoxically soothing and unnerving at the same time. Imagine a river. On the surface, the water drifts gently towards the river’s mouth, sometimes lazily swirling around or doubling back upstream. This is Miles unmistakable horn, serene and often sparse. Now, just below the surface is a strong current, swiftly ushering water along the river’s channel. Fish, or whatever passes for fish in this world, conduct their business in this layer, feeding, hunting, hiding, swimming along with the current or struggling back against it. This is the tirelessly propulsive percussion and organ that serves as the backbone of In a Silent Way’s pair of tracks. Finally, there is a murky depth. It is impenetrable, but there is unmistakably something there. Something… other. Not necessarily malicious, but ultimately unknowable and alien. This is the rest of the music, discretely triggering anxiousness in the back of your mind while you listen, and acting as a mirror-image foil to the lyrical trumpet that sits in the fore.
I love this album. It is unlike anything else I’ve ever heard. Miles would actually go further down the avant-garde path in subsequent releases, but he never struck the balance between beauty and mystery that he did here. One of several high water marks for jazz, brought to us by the form’s most creative mind.
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Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin
It’s well documented that Led Zeppelin faced album reviews that ranged from apathy to repugnance when they first came out. Consumer opinion far outpaced critical opinion in terms of predicting the band’s success and lasting legacy. Listening to their first self-titled album with fresh ears is pretty much impossible at this point, but I still can’t help but wonder what raised the ire of the rock establishment so much? The biggest issue always seemed to be their appropriation of the blues, which is certainly something they did. However, they at least reinterpreted the music back in a new way, which is far more than can be said of the critically lauded work of the Animals or the early Rolling Stones, who played it pretty straight with the tunes they covered. Was it the appropriation that was offensive, or some perceived lack of reverence? I would suggest the latter, which is a bit silly, since the band was clearly fond of Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson and the others who they borrowed from. They just realized that playing a Robert Johnson song the way Robert Johnson played it, apart from being practically impossible from a technical standpoint, would be pointless and redundant. Should they have credited their sources? Absolutely. But that doesn’t diminish the accomplishment of what they did with the material, and is certainly doesn’t make them talentless imitators.
None of which actually describes how I feel about Led Zeppelin, of course, but I always found the complete reversal of critical opinion, and subsequent canonization of the band, somewhat fascinating. Anyway, nearly 50 years after the fact, the album still holds up. The strongest tracks are the opener and closer. In fact, “Good Times, Bad Times” is a contender for the best first song in a band’s catalogue, ever. Right from the start, four distinct voices come through clearly. Robert Plant, love him or hate him, became the prototypical rock singer. Jimmy Page, I’ve always thought, is rated a little highly as a soloist, but as a merchant of riffs he’s unparalleled. John Paul Jones, like all great rock bass-players not named Claypool or Burton, deserves more credit than he gets for his supple and versatile grooves. John Bonham, far from the most talented rock & roll drummer, is easily the best rock & roll drummer. He’s not as fast as Moon or Mitchell, not as technical as Pert or Palmer, but he brings thunder like he’s Zeus atop Mount Olympus. Most importantly, though, the band doesn’t adhere to conventions. They take from every pile (a little folk music here, liberal use of the blues, sprinkle in some psychedelic rock) and run it all through the blender. What comes out the other end should be familiar, but instead is uniquely their own. Maybe that’s why critics had a hard time adjusting to them in 1969.
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Stand! – Sly & the Family Stone
While I mentioned before that soul music was a step behind its’ peers in terms of building cohesive albums, Stand! was a critical leap in that direction. There is no question that this is a carefully constructed record on a single theme, and not merely a collection of singles (although the songwriting is so strong it did turn out to be mostly singles.) Bursting full of life, this is an album that dances across your eardrums and leaves you more joyful than you were before you heard it. “I Want to Take You Higher”, especially, is a powerhouse of positive energy. It’s like James Brown’s “I Feel Good” after it’s been bitten by a radioactive spider. Sly & the Family Stone is known for the creative interplay between band-members, and that element is utilized to its greatest effect on Stand!, the last album before Sly would lose himself in a heroin daze and stumble off into another, albeit equally fruitful, direction. Freddie Stone’s treble-heavy guitar and voice is countered by Larry Graham’s baritone and bass, while Sly and sister Rose bring their beautifully nuanced mid-ranges to the mix. The group plays around with nonsense doo-wop phrasing (“Sha shala” and “Boom shaka laka laka”) but sounds far from old-fashioned. The Horns, organ, piano and drums (Greg Errico at his best here) round out a sound that is both urgent and sophisticated.
The vocal harmonies echo thematically the racial and political harmony that is the band’s mission statement. Sly’s impassioned “We’ve got to live together!” on “Everyday People” encapsulates the point of the album. It was a common enough concept in the Spring of ’69, but I find that it doesn’t resonate quite as much coming from somber white dudes with acoustic guitars than it does from a multi-racial band with the energy of an exploding sun and the balls to release a track called “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”. If there is a flaw in the album, it’s the extended instrumental vamp, “Sex Machine”. The groove itself is good, and the band is talented enough to keep you engaged throughout, but the near 14-minute run time really derails what has been, to that point, an extremely lean and powerful series of tracks. If that song had been cut in half, and the extra time used to include the three non-album singles released the same year (“Hot Fun in the Summertime”, “Everybody is a Star”, “Thank You (Falletinme be mice elf agin”), Stand! could easily challenge Abbey Road for album of the year.
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Let It Bleed – The Rolling Stones
It’s funny how the Rolling Stones’ best material is so American-sounding. I don’t mean the Muddy Waters or Chuck Berry aping of the early albums (that’s plenty British.) I mean the country-influenced string of roughshod masterworks kicked off by Beggar’s Banquet in 1968 and culminating with 1972’s Exile on Main Street. It’s less about the country-influenced part, and more about the swagger and frayed edges on display. Whatever it is, it represents my favorite period of their work and some of the best music of the 60’s and 70’s.
Let It Bleed kicks off with a contender for the best album opener of all time, favorite of Martin Scorcese and everyone else, “Gimme Shelter”. The track is just pure passion and fire, bringing a level of coiled intensity that would be impossible to sustain. Instead, the band downshifts into a series of laid back, almost ramshackle tunes for the remainder of the first half. “Midnight Rambler” kicks off side two with another tempo shift, this time back up a notch. I’ve already used this word in the review, but swagger is the only one that comes to mind when describing that particular track. “Monkey Man” echoes some of the frantic feeling of the opener, before the whole thing wraps up in the epic and beautiful “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Maybe you can’t always get what you want, but we certainly did across five magical years when it came to the Rolling Stones.
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Kool & the Gang – Kool & the Gang
What I want most out of this project (besides satiating my absurd compulsion to categorize everything into lists) is to be unexpectedly delighted by music that I had never really considered before. Out of my top 10, there are three albums that I didn’t previously own, although I did own a few tracks off of each. Of those three, only Kool & the Gang is what I would consider a revelation. I am floored by how cool this album is. I’ve been a fan of some of their 70’s funk since high school, but never felt particularly compelled to branch out past the best stuff off of their various compilations. On their debut, they successfully combine funk, soul and hints of jazz into a seamless and fluid progression of songs. It’s hard to describe, because the most applicable words tend to have a negative spin: “smooth” and “easy to listen to” have serious elevator music connotations, particularly for the band that brought us “Celebration” and “Cherish” in the 80’s.
A lot of groups were doing a similar thing at the time. Booker T & the MGs released a listenable but not particularly inspired batch of instrumental soul in ’69, and the New Orleans-based Meters debut album from that year made my honorable mentions. Kool & the Gang stands apart, however. It is probably the 2nd best instrumental funk album I’ve ever heard, after Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters. And while I have a hard time couching my recommendation in terms that sound appealing, maybe a track like “Chocolate Buttermilk” does a better job of speaking for itself… what do you imagine it sounds like based on the title? You’re probably right, and you should do yourself the favor of finding out for yourself.
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Love Man – Otis Redding
Otis Redding is a force of nature. He is peerless when it came to conveying emotion with his voice, usually heartache. Every sigh or whine or grunt is a gut punch, and even the breath before he starts in on a verse can feel devastating. Regardless of the material he’s interpreting or the quality of his band, his albums are can’t miss propositions. When he has a strong set of songs, as he does on Love Man, and his band is as good as the Stax house band always is, you end up with a minor masterpiece. You won’t find many of Otis’ biggest hits on here, but I’ve always felt that his songwriting improved towards the end of his painfully abbreviated career. The title track, “I’m a Changed Man” and “Direct Me” are all highlights of said career.
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Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin
It’s not that impressive that Zeppelin were able to produce their sophomore album in such short order… three albums every two years was pretty much the common practice in those days, so you had plenty of folks doubling up (CCR, The Isleys, Tim Buckley, for example, all in ’69.) What is impressive is how much that Led Zeppelin II has its own identity, separate from Led Zeppelin I. This is a looser album, always tied specifically to the summer months for me, and even more dependent on its monstrous riffs than any of their other albums would be. To be fair, it’s also a little thin, with several extended instrumental passages (including “Moby Dick” which is pretty much a riff and a drum solo) and the biggest offender in terms of just slapping together random blues lyrics and calling it “songwriting”. Still, nobody in the history of Rock ‘N Roll has done smoke and mirrors better than Zeppelin, and there is just enough meat on the bone here to keep II in the same general tier as I, III and IV.
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Willie & the Poor Boys – Creedence Clearwater Revival
CCR is an interesting case: I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like them, but yet they rarely receive the type of reverence showered upon their contemporaries. It may come down to the perception that they created great songs, but not necessarily great albums. I find that’s mostly true, but if you grew up thinking Chronicle was the only worthwhile investment into the Creedence catalogue, I’m here to suggest checking out Willie & the Poor Boys. While it does have a few of the big hitters (the laid back and lively “Down on the Corner”, the anti-upper-class-privilege screed “Fortunate Son”, the Leadbelly cover “Midnight Special”), the factors that push the album past, say, Green River which was also released in ’69 are the quality of the deep cuts and how the political theme flows throughout all of the material. “Cotton Fields” (another Leadbelly cover) and “Effigy” in particular, stand with the band’s best work. Fogerty should definitely get more credit for his clear song-writing and tight arrangement, something that stands in sharp relief when compared to some of the rambling, muddy and ultimately nonsensical psychedelic rock that was released in this time frame.
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Blind Faith – Blind Faith
I sometimes wonder what generations younger than me think of Eric Clapton. He was pretty well revered when I was growing up, but even then his post-heroin-addiction soft rock had run slightly counter to his reputation as a guitar god, and that was before Unplugged smoothed out any edge that he might have previously had. So why is he considered one of the greatest guitar slingers of all time? Consider this: Cream’s Disraeli Gears came out in 1967, Blind Faith in 1969, and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek & the Dominoes was in 1970. That’s three very different classics in four years, with three different bands! That would be like a quarterback taking three different teams to the playoffs in rapid succession. It highlights Clapton’s versatility and creativity, as well as his ability to collaborate. Oh, and the guitar playing is pretty good, too.
Blind Faith is the lesser of those three albums, but it is without a doubt rock-solid. Every track, barring one, stands out as being terrific, with the spare and haunting “Can’t Find My Way Home” and the Clapton-penned “Presence of the Lord” as major highlights. The 15-minute “Do What You Like” is the only song that doesn’t hold up, relying on a lot of repetition and noodling that may have sounded great at 4am after the tenth joint of the evening, but falls flat in any other scenario. Besides Clapton, Ginger Baker provides inspired percussion and Steve Winwood delivers charmingly sketchy singing. He constantly reaches just beyond his vocal capabilities, which adds a nice tension to the album. There are a dozen similar rock albums that could have slotted into this spot, but the consistency of these three pros is what bought Blind Faith in at #10.
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Honorable Mentions
Soul/Funk: The Meters – The Meters; Green is Blues – Al Green; It’s Our Thing, The Brothers Isley – The Isley Brothers; Cloud Nine – Temptations; “Hot Fun in the Summertime”, “Everybody is a Star”, “Thank You (Falletinme be mice elf agin)” – Sly & the Family Stone; The ’69 Los Angeles Sessions – Fela Kuti; “Funky Drummer”, “Mother Popcorn”, “Ain’t It Funky”, “Give It Up or Turn It Loose” – James Brown
Folk: “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Everybody Knows This is Nowhere – Neil Young; Five Leaves Left – Nick Drake; Happy Sad – Tim Buckley
Rock & Roll: “Eli’s Coming” – Three Dog Night; Tommy – The Who; The Soft Parade – The Doors; Green River – Creedence Clearwater Revival; Goodbye – Cream; In the Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson; Free – Free; The Allman Brothers – The Allman Brothers; I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! – Janis Joplin; “Volunteers” – Jefferson Airplane; Santana – Santana
Jazz: Karma – Pharoah Sanders
Country: Nashville Skyline – Bob Dylan
So there you have it. Please chime in with a comment to tell me what I got wrong and what I got right. I’d also really love to hear what I missed, and what you discovered by reading this post. Thanks for reading!
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