The Doors

The Doors

The Doors

Elektra (74007)

1967

Producer: Paul Rothchild
Engineer: Bruce Botnick

Rating: **** (Recommended)

Released March 1967, reached #1 (ignored in UK)

Debut from this outfit, its blues-based sound pure L.A., a refreshing alternative to the meandering California psychedelic from Frisco.  While it gets a bit silly at times, they always manage to pull out the slack, laying down a string of solid cuts that conclude with the epic “The End.”  While, they had several solid sets, this debut was one of their best.  It serves as a good intro to this band, and it’s essential listening for fans.

— winch

The Doors

Waiting For the Sun

Elektra (74024)

1968

Producer: Paul Rothchild
Engineer: Bruce Botnick

Rating: *** (Noteworthy)

Released August 1968 (September in the UK), reached #1 (#16 in the UK)

While this L.A. outfit had a strong beginning, cracks begin to show with this third set.  Much of the material has a dreary feel to it, perhaps capturing not only the strain of fame on this band, but also the wilting of the flowers from the summer of love.  Like all their 60s albums, this has its moments, but it’s their weakest album with Morrison.

— winch

The Doors

The Soft Parade

Elektra (75005)

1969

Producer: Paul Rothchild
Engineer: Bruce Botnick

Rating: **** (Recommended)

Released August 1969 (September in the UK), reached #6 (ignored in the UK)

Perhaps recognizing that their previous album was a bit depressing, they pick up the pace and fill in the sound for this fourth set, backing the band with big arrangements and calling in plenty of guests.  While this was an improvement over the third album, many felt otherwise.  The Doors had finally found an audience in the U.K. with the third set, but they lost them again with this collection. 

The set gets a bit overblown and silly at times, but the same is true with all their albums.  This doesn’t have the dark menace of the early material, but it sees the band pulling out the slack and charging forward, something they’d continue doing in the 70s.  It’s another worthwhile listen for fans.

— winch

Beatles (1967) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (LP) Capitol

Beatles

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

 

1967 

noteworthy ***

    Overplayed and overrated Beatles set, the second time the Beatles helped ruin American music.  The first time was in 1964 when they arrived with their watered-down version of American R&B, lame covers or lame originals.  They were like the Osmonds of the 60s.  

    The Osmonds were a white version of Motown’s The Jackson Five.  We couldn’t have our white girls creaming in their jeans over a bunch of colored brothers from Gary, Indiana, or any of those colored folks from Motown so along came the Osmonds.  

     Things were much more serious in 1964.  For the first time, white people were buying black music by the truck load.  So they brought over the Beatles who almost single-handedly managed to destroy one of the greatest times in American Music.  In the post-Beatles world, we’ve never had anything that has come close to the early 60s.  

     In ’64, we not only had the blacks, but we had white folks playing black music with gesto, classic garage that actually rocked, folks like Dick Dale and Link Wray, a bunch of punk kids having a blast, and the black folks fusing hard bop with the grooves of R&B and world influences (long before the Beatles), and then you had the real R&B. 

     I was just listening to Shorty Long do his 1964 original “Devil in a Blue Dress.”  Now that’s a classic.  Like so many others, that should have been a hit.   

     But the Beatles arrived with crap like “Love Me Do,”…then years later “And in the end / the love you take / is equal to the love / you make,” or something like that.  Barf-O-rama.  That makes me want to punch someone in the face.  That is so dated and dimwitted.  And in between that, we got this set, just when we were getting the groove going again in ’66. 

     Sure, this is a decent set, and the Osmonds comment was mostly to make a point and piss people off, stir up the pot, to start some conversations. I put Pepper in the Good Shit inventory, called it noteworthy, but it’s not that great, and the influence it had on American music wasn’t all good.  Since the Beatles couldn’t even put on a decent show, this marked the time when they gave up even trying.  It’s one thing to steal American black music and call it your own; it’s another thing to dress it up in a uniform and send it to private school. This album took the wild abandonment of R&B, and made it tame and educated.  You can do that with a lot of things and I won’t cause a stink.  

     But you shouldn’t do that to rock ‘n roll.

    

— winch

“I wish Sgt. Pepper had never taught the band to play.” –the Dictators

Bob Dylan & the Band (1967) The Basement Tapes (LP) Columbia 33682 (1975)

Bob Dylan & the Band

The Basement Tapes

Columbia (33682)

Recorded 1967
Released 1975

Producers: Dylan & the Band

Rating: *** (Noteworthy)

Recorded 1967, released July 1975, reached #7 (#8 in the UK)

 

While considered a classic, even a masterpiece, this should have been distilled down to a two-sider–one side featuring cuts by the Band, the flipside with cuts by Dylan.  As it sits, this has too many annoying Dylan cuts.

— winch

Morton Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon (LP) 1967

Morton Subotnick

Silver Apples of the Moon

Nonesuch

1967

Rating: *** (Noteworthy)

 

 

 

Crazy avant-garde robot music, space-age craziness, random bleep-beat for a disjointed version of rhythm, the sound somewhere between the Residents and Tangerine Dream,  this sounding like it influenced both of those groups.

— winch

http://www.eight-track.com/robot_music.html

Love (band) Essential

Essential LOVE

(90 Minute Tape)

 

“My Little Red Book” (Bacharach/David)
“Can’t Explain” (Lee/Echols/Fleckenstein)
“A Message to Pretty” (Arthur Lee)
“My Flash On You” (Lee)
“Emotions” (Lee)
“You I’ll Be Following” (Lee)
“Gazing” (Lee)
“Hey Joe” (Valenti)
“Signed D.C.” (Lee)
Love       Elektra 4001     July 1966

cool Love cover:
“Signed D.C.”/”Hey Joe”
Dead Moon (Clackamas, Oregon)  Live Evil  1990

 

“Revelation” (Lee, MacLean, Echols, Forssi)
“Stephanie Knows Who” (Lee)
“Orange Skies” (MacLean)
“Que Vida!” (Lee)
“Seven & Seven Is” (Lee)
“The Castle” (Lee)
“She Comes in Colors” (Lee)
Da Capo      Elektra 4005     February 1967

 

 

“Alone Again Or” (MacLean)
“A House is Not a Motel” (Lee)
“The Daily Planet” (Lee)
“Maybe the People Would Be The Times or Between
 Clark and Hilldale” (Lee)
“Live and Let Live” (Lee)
“Bummer in the Summer” (Lee)
Forever Changes      Elektra 4013     January 1968

 

 

cool Love cover:
“Alone Again Or”
UFO (London)  Light’s Out  1977  

 

 

compiled by Winch (author of Kalamazoo: Growing Up Sideways in the 1970s and the two-part novel Junk Like That)

http://www.eight-track.com/Eight_Track_Publishing.php