Speaker 1Hello and welcome to another episode of The Album Years with myself and my co-host Tim Bones. Hello. And today we're going to be talking about 1969. Now the last two episodes as you probably know if you've been following this podcast were 1979 and 1989 so now 1969 can you see what we've done there? This is clever. It's very clever so we thought it'd be interesting to see you know we've obviously done the the dawn of a new decade or the end of the previous decade two previous episodes so we thought it'd be interesting to go back and and see you know how that was affecting music at the end of the 60s which some would argue was the most important era of all for pop music in the sense it was the era it was the decade when pop music really came of age wasn't it you started the 60s with you know pop music very much being one thing a sort of more on the kind of trivial middle of the road end of the spectrum and you end up and we're kind of really into the realms of art rock and serious pretensions for for what was popular music so we're going to talk about that but before we do Tim I believe what you know a regular part of the show I think from now on is going to have to be the complaints and errata section where we deal with where we deal with your comments about what we've got school boy errors school boy errors errors we've made which we you know we're quite happy to come clean when we've made genuine school boy errors and also some complaints so Tim you you are kind of like in charge of the the complaints desk here the letters desk here so
Speaker 2I'm going to start with one really is it's actually for me that I kind of found it slightly annoying where somebody had actually written I love the album years which I can take that that comment so far so good I love the album years and one of the best things about it is when Professor Wilson Professor Wilson takes apart his lowly student Tim Bonus on the errors oh that's beautiful and I'm thinking that's beautiful yeah has this person actually heard the show because obviously we've equally been responsible for errors and I'm afraid to say this person is going to be saying I love the album years especially when Professor Bonus points out his lowly student Wilson's many many many errors well
Speaker 1that was too many manys there do you think three many many errors I'll you know I'll sell for many listen I I make lots of school boy errors in fact I made one uh last in the last podcast where I where I said that uh um I think Omar Hakeem played on Seeds of Love. In fact, it was Manu Kache, of course, as anyone knows. I did make that mistake and I will come clean. That was a terrible, terrible schoolboy era. It would take some beating to beat your schoolboy era of describing Jethro Tull's album Benefits, though. The one that almost sank the whole podcast, you know. But, you know, I love that. And you know what? And the funny thing about that comment is it wasn't even me that wrote it. I wish I'd thought of it and done it myself. But anyway, what else have we got?
Speaker 2So we had that one. Also, that we had mentioned Prefab Sprout, that we were going to discuss protest songs, which, of course, we did. We had a very good discussion about it. But you edited it out before even I could edit it out, I'm afraid.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I should point out at this point that basically every time myself and Tim record one of these podcasts, we go on for fucking hours, right? And inevitably, to save the planet from being bored to tears by us rapping. battling on for hours and hours, some of it has to go. And I made the executive decision to excise Prefab Sprout out of the last podcast, which unfortunately generated a continuity error. We can't afford to employ a continuity person to check for things like that. So things like that will occasionally pop up. I think the bottom line is we will talk about Prefab Sprout, one of Tim and myself's favourite bands of all time. But I think ultimately I felt like the protest songs discussion, I don't think either of us would. would say that that's their best moment. So I thought, OK, you know what? We're going to talk about that band in more depth on another episode, no doubt. So this time around, they can go. Listen, I'm looking forward to the time when we get to episode 25 of the podcast and the entire podcast is just taken up with complaints. So 1969, the one thing. When I was compiling the list for this year, the one thing that occurred to me is how the era of psychedelia, the kind of summer of love, had kind of affected everything. You really hear the influence of psychedelic music or that kind of approach to music affecting everything from mainstream pop to folk music, to country music, to soul and funk, to jazz. I mean, jazz is going through an incredible, you know, kind of period of transition, isn't it? 1969 is very much a watershed year for jazz music. And it's true, I think, of almost every style of music that we're going to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. The influence of psychedelia.
Speaker 2Well, certainly all of the genres seem to be sort of expanding. And this even, you know, goes into the realms of country. You know, you've got people like Bobby Gentry, who a year earlier made The Delta Suite, which is an amazing concept album. And Johnny Cash was making lots of concept albums during this period. So he'd have done The Holy Land this year, I think, 69, which is a kind of biblical concept album. And what's interesting is that a lot of seemingly M.O.R. or country or folk artists, are really expanding their repertoire. And, you know, as we'll find, there's a kind of British blues boomers of the mid-60s are really coming out and expressing things that you just couldn't have believed. And as I think you pointed out at the beginning, what's exciting about 69 is you think about 1960 and there were some great albums in the classical field and the jazz field, but, you know, pop and rock wasn't necessarily in an interesting place. And you think of the Beatles kind of emerging 62 and then 63 in a big way. By 69, Abbey Road would have been an unimaginable album in 1960, the growth of that band. And I think that's kind of interesting. It's not only the growth of the band, it's the growth of the arts during that era. There really does seem, as you've said, perhaps it is this psychedelic mind and sensory expansion, but something was happening.
Speaker 1So maybe you kind of mentioned specifically the country thing. Maybe we should start with country music. What's interesting here is there are country artists that I guess have been, you know, been inspired by what's going on in, you know, rock and roll, but there's also things going in the other direction too. So you have artists like Bob Dylan making Nashville Skyline, which is kind of his first country record. I hope that's not a schoolboy era. I think it was his first sort of nod to, you know, very obvious nod to country music. An album, of course, that has Johnny Cash on it as a guest. And then you have a band like The Birds, who made two albums this year, Dr. Birds and Mr. Hyde, and Ballad of Easy Rider, both great records. Actually, their big sort of breakthrough into country was the previous year with Sweetheart of the Rodeo. But it's interesting that there are these bands that are coming more from the sort of rock and folk tradition moving towards country. And obviously you have the band as well from Canada who kind of make their definitive album, self-titled album this year. There's almost a yearning, isn't there? It seems to be getting back to your roots, particularly in America, a yearning to be getting back to some kind of notion of roots.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah, what you point out is interesting because it wasn't only The Birds or, or Dylan. You had bands like Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead who were in some ways kind of retreating from that psychedelic experimentation of the 66, 67, 68 period. And of course, Grateful Dead are going to go on to do things like American Beauty and so on, which were much more stripped down and much more rootsy. And it is always bands trying to find their roots. Although I kind of find it slightly more interesting, slightly later, you know, I suppose in the early seventies, an album like Gene Clark, who obviously was in The Birds, where he produces the kind of cosmic country and Poco similarly do cosmic country where they're kind of fusing conceptualism and psychedelia with this very rootsy, earthy quality.
Speaker 1There's definitely, you know, the birth of, you know, psychedelic country music here. You've got an album by like UFO by Jim Sullivan. Townes Van Zandt made a couple of records this year. Yes, yeah. But just flipping over to the other side, you know, if you like the kind of flip side of country, which is kind of folk music, it's also a very, very interesting year for folk, what people would come to know as folk rock. And I suppose preeminent among those would be Fairport Convention, who released not one, not two, but three albums this year. And some might say their three greatest albums were all released within the year of 1990. Right at the beginning of 1969. So right at the beginning of the year, you've got what we did on our holidays. Then halfway through the year, you have Unhalf Bricking. And then towards the end of the year, you have what I think for many people would be the preeminent folk rock masterpiece, Lesion Leaf. So maybe we should talk a little bit about Fairport Convention. They're an interesting band, aren't they? Because they kind of started off being sort of Bob Dylan idolaters. Yeah. And they discovered the sort of the great folk, the British folk songbook. And obviously recruited Sandy Denny, one of the greatest female, singers of all time, I think I can safely say without fear of contradiction, and made this trio of just stunning albums that virtually invented the whole notion, I think. certainly from a British perspective anyway, invented the whole notion of folk rock, at least the idea of taking traditional folk songs and rocking them up.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first Fairport album from 68 is pretty good, actually. But, you know, Judy Diable has a really charming voice and you can see that they kind of come from more of a West Coast, American and Dylan direction, though there are a few, you know, very beautiful ballads on that album. But yes, Sandy Denny is one of the most extraordinary vocalists of all time. And it's just a beautiful, deathless sound. You know, for me, the two female vocalists I love during this period are Sandy Denny and Bobby Gentry, really. And I think that with these albums, she really comes into her own. Obviously, who knows where the time goes and so on, but Autopsy, you know, one of my all-time favourite tracks from Unhealthbreaking. And what's interesting about this band is, as you say, they're kind of on the edge of. discovering the traditions of English folk, bringing it into almost a kind of a hard rock, late 60s, early 70s sound and improvisational quality, you know, because there's something in the looseness of this band that kind of reminds me of Zeppelin or Free in some ways. I don't know why, but I'm always kind of. because it's such a brilliant, flexible band with such a great sound. And I was kind of thinking as well that 69, one of the things that comes up for me is guitar tone that there are people like Peter Green, Robert Fripp, Frank Zappa, John McLaughlin, Jimmy Page, and then Richard Thompson, who have the most amazingly pure and distinctive guitar tones.
Speaker 1Yes, and in fact, lest we forget that Led Zeppelin also made their first two albums this year and Jimmy Page very, very influenced also by the tradition of British folk music. And of course, famously ended up with them recruiting Sandy Denny to duet with Robert Peake, which was a great plant on the Battle of Evermore on the fourth album. So there's a lot of interesting things going on in the world of folk music. Obviously this year also we have Pentangles, Basket of Light, Pearls Before Swines, these things too, incredible string bands, Changing Horses, probably their weakest album actually during this period, but still a very interesting band. But another album I think is worth dwelling on perhaps from this era, from this year that kind of falls loosely into the folk tradition is the third Tyrannosaurus Rex album. Unicorn. Now I'm a massive fan of Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's, I think they have something in common with incredible string band in the sense that they're almost, it's almost outsider music before the notion of outsider music was born in the sense these are, these are people who can't really play with any great deal of proficiency, but they're creating something wonderfully naive and wonderfully childish and wonderfully magical despite themselves almost. I mean, Mark Bonin's lyrics at this time is just gobbledygook of lines and words. He's kind of cribbed from Tolkien and, you know, C.S. Lewis and put together in these very beautiful, but completely meaningful, meaningless, I should say, or at least it seems to me, playing this kind of very cheap acoustic guitar with a guy sitting next to him on bongos. But there's something so innocently magical and otherworldly about the sound of Tyrannosaurus Rex, isn't there? I absolutely agree.
Speaker 2I think, you know, there's a kind of inspired amateurism about it. And I guess that it's Bolin's uniqueness. He has a great way with language, even if I don't understand what he's saying. And he has such a distinctive and charming voice as well. And I really like Unicorn. I mean, my favourite T-Rex album is probably the transitional album, which was T-Rex, I think itself, isn't it? The one from 1970? Yeah, yeah. And that is where you actually have the freedom of Tyrannosaurus Rex and the beginnings of that kind of rock power that you had on Electric Warrior. And I kind of love that album because it's the best of both worlds for me. But yeah, Unicorn is, it's a gorgeous album. They all kind of blend into one to an extent, the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums for me, a bit like Incredible String Band, but a bit like that. I love them all. You know, when it's on, I'm completely transported. And it just seems to have, as you say, a kind of an innocence that's very specific to that era, really.
Speaker 1Maybe we should, I think we should sort of cut to the nub now. And let's talk about, you know, we talk about how psychedelic music is kind of influencing everything. We've country music and folk music, let's kind of talk about, I think, what the natural, I think, you know, you could argue the most natural kind of successor to psychedelic music. And we've kind of touched on this before in previous episodes, is this notion of what progressive rock is going to become. So I've got this category here, which I call proto-progressive rock, because a lot of these bands weren't really making what you would consider to be, you know, your stereotypical progressive rock, if there is such a thing during 1969. Sure. But there's a lot of bands like Pink Floyd, Caravan, Family, Yes, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum, Vandegraaff Generator, all making records this year. And lest we forget, right at the end of the year, what many people consider to be the first, perhaps the archetype of all progressive rock, King Crimson's first album, In the Court of the Crimson King, is released. Now, I don't want to talk about this album because I think a lot of people have talked about this album a lot, and it's kind of pseudo-canon, kind of, isn't it, really? But let's maybe talk about some of these other entries that these bands are making. And I think it's fair to say some of these bands are still finding their way. Yes, they're releasing their first album. So it's a lovely record, but it still has influences from West Coast music. They're covering things like Buffalo Springfield and The Birds. It has a kind of naivety. Yeah, but Beatles. But it has a sort of naive charm to it, doesn't it? I mean, John Anderson's voice is as good as it ever will be.
Speaker 2I think it's a lovely album, actually. You know, there are tracks like Sweetness that I'd put on a Best of Yes compilation for me. Survival, yeah. Survival, glorious piece. And I think that the interesting thing about Yes during this period is that they do have a distinctive sound. You know, they've got an amazing bass player in Chris Squire and John Anderson. You know, so to have kind of Anderson, Bruford and Squire in your band alone, you've got this sound. And I always think Peter Banks is incredibly underrated. I think his playing on this album is superb. And one of my kind of theories with Yes, they kind of fit into my Academy of the Underrated in that if Yes had only made this album, I still think we'd be talking about it as this amazing British experimental West Coast
Speaker 1proto-progressive album. Well, and it's interesting, there are a few bands this year that kind of did do what you're talking about. They really only made one or two albums and then they kind of broke up. And I wonder if some of these other bands, like bands like High Tide and East of Eden, who both made great records this year. I mean, High Tide's album, Sea Shanties, I mean, that's a really dark, nihilistic record. I mean, very much kind of, you know, yelps in a way what Van de Graaff, Generator and King Crimson are going to do later with that album. I mean, the first two tracks, Futilist's Lament and Death, I forget what the second one's called, Death on Two Legs or something. Oh, that's a Queen title. It's something like Death Warmed Up. Death Warmed Up is the second. I mean, this is really dark stuff. But they're a band that broke up almost immediately. And you wonder if some of these bands, as you say, you know, might have gone on to become the Yeses or the Pink Floyds had they kind of persevered. Yeah, absolutely. But also other bands this year, Man 2, Counties of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle, great title, great album. Families Entertainment, The Nice, their self-titled album. So some really interesting proto-progressive rock albums. And my favourite band, Pink Floyd, made two of my favourite albums this year that they ever made, Moore and Amagama. And I'm a massive fan of Amagama. Sometimes I would say Amagama is my favourite Floyd record. I'm particularly a fan of the second record, which I know some Floyd fans can't abide. I think it's just an incredible piece of work and I think it's an incredible piece of work. A band, you know, really using the studio in a way so creative. When I was 12 years old and I discovered this album, it blew my mind open. And, you know, and we, interesting, we talked about how the White Album, you know, how Revolution 9 was an example of introducing people that would never normally be introduced to the idea of music concrete, to that whole world of music concrete through Revolution 9. I think maybe for me, a similar thing happened when I heard Amagama. I mean, that introduced me to the whole world over and over and over again. I mean, I think it was a real gateway for me.
Speaker 2Well, I think Floyd naturally kind of combined accessibility with experiment. And certainly on Amagama and more, there are some of my favourite Floyd tracks. I mean, you know, I've always loved Grantchester Meadows, Cirrus Minor, I just think is a magical piece. And you're right, you know, they managed to make these kind of timeless, singer-songwriter pieces then experiment with tape loops and avant-garde electronic classical. And also they're a damn good psychedelic rock band as the live sides of Amagama suggest.
Speaker 1Totally, totally. I think the definitive version of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "Careful With That" actually, Eugene, are wonderful versions of it. It's just a perfect kind of summation of what they were doing.
Speaker 2Well, it's one of my favourite periods. I think that whole thing that, you know, I do like the Floyd debut, "Piper Gets a Dawn", but actually "Sourceful of Secrets", through to "Atom Heart Mother", where the band seemingly a transitional.
Speaker 1My favourite period, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, they're playing with so many possibilities. They're an utterly brilliant band. You know, personally, I might prefer, you know, the whole "Dark Side of the Moon to the Wall", well, "Final Cut" possibly for me, is a beautiful run of perfectly crafted albums. But this period is so exciting. And so, as you said, you know, when you were 12, I think I was about probably a similar age when I discovered Pink Floyd, although "As Wish You Were Here" was my entry point. But yeah, it was incredibly revealing. of so many alternative worlds that I've not discovered.
Speaker 1I think kind of the flip side of proto-progressive rock is what I've called the sort of kraut rock, the birth of kraut rock and experimental rock as well this year. Although experimental rock's kind of been happening for a while now through artists like Zappa, obviously. But there's definitely, again, a bit of a watershed moment this year because we have a couple of Zappa's masterpieces, Uncle Meat and Hot Rats. And again, you know, Uncle Meat's another album, much like the second record of Amagama, where he's combining the idea of the studio as a musical tool in itself with incredible musicianship, incredible chops as a composer, the tape manipulation, the use of vary speed, backwards masking, all of those things going on in that record. And then Hot Rats, which again is an album that could easily have popped up in the jazz rock category here because it's essentially a jazz rock album. But, you know, experimental rock's been around for a few years by virtue of people like Zappa. But here we also have now artists like Can coming on the scene with Monster Movie, another artist from, another band from Germany, Amon Dool 2, making their first album, Phallus Die. We have a very, very eccentric British album by a band called White Noise called Electric Storm, which is essentially members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, helmed by a guy called David Voorhuis. This album is a really strange album. This is a, this has got that kind of BBC, BBC Radiophonic Workshop sort of sensibility, the sort of very kind of cerebral academic approach to cutting up tapes and creating sounds from nothing. But I think the album that we really should talk about and dwell on the most from this year, because it's just completely out there on its own. It's an album I've talked about many, many times over the years in interviews, is an album that still doesn't seem to obey any rules at all and make any sense at all on a superficial level, which is Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefar. An album you cannot not have an opinion on. You either love it or you hate it. Now, I have to say, I've been through both phases. The first time I heard it, I hated it. I didn't understand it. It sounded like people messing about. And I gradually began to realise through my own curiosity of going back and kind of trying to decode what was going on in the music, I realised it's genius. Are you a fan of this album, Tim, Trout Mask Replica?
Speaker 2It's original, it's poetic, it's controversial, it's disturbing, it's funny, it's brilliant. I can't say it's something I necessarily listen to for pleasure, although, you know, there are some Beefheart things that I do listen to for pleasure. I kind of liked when Beefheart collided with The New Wave, some of his, you know, Doc at the Radar Station, his sort of late 70s, early 80s albums, Ice Cream for Crow. I kind of connected with more than I did Trout Mask.
Speaker 1I think the thing about Trout Mask Replica is it's completely hardcore. It's completely uncut. So I guess that's in a way why I'm saying it's very hard to feel ambivalent about it, although you're kind of suggesting to me you are kind of slightly ambivalent about it. I think it's almost impossible to be ambivalent about this album. It's so bizarre. It's so unwieldy. It's so strange. It's so alien to the ears of anyone that's been brought up on conventional pop music or conventional pentatonic blues music. It's such a shock to the system to hear Trout Mask Replica. I mean, yes, you can. You can hear little bits of echoes of R&B, you know, Howlin' Wolf and people like that in Beefheart's Delivery. But musically speaking, there seems to be no precedent at all for what he's doing in terms of the complexity of the music, just with two guitars, drums and bass and something that's never really been replicated.
Speaker 2Well, it's also so difficult to replicate this. You know, this really is. I mean, I think Tom Waits. Obviously, access some of the spirit of Beefheart from the early 80s onwards. But yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone has approached this because I think it's a weird combination of chaos and intention, I think. And King Crimson have this, but King Crimson have it to the nth degree. In some ways, they feel absolutely in control of the chaos and the intention. One of the things I kind of find fascinating about this is that, I think we said this before, there are very, very few people within any kind of. art or genre that I'd call genius. And whatever I feel about the music, whether I love it, like it, dislike it, Zappa and Beefheart are two people that I would call genius. You know, people like Bowie, people like Waters, who I think have produced genius work, I think a lot of their success is due to great ideas and hard work. Whereas with Beefheart and Zappa, they just seem to be naturally extraordinary characters. And extraordinary talent.
Speaker 1Well, I think what's also, also just to sort of slightly elaborate on what you said there, I think also people like Bowie and Waters were very good at using the people around them to make themselves look better. You know, and I don't say that in a, you know, I don't mean that in a derogatory way whatsoever. That is part of the genius of Bowie and Waters is that, you know, Bowie was very good at always being the same, but changing the people around him to make it appear that he had changed and he had developed and he had kind of. kind of reinvented himself. And that's a simplification because I think he did, obviously, obviously did reinvent himself, particularly the way he looked and the way he sang. He did change. But I think a lot of it was also about the people he chose to collaborate with. And you can't really say, well, maybe you can say that about Zappa and Beefheart. They did change their collaborators, but I think their personalities were so strong that it almost didn't matter, or at least it didn't matter as much who they were working with.
Speaker 2Well, you also, yeah, exactly. You feel that they could have done it.
Speaker 1On their own. Maybe this is a good point, Tim, because, you know, you've kind of, I mean, I think you could quite easily describe Zappa and Beefheart as being in the same category that I was going to come on to now, which is a category I've called eccentrics, which is kind of people that don't really fit in to any of the other things, but they're just making this wonderfully kind of eccentric, creative music. I'd actually put Bowie in here. Bowie's Space Oddity came out this year. I think we've talked about Bowie enough already. So other eccentrics. We've got this year, Bonzo Dog Band made two albums this year, Tab Poles and Cane Shem. I mean, they're really kind of, you know, very eccentric out on their own. It's a combining sort of musical comedy with progressive rock and psychedelic rock and sort of kind of a mixture of everything. Scott Walker made three and four this year. I mean, two pinnacles in his catalogue. Also, some other eccentrics this year, or not necessarily eccentrics, but outsiders. Love, Arthur Lee, For Sale and Out There this year, two good albums. Donovan's Barabba Juggle, not one of his best, but still some lovely pieces. Jack Bruce, Songs for a Tailor, which is a great record.
Speaker 2That is a really lovely album, I think.
Speaker 1Definitely recommend Songs for a Tailor. Steve Miller, two albums, Brave New World and You're Saving Grace. Mott the Hoople, self-titled album. But the two albums I want to focus on, Tim, the two eccentrics that I want to focus on are Kevin Ayres and Harry Nilsson. Kevin Ayres' album this year, Joy of a Toy, which was his debut album. I think this is just one of, for me, along with Piper at the Gates of Dawn, this is one of the definitive kind of psychedelic progressive pop. records, just wonderful songwriting. The arrangements are lovely. There's that kind of, again, something he has in common with Sid Barrett, that kind of interest in people like Edward Lear, almost childlike surrealism, like Alice in Wonderland, surrealism going on in a lot of the lyrics. So you have song titles like Stop This Train Again Doing It or Eleanor's Cake That Ate Her. It's almost stuff that's come from the nightmare aspect of the nursery.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've always loved it. I think what I like about it, again, is this kind of freewheeling combination of experimental ideas and plainly lovely melodies. And as you've pointed out, the arrangements on this are so unexpected. And you will get pieces that could sit alongside Nick Drake, but then you'll also get pieces that fly off into kind of wild jazz or psychedelic directions. And as you've pointed out, there is this kind of nursery innocence, this particular kind of nursery innocence. This particular kind of English nursery innocence, which is also in the work of Sid Barrett and some of the early Floyd. Yeah, I'm not sure he ever made anything better, though he made a lot of very, very good albums after this.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't think so. I think this is my favourite Kevin Ayres album. I mean, I love albums like Whatever She Brings We Sing and Shooting at the Moon, too. But there's something about this album that's so perfect and so quintessentially 1969. And of course, it has a lot in common with what his former band Soft Machine were doing at the time. And his work was really, really good. And I think his vocal approach is not dissimilar to the Robert Wyatt vocal approach, is it? Again, it's a slightly underachieving, almost underachieving sort of vocal approach.
Speaker 2I was going to say, I think it's a perfect album year's album because, you know, what I love about kind of Ayres and Wyatt at this time is that they seem to love Terry Riley. They seem to love Motown. They seem to love the Beatles. There's just kind of a natural enthusiasm and effusiveness that also comes through the music, even though it does have a kind of a melancholy quality as well.
Speaker 1Well, it does, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it has a slight year. I think it's that yearning for childhood thing again, isn't it? So, you know, again, I've always felt this with the, you know, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the songs like Scarecrow and the Gnome and Bike. They have this almost yearning to go back to the nursery, trying to recapture something about childhood. And Donovan has that completely as well through most of his great music. And it's definitely very present here. Now, is that aspect also present in the work of Harry Nilsson? I'm just wondering, too, because there's almost something about a yearning for childhood in a lot of Harry Nilsson's music. Nielsen's work. And his album from this year, Harry, is I think one of my favourite Harry Nilsson albums. I mean, what a wonderful voice he had. I mean, he kind of ruined it, didn't he, as he went through the 70s with drinking and hanging out with John Lennon too much.
Speaker 2I've got the album where his voice is going, you know. Shot. Yeah, it's completely shot. And it is so sad because he had arguably one of the greatest voices in pop and rock music. And I think what they always said at the time is that, you know, you love the Beatles. This guy is McCartney and Lennon rolled into one, but with a better voice than either, you know.
Speaker 1And you know what? I don't think that's hyperbole. I really think at this moment in time, I mean, some of the songs on this record, just the most beautiful songs. I guess The Lord Must Be in New York City was the song he, I think he wanted to be in Midnight Cowboy, but in the end they wanted him to do the Fred Neal song instead, which of course is wonderful. Everybody's talking. But I guess The Lord Must Be in New York City is, you know, equally impressive composition.
Speaker 2Well, I suppose with his voice, I mean, one of the things as well, it's not only this, he's got the sweetness of McCartney, the bite of Lennon, but he's also got the range of singers like Freddie Mercury and Jeff Buckley to come. He just seems effortlessly brilliant.
Speaker 1So maybe let's, I think talking about Nilsson and Kevin Ayres in a way, sort of dovetails nicely to talking more broadly about singer-songwriters. Now, singer-songwriters, in 1969, no exception in the sense they're also being massively influenced by what has been going on in the world of rock music and psychedelic music and proto-progressive music. And there is definitely, I think, a sense that things are becoming more ambitious. So some great albums from this year, Neil Young released two, his first two albums this year, Neil Young and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Unfortunately, we have this thing with Neil Young where we always mention Neil Young. We say, the albums are great, but we don't really talk about them because I think he's one of those artists that they're all good albums, aren't they? I mean, it's almost like we want to dwell on, you know, perhaps the artists that perhaps aren't discussed so much. So let's not talk about, but they are amazing records.
Speaker 2I mean, the one thing, the first album's got a few pieces that he never really kind of revisits, this sort of orchestral singer-songwriter style that was quite popular in the late 60s. And I think Jack Nietzsche, however you pronounce it, did the arrangements and they're great. And of course on Everybody Knows, this is where he introduces the real, real guitar freak outs that he becomes known for, the nine minute long.
Speaker 1Yeah, this is the birth of Crazy Horse. Yeah, even though it's not Crazy Horse at that time, yeah.
Speaker 2But it's that sound, isn't it?
Speaker 1We've got Laura Nairo's New York Tenderberry. I know you're a big, big Laura Nairo fan. Wonderful album. We've got Roy Harper making Folk Joe Coppice this year. Roy Harper's another big, big favourite of myself and Tim. I think it's fair to say this is not one of his great, his great work is to come, I think is what I would say.
Speaker 2Yeah, I never, it's funny because I really like his debut, you know, the stuff, the stuff from 67, 68. And I think he, even the demos he did in the mid 60s, really like them. But Folk Joe Coppice, one of the, for me, my least favourite Harper album.
Speaker 1Me too. But then, but then just around the corner, we have Flat Baroque and Berserk. We have Stormcock. We have Life Must. We have a run of extraordinary albums. Elton John's album Ditto, Really Empty Sky, probably the weakest of his first, you know, 10 or 12 albums. But, you know, the birth of an incredible artist there to be heard on that first record. Tim Buckley made two great records this year, Happy, Sad and Blue, Afternoon. I can't remember if we talked about Tim Buckley before on the show, have we? We haven't.
Speaker 2I mean, they're probably my two favourite Tim Buckley albums, really. And he's kind of doing what Joni Mitchell goes on to do in the late 70s, infusing singer-songwriter with jazz music, I suppose, on these two albums. And, yeah, they possibly remain my two favourite Tim Buckley albums, although I would argue that Star Sailor is his most extraordinary album.
Speaker 1But I agree with you. Happy, Sad and Blue, Afternoon, are probably the most listenable, that's a horrible word, but probably the most listenable albums in the sense that they have a wonderful kind of open quality to them, sort of the freedom of jazz, but not the kind of histrionic aspects that he would go on to introduce on albums like Lorca, Star Sailor, Greetings from L.A., which are sometimes a little bit hard to listen to. Here, he's still got that sweetness to the songwriting sensibility. He's still got the sweetness in his voice. And so just some wonderful songs like Love from Room 109, the title track of Blue Afternoon, I Must Have Been Blind, some great songs on these records. I guess they're as close
Speaker 2as he comes to no risk discs in some ways,
Speaker 1aren't they? We've got Phil Oakes, Rehearsals for Retirement, a record I don't know, although he's an artist I'm kind of curious about. I need to investigate a bit more. Also from this year, we have Richie Havens, Stonehenge. We have Joni's second album, Clouds. Love that record, but we talked about Joni. We talked about Joni on, we will talk about Joni more, I'm sure, on other episodes too. Al Stewart's Love Chronicles, that's a wonderful record. I love that. Epic, epic title track, yeah. Is this in a way the birth of confessional songwriting, perhaps? Maybe I'm exaggerating the importance of this record in that sense, but it seems to me that Love Chronicles, this is just a song, a 15 minute long song about all his love affairs growing up and into quite graphic detail as well. Is this the birth of what we might call confessional love? Confessional singer-songwriter? I suppose it is.
Speaker 2I think you can see, you know, if you think of confessional singer-songwriters during this period, I see two sides of it, really. One is the Canadian, Leonard Cohen and Jenny Mitchell, who they've got Songs from a Room. Laughing Len, yeah. Laughing Len, Songs from a Room this year, which has got some great stuff on it. Jenny Mitchell's Cloud, as you've pointed out, beautiful record. And then in Britain, in a very, very different way, I think Roy Harper and Al Stewart are quite confessional. They're, you know, sometimes searingly honest writers. And Love Chronicles is very different because the first Al Stewart album, which I actually, again, really like, is very Baroque, very orchestrated. And a lot of people felt the arrangements got in the way of the music and his lovely voice. But Love Chronicles, it's just unadulterated Al, isn't it, really?
Speaker 1Yeah. And also this year, of course, we have two very big hitters making their first albums. Crosby, Stills and Ash. What an incredible record. You know, I think probably almost canon. It's almost like we don't need to talk too much about this record. But I mean, just so many great songs on that record, you know. But I think maybe we should talk about the other one, which is Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left, because this artist has been so special to you and me. So key to, I guess, you know, we talk about having a musical DNA. I think Nick Drake is embedded deeply in the DNA of both of us to the point that we've covered several of his songs. I know you've been very keen over the years to do a whole lot to do a whole album of Nick Drake. Actually, I've probably
Speaker 2with Peter Chilfers, we've covered about 10 of his tracks that have never been released.
Speaker 1I, you know, I think Nick Drake has almost become a part of the furniture now. But in the sense, it's very hard to find any musician that won't drop his name into the conversation as being an influence. But lest we forget, and I'm not trying to be holier than thou, though, when I discovered him in the mid 80s, I couldn't find anyone that had even heard of him. I remember buying a box set called Fruity. It was called Fruit Tree from the local hour price and it was marked down to $4.99 and it sat on the shelf in an hour price for about two years and nobody had bought it. And I bought it one day and I was just completely transported and mesmerized by the quality of the songwriting, the quality of his voice, the quality of his guitar playing. I mean, his whole approach to guitar playing, as I think any sort of acoustic guitar specialist will tell you, is just very, very elevated. He's a very, very, very accomplished guitar player. And the whole kind of combination of that with the whole story of his life, the fact that he was ignored through most of his, most of his lifetime. He died in 1974 completely unknown by an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Was it suicide? Was it not? He was very unhappy for most of his adult life. And that quality in much the same way, I think when we talk about Joy Division, it's very hard to divorce the Joy Division music from what you know about Ian Curtis. It's very hard to divorce the music of Nick Drake from what we know about him and his life,
Speaker 2isn't it? And it stands apart in a way. I mean, on one level, it fits in with that whole kind of, is it the witch season island records folk scene at the time with Fairport, John Martin, and so on. On one level, it kind of fits in with that. But on another level, there's a real kind of grace and timelessness that puts him outside of almost anyone. Even though in the songs you can kind of hear that he would have been familiar with Donovan for a start. You know, I always kind of think that songs from A Flower to a Garden, there are aspects of the second album of that that would have influenced Drake. But he sort of takes it further. You know, his guitar playing is astonishingly accomplished while his voice is beautifully fragile. You've almost got this tension between a kind of hesitant vocal and a tremendously confident and accomplished guitar approach. But just beautifully, beautiful songs. You know, I think the standout on this album possibly is River Man, which has been covered by a number of people and imitated by quite a number of people. It's a kind of a shuffling, gorgeous, folkish singer-songwriter piece in 5-4, isn't it?
Speaker 1But I think so many standouts on this album. I think that's the beauty of a great album is that, you know, you can just point, you can almost sort of throw a dartboard and you'll hit a great song. I mean, Three Hours, Time Has Told Me, Cello Song. I mean, there are so many great, Fruit Tree, there's so many great songs on this record. But I think what's very interesting about Nick Drake also, and I'm looking through this list of all the other singers, of songwriters we've talked about and there's one thing that he doesn't have that all of the others have your neil young's your lauren nairos your l stewart's your joni mitchell's the one thing he hasn't got that they've all got is he hasn't got an ounce of cynicism there's something about his music that is completely uncynical it has the melancholy but it's not cynical it's not lashing out at the world in any way is it yeah i suppose
Speaker 2yeah i'm kind of phrased it differently in the sense i guess his music doesn't seem particularly worldly in the sense that with mitchell young cohen they all seem like they've lived very eventful lives they all seem like they know everything you know lou reed as well i think velvet underground's album this year the self-titled album was superb and all of them seem very knowledgeable very worldly very immersed in cultures he seems kind of outside it all if that makes any sense so
Speaker 1so talking of cynicism let's talk about uh the the other end of the spectrum the the the development i suppose out of sort of the sort of boom of blues music is kind of happening all around us in 1969 so we we mentioned the first two zeppelin albums this year there's also albums like kick out the jams by mc5 uh and and the kind of other the other album in that category would be the stooges first time this kind of very aggressive garage rock music we've got cream making their last album goodbye 10 years after made two albums this year um credence clearwater revival made three albums this year uh you know alongside fairport convention what an extraordinary uh you know work rate uh status quo spare parts spirits clear jeff becks bacola blind faiths eponymous album alice cooper pretties for you deep purple self-titled album and their concerto for group and orchestra which is kind of an anomaly in a way but i think the albums that would be interesting to talk about from this year from from the blues scene well there's a lot of things that i think are going to be interesting there's a couple fleetwood max then play on but also the two albums that free made this year now you've already mentioned free tons of sobs and free were the two albums they made in 1969 and i think what's remarkable about remarkable about these two albums is firstly how accomplished they sound and secondly how young the band were when they made them i mean they're they're kids i mean they're barely out of you know in fact i think they still are in their teens when they make tons of sobs isn't simon kirk about 16 on the day something crazy like yeah that and yet they sound so accomplished that first album i think is one of the great sort of progressive blues albums of all time um the second album similarly so i think paul kossoff at this at this stage arguably is ahead of jimmy page in what he's doing with his instrument in terms of tonally and the way he makes his instrument speak uh in a kind of emotional way to the listener it's for extraordinary for someone that's 19 or 20 years old something crazy like that yeah yeah well i
Speaker 2mean it's interesting is it because obviously free were huge but when you're talking about 69 zeppelin did their first two albums and they are great albums you know in particularly for me the first one but free are as good but
Speaker 1free but free were not successful until until later on these first two these two albums were not successful i think that's worth pointing whereas the zeppelin ones were instantly instantly massive records yeah and and
Speaker 2that's kind of peculiar they didn't really capture the public imagination even though of course they had the huge hit with all right now a couple of years later and and greater success they seem to sort of fall apart whereas zeppelin seemed to become invincible as the years went on free there was something quite fragile about them and on these early albums you're right it's kind of coming out that british blues boom it's anticipating the hard rock of the 70s but it's also got little bits of that english folk influence that you can hear in traffic fairport convention you know you name it that's also in
Speaker 1which is also true isn't it a fleetwood max then play on i think i think there's there's as much of an influence from folk music and classical music and chamber classical music uh you know on that album which essentially again coming from a a blues quote-unquote band and peter green again you know a very troubled soul like like paul kossoff very troubled uh soul and a lot of that sort of sadness and melancholy permeates the songs don't it songs don't they permeate the songs and songs like oh well uh and man of the world are just kind of imbued with that kind of world weary uh just you know just that kind of just get me out of
Speaker 2here quality um but also the danny kwan i mean you know his stuff although the sun is shining um when you say i mean he's a great uh melodicist as well you know fantastic melodies he almost kind of has a sort of bluesy baccarat quality for me actually danny kwan during this period but
Speaker 1it's funny isn't it that sadness also seems to permeate his songs too i mean it also also seems to have been it also seems to have been quite a troubled troubled so it's fleetwood macker band that seemed to be cursed to have you know these very troubled you know musicians pass through their ranks but it obviously has given the music something something really special uh that we can all enjoy at the expense of these troubled you know uh really you know musicians with their demons to say the least but that that's another wonderful album isn't it then play it is and it
Speaker 2covers a lot of ground you know as you say it covers that kind of slightly pastoral english folk element it almost has aspects of mor baccarat in some of kwan's melodies it has really raw experimental blues proto hard rock lots of things are in there and it seems very natural you know again it's one of those albums where they're kind of putting it together for the joy of putting music together and it's the blues coming apart in in delightful ways dave gilmore's tone you can sort of hear in peter green at times can't you and you can sort of hear it in peter green at times can't you and um another big band who were influenced by this i think you know this particularly maybe this album the template wishbone ash i think yes yeah very much so it's
Speaker 1interesting isn't it albatross is not on this album it's it's from the previous year but that song that that two and a half minute instrumental when you think of the influence it's had everything from the sun king on you know on abbey road to north star and robert fripp's exposure to a large part of david gilmore's musical vocabulary comes apparently from that one two and a half minute instrumental by peter green it's it's just an extraordinary legacy for that song to it is a beautiful song
Speaker 2stunning yeah well they try it don't they on this album then play on the very last track before the beginning which is a piece of green instrumental it's a bit like albatross too it's almost like
Speaker 1they're doing yeah it's interesting you use the word natural though tim i think one thing i love about fleawood mac is how natural the voices are which you can't say you know you listen to free i mean uh you know paul rogers has got an amazing voice but it's not a natural voice is it robert plant similarly they're obviously very much quote unquote natural they're very much quote unquote natural they're very much quote unquote professional singers whereas when you listen to people like peter green or danny kerwan sing there's again there's that wonderful kind of outsider quality these are just sort of regular guys that have stepped up to the microphone to sort of pour out their woes to you and it just feels very natural and very uncontrived i think that's a quality that i really love about this
Speaker 2album then play on absolutely and also when they do go back to their roots you know when they've got that kind of 30s robert johnson blues sound there's something surprisingly authentic about it um and when you consider these are middle-class kids from london relatively young and yet they seem to as you said kind of display this pain and emotion
Speaker 1let's just have a
Speaker 2quick
Speaker 1run
Speaker 2through
Speaker 1what's going on in the world of say the more mainstream the more established artists this year obviously with the beatles abbey road uh you know we we can't fail to mention that a great record uh i don't think we need to talk about it anymore the who make tommy um great concept records uh the kinks arthur uh rolling stones let it bleed the doors the soft parade which i'm a i'm a bit of an apologist for the software and i think it always gets a bit of a you know a sort of worst of their worst of their six uh jim morrison albums sort of yeah it's
Speaker 2not the way it's not i mean i mean personally i think the best albums of the first three i think the first three door album doors albums are fantastic but i think soft parade is where they really do try and venture out you know for me the title try and venture out you know for me the title track is amazing but there's a couple of wonderful pop songs with um brass yeah touch me it's great i
Speaker 1mean it's very it's a bit kitsch and i suppose people that's not what they want from the doors they want the doors to be you know like the uh what was his nickname the lizard whatever his nickname was uh the lizard king they want the lizard king they don't want the tom jones sort of aspects of of touch me but i think in retrospect it's still a very listenable record i i do like it uh we got the carpenters first album or carpenters i think is the correct way to refer to them first carpenters album ticket to ride but i suppose a record that's worth dwelling on is the first album of the first album of the first album of the first album of the actually a couple of the beach boys 2020 which has one of my favorite beach boy songs of all time although it's not really from 2020 because it was supposed to be on smile which is cabin essence what a song what a song um and this is this is my favorite version of of cabin essence because it was overdubbed a little bit more for the release on this album beach boys go through a really interesting time aren't they because they're struggling now they're really struggling to maintain their profile aren't they uh having kind of imploded a little bit with with the smile project that kind of you know kind of fell apart and then the wild honey back to the roots album which didn't really translate into record sales and they're still making a lot of music but it's not really selling that well but there's some wonderful chris you know there's some wonderful gems on these records from this time aren't they
Speaker 2absolutely and cabin essence as you say is one of my favorite tracks of all time and um and i think that you know for me the beach boys remain interesting right up until the end of the 70s there are always great you know dennis wilson tracks um to be heard um there's always something happening in their music and it's such a shame that this got neglected at the time and great albums like holland got neglected as well but i suppose surfs up is the one where it kind of comes together for the band um artistically and also in terms of public awareness and and again great album i think a good
Speaker 1album but i still i still prefer 2020 there's something still about it that's got that kind of um they're making it in their bedroom quality which i which i love on on on wild honey uh and the previous album friends as well has got that uh the sound of that sort of very bedroomy or school classroom upright piano which is kind of the bedrock of a lot of the beach boys music around this time i love that but the other album that's worth talking about here tim i think is is um bgs odessa what a mad record a double concept record in a red in a red velvet box about about something i'm not quite sure um but the the music i mean it it's it's all over the place isn't it it's i suppose it's got that kind of post-modernist feel to it i suppose it's got that kind of post-modernist feel to it post-beatles psychedelic quality to it again hasn't it yeah i
Speaker 2mean definitely you know the bgs um late 60s work is indebted to the beatles and they you know perhaps aren't as great as the beatles but they write some amazing songs and they again a bit like harry nilsson managed to combine the bite of lennon with the melodic and beautiful qualities of mccartney and you know there are some wonderful short songs on this but overall it's quite a barmy concept with some extreme arrangements and as was par for the course for the um the bgs around this time some um rather peculiar song titles as well i think
Speaker 1yeah so i mean they're really this is this is their great art rock statement that unfortunately for them wasn't successful and i think it kind of sent them running in the opposite direction in a way they ran away in a sense from from ever being this ambitious again um and it's a shame in a way because i think i think they could have perhaps been um i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know if if this if these are the kind of albums that their reputation rested on uh i think they maybe could have been taken a lot more seriously than they are to this day i think you know people kind of respect the bgs don't they i think for a lot of people the bgs will always be defined by that kind of 1977 disco saturday night fever singing in falsetto thing which i adore but it's a shame in a way that albums like odessa might be overlooked because of that because this is um this is um this is as ambitious as anything anyone is doing at this time
Speaker 2isn't it yeah agreed and then they'll also have these little miniature songs you know i laugh in your face beautiful melody you know um they are really kind of gifted and i guess you're right it's that sort of you know like berlin for lou reed it's the album that maybe they put an awful lot into and it was the wrong album for the time because it was kind of overblown the packaging was overblown some of the arrangements are fairly extreme and of course you know we know that in the 70s bands like electric like orchestra you know they were kind of overblown and they were kind of overblown and they were kind of are going to have great success with similarly overblown combinations of pop and chamber classical but um i don't know maybe because as we're saying earlier in the program that a lot of bands whether it's fairport convention whether it's grateful dead are returning to the roots and the bgs are going even further out there in this baroque pop language i think also one
Speaker 1of the problems they have is that everything feels with the bgs at this time a little bit like a parody of something else so you get the country song you get the soul song you get the sort of music hall comedy song everything and you get the sort of beatles pastiche so everything ends up feeling a little bit like an homage or a pastiche to something else and so it's difficult in a sense as perhaps it's difficult in that sense to take it as seriously as you might but nevertheless and it's incredibly enjoyable record and and you know it is very ambitious and very epic and unashamedly pretentious and i love
Speaker 2that about it yeah and i think the one thing again i like about the beach bgs for me is that it's from this kind of period and they still had it you know really right up to their disco era there's a real sadness and yearning quality in even quite a lot of their singles so let's you
Speaker 1you may we mentioned soul there in relation to to um to the bgs album let's talk about what's going on the world of soul and funk because again no exception soul and funk music black music is being very much influenced by uh psychedelia and more progressive thinking in terms of what you can do with the music you're listening to and what you're listening to and what you're listening to the art with the with the format of the album so we have um roberta flack's incredible debut album first take with uh with the very famous song the first time ever i saw your face we have sly and the family stones classic psych funk record stand we have aretha franklin soul 69 we have james brown say it loud i'm black and i'm proud but the album i want to talk about the most uh which again i think is a very important album for both of us not least because we sampled uh a big a big chunk of this record for one of our favorite no man records isaac hayes hot-buttered soul uh what the debut isaac hayes album he he really created his own sound right from the off didn't he i mean what what you'd say about this album tim well
Speaker 2again one of the things that you can say about this album it's what you can say about the progressive and underground music of this time is that it's defining something it's not necessarily being something you know we the sort of early 70s people are making progressive rock music in this period people are making up progressive rock music it's music in the process of being defined and the isaac hayes album what would you call it psychedelic soul progressive soul um i don't know very difficult yeah i mean
Speaker 1it's i mean obviously you the first thing you do is when you look at the track listing you notice the durations of the songs i mean uh an 18 minute long song to 12 minute long song i mean obviously the whole notion of conventional pop song structure has gone out the window straight away and it's interesting you see you see this trend uh the next few years in funk and soul music you see this trend a lot i mean you look look at bands like the temptations uh uh frequently 11 12 minute long songs would come start to pop up on their albums certainly hot-buttered soul is a in that sense and you have these long monologues don't you at least a long monologue at the beginning of of uh by the time i get to phoenix which would become one of his trademarks uh wouldn't it so it's kind of drawing you in in a sense over a period of minutes i was about to say yeah it's
Speaker 2the birth of barry white here as well very much white has obviously heard isaac hayes and made you know commercial gold out of isaac hayes experiments in a way and you know the barry white stuff is great as well but um these tracks yeah they just breathe and it's there's a i think serge gansberg and we listen to things like melody nelson but
Speaker 1it's also but it's also got that psychedelia aspect to it as well some of the guitar sounds the kind of fuzz tone guitars um so yeah a wonderful record let's um so i think the last category really that i want to talk about is what's going on the world of jazz and jazz rock now again like i said at the beginning of the show it's almost impossible to talk about any of these genres without referring back to the influence that psychedelic and progressive music is having on and rock music is having on the world of jazz on every scene and jazz is no exception this is a kind of a watershed year really for for the fusion of jazz and rock music um and what's interesting is you have different artists coming from both directions but arriving at the same point or similar points so we talked about soft machine kind of going in a jazz rock direction we also have santana making their first album this year we have chicago making their first album this year still called chicago transit authority and these are artists that have obviously come from the tradition of rock and r&b music but they're making jazz rock but at the same time you have jazz musicians like miles davis starting to make jazz rock as well so coming from two opposite directions but arriving in a similar kind of uh you know netherworld tony williams emergency john mclaughlin's extrapolation these are all i mean these are all masterpieces of jazz aren't they
Speaker 2really it's an amazing year for that i mean the soft machine i kind of see a slightly outside of this because it's somewhere between that kind of very english psychedelic whimsy of kevin ayers sid barrett and jazz vocabulary but you know it certainly draws from jazz music and also draws from terry riley you know that kind of loop uh minimalism but yeah it's a really exciting year i mean one of my favorite miles davis albums in a silent way which of course is typified by john mclaughlin's beautiful guitar tone and this almost meditative rock jazz and you know one of my favorite albums of all time certainly one of my favorite miles davis albums and as you say tony williams emergency the lifetime album is is really very very good also john
Speaker 1mclaughlin on guitar and we have john mclaughlin's extrapolation yeah yeah i mean what's interesting is he's also got that kind of peter green aspect to his tone hasn't he again and in fact you can you can hear the influence mclaughlin had on frip uh no question um in fact robert will admit it in fact he told me once that he had to stop his guitar and he said i'm not going to stop my guitar i'm going to stop my guitar because he felt they were having too much influence on on king crimson this is around the time of lark's tongues and aspect because they toured together but john mclaughlin i mean it's just he's present on all three of these records isn't he um what you know what a what an extraordinary trio of records to to make your name with absolutely
Speaker 2and they're all very different aren't they because extrapolation uh doesn't have a particularly distorted quality as you say it's almost got that kind of post django reinhardt picking that you're going to hear in frip it's
Speaker 1a very clean tone -
Speaker 2Yeah, and Lifetime, quite wild and of course in a silent way as the title suggests very meditative
Speaker 1well also emergency the tony williams lifetime album it's it's very poorly recorded it's yes it's it's one of those albums that's so badly recorded that the recording has has kind of imposed its its kind of personality on on you know on the music on the way you kind of perceive the music uh in a similar way that say the second velvet underground album or soft machine third are essentially proto lo-fi you know not deliberately so but they have a kind of lo-fi quality which kind of almost enhances uh and creates a kind of patina across the music also this year pharaoh sanders two albums jewels of thor and karma karma of course having the the uh famous the creator has a master plan track on it which i which i a title which i parodied on a later porcupine tree album um anyway um well we kind of reached the end tim except for a couple of outliers one of which you've referred to several times in this episode which just shows you how important it is to have a master plan track on a later porcupine tree album this record was uh which is terry riley a rainbow in curved air now we've talked a lot about minimalist music on on the podcast already in the past and i guess we've shown we've shown people that how much minimalist music is important to us but i think we've also made fair points uh when we've talked about it how influential it has been on the rock canon and the pop canon because it does pop up all over the place doesn't it and this album i mean not only was it influential in the rock canon but it was also influential in the pop canon and the pop canon because it was the first album to be released in the pop canon because it was the first album to be released in the pop canon this year called curved air it's the the kind of use of repetitive textures and the use of echoplex is clearly heard in the music of of artists like soft machine and kevin ayers as you've pointed out it's a very important record isn't it in that sense it's a record that kind of bridge that bridge the divide between serious composition and the world of popular music in a way that perhaps had never been done before this time i think
Speaker 2you're right but in some ways i think he peaked too early because i think at the time he had a massive impact on the music that he was doing period pop period rock the album became quite iconic but i think partly because it was packaged in a rock way and partly because of his image which was quite hippie in retrospect he's not seen as important as those that came after him you know from steve reich to philip glass to john adams to john luther adams you know there are a lot of minimalist composers who maybe have a more serious reputation because they're not necessarily tarnished and of course terry riley again linking it to velvets and other things it's a lovely album that you know you have the title track and then you have poppy no good where he's using um a delayed saxophone throughout it and you know you can hear how somebody like bezinski was probably very influenced by this as well you
Speaker 1know but also i think that first side you know the the the title track um i mean it's difficult to imagine tubular bells existing without you know a rainbow and curved air having been a precedent isn't it um so it's influence it is it's definitely influential certainly for the next few years this is an extremely uh influential record and the whole notion of of you know uh repetitive uh using using echoplex to create repeating patterns and polyrhythms playing against yourself in that sense so on side one he's playing the organ against himself and on side two he's playing the saxophone against himself you know but i suppose it's the idea that this is now released on a on a rock label cbs marketed as a rock album and using an electronic instrument the electronic organ really creates that kind of uh bridge between the two different worlds i still think it's an amazing record i don't think this record is
Speaker 2dated in a moment no i i love it i think it's unfairly overlooked really um and on that first side you can definitely hear aspects of philip glass's sound in particular with the use of the electric organ yeah
Speaker 1i mean i always think when i hear in c which is another of terry riley's important pieces from from this era that you've got steve reich's career in a nutshell in that piece you know um and and and and and and and everything steve reich did terry riley kind of did you know in in c uh i'm not saying steve reich didn't didn't do extraordinary things he didn't and arguably he did it much better and he took it much further but terry riley as you say kind of slightly overlooked figure in the history of minimalist music in the sense that he he in a sense he really started a lot of these techniques uh off so a couple of outliers i think worth mentioning frank sinatra's a man alone i love this record uh one of one of frank's most melancholy albums um yeah great yeah songs of rod mccue and great album uh john barry's great soundtrack to to midnight cowboy of course including the the harry nilsson version of everybody's talking uh but also the the main theme which people will instantly recognize on a
Speaker 2majesty secret service is also good which does kind of involve psychedelic rock and synths and so it's one of the first experimental bond soundtracks in that respect
Speaker 1uh kyle and stockhausen's hymnen came out this year again i'm a big stockhausen fan this is one of his electronic compositions uh created entirely from recycling the sound of the music and i think it's a great album and i think it's a great album and i think it's a great album and i think it's a great album and i think it's a great album and i think it's a national anthems from all over the world there you go folks i get you're all i bet you're all rushing to listen to that now aren't you that's it tim well we again i think we crammed in an extraordinary uh number of albums into a very short period of time there so traditionally we always at this point in the show we we try to pick our favorite albums and also the ones that we feel were the most um perhaps influential in the longer term most forward-looking perhaps in that respect uh what would you go for tim
Speaker 2i mean with favorite it is almost impossible there are so many more albums from this year five leaves left a rainbow and
Speaker 1curved air come on i'm giving you some clues here oh five leaves left
Speaker 2i say it with a heavy heart with a heavy heart it's a lazy
Speaker 1chore it's a lazy list listeners listeners that is a lazy choice that's a lazy choice i love it though no i do too it's an understand it's an understandable
Speaker 2one um okay nick drake five leaves left i'm going to go for influential here i've got three i'm going to go for terry riley because you can hear minimalism and rock all sorts of things there um in the court of crimson king arguably sets the blueprint for what becomes progressive rock um and then i think abbey road because i think especially on the second side of abbey road and also their use of synthesizers on the album you hear what is going to be mid-1970s british pop electric light orchestra 10cc pilot um it's kind of all there in abbey road it's an incredibly forward sounding album i think okay
Speaker 1you know what i i don't think i can disagree with any of your choices there um so i'm going to be really lazy and just say i agree with tim uh on the on the most influential and forward-looking i mean yeah i mean that makes perfect sense to me absolutely
Speaker 2and i love hot rats actually hot rats is one of my favorite from that
Speaker 1year i mean you can argue that there are other albums that have had big influence i mean you know the first roberta flack album first take i mean you can hear so much what's going to what's going to come out of the mid-70s you know the sort of uh the sort of soul singer songwriter tradition really comes from that record isaac hayes yeah you know there's so many records that you can point to as as being influential you know the whole influence of country music coming through for the first time on you know an album like the band the self-titled band album so influential you know um on so much west coast music to come but anyway let's not get bogged down in that um yeah my favorite albums of the of the year yeah it's tough i mean floyd's amagama has been so important to me uh over the years um it's in my dna as that band is in my dna it's in my dna in a silent way you know i never and i never get tired of listening to again it feels slightly lazy to pick it you know but uh i agree with you nick drake's five leads left uh terry riley's a rainbow in curved air can never get tired of listening to that neil young's everybody knows this is nowhere um it's hard isn't it it's hard to pick you know
Speaker 2yeah it's got three and yes the kevin airs yeah well in the court of grimson king is a great album that i still listen to and i believe you've done some mixing of that
Speaker 1recently i have i honestly at this stage i'd be quite happy if i never hear it again as long as i live uh but but it is a great album and there's nothing that's no reflection of the album at all it's a great album i just don't want to hear it ever again okay great you know let's let's we go on all night let's leave it there i think i think we've um we've picked a few there that we we kind of hold very dear to our to our hearts anyway and that's the important thing if you have enjoyed this album this episode or if you have any complaints or you've spotted any heinous schoolboy errors of which no doubt there were many as there will always be uh please do feel free to go online and give us a one-star review or or five-star review uh or whatever anything in between and and and give us some feedback because we do we do we do read your letters that's all for now thank you very much for listening and goodbye goodbye you
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