Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
True enough.
  

    
It's also interesting to see how things you would *think* would be
historical artifacts aren't.  This is a 1968 album, but I still love
Quicksilver's "Happy Trails" just as much as I did the first time I
heard it, and still listen to it regularly.  People are often quick to
dismiss things that are very far into a particular style (in this case
psychedelia) but good music is just good music.
  

    <scribbled by rik Fri 9 Oct 09 09:48>
  

    
Slip

 He preceded it with "resonates over time". And I don't think they do.
 But yes, they were influential.   I simply prefer the stuff that was
 influenced by them.

 1969 was the year I made to the decision to shitcan everything else and
 get serious about being a professional musician, so I ate, slept, and
 breathed all the stuff y'all have been discussing here.   It certainly
 influenced  me.  But my personal taste - what moves me and what I'd rather
 listen to - is what came later.
  

    
I have to say, my favorite paragraph in my book is the one I lifted
from Phil Lesh's memoir about the experience of playing music while on
acid (luckily it was less than 200 words).
Actually, my original idea for the book on 1969 was to be a collection
of "survivor" stories about acid trips, orgies, rock festivals, and
beating the draft, although my own story was relatively short on
orgies.
  

    
... I think your experience with orgies, Bruce, is the more common
one ...

de gustibus, etc. etc.

I still get thrilled - not just enjoy - but get thrilled listening
to [most of] Highway 61 - particularly "Like a Rolling Stone" -
also - Desolation Row (and It's Alright Ma... from the previous 
album... I have never, and can't imagine ever - getting enough
of those tracks ... they thrill me everytime! - despite having
memorized them years ago).

Recorded music - particularly live performances - is frozen time -
and a good percentage of the excitement of special times seems to
survive...
When I listen to Louis Armstrong's Hot Five recording of "Hotter than
That" I also get thrilled - Louis exhiliration of discovering here-to-
fore uncharted territory remains palpable - and I hear that in
"Like a Rolling Stone" too - 

I long denied any trace of "nostaligia" in my taste - and have
been a music prospector my whole life. Why restrict one's self to
the past - statistically most of the great music comes from the
past... but that's mostly just because there is lots and lots
more past than present, and it's hard to get stuff from the future.
There's always great music being made - and, again statistically - 
it's a lot easier to see live performances of current music makers
than ones from the past, since most past music makers have passed.

But my first iPod betrayed a skewing of the music I cared to 
carry around to the years 1959 - 1970 (when I was 6-17) ...
so... hmmmm ...
Still - the percentage of GREAT music compared to morass
is so small - one must always be on the look out, past, present,
future... where is it...

and there ARE periods of time that just ARE more fertile - 
1927 - 1929... all over the world... fertile.

and 1969 ... huge ... (in fact, I've only recently discovered
Os Mutantes ... )
  

    
Personally, if I had to choose only one Beatles LP, it would be a hard
choice between "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver", not "Sgt. Peppers".
However, as a sweeping cultural imprint, more than any other record by
anyone, Sgt. P's (I'd-love-to-turn-you-on) captured the short-lived era
of psychedelia. 

(My Dylan LP would be, not his earlier mid-60s stuff, but the
seminally non-influential "Blood on the Tracks.") 
  

    
Put me down as one who still enjoys Highway 61 Revisted. For me, those songs
hold up remarkably well.
  

    
How often did you listen to it this year?   Seriously.
  

    
In my list, back in <63>, I definitely picked albums I enjoyed at the
time, or would have enjoyed if I'd know about them.  So in other words,
the list is a bit biased, not a random selection of top-selling
albums.  With that said, I've probably listened to 3/4ths of the albums
I listed in the past year.  Some of them many times.  Highway 61
Revisited is something I listen to once every couple of years.  The
Dylan albums I listen to all the time are "Blood on the Tracks,"
"Desire," "Blonde on Blonde," and some of the "Bootleg" sets he's come
out with.  And the Basement Tapes.
  

    
God help me.   The only Dylan album I play with any regularity is "John
Wesley Harding", and that's for the rhythm section.   Buttrey and McCoy are
magnificent, and even more so when you know that McCoy's main instrument
wasn't bass.
  

    
My Top 5 Dylan songs:
Like a Rolling Stone
Every Grain of Sand
Blind Willie McTell
Mississippi
Bob Dylan's 116th Dream
  

    
By the way, further on my thought that the period starting after the
killings at Kent State in 1970 and ending in '72 with the McGovern
massacre was particularly fraught with melancholy and retreat, and
laden with decadence, here are some of my favorite songs from the era
(I've always been more of a song guy than an album guy).
1970
Fire and Rain   James Taylor
Let It Be     The Beatles
Memo from Turner   Mick Jagger
Paranoid   Black Sabbath
Ohio    CSNY
Time Passes Slowly  Bob Dylan
Jesus Is Just Alright   The Byrds
Truckin'   The Grateful Dead
Mother   John Lennon
Compared to What   Les McCann
Everything Is Beautiful   Ray Stevens
PF Sloan    Jim Webb
Sweet Jane   Velvet Underground
After the Goldrush   Neil Young

1971
Changes    David Bowie
One Toke Over the Line   Brewer & Shipley
Eighteen   Alice Cooper
Find the Cost of Freedom   CSN
Watching the River Flow   Dylan
Third Week at the Chelsea    Jefferson Airplane
Mercy Mercy Me    Marvin Gaye
Captain Jack   Billy Joel
It's Too Late   Carole King
Lola    The Kinks
Layla    
Stairway to Heaven   Led Zeppelin
How Do You Sleep   John Lennon
Trenchtown Rock   Bob Marley
American Pie    Don McLean
Blue    Joni Mitchell
Road Runner   Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Been on a Train   Laura Nyro
Sister Morphine   Rolling Stones
Sam Stone    John Prine
Low Spark of High Heeled Boys   Traffic
The Song Is Over

1972
A Horse with No Name    America
Song for Adam    Jackson Browne
Take It Easy   Eagles
Beauty School Dropout   Cast of Grease
Crocodile Rock    Elton John
Celluloid Heroes   Kinks
Superfly    Curtis Mayfield
Hi Hi Hi   Paul McCartney
All the Young Dudes    Mott the Hoople
Garden Party   Rick Nelson
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Randy Newman
Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues   Danny O'Keefe
Love Has No Pride   Bonnie Raitt
Walk on the Wild Side   Lou Reed
Me & Julio down by the Schoolyard   Paul Simon
Reeling in the Years   Steely Dan
Children of the Revolution   T-Rex
Papa Was a Rolling Stone   Temptations
Pancho & Lefty  Townes Van Zandt
Dead Skunk   Loudon Wainwright
Dueling Banjos   Eric Weisberg
The Song Is Over  The Who
The Needle and the Damage Done   Neil Young

    Personally, I was just the opposite, moving in with my girlfiend
in 1969, going back to school and getting married in 1970, winning the
writing prize in 71, getting a writing job after graduation in '72.
  

    
Couple of typos in the above: 
Layla was by Derek & the Dominoes, re-released in '72.
The Song Is Over by the Who is from '71.
  

    
All right, one last revision. I wouldn't say most of these were my
favorites (aka "A Horse with No Name"); just that they were emblematic
of the time.
  

    
RE: Charlie McCoy's main instrument wasn't bass...

Mostly known for his magnificent harmonica playing - Charlie McCoy's main
instrument is Charlie McCoy - he's just one of those folk who exude music -
and glorius meaningful moving music - I'm sure he could pick up rattlesnake
or a broom or a carburator and move us all to tears ...
His guitar accompaniment to Highway 61's Desolation Row is one of the
great monuments to artisitic achievement ...
(I really held myself back there on the hyperbole... wanted to keep it to
the facts ... )
  

    
Actually, it wasn't "Bob Dylan's 116th Dream." It was "Bob Dylan's
Dream," from Freewheelin'--got me through my first year of college.
  

    
Pardon the drift, but one of my fantasies as a record producer would be to
have been able to get the Fillmore East version of the Allman Brothers to
back up Wilson Pickett on "Highway 61 Revisited".   That awesome double-
drummer shuffle, a four-bar slide intro as a tease to what's to come later,
and Pickett comes in, full-bore, with "God says to Abraham, kill me a
son..."    Admit it.  It would have just killed.
  

    
It would have!  "Freewheeling" and "John Wesley Harding" are both on
my list of things that I listened to a billion times before some junkie
stole the vinyl.  Just have never gotten around to replacing them on
CD.  I've been sorta surprised by how much I've enjoyed "Desire" over
the years - I thought I'd get sick of it, but I haven't.  

And that's a great list of songs.  There are a few I don't own, but
I've certainly listened to at least half of those in the past year. 
Although I could never pick just one Steely Dan track.

I never listen to 1960s/early 70s music for nostalgia value - to me
the music just stands on its merits.  
  

    
My favorite Steely Dan cut is "Kid Charlemagne," with the great guitar
solo by Larry Carlton.
I prefer individual tracks because of my love of mixed tapes (and
cds). 
Once, after making a hundred or so, I said to myself, "Gee, I wish I
could get a job where all you do all day is make mixed tapes."
A year later I had one, at BMG, which lasted twelve years.
Unfortunately, most of the time I had to restrict myself to mainly BMG
tracks (but what a history RCA had, from Louis Armstrong to Jimmie
Rodgers to Tommy Dorsey to the Astronauts).
  

    
Love it, Rik...

...but that is serious drift.  The Allman's at the Fillmore East
happened way after the end of the musical revolution of '69.  July 1971
just doesn't cut it!
 
;=)
  

    
I think you're mistaking "musical revolution" and "revolutionary
music" or just plain great music.
Anyway, I've always found the subtitle of my book misleading, in that
my whole theme is that revolution that started in '65 or so came to an
end in '69.
  

    
Nice job there.
  

    
;=) was just my way of politely disagreeing with you, Bruce.  

Again, the cauldron of musical vitality from the period starting in
1965, IMO, did not cool until 1972.  This is not to say that 1969
wasn't an amazing year. I simply don't see it as the "end," as you
suggest.  With music at the fore, there was a dialectical morphing of
Western culture taking place as a result of the tensions between the
counterculture and mainstream culture.  It produced a new mainstream
(and a great deal of plain music) by the mid-70s.  Two key markers of
this change in the U.S. were the end of the draft and, then, Watergate.
 Musically, with the examples I mentioned earlier from Marvin Gaye and
a bevy of singer-songwriters, there was too much "revolutionary"
fervor still in the air in 1970, 71 and 72, to consider 1969 as the
"end."  

1969 was the peak, maybe, but not the end.    
  

    
In my thesis--and I'm sticking to it--68 was the peak and '69 the
beginning of a precipitous slide (accompanied by a last gasp--and what
a gasp it was--of great music, much like the last gasp of Woodstock,
which seemed to symbolize something beginning but just as easily
symbolized something ending. Maybe the turnouts were bigger for some of
the demonstrations of the early 70s, but I think the counter culture
was already crushed.
To me, 1970 was The Jackson Five, Bread, the Carpenters, Bobby
Sherman, "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison, "Spirit in the Sky" by
Norman Greenbaum.
1971 was Tony Orlando and Dawn, the ChiLites, Olivia Newton John and
Donny Osmond.
72= Gilbert O'Sullivan, Mac Davis, "My Ding a Ling" by Chuck Berry,
"Sunshine" by Jonathan Edwards.
Like radio took a swing to the right, easy listening designed to blot
out the turbulent memory of the late 60s.

    By '74, however, I think it was beginning to heat up again, after
the end of the war and Nixon's waterloo at Watergate, Dylan's comeback,
and punk rock taking over the Lower East Side.