New Spotify (And 8Tracks) Playlist – Best Of The Sixties
This playlist is rather different from my normal playlists. Normally, I try to mix up obscure tracks, new things I’ve only just discovered, and old classics. This time, however, this is (almost) on commission.
Talking by email with Plok earlier today, he said he knew a teenager who wanted to learn more about ‘sixties music’, naming a couple of tracks she liked. He told me a couple of other things about her (she’s bright and cheerful, very innocent, etc) and asked me for suggestions.
So I’ve tried to put together a playlist that covers *ALL* of ‘sixties music’, which is frankly impossible. To make it more difficult, I’ve tried to structure it like a mix tape (it’s 90 minutes to within a minute or so), and I’ve also used 8track.com , a site that allows you to create streaming playlists of MP3s, but no more than two tracks by each artist per playlist, because that (unlike Spotify) should be accessible in Canada. I wanted to *try* to get everything from folk-rock to freakbeat to Brit-Blues to psych to soul in there, but 90 minutes is not a long time… I also wanted to put in tracks that would be interesting pointers to other stuff.
I’ve tried to go for a mix of obvious hits and obscure but interesting, but with the emphasis on the former. The notes below should be taken as a guide for teenagers, rather than for people who already know this music, so apologies if it seems patronising to my normal readers. Spotify playlist here, 8track playlist here.
Side 1
Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys opens what many consider the best album ever, Pet Sounds. While it seems like just a simple pop song, it has layers of instruments and vocals that reward repeated listening.
You’re No Good by The Swinging Blue Jeans is included not just because it’s a great little pop record, but also for historical value. The Beatles didn’t come out of nowhere – they were part of a scene, Merseybeat, that produced dozens of successful bands in the early 60s. The Swinging Blue Jeans were the best of the other Merseybeat bands, so this gives some idea of what the competition was like for the Beatles.
Time Of The Season by The Zombies is actually musically quite similar to You’re No Good, but is from the other end of the sixties. From another contender for ‘best album ever’, Odessey And Oracle (yes, it’s spelled that way), the Zombies had already split up by the time this charted.
The Door Into Summer by The Monkees shows just how fast music was changing in the 60s. A year before this, the Monkees had been a manufactured band for a TV show, but now they were busy inventing country-rock, and not just country-rock, but psychedelic country-rock based on a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel…
Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys is pretty much undoubtedly the best single ever released. You may think you know this one from commercials or whatever, but actually *listen* to it and you’ll be astonished.
Do You Believe In Magic? by The Lovin’ Spoonful is one of the most *fun* tracks of the decade.
Days by The Kinks may be the most beautiful song ever written. Nothing more to say about that.
How Does It Feel To Feel? by The Creation is one of the most influential records of the sixties, even though it was never a hit. Listen to this and you realise that Oasis were nothing more than a tribute act to The Creation, but with slightly less talent. Seriously, this is *every* Oasis record ever, but better, and it’s from 1965.
Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful is a song pretty much everyone already knows, but is here just in case.
Tin Soldier by The Small Faces is actually very like Summer In The City, structurally, but just listen to the dynamics of this record, the way it moves between sections. And that VOICE. Steve Marriot was a short, white lad from London, but his voice here could blow away any soul or rock singer ever.
Dark End Of The Street by James Carr is the best soul ballad ever, and another incredible voice.
You Don’t Have To Walk In The Rain by The Turtles is the single from Turtle Soup, their attempt at making an album like the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society – even getting Ray Davies of the Kinks to produce it. It’s a great pop single, and funny with it (“I look at your face/I love you anyway”)
Making Time by The Creation is a more typical 60s garage track than How Does It Feel, but powerful.
Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd And The Pirates is the first great British rock record, from well before the Beatles ever recorded. Just listen to that great guitar riff, and the drum break….
While Seven And Seven Is by Love invented punk and heavy metal while most bands hadn’t even got round to the whole ‘flowers in your hair’ bit yet – this is, staggeringly, from 1966.
Side 2
Even more amazingly, Alone Again Or by Love is the same band a year later.Hard to believe, isn’t it? From another of the general contenders for ‘best album ever’ – Forever Changes.
This Will Be Our Year by The Zombies is another track from Odessey And Oracle, and one of the best songs about being happy in love ever. Shame Rod Argent and Hugh Grundy can’t keep in time with each other…
Some Mother’s Son by The Kinks is one of the saddest anti-war songs ever. World War I was being reassessed in the 60s, and that time period had a huge influence on British music of the period, and you really need at least one song about it on a compilation like this.
Be My Baby by The Ronnettes bom, bom-bom BOM, bom, bom-bom BOM
Lies by The Knickerbockers isn’t by the Beatles. Honestly. It’s a group of jobbing musicians from New Jersey. HONESTLY…
Look Out, There’s A Monster Coming by The Bonzo Dog Band is hilarious.
We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place by The Animals is the greatest of all the British R&B singles, mostly for Eric Burdon’s astonishing vocal.
I’ve Been Good To You by The Miracles was one of John Lennon’s favourites – enough so that he stole a chunk of it for Sexy Sadie from the White Album.
Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group is included partly because it’s one of the best singles of the 60s, and partly because Jonathan Calder would look sternly at me if I didn’t include something with a Steve Winwood vocal.
The Old Laughing Lady by Neil Young from his first album is a pointer to a style that no-one really followed up on, not even Young himself, a sort of progressive-psych-folk-country but with orchestral arrangements. The nearest things I can think of to this track later on are Dennis Wilson or some of Gram Parsons’ music…
Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes I Do by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band is about as commercial as the good Captain ever got, and has some great slide guitar by Ry Cooder.
Hold On, I’m Coming by Sam & Dave is one of the great soul tracks.
Walk Away Renee by The Four Tops is here to kill two birds with one stone – the original of this, by The Left Banke, is a classic of baroque pop, but the Four Tops manage to make it fit their Motown style perfectly.
I Say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin is an obvious choice, but sometimes obvious choices are obvious for a reason.
And The Intro And The Outro by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band sees us out…
Spotify Playlist – Veteran’s Day Poppy
Remembrance Sunday and the eleventh of November are days that evoke conflicting emotions in me. I’m pretty much an absolute pacifist, so you’d expect me to disapprove of them, but at the same time the *reason* I’m a pacifist is because I don’t like seeing people go and get killed (or kill others), and I have nothing but respect for those who fought (and often died) for causes they thought were right, even when (as has so often been the case) they’re led by psychopaths. Those people DESERVE remembrance, and respect. They went through things that none of us who haven’t been in a war can possibly imagine, and many of them behaved with far more decency than their commanders (I’ve read studies that show that in war, even when afraid for their own lives, 85% of soldiers unconsciously shoot to miss, because even in that position they can’t bring themselves to kill – something borne out by stories of people like Harry Patch, the last British soldier from WWI who died earlier this year, who had made a pact with his friends never to shoot to kill, but to aim for the enemies’ legs.)
I also don’t wear poppies, partly because I don’t wear anything like that – no breast cancer awareness badges or make poverty history wristbands, but also because the poppy as a symbol has become incredibly politicised in Britain recently, and it’s increasingly become a symbol of support for a particular right-wing form of patriotism. That said, I do think it’s hugely important to remember the sacrifices people went through for causes both noble and otherwise, so I’ve put together this spotify playlist. A lot of these songs are angry songs, because people should not have to travel thousands of miles to kill or be killed unless there’s a good reason, and often there isn’t. I find it very hard to remember those who died, or those who were maimed for life, without also remembering those who put them in that position. Never again should mean that…
One song I wanted to include was Armistice Day by Paul Simon, which he titled that for reasons much like those in this Vonnegut quote:
I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.
However, Armistice Day appears to be one of the few Paul Simon songs *not* on Spotify. So it goes.
The songs I have included are:
Veterans Day Poppy by Captain Beefheart (mislabelled as Apes-Ma – all the songs on this album are mislabelled). Sometimes Beefheart’s lyrics are difficult to understand, so here’s a transcription:
I cry but I can’t buy
Your Veteran’s Day poppy
It don’t get me high
It can only make me cry
It can never grow another
Son like the one who warmed me my days
After rain and warmed my breath
My life’s blood
Screamin’ empty she cries
It don’t get me high
It can only make me cry
Your Veteran’s Day poppy
Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914) by The Zombies is written and sung by Chris White, and his more fragile voice suits this deeply disturbing song much better than Blunstone’s would have.
Any King’s Shilling by Elvis Costello is a reminder of some of the more recent conflicts. “Stay at home tonight, if you know what’s good for you/I can’t say more, it would be telling/But if you don’t, what will become of you/Just isn’t worth any King’s shilling”.
Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt is another Costello song (co-written), and possibly the saddest song ever written, about the hope a war brings to an economically depressed town – “It’s just a rumour that’s been spread around town/A telegram or a picture postcard/within weeks they’ll be re-opening the shipyard/And notifying the next of kin once again”.
Some Mother’s Son by The Kinks is from Arthur, the last of their incredible run of straight masterpieces in the mid sixties. “Some mother’s son lies in a field/Someone has killed some mother’s son today” I’d have liked to pair this with the other WWI song from the same album, Yes Sir No Sir (“Give the scum a gun and make the buggers fight/just be sure to have deserters die on sight/If he dies we’ll send a medal to his wife”) but that’s not on Spotify.
Song For The Dead by Randy Newman does a pretty good job of this though – a song from the point of view of a soldier in Vietnam burying his dead comrades and saying ‘a few words on behalf of the leadership’. At once utterly vicious and cynical about the motives of the leaders who start wars, but still recognising the real horror their decisions cause to those who have to carry them out.
Rich Man’s War by Steve Earle continues along these lines – “Somebody somewhere had another plan/Now he’s got a rifle in his hand/He’s wandering Baghdad wondering how it got this far/He’s just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war”.
Little Boy Soldiers by The Jam – “These days I find that I can’t be bothered/To argue with them, well what’s the point?/Better to take your shots and drop down dead/then they send you home in a pine overcoat/With a letter to your mum/Saying find enclosed one son/one medal and a note/to say he won.”
Where Have All The Flowers Gone? by Pete Seeger is often thought of as a rather twee song. It really isn’t.
And to finish, we have The Last Post.
New Spotify Playlist – Pure Pop For Never People!
Sorry I’ve been a bit crap at updating recently. Between computer problems at home, pressure at work, and the general blandness of most of the comics recently, I’ve not really had any momentum for posting. Hopefully that’ll be back again soon and I’ll be back to the level of productivity from last month within a few days.
Anyway, the nights are drawing in, so we all need some cheerful pop music to pick us all up, and here is a playlist of just that.
Come On In by The Association is as good an opener for anything as you could hope for. The one time I DJ’d I started this up as soon as the doors opened (unfortunately, of course, no-one heard it as they hadn’t arrived yet. This is the kind of thing you don’t think of if you’ve never DJ’d before).
Mayor Of Simpleton by XTC is one of those list songs like What A Wonderful World, to which it bears a huge lyrical resemblance – “Never been near a university/Never took a paper or a learned degree… And I may be the mayor of Simpleton, but I know one thing and that’s I love you”. The music is insanely catchy, though, and I’m amazed this was never a hit. Everything here’s perfect and thought through – listen to that bassline from Colin Moulding, going all over the place, commenting on the main melody – but at the same time it’s *immediate* in a way much of XTC’s stuff isn’t… I actually considered just doing an XTC playlist today, they’re so great.
Broadway by Stew is one of his few cover versions, a radical reworking of the Clash song, turning it into a disco track backed by drum machine, analogue synth sounds and fast-picked banjo (presumably played by Probyn Gregory?), this gives some idea of what the Negro Problem’s side project The Covers Problem sounded like (at some point I must post an MP3 of their live cover of the full Thriller album).
I’ve posted Nerdy Boys by Candypants in more than one playlist before, but who cares? It’s the best pop single of the last decade.
7 And 7 Is by Love is the song that invented punk, back in 1966 when the rest of California was busy inventing hippysim, and it’s still one of the most ferocious records ever (fantastic song to play live, too, especially since the rhythm section has to do all the work while the guitarists just have to slash out chords). Drumming by the great Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer (I’ve told Holly that if we ever have a kid I’m going to name it Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer in tribute, which has ensured we shall remain child-free).
September Gurls by Big Star is the track that invented powerpop. Unfortunately, Spotify removed the three proper Big Star albums recently, so this is what sounds like a full-band demo – every element of the track is there, but not *quite* as tight as the finished version. For those who don’t know the original, though, it’ll more than suffice.
More Important Things by The Mockers is another catchy-as-hell harmony-based spiky jangly guitar song. Sometimes I like those.
Baby It’s Real by The Millennium is a track I’ve adored for ten years even though it breaks the cardinal rule of lyric-writing , Harry Nilsson’s “Never use the word baby unless you’re talking about a little person”.
Friends Of Mine by The Zombies is almost unique in that it’s a song about being happy about other people being in love, although rather sadly almost all the (real) people named in the backing vocals have either split up or died (Jean and Jim are still together forty-one years later though, if that’s any consolation).
This Whole World by The Beach Boys is an astonishing tour de force. Stupid lyrics, but in one minute fifty-seven this manages to cycle through something like five different keys, never settling on one for more than a couple of bars, in a completely unusual structure.
Thankful/It’s Over Now by Linus Of Hollywood is another example of LoH’s rather odd attitude to women (which I can only hope is a Randy Newman-esque ‘writing in character’ thing) – “If you would just leave and take all of your things I’d be grateful… don’t forget to take your mood swings/don’t forget to take your nasty attitude” over one of the most upbeat, bouncy pop tunes I’ve ever heard. Again, a cleverly-structured, complex piece.
And Jaded by The National Pep is my attempt at doing a pop song as clever and complex as the last couple, or even more so. And if you listen to it through spotify, I’ll get a whole shiny penny to share with my collaborators…
Scott Walker, The Zombies, Edgard Varese, Small Faces, Serge Gainsbourg… Spotify Playlist For This Week
This week’s playlist, which I’ve titled Misty Rosary, doesn’t have an organising theme like the other ones I’ve done recently, it’s just seventeen songs I really like right now. I hope you will too…
Misty Roses by The Zombies is a live performance from the Odessey And Oracle 40th Anniversary CD/DVD, and actually only features Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, plus touring band member Keith Airey and a string quintet, recreating the arrangement of the Tim Hardin song from Blunstone’s first solo album. One of the most gorgeous things ever in pop music, seriously.
Mr Bellamy by Paul McCartney is the best thing by a long way from his most recent solo album proper, Memory Almost Full, and the most interesting thing he’s done in a long time – it sounds like nothing so much as Sparks, but Sparks covering Love In The Open Air (the love theme from The Family Way, which McCartney wrote in 1965).
Guilty As Charged by John C Reilly is from the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I was put off that film for a long time by its promotional material, which made it look like the kind of thing that Will Ferrel would be in, but in fact it’s a very sharp, funny film – a parody of rock biopics, but particularly Walk The Line. But the music’s what makes it – it has the best original soundtrack since A Mighty Wind. This one’s a spot-on Ring Of Fire Johnny Cash with a spot of Secret Agent Man thrown in. Reilly is a great vocalist – not just ‘for an actor’, he’s an astonishing singer by any standards – but what makes this soundtrack is the attention paid to production details. All the songs sound like they could have come from the time they’re set, and that’s a much harder thing to do than people realise.
Ionisation by Edgard Varese is a wonderful piece of atonal percussion music, hugely influential on everyone from Pierre Boulez to Frank Zappa. The present day composer refuses to die!
If I Could Have Her Tonight by Neil Young is from Young’s eponymous first solo album, still my favourite of all his albums. Back then, Young had quite an unusual sound, somewhere halfway between the psych-pop of Love and the country-pop of the Byrds or solo Mike Nesmith, and while much of his later stuff’s good, it’s less interesting than the music he was making then.
Tin Soldier by The Small Faces is possibly the best rock (as opposed to pop) single ever made. Everything about it – the dynamics, Steve Marriot’s vocal, those Jaws piano chords at the start, is about as perfect as it gets.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Serge Gainsbourg is a fairly straight rendition, but from an album, Rock Around The Bunker, which was pretty much what it sounds like…
Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me by Billie Holiday is a cover of the Duke Ellington song, originally titled Concerto For Cootie.
Take Me In Your Lifeboat by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band features Del McCoury and two of his sons, making it essentially a Del McCoury Band track. Which means it’s by some of the best bluegrass musicians today.
High Coin by Harpers Bizarre is written and arranged by Van Dyke Parks, in a very similar style to his work on Song Cycle (which I must write about at some point).
You Don’t Know Me by Ray Charles is from Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music vol 1 (my copy of which, bought second-hand, was the best 50p I ever spent). One of the greatest vocal performances of all time, this is one of a very small number of songs that can reduce me to tears.
Golden Days by William Grant Still is an excerpt from The American Scene, one of Still’s last major works. For those who don’t know him, Still was ‘the black Gershwin’, going from arranging for WC Handy and playing with James P Johnson to being the first African-American to conduct a symphony orchestra. He’s a sadly underrated figure in American music, and fans of Gershwin, Ives, Copeland et al could do worse than check out his stuff.
Another Time by Curt Boettcher is a lovely gentle soft-pop song. In the mid-60s a sort of informal collective of people centred round Boettcher and Gary Usher recorded about six albums worth of soft-pop stuff which mostly remained unreleased til the 90s, and has since been released on several different labels under several different names – the same tracks can be found as by Curt Boettcher and/or the Ballroom and/or The Millennium and/or Sandy Salisbury and/or Sagittarius, depending on the reissue. These are all worth getting, but the stuff released as by Boettcher or Salisbury solo tends to be the best.
Oh Bondage, Up Yours by X-Ray Specs is here for three reasons – firstly that there are too many slow songs in this list, secondly that there aren’t many women, and thirdly because it’s fucking great. “Some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard, but I say… OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!”
Lyke-Wake Dirge by Pentangle is actually only my second-favourite version of this old song (after that by The Young Tradition), which is surprising because Pentangle were one of the most interesting bands of the late 60s, fusing traditional folk and modern jazz. It’s an old Yorkshire song to be sung at wakes, and the lyrics (which can be found here) talk about ordeals of purgatory, saying that after you’re dead you have to go through various trials, and will only have to protect you the things you gave to the poor in this life – you have to walk over thorns and can only wear shoes if you gave shoes to the poor, and so on. Quite an inspiring, hopeful but earthy take on things, as tends to be the way with Yorkshire religion.
You Set The Scene by Love is an alternative mix of the track from Forever Changes. The amount of invention in this song – the number of different melodies, and the strength of them – is astoundng. Just listen to the section starting ‘this is the time in life that I am living’ without shivers going down your spine. I DARE you.
And Rosary by Scott Walker is from Tilt, his ‘comeback’ album, and (along with his more recent The Drift and …And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And Who Shall Go To The Ball?) possibly the strangest records ever made by a major figure.
A Beginner’s Guide To The Zombies
As those of you who are friends of mine (I wrote this in two chunks when my head was up to it, and coming back to this I can’t believe I wrote that and didn’t see the pun…) on last.fm will know, I’ve been listening to rather a lot of the Zombies’ music since I saw them live the other week, and so I thought I’d put together a brief guide to the music of one of the more overlooked bands of the sixties.
The Zombies were a five-member band, but really had three important members. Colin Blunstone is one of the great pop vocalists of all time, and Rod Argent and Chris White were both exceptional songwriters in their prime. Argent is also an extremely talented keyboard player, and both Argent and White were pretty good singers.
The band’s first album, Begin Here, is a very typical early-60s album, of the type you’d imagine from a band who wanted to be R&B but were from St Albans and had A-levels. There are three great Rod Argent originals – She’s Not There, the band’s first and biggest hit single, and two gorgeous ballads, I Remember When I Loved Her and The Way I Feel Inside, but the rest of the album is filler, including deeply unconvincing versions of Road Runner and Got My Mojo Working which remind me of Sonny Boy Williamson II’s comment on British beat groups of the time – “those white boys want to play the blues so bad… and they play the blues so bad!”
There’s nothing on there as cringe-making as Gerry & The Pacemakers’ version of Little Walter’s My Babe (which may be the whitest record ever made), and they even manage to do a couple of decent soul covers (Solomon Burke’s Can’t Nobody Love You and Ray Charles’ Sticks And Stones – neither of course matching the originals, but both perfectly competent) but even the expanded CD version, which includes the band’s second hit Tell Her No, another classic single, isn’t really worth getting on its own, other than for a handful of tracks.
The Zombies recorded many non-album singles over the next couple of years, which are available on a variety of compilations, and most of which are very listenable, especially their cover version of Little Anthony & The Imperials’ Goin’ Out Of My Head. If you want to hear the early beat-group era Zombies records, a compilation of these singles is definitely the way to go, rather than that first album. Look for a compilation which contains The Way I Feel Inside, I Love You, Goin’ Out Of My Head, I Remember When I Loved Her and Whenever You’re Ready as well as the big hits.
They didn’t get to record another album until mid-1967. That album, Odessey And Oracle, is so different from their first album that it’s hard to believe it’s by the same band. Made up entirely of originals (seven by Chris White and five by Argent), Odessey And Oracle is one of the very, very few albums ever recorded where every single track is a good one – there’s not a weak song on there, and if you only get one Zombies album, that’s the one to get. A perfect encapsulation of everything that’s good about baroque pop, it’s as if someone distilled everything good about both the circa-1966 Kinks and Beach Boys into one album. Really that good.
The band decided to split before recording O&O, but a year later one of the singles from the album, Time Of The Season, became a massive hit, and so the decision was made to release a ‘new’ ‘Zombies’ album, RIP, which was put together by taking some unreleased early tracks and adding orchestral overdubs, and then adding in a few Zombies-esque tracks by an early line-up of Argent and White’s new band, Argent. This album was never released, but a few tracks from it are bonus tracks on the most recent reissue of Odessey, and they’re definitely worth listening to.
All the Zombies’ studio material (including RIP), along with a ton of outtakes and BBC sessions, was released on the 1997 box set Zombie Heaven. The strength and weakness of this set are the same – it’s compiled by someone who can say things like “While most collections of demos and ‘works in progress’ can be testing for the listener, in the case of the Zombies that maxim does not apply, for they could literally do no wrong.”
In other words, it’s a four-CD box set that should really be a three-CD box, and would be better for it, but it does contain everything, so if you see it going cheap it should be the one you go for. It is definitely worth owning – many of the outtakes and sessions on it are well worth listening to – but a bit overlong.
Paradoxically, however, given those comments, I would urge anyone who likes O&O to get Into The Afterlife, a compilation mostly consisting on immediate post-Zombies work by Argent, White and Blunstone. Containing Blunstone’s solo singles as Neil Macarthur (including his remake of She’s Not There, some of the RIP tracks with just the vocals and string overdubs, and some songwriting demos by Argent and White for what was to become Argent, one would imagine it would be awful. In fact it’s the second-best ‘Zombies’ album.
After the split, Blunstone, White and Argent continued working together on Blunstone’s early solo albums – White and Argent producing and contributing songs (though Blunstone grew a lot as a songwriter himself), and Argent (the band) acting as backing musicians. The first of these solo albums, One Year, is one of the all-time great albums – even Holly, my wife, who’s not a Zombies fan, enjoys Blunstone’s early solo work. For most of the album, the only backing is a string quintet, and the arrangements are some of the best I’ve ever heard on a rock/pop album – more Bartok than anything else, and working in conversation with the vocals rather than just backing. Particularly extraordinary is the cover of Tim Hardin’s Misty Roses, with an extended break just for the strings, and the cover of Denny Laine’s Say You Don’t Mind was a big hit, but the whole thing is essential – in a just world it should be rated as highly as Pet Sounds or Astral Weeks
Blunstone’s second solo album, Ennismore was also produced by Argent and White, and while it’s a more conventional-sounding album, it’s still extraordinarily good, containing the minor hit Andorra, the wonderful Russ Ballard song I Don’t Believe In Miracles and Blunstone’s own How Wrong Can One Man Be? (VERY obviously influenced by Tim Hardin, but no worse for that). On CD, it’s paired with Blunstone’s third album, Journey, which was produced by White alone. While decent, this is nowhere near up to the standard of the first two.
Pretty much nothing the Zombies have done together or apart since Ennismore has been worth bothering with (though I’ve bothered with quite a bit of it), but it’s worth getting the live Odessey And Oracle (Revisited) DVD, the soundtrack of which those of you on Spotify can hear here.
Spotify doesn’t have any of the Zombies’ studio recordings, although it does have some Blunstone solo stuff (and Blunstone/Argent reunion Zombies stuff) mislabelled as the Zombies. It doesn’t have the first two albums, but there are a couple of Blunstone best-ofs (like this one ) which are made up almost entirely of tracks from the first three albums and should give you an idea of their quality.
Spotify A Capella Playlist
It’s going to take me a little longer than I thought to get my thoughts together about Seaguy, so I’ll be posting about that and Cerebus Archive tomorrow, instead of today. In the meantime, here’s a Spotify playlist.
This one’s an a capella (almost entirely) collection, which happened by accident when I noticed the first couple of tracks I chose were already a capella, and I decided to go with it, and can be found here.
The Way I Feel Inside by The Zombies is a song I’ve been listening to over and over for the last few days – I picked up the Zombie Heaven box set after seeing them live and will be reviewing that soon (in brief my conclusion is that every original they did was astonishingly good, but the best Zombies album is still Blunstone’s first solo album, One Year). You might remember this from the funeral scene in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, one of the best uses of music in a film I’ve ever seen (I’ve not actually watched that film since I saw it in the cinema, but can remember huge chunks of it nonetheless). This shows what difference an arrangement can make to a song – there’s a demo version of this which is done in a Beatles-esque arrangement, and it does nothing for me at all, but this is great.
Old Molly Metcalfe by Jake Thackray is a gorgeous, beautiful pseudo-folk song, and the saddest thing that Jake ever wrote. Incidentally, Jennie, if you’re not a Jake fan already, you should listen to this. It’s the most Yorkshire song I’ve ever heard, and is also very obviously the basis for The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett.
I Hear Your Heart by Vocal Group Cosmos was Latvia’s entry into the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. Despite that, it’s quite astonishingly good – pretty avant-garde and atonal in places, sounding just like Queen in others, and like a bad 90s boy band in yet others – all these styles mixing and merging in unpredictable ways. The bulk of the song unfortunately is generic boy-band, but the stuff surrounding that is just…weird.
Dido’s Lament by The Swingle Singers is a vocal-group-and-human-beatbox arrangement of the aria from Purcell’s Dido And Aeneas. Dido of course, as every Doctor Who fan knows, was really the Doctor’s companion Vicki, which means that this actually has something in common with Who’s Doctor Who? by Frazer Hines. Not much, but something…
God Only Knows (a capella mix) by The Beach Boys is a vocal-only mix (apart from some low instruments during the break) from the Pet Sounds Sessions box set. Carl Wilson takes the (double-tracked) lead vocals, while the backing vocals and the tag are Brian Wilson and Bruce Johnston (Brian taking the first and third lines on the tag, Bruce the second). Gorgeous.
Where Have All The Flowers Gone? by Pete Seeger is yet more evidence that actually the first people to do collagey, mix-and-matching of diverse influences were the folk singers. Practically nothing in this song is original to Seeger – the main text he took from an old Russian folk poem he found in a novel, just adding the ‘long time passing’ and ‘when will we ever learn?’ lines, while the melody is a traditional one – but it’s definitely Seeger’s song.
From Seeger we go to Black Betty by Leadbelly, Seeger’s friend and colleague. A medley of prison worksongs, this song gave hits to both Ram Jam (Black Betty) and Johnny Cash (I Got Stripes) – two more different records from the same source couldn’t be imagined.
Honest Work by Todd Rundgren is from his A Capella album, an album where all the ‘instrumental’ parts were Rundgren’s electronically-treated vocals. This one is one of the more traditional songs on the album.
Jesus Gave Me Water by The Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi (not to be confused with the more well-known Five Blind Boys Of Alabama) is a classic gospel song – I love the screamed “Yeeeaaah!”s.
One For The Boys by Brian Wilson is from his eponymous 1988 solo album, and has that 1988 sound to it, unfortunately, but it’s still a wonderful piece of vocal arrangement, and one of the best things on that album. It’s all multi-tracked Brian, except I think Andy Paley might be doing some of the low notes.
Country Life by The Watersons is from their classic For Pence And Spicy Ale album. The Waterson family are to English folk music what the Carters are to American country, and while Spotify unfortunately has almost no traditional English folk on there, it does have this album, which is as good an example of the form as any you’ll find.
Another Man Done Gone by Odetta is a wonderful track by a singer who is so horribly overlooked I had no idea until today that she died six months ago.
I’m Always Chasing Rainbows by The Four Freshmen is an example of what was called in the 50s ‘modern harmony’. While this stuff sounds odd or corny to our ears, as the style almost completely died out by the early 60s, it’s incredibly complex if you listen to the movement of the different parts, and this band in particular were a huge influence on Brian Wilson – the Beach Boys’ early attempts at harmony sounded almost like a tribute band.
Don’t Look Back by The Persuasions is a cover of the song Smokey Robinson wrote for the Temptations. This is from the 70s, but the Persuasions are one of the few a capella vocal groups still going – their tribute album to Frank Zappa in the 90s was particularly good.
Zilch by The Monkees is just an exercise in building up a sound from the cross-rhythmic repetition. Apparently one of the lines in this was sampled by Del Tha Funkee Homosapian, and caused a rumour that ‘mister Bob Dobalina’ was a SubGenius reference…
And finally Thomas Rhymer by Ewan Maccoll is some traditional Scottish folk to go with the traditional English folk from earlier. This song, about the supposed journey of 13th-century Scottish prophet Thomas Learmouth into the land of Faerie, was a huge influence on Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers (it’s quoted on the first page of issue zero). It’s also the source of the more recent Tam Lin ballad (itself also the other main source of Pratchett’s Wee Free Men, tying in nicely with Thackray’s song earlier).
Just a reminder for some people, incidentally – if you are in a country that says you can’t use Spotify, you can try the free software despotify client (which only supports the premium accounts, but imposes no geographic restrictions). It’s still so poorly-usable that even I, a free software supporter, choose to use the proprietary app and run it under WINE, but it’s definitely better than nothing…
The Zombies, Bridgewater Hall, 24/04/09
From Rock Of Ages by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter
The Zombies’ album Odessey And Oracle is one of the few ‘classic albums’ that happens to really be the best album of the band’s career. While many Beach Boys albums are at least as good as Pet Sounds, Revolver beats Sgt Pepper hands down, and Da Capo is half a better album than Forever Changes, The Zombies’ career was short enough that they only really made one proper album-as-statement, so it’s lucky that Odessey And Oracle, which was released in 1968, after they split, is as good as anything out there.
A few years back, two of the members of the Zombies, Colin Blunstone (the lead vocalist) and Rod Argent (the main instrumentalist – a wonderful keyboard player, who also wrote the band’s biggest hits) started touring together, firstly as “Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone of The Zombies”, but then the “Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone” started getting smaller on the posters and The Zombies getting bigger, and now their touring band just tours as The Zombies. I never managed to see them live, even though the Zombies were one of my favourite 60s bands, because there has always been some kind of scheduling conflict (for example when they played Liverpool in 2004, Brian Wilson was performing Smile in town on the same night), but the live recordings I’d heard of the touring band had been pretty good (though reunion album Out Of The Shadows was fairly poor, with only the decent Ray Charles-esque blues track Mystified being at all memorable, and even that badly produced).
However, last year the four surviving members of the Zombies (guitarist Paul Atkinson having sadly died a few years ago) got together for a handful of concerts in That London to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Odessey & Oracle. In the first half of the shows, Blunstone & Argent’s touring Zombies played a normal set, while in the second half the four surviving members, augmented by touring guitarist Keith Airey and keyboardist Darian Sahanaja (who regular readers will have heard me rave about before) performed O&O from beginning to end. (A live album from those concerts can be heard here for those of you with Spotify, but the live DVD that came out this week is better, having more songs). After this, they announced that they would be playing four (and only four) UK gigs doing the same thing, and then never play the album live again. As one of those was the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, I had to go, along with my 22-year-old brother who is only now starting to develop his musical taste.
The first half of the gig, by the current touring ‘Zombies’, was a mixed bag. The band themselves are the same kind of lineup you see when going to see any 60s group live these days – two original members (you’ll recognise these in any 60s group – they’re the ones with the mullets), a bass-player who used to be in a different 60s group (Jim Rodford, formerly of Rod Argent’s late-60s band Argent, and a member of The Kinks for 20 years), a guitarist who looks like he thinks he’s too good for this and insists on playing twiddly blues riffs all over everything (Keith Airey, who my brother said was ‘working out his mid-life crisis live on stage’, and looks like a clone of Roger Daltrey) and someone several decades younger than anyone else on stage who’s the son of one of the other members (drummer Steve Rodford).
Starting out with I Love You, the band stormed through the first half of the set. The early Zombies songs worked very well – the appeal of the Zombies early on was Blunstone’s voice and Argent’s keyboard, anyway, so the others weren’t too missed. Those early songs, while good of their type, were pretty much indistinguishable from other chart music of the time in their construction – most of their first few singles could have easily been hits for the Swinging Blue Jeans or The Merseybeats – but Blunstone’s breathy, gorgeous jazz-inflected vocals and Argent’s Hammond organ made the finished records sound like Mose Allison Goes Merseybeat.
Surprisingly, though, while the first set contained a few early Zombies songs, and one or two from the reunion albums, as well as songs like Sticks And Stones (a Ray Charles cover the Zombies used to do), a big chunk of the first set was devoted to Colin Blunstone’s solo records.
This is no bad thing. After the Zombies split, Argent formed the imaginatively-named prog band Argent, along with (as a non-performing writing/production partner) Zombies bassist Chris White, but Blunstone went on to make a couple of exceptional solo albums – One Year and Ennismore – before his later, more mediocre, solo work. One Year was produced by Argent and White, and so is effectively a Zombies album by any other name, and may even be the best of them.
Unfortunately, One Year was based around some gorgeous string arrangements which couldn’t be replicated live, but the Tim Hardin cover Misty Roses still worked wonderfully with just Blunstone’s vocal and Airey’s (remarkably restrained) acoustic guitar. Say You Don’t Mind worked less well, turned into a Status Quo-esque boogie (they said later that the Zombies used to play it that way live, but that didn’t make it any better). I Don’t Believe In Miracles, on the other hand, from Ennismore, is one of those songs it’s impossible to mess up, though it helps that Blunstone still has one of the most extraordinary voices in popular music.
Unfortunately, the sound in this first half was *appaling*, and the fault must be that of the sound engineer as the Bridgewater Hall has the best acoustics of any venue I’ve ever attended. Blunstone’s voice was almost drowned out for much of this first half, and the whole thing was a wash of reverb. The band played wonderfully, and Blunstone in particular sounded stunning – but it was a strain to hear him. I should have realised the sound engineer would be bad even before the start of the gig – the intro CD was an Otis Redding mono/stereo twofer, and when it turned into stereo, we could only hear one channel through the PA, so we were treated to minimalist bass-and-horns-only versions of Mr Pitiful, Satisfaction and so on…
However, despite this, the first half was very good, and the ‘new’ members acquitted themselves pretty well. The first set ended with Argent’s hit single Hold Your Head Up, which sounded far better (though still not all that great) with Blunstone singing lead.
The second half was what everyone had come to see, though. The Zombies had split up before Odessey And Oracle had ever been released, and so they’d never performed this material live. In fact Hugh Grundy, the drummer, and Chris White, the bass player, have not played live much at all in the forty-plus years since recording the album. But here were four of the original Zombies, plus Keith Airey on guitar, Darian Sahanaja on keyboards, the Rodfords on backing vocals and hand percussion and Chris White’s wife Vivienne Boucherat on backing vocals.
I was particularly glad to see Chris White on stage, as while Rod Argent wrote the band’s biggest hits, and some very very fine songs like A Rose For Emily, Chris White wrote seven of the thirteen songs on Odessey And Oracle, and I always found his songs to be more to my taste than Argent’s – songs like This Will Be Our Year and Friends Of Mine seem slightly less calculated than Argent’s rather intellectual, precise writing.
But actually one of the striking things about Odessey And Oracle is how unified Argent and White’s vision was. Normally if you have two non-collaborating songwriters in a band you end up with two very different styles – think of Lennon & McCartney, both equally good, but McCartney could never have written I Am The Walrus and Lennon wouldn’t have written For No One. By contrast, White and Argent have almost interchangeable styles – White slightly more folky and Argent more jazzy, but Argent could easily have written Butcher’s Tale or White I Want Her She Wants Me.
What’s even more amazing is how well the album stands up as a live performance. Usually, when watching one of these ‘classic acts perform their classic albums’ shows, there are one or two songs that just don’t work in a live setting – watching Brian Wilson do Pet Sounds live, for example, Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) never really came off very well, even though on the record it’s by far the best song. By contrast, it was relatively weaker songs from Odessey And Oracle like Changes (only relatively weaker – O&O is almost unique as a filler-free album) that shone here – hearing those block harmonies (and the vocal blend was stunning, with Blunstone, Argent and White sounding just like they always did, and the other members only adding background touches that had been tracked in the studio) sent shivers down my spine.
Thankfully, the sound engineer had sorted the balance out for the second half, and every note was audible, and Airey had toned down his guitar histrionics, playing note-for-note the parts on the record. Blunstone was in stunning voice throughout – and he’s the only one of the great sixties vocalists whose voice hasn’t aged at all – and everything from the opening of Care Of Cell 44 through to the end of Time Of The Season was about as perfect as you can imagine. The record was replicated absolutely faithfully, but Blunstone’s vocals were if anything even better – I was open-mouthed in awe at his singing on the “she told me to be careful if I loved her” section of I Want Her She Wants Me, and every single song in the second half was just beautifully done, from the a capella folky chanting of Changes to the pastoral psych of Beechwood Park (the “Oh roads in my mind” section being another stunner) to the jazzy pop of Time Of The Season.
After this, there was an ‘encore’ which didn’t involve anyone leaving the stage, consisting of their two big hits, She’s Not There and Tell Her No, plus Going Out Of My Head, all augmented by the brass section who’d come along to play on This Will Be Our Year, and then a final real encore where they performed the Gershwins’ Summertime, the first song they ever recorded.
It was definitely a show of two halves, and I feel very sorry for everyone who didn’t get to see this (they say they’re never going to do this in the UK again, though I think they’re touring the US doing it) but I’d definitely still recommend going and seeing the touring band if you get the chance – the ‘new’ members aren’t the originals, but they’re good at what they do, and their half of the set was marred by factors out of their control. But this was one of the handful of shows (like seeing Brian Wilson premiere That Lucky Old Sun, or Richard Thompson doing 1000 Years Of Popular Music, or Pulp at Glastonbury in 1995) that will remain with me forever. My brother, who didn’t know the band’s music at all before going to the gig, came straight out and bought a copy of the live DVD of last year’s show, which should tell you something about the quality of the show.
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