Here we go--drogas, and Hair (the musical, and the stuff on your head and other joyfully gyrating areas). Social change. Guys with crew-cuts blowing their stack with red faces about it all. Whatever. Cool it, Dad, don't get Uptight. Just mellow back and dig what we're layin' down here.
There were so many great songs from 1970, that were really pretty much 1960s songs, that I've given up and stretched the category by one year. Hope you like.
Also, NOTE: It's, like, late, man. So I'm publishing the folk and rock and roll stuff as part 1; in a day or two, you'll get part 2, with all the great old Blues, Gospel, Soul, Pop (yes, Alex Chilton will be in it!), &c. I felt bad when someone pointed out that my 80s and 70s diaries were REALLY light on artists of colour. It was completely unintentional, but I felt bad. Part 1, here, being the folk and rock portion, is almost COMPLETELY white too, I'm afraid. But Part 2 will contain all the great artists of colour from 1960s gospel, soul, blues, and even the birth of Reggae (if I'd only published that one first!). So sit tight, and don't flame too harshly! J'arrive.
Until then, enjoy THIS! What 60s music really got it for you?
My first memory of life is of hearing music in the 1960s. I was in a small shop in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, about an hour east of London, England, in 1968, and the small, tweedy transistor radio on the counter played this song.. I still remember the gleeful face of the young woman behind the counter, who was tickled by the baby-faced five year old kid, nodding his head, perfectly transfixed by the then-hip Beatles music. The lyric, "take a sad song, and make it better," comforted me in bad times, and encouraged me in good times, ever since. That is the first memory of which I am aware.
EDIT: Oh no! Forgot Pink Floyd! (Thanks koNko for the reminder.) That's just wrong. That was a good bit from their Pompeii concert, which I remember seeing on film as a kid ("they only serve the round kind here! What are you going to do about that, then?"). Here's some more! The talking heads before the song are a crackup. But boy, were they good then. One more? Oh, okay: one more! Really, my favorite from that time, still.
And... Van Morrison! How could I have failed to include him? Van the Man. Here you go. Here's the song that was always my favorite by Them.
/EDIT
FOLK
Joni Mitchell was my sister's favorite artist. She remains one of my top three (Peter Gabriel and Earth, Wind and Fire are the other two), so forgive this loooong first few paragraphs on her music.
The song, more than any other, that gripped my imagination as a child was Rainy Night House. That song always seemed to me like a painting in musical form. I could see every detail she sang about, coming to life right before my eyes: the small white bed; the rainy night; the wooden floors of the home, the quietness of the house, everything. It all came alive for me, then as now. I got quite a mystical feeling from Woodstock, here the version from Big Sur, 1969. That version, in the falsetto version at the end, does things that bother my friend. She says: "I like the Idea of Joni Mitchell. But the falsetto: 'AAaa Aaa Aaa...'" But even though I still love that version, here's the Isle of Wight version, without the falsetto humming at the end. It also mercifully omits the jarring interruption by the grinding self-promoting stage-crasher, whom you can see in the movie "Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival."
In the movie "After Hours," Martin Scorsese uses Chelsea Morning to illustrate airy-fairy hippiedom, in the person of Teri Garr's lost in the 60s flower child, who plays the song. But to me, it's still just absolutely beautiful. "The sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses..." And listen to her high note at 2:46-2:49... it brings tears to my eyes, it really does.
Pete Seeger--my family played a lot of Pete Seeger. He covered Malvina Reynolds' Little Boxes; here's her version, and now here's his. I didn't understand half of Pete Seeger's lyrics (though this song was not his), and in fact was bothered tremendously when he'd mention "blablabla we elect 'em again and again," and get a huge, knowing laugh from the audience, for a joke I didn't get. HUGELY annoyed by that. But this great song, I understood: it's awful! It's saying that the people in the boxes (which I took to be South San Francisco's awful boxes on the hillside, and I was told that's what she was writing about) live horrible, empty lives. Fuck!
Bob Dylan, of course, is one of the towering names which are almost synonymous with 60s folk. Here's one of the greatest works by him, in my humble open yen. One thing about Bob Dylan of that time is that, like John Lennon, he was always snottily trying to skewer you, him, her, and everybody else who needed to be told what's happenin', whether you really did or not. But God--if it gave us great songs like this one? Nothing's bad.
Joan Baez really did something incredible for me with this song.
Simon and Garfunkel made the soundtrack for The Graduate something really special (though it was hilarious to see them using a Simon and Garfunkel song for an example of loud, ear-splitting rock and roll that Ben objects to, in the next car over at the drive-in restaurant). This song really is a great one, very moving... yes, I'm the kind of guy whose guitar Bluto from Animal House would have crushed, sometimes.
ROCK
Well, where do we start? Rock and Roll? Who knows where to start and where to end... but let's try The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, first. I won't try, I know I'm going to leave out your favorites, no matter what. Post yours below.
If you're talking about England, though, then you've got to talk about the Londoners par excellence, who remembered Waterloo Underground for us. The Kinks were so incredible that all you have to do is throw darts at their discography, and you'll hit another fantastic song... like this one.
San Francisco's greatest export, for many, were the Grateful Dead. My favorites have always been Ripple and The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion) Ripple was written in 1970, but these diaries aren't ever perfectly strict (just almost; I usually put in only one exception song that stretches it).
The Band did a great version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, but I've already done one exception to the year rule, and their Last Waltz was from the late 70s. So get your long-johns on, hide from the revenooers, and pour up some moonshine, if'n y'all got a mind ta.
Crosby Stills Nash (and Young). Fairly the emblem of Woodstock, I suppose, along with a few others. This was arguably my favorite song by them. But here's another (1970) rule-stretcher: you gotta include this one, don't you?
Santana first burst into our consciousness at about the same time, beginning what was to be one of the longest careers in rock and roll, I'm happy to say.
Hey, you're not going to play CSN & Y without playing Buffalo Springfield, I'm sure? Well, heck no! Loved 'em.
What about The Byrds, then? Well, that was a Rilly Big Shew. Here's another.
Procol Harum? No, not that SAME OLD song they keep playing; THIS one!
The Doors were pretty dangerous, weren't they? Well, here's one that's slightly less dark... Boy, did I get into them. Not a classically-trained singer, but great for taking you into strange places inside your warped self.
When the Doors started playing, they wanted to be as big as this band, Love.
You want rock and roll? I mean, just real rock and roll? The Small Faces provided a lot of it, didn't they? Not enough? How about this one? God, Steve Marriott was great.
But what about when the Faces scored that other singer, Rod Stewart? Beats the hell out of the Rare Earth's version of that song, I say. If ANYONE out there can find a Youtube version of the Faces' Wicked Messenger (Bob Dylan's song originally), PLEASE post it, because that'll smoke just about anything else on here.
The Moody Blues are heavy, for me. My Dad got this new VW camper-bus, and drove us across Europe in it, in 1968 or '69. The Moodies had just come out with Days of Future Passed, not long before, with Nights in White Satin on it, and Tuesday Afternoon, with their mystical messages of otherworldly communion. Those songs had a DEEP effect on me. This song, Gypsy, did as well.
The Who. I think that Chip Monck liked putting an extra-trippy sound in his voice when he announced them at Woodstock, and I always believed that it was simply because he thought their name was intrinsically trippy. Well, hey. Have to give a tribute to their drummer, Keith Moon, and their bassist, John Entwistle, both died untimely. Rest in Peace.
Too many rock and rollers died untimely. Janis Joplin, for one. Try just a little bit to beat her singing on this song. Dig it, man!
The Animals had their place in the decade, for sure.
The Yardbirds were pretty heavy, weren't they? Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton were all in this band. Whew.
Jimmy Page did good stuff for Donovan, too. Oh, hey, another great one from him.
Jeff Beck became really quite flash, rather.
Clapton, too. Not least in the great band Cream. Bomp bomp bomp ba bomp bomp.
Clapton and Dylan were both said to have burst into tears upon hearing of the death of this guitarist. My guitarist friend, from my first band, was the hugest Hendrix fan I knew, in high school. Now, he says of Hendrix: "I just can't listen to him. I can't." Too overplayed. But... I love this song. And listen to this, and tell me if he didn't deserve to be such a legend. Love the guitar fills at 2:57-2:58, keeping things going. You don't hear it unless you listen for it.
Stevie Winwood sang on that song with Jimi. Stevie did a bunch of great stuff in his own right, though, too. But he started out with the Spencer Davis Group. Great stuff.
Brings up Fleetwood Mac in my mind, for some reason. Any reason's a good reason. (Actually, I think I know why: because Christine McVie, of later Fleetwood Mac fame, talked about seeing Steve Winwood in those days, and said women twice his age were getting the hots for him.
King Crimson kicked our asses with this one. Rocks pretty hard for musicians the Sex Pistols would later call dinosaurs (a whole 9 years later, maybe).
Like, Jefferson Airplane blew my mind, and all the squares' minds, too, man.
Was that it for rock and roll in the 60s? Oh, I'll bet I left out a million acts; but I won't forget the debut of a certain Deep Purple. This version has Ian Gillan singing, instead of Rod Evans, who he'd recently replaced, but Ian Gillan's not bad, is he?
Nor will I forget the first musings of a little band called Led Zeppelin.
English rock and roll... Jethro Tull, man. Dig this heavy song by them. Plenty marvy. Grooved to this one, too.
Country Joe & the Fish set up a long-standing leftist tradition of using humour to become grindingly annoying to those we wanted to convince, with this song. But it's great, isn't it? The calliope, the kazoo, the -- well, what seems like a fuzz acoustic guitar solo? Just LOVED this song, then and now.
I never dug the Beach Boys when I was a kid. Seemed like jock music to me. But I confess that Cameron Crowe's use of this song in Almost Famous, to evoke the weary, happy camaraderie, after the craziness of life on tour with a rock and roll band, really worked for me. It did for me just what he wanted it to. Make more movies like that one, Cameron Crowe.
Enjoy that for now! Back in a day or two with a LOT of stuff you'll love.