The Who: "Substitute"

The Who: "Substitute" (UK: March 4/US: April 5, 1966)

With the Rolling Stones’ "19th Nervous Breakdown" already blaring near the top of the charts, another London group dropped their first single of the new year. The Who, that strange anarchic force that had exploded with "My Generation" back in December seemed to serve notice that 1966 was going to be a very heavy year indeed. Though the record still created no waves in America, it was banging smash in Britain, reaching the No. 5 spot for what would be quite a fine year for Who singles in general.

If the Stones were going to come out swinging aggressively, this strange bunch of arty street scruffs was not going to let them have at it alone. The equipment-smashing, in-your-face Who performances were growing legendary, and these cocky, menacing absurdists knew they had to have the right original songs to give all of their ear-splattering energy its full effect. Luckily, of course, the guitarist was a crazy bloke who wrote insane, violent, twisted tunes. While "My Generation" had been a youthful assault on society for certain, its stuttering subtext of insecurity would rise to the forefront here. "Substitute" is probably the first in a long line of great Pete Townshend compositions about an outsider looking in at a world from which he is excluded. And there’s no question he’s definitely pissed about it.

Actually, there’s a good argument to be made that "Substitute" was the angriest, most aggressive rock song ever released to this point. Well, it’s pretty hard to top "My Generation," but "Substitute" was more of a song than just an anthem. And it grabbed ahold of some real frustration and fury that was hiding just under the surface of the now-coalescing "counter-culture" and gave it a voice and a story. It also gave it some of the loudest, most explosive guitars, bass and drums ever heard.

But also, in what was part of the wonderful complexity that would continue to be the Who, there is a softness and a sadness at the heart of this tale that betrays a lonely soul and begs for tenderness in a harsh world. It’s heard immediately at the beginning of the song, with its bare acoustic guitar chords strumming a melancholy feel. Then, BAM! - the anger kicks in, even if it’s just the adolescent posturing of anger because tough guys don’t show their pain. The Who would always appeal most to the disaffected, the removed, the left out of the flowering world of wonder all around them. And that’s one reason the band was so essential.

　

 

 Lip-syncing isn't their style - the record sounds great though. 

 

 

The real Who - blowing away the flower power at Monterrey.

 

 

It always stayed in the repertoire. Usually the second song.

 

 "Substitute"

You think we look pretty good together
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah

Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Substitute me for him
Substitute my coke for gin
Substitute you for my mum
At least I'll get my washing done

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just backdated, yeah

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Substitute me for him
Substitute my coke for gin
Substitute you for my mum
At least I'll get my washing done

Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack

Exploring Miles Davis (An Introduction)

 

Miles. He was, unquestionably one of the greatest and most influential musicians of the twentieth century. And yes, he was cool - the king of the cool, by the way. As a matter of fact, a friend and I decided one evening, you could functionally define the word "cool" as meaning, "as close as one can come to being as or like Miles Davis as possible."

 

But there’s so much more to it than that. For roughly thirty years (from 1945 to 1975), Miles Dewey Davis engaged in one of the most powerful, probing, sustained exercises in the progressive creative development of an art form the world has ever seen. His revolutionary changes in stylistic directions, always outward-looking, forward-reaching, has often brought him comparisons to other restless revolutionaries, such as Pablo Picasso. Let’s just take a quick look at his long yet mercurial career, and we can get a fairly solid outline that suggests - at least to some degree - the extent of the man’s achievements.

 

In 1945, at the age of 19, Miles Davis moved from East St. Louis to New York City in search of Charlie Parker, the revolutionary messiah of the new modern jazz called bebop. Not only did Davis connect with Parker, but he played in his band, in clubs and recordings, for most of the next four years. This was his musical school, his formal training ground: night after night of playing the most adventurous and demanding forms of music while it was still in its infancy. Miles hit the New York jazz scene at precisely the perfect time. Parker and some of his young cohorts, including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, had been experimenting with new forms of expression in the playing of the music called jazz, but it was Parker - nicknamed "Bird" by the cognoscenti - who was carrying the torch and pushing the music the farthest.

 

Charlie Parker was a bona fide genius: unquestionably one of the greatest musicians in modern history, and his imagination led him to extraordinary flights of dizzying improvisation. Every night, every song, every solo, was a revelatory experience of dazzling virtuosity and inexhaustible creative wonder. He was the great pied piper of modern jazz, and the new style and approach he created revolutionized the way that jazz musicians the world over would approach their music. To this day, whenever we think of "modern jazz," we are essentially thinking in terms of the new conceptions of playing that Charlie Parker laid out so dramatically some seventy years ago.

 

And there by his side was the young Miles Davis. I can think of no other experience, imagine no other apprenticeship that could compare to what Miles was getting in his young and hungry years.

 

This should tell us something about the character of the man in and of itself. Unlike Parker, Miles Davis was not a prodigy. He was a pretty good trumpet player for his age, he was smart, and he caught on pretty quickly. But the young Miles Davis had so little doubt about his capacity for absorbing and mastering this extraordinarily challenging new music that he had tough-minded audacity to go right up to Parker and begin playing. This was a kind of confidence that bordered on insanity. But it is precisely this proud, fearless construction of mind that allowed Davis to shape his entire extraordinary career.

 

No, young Miles Davis could not play with the fluent, fiery abandon of Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, or some of the other hot young trumpeters on the scene. But what Parker liked about Davis was his sound. Miles Davis definitely had a gift for creating the perfect, penetrating clear tones that would develop into what is probably the singular most recognizable voice on his instrument. Period. Miles also was gifted in that he could hear and play melody. Lots of musicians played fast and furious licks, but Davis was always about constructing beautiful melodies with his horn. He focused on the middle range of the trumpet and always tried to get the most beautiful, delicately nuanced solos he possibly could. Bird loved Miles’ playing, and he loved the contrast that came between his own acrobatic, over-the-top style and Davis’ hip, laid-back approach.

 

Needless to say, playing night after night with Charlie Parker in the most demanding and revolutionary jazz group in the world, Miles Davis quickly got better and better. By the time he left Parker around 1949, he was unquestionably one of the greatest young trumpet players in jazz. Perhaps more importantly, the time he had spent playing with Parker gave him an unprecedented pathway in order to directly absorb all of the musical ideas of the day shoulder to shoulder with the man most responsible for the revolution itself. There is no way to measure what the depth of understanding that those years provided the young musician. Miles Davis walked away from Charlie Parker’s group as a living embodiment of the essence of the new jazz form. This was the kind of mastery that one could never get any other way, and Davis carried everything he had absorbed from playing with Parker for the rest of his professional life.

 

But Miles Davis was more complex than that. He was not satisfied with just being another great jazz musician. Endlessly creative, restless, and blessed (or cursed) with an enormous ego, a burning, angry flame in his heart, he was always hearing and searching out for some new sound. He was one of the great listeners in music history, and his lifetime of choices in sidemen bear this out like no one else. Plus, he had such an extraordinarily delicate and rare sensitivity that he could encapsulate the essence of loneliness and heartache with just a few carefully chosen notes. This powerful and strange mix of powerful character traits in this one-of-a-kind mortal came merged in the public eye as one of the most powerful and mysterious artists the world has ever seen.

 

Davis’ starkly original nature shone through tremendously with the first recordings that he made as a leader himself. His first session, in 1947, displayed a form of be-bop that was softer and somewhat more sophisticated in tone than his sides with Charlie Parker (who appeared on Davis’ debut playing a tenor saxophone, with a beautiful, smooth complimentary tone). But it was the groundbreaking recordings he made in 1949-1950 with his octet and nonet that set off a new direction in jazz. Working with composer/arranger Gil Evans, among other experimentalists in New York, Davis utilized unusual combinations and instrumentation (such as French horn, tuba, and baritone sax) to produce a radically new and different sound.

 

While these recordings had little impact at the time, they influenced a large number of musicians enormously, laying the foundation for a more mellow form of bebop that came to be christened "cool jazz," and became extremely popular, especially on the West Coast. When all these recordings were finally compiled and released on an LP in 1957, they were fittingly named, The Birth of the Cool. These recordings continue to be much loved and appreciated today.

 

In 1951, Miles Davis signed a recording contract with the independent Prestige jazz label, and he began a five-year series of non-stop recording sessions with different musicians, first releasing 10-inch, and then later, 12-inch albums in abundance. Unfortunately, around the same time, Davis became addicted to heroin.

This is in a way profoundly shocking as Miles had managed to remain scrupulously straight all during the time he had played with Charlie Parker, who, even if he was the king of modern jazz, was also the "king" of the jazz junkies. Davis had seen first-hand what heroin could do to an individual, so it is surprising that he became hooked himself, especially at this date, when his solo career was set to take off.

I have read Davis’ autobiography and other books about his life, and I have speculated that the musician’s sad falling into this habit was intimately related to personal depression combined with a racial anger at how black artists such as himself were treated in the U.S. at the time. This was highlighted for Davis by a very successful trip to France, where great jazz musicians were treated as cultural royalty. I believe that Davis was powerfully tempted to remain in Europe, where he was accorded both admiration and respect, but he realized that if he cut himself off from the on-going musical developments in New York, he would not advance in his art. On his return to the States, being painfully reminded of the second-class citizenship his own country afforded black men and the music they created, I believe he gave in to a kind of despair. Whether I am right or wrong, this is the time that Davis began using narcotics. He would struggle with a horrible addiction for nearly four years.

 

If heroin did not damage his playing ability - while many critics maintain that it did - it certainly slowed down Miles’ momentum as an artist. There are many good recordings from this period, both for Prestige and for Blue Note records, but there does seem to be an erratic quality and a hesitancy that is quite easy to blame on drugs, and Davis himself admitted to having great difficulty in holding his life together during this period.

 

Fortunately, in 1954, Miles Davis made a firm commitment to break his habit. He left New York and returned to his father’s house in East St. Louis, where he locked himself away for three excruciating days as the horrible pains of detoxification and withdrawal took their toll. When he finally emerged, however, he was a man reborn. No doubt Miles Davis suffered temptation and the after-effects of his ordeal, but the fire had been rekindled inside of him. Whatever he went through one thing is certain: beginning in 1954, Miles Davis began playing the trumpet with a new passion, precision and control that astonished even those who knew and admired his playing.

 

It was at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival when Miles Davis created a sensation with his spellbinding performance of Thelonious Monk’s mysterioso ballad "‘Round Midnight." Columbia Records was so impressed that they offered Miles a multi-year contract for an amount almost unheard-of (for the time) of a jazz musician. "What’s all the fuss about?" Davis purportedly replied. "I always play like that."

 

1954 also marked the beginning of a new energy in New York City jazz. In February of that year, the great drummer Art Blakey, along with pianist Horace Silver displayed a new group at Birdland, the famous club named after Charlie Parker, featuring the electrifying performance of a phenomenal young trumpet player named Clifford Brown. The music was hard, raw and edgy, maintaining the bebop language and structures, but incorporating an emphatic new drive that came, partially at least, from the contemporary rhythm and blues acts that were beginning to thrive and that would soon transform into rock ‘n’ roll. The new sound was dubbed "Hard Bop."

 

Davis made the decision to step away from the "cool" sound he had helped to create and to help lead the way with this exciting new movement. His old friend, drummer Max Roach, had enlisted Clifford Brown and was playing some of the most exciting music in the city. Davis, sensing the timing was right, went to work trying to put his own group together that would compete with Blakey and the Brown/Roach quintet and put himself at the forefront of modern jazz again. He was disappointed, no doubt, when his friend, the dynamic Sonny Rollins - probably the best young tenor saxophonist of the day, turned down his offer and took up employment with Roach. But Davis persisted, and by 1955, he finally emerged as the leader of one of the greatest small groups in jazz history.

 

Today this group is known by the title, the "First Classic Quintet" (to distinguish it from the later great quartet that Miles led in the 1960s). Driving the rhythm section was Davis’ favorite drummer, the dynamic Philly Joe Jones, a whirlwind of a player that could drive a band like no other. On bass, Davis found a true prodigy: Paul Chambers from Pittsburgh was barely 19 years old, but already was one of the finest and most sensitive bass players in the history of jazz. Red Garland was Davis’ choice for piano. He had a light and graceful touch that Miles admired, held things together tastefully, and would soon become famous and influential for his "block chord" soloing.

 

The band’s secret weapon, however, was an unknown tenor saxophonist from Philadelphia. John Coltrane was the same age as Miles Davis, but he had nowhere the credits or the experience that his employer carried. On the other hand, he had a sound. It was an enormous, growling sound, quite unlike anything anyone had heard before. Coltrane, a tall, unassumingly quiet man, quite astonishingly played like a screaming madman, his head filled with clusters of ideas that he fought ferociously to get out of his horn in time. Coltrane quickly divided opinion, but Davis heard the possibilities immediately. Remembering the old magic between his own spare playing and Charlie Parker’s gymnastics, Miles Davis employed John Coltrane as his ultimate foil, the saxman matching his leader’s beautiful tone and careful crafting of melody with the raging power of his own surging explorations.

 

There are many who believe still that this was the greatest jazz combo of all time.

 

During 1955-1956, Davis and his new group played continually, racking up a tremendous following that engulfed New York City and gradually spread around the country. During this time, the band recorded not only five albums’ worth of material for Prestige (to complete Davis’ contract with them), but also laid down four sessions at Columbia on the sly to prepare for Miles’ major-league debut. When it was finally released in early 1957, the Miles Davis Quintet became a national sensation.

 

 

‘Round About Midnight (March 6, 1957)

It is with this astonishing debut album on Columbia records that I recommend newcomers both to Miles Davis, as well as modern jazz in general, to begin. The playing is absolutely astonishing, the sound is beautiful, and what you are hearing is the absolute distillation of over a dozen years of development, both for the artist and the art form. It is absolutely one of the pinnacles of modern music. But for Miles Davis, this album was, in so very many ways, just the beginning.

 

(To be continued . . .)

 

 

 

 

By the way, for those who wish to advance deeply into the exploration of Miles Davis' quintet and sextet recordings for Columbia from 1955 to 1961, this extraordinary box set features the complete recorded works of Miles together with John Coltrane for the label. Documenting the collaboration of two of the most important jazz artists in history, this compilation contains many alternate takes, outtakes, and live performances. This superlative 6-disc set is one of the finest collections of modern jazz ever offered anywhere. It is historically comprehensive, essential in both form and content, and endlessly musically rewarding. I cannot recommend this set highly enough.

 

 

The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis with John Coltrane (October 26, 1999) 

 

 

 

 

The Rolling Stones - "19th Nervous Breakdown"

Released
UK: February 4/US: February 12, 1966

In 1965, the Rolling Stones hit the No. 1 spot on both the British and American charts with their identity-defining anthemic single, "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction", establishing the group not only as a major new force in modern pop/rock music, but positioning them to challenge the success of the Beatles as an international phenomenon. The electric blues/Chuck Berry hybrid that the band had developed since their first single in 1963 had morphed itself into a new, hard-hitting rock style that aggressively attacked the banality of modern life, fueled both by a propulsive electric-fuzz riff by guitarist Keith Richards and faintly Dylanesque lyrics of disgust and protest delivered by their increasingly charismatic and controversial singer, Mick Jagger. In short, they were a sensation, and they followed up their triumph with a tough, funny worthy follow-up, "Get Off of My Cloud" before the year’s end. Moreover, the Stones were creating havoc with audiences wherever they performed and were quickly solidifying themselves as international heroes of would-be rebels from masses of fans from their teens to their twenties.

As the new year emerged, the Stones were positioned to push the envelope of their increasingly furious power, as well as their rapidly developing musical and writing skills. Still, nobody could have forecast just how far this group would travel artistically during 1966. Along with the Beatles and Dylan, the band was about to embark on a creative run that was to revolutionize the very boundaries of what popular music could be. During the year they would release four new singles, each one more frenzied and challenging, both instrumentally and lyrically. They would also produce their first completely self-written LP, the groundbreaking Aftermath, which experimented - successfully - in so many different ways that it transformed the world’s vision of them, and rock music in general to a point that could not have been imagined by the year’s end.

It is amazing to think how quickly things developed and changed, looking back at this extraordinary era. The songs kept coming every few months with greater and greater urgency: "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Paint It, Black", "Mother’s Little Helper", and finally the insane rush of "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" Along with their competitors, who by now were their peers, the Stones pushed rock and roll to the breaking point, painting a portrait of a society going mad at the fringes in the process.

It all began in February, with the release of their new single. For my money, "19th Nervous Breakdown" was the greatest thing the Rolling Stones had produced yet - and it remains one of the most furious and iconoclastic rock songs of all time. In a sense - especially at the time - it seemed to complete a trilogy of hard-rock protest songs that began with "Satisfaction." But there was something new, edgy, and more dangerous about this single. It seemed as if the music itself was going mad, straining to somehow jump completely out of the rock-song mould. It was absolutely exhilarating - and to some people, just downright frightening in its intensity.

Unlike the cocky grooves of "Satisfaction" or "Get Off of My Cloud," "19th Nervous Breakdown is driven by an anxious, edgy jump back and forth between chords by Keith Richards, hot, driving and unstable. Brian Jones counters with a rocking back-and-forth Bo Diddley-type rhythm that grounds the tune in a kind of nervous stasis: everything’s stuck in place, but it’s screaming to get out. Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman enter with such a ferocity that you don’t think the song can build - but it does.

Jagger’s insouciant vocal is delivered to an upper-society girl on whom he looks down disdainfully. It’s a theme that he picked up on 1965’s "Play with Fire," and something he’ll carry with him throughout the year and beyond. One of the glorious things about the Rolling Stones of the 1960s is that they attack decadence, rather than wallowing in it themselves. Mick is angry here, just plain nasty, as he pours out his frustrated spite on the over-privileged object of his derision:

You’re the kind of person
You meet at certain dismal dull affairs
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud
Running up and down the stairs
Well, it seems to me that you have seen
Too much in too few years
And though you’ve tried, you just can’t hide
Your eyes are edged with tears
You better stop, a-look around . . .

As the band breaks, Richards lays down an absolutely screaming, scrawling guitar line that pronounces a guttersnipe’s indignant judgment. It’s beautiful.

Then the refrain starts: "Here it comes, here it comes . . ." Yes, this song is a threat. It rises in pitch and intensity: "Here it comes, here it comes . . ." Then it delivers: "HERE COMES YOUR 19th NERVOUS BREAKDOWN!"

The band floats for a bar or two while Charlie Watts delivers a mean, mean fill to push it into the second verse:

When you were a child, you were treated kind
But you were never brought up right
A-you were always spoiled with a thousand toys
But still you cried all night
Your mother, who neglected you
Owes a million dollars tax
And your father’s still perfecting ways
Of making sealing wax
You better stop, a-look around . . .

Here is a band who is delivering the actual text of what had only been implied in the subtext of Elvis’ sneer in ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll: This culture is filled with over-indulged, shallow, materialistic hypocrites, and you’re all about to get your come-uppance!

After another great ride through the refrain, the group takes off into a bridge section that actually AMPLIFIES the outrage and anger:

Oh, who’s to blame? That girl’s just insane
Well, nothing I do don’t seem to work
It only seems to make matters worse, oh please

As his voice rises in his frustrated rant, Mick eventually just trails away in disgust.

There is an obvious parallel between "19th Nervous Breakdown" and Dylan’s ground-breaking masterpiece of the year before, "Like a Rolling Stone," and I doubt that’s a coincidence. But there’s a difference here, too. While Dylan’s indictment implicitly includes himself and ends on a note of freedom and release, "19th Nervous Breakdown" is a cold slap in the face from pissed-off bunch of punks to would-be hipsters who are really pretenders - stuck eternally in their own self-constructed wheels of delusional pretension. This girl isn’t going to learn anything from this lecture, and the band knows it. These guys aren’t looking for answers - they just want to say "fuck you!"

Interestingly, since the lyrics come so fast and hard, a lot of people have never realized that this is one of the first ‘60s rock songs to explicitly deal with LSD. Yes, even back this far, the Stones were ensconced in the new counter-culture and were (at least artistically) attempting a personal and social transformation. Unfortunately, however, in this case, the old "phony values" make it a lost cause:

You were still in school when you had that fool
Who really messed your mind
And after that you turned your back
On treating people kind

On our first trip
I tried so hard to rearrange your mind
But after while I realized
You were disarranging mine
 You better stop, look around . . .

The message couldn’t be clearer: we’re here to blow away the bullshit, and if you can’t cut it, just beat it. In other words, this is punk rock, folks - and it’s taking no prisoners. That’s right - the Stones were the biggest punks rock had ever seen. And they were smart. They were smarter and cooler than you and everyone you had ever known. That’s why the group was so dangerous: they were intelligent thugs. And they were taking over. So logically speaking, if you bought their records and listened to their music, you were taking over too. Out of the way, lame, straight, fucked-up world! It’s our turn now - and we’re pretty well disgusted with everything you do.

All that’s left to mention is the beautiful ending, where, slowly fading out while repeating the refrain, Bill Wyman brilliantly employs his own "breakdown" on his bass. Beautiful, baby, beautiful . . .

　

 

1966 in Music - Reaching a Critial Mass

 

The pop/rock revolution that began three years earlier with the emergence of the Beatles and Bob Dylan reached an astonishing peak in 1966, as those two artists, along with the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, produced their most unexpectedly sophisticated work yet. Other bands, such as the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Kinks, plus significant new groups like Love, Buffalo Springfield - and yes, the Monkees - appeared on radios and record players all across the States, in Britain and beyond, changing musical tastes and trends monthly.

Along with the top artists seemingly competing for the ultimate pop masterpiece, 1966 also saw (or heard) strange new sounds coming out of garages, often inspired by some trendy new chemicals: the Seeds, the Electric Prunes, the Troggs, and the extraordinary "psychedelic sounds" of Texas’ 13th Floor Elevators announced a new era of mental recreation and discovery. And right in the middle of the year, perhaps the most audacious debut album in history emerged, as Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention seemingly leap-frogged over everyone with the satiric/avant-garde challenge of Freak Out!

Though black pop music continued to be played on white AM stations, continuing with enormous hits for Motown artists like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the phenomenal Four Tops, it was the harder and grittier "soul" sound of artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and of course, Mr. James Brown that would continue to lead the black youth of America in new, more hard-driving directions that would separate it more and more from white rock.

As for jazz, the trend was more and more away from the mainstream, as experimental performers like Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Don Cherry and Roscoe Mitchell kept pushing the envelope. But the biggest sound belonged to veteran John Coltrane, who leapt feet-first into the leadership of the avant-garde with challenging albums like Ascension and Meditations. Jazz was reaching a critical point itself, as musicians traveled in wilder and more esoteric directions, practically daring listeners to follow them.

 

Though 1966 produced some of the greatest albums in the history of popular music (Pet Sounds and Revolver are often pointed to as perhaps the greatest of all time), the year was still rich in the 45-rpm single. As a matter of fact, this was probably the last year in which hit singles would be as popular and important as LPs, as the next year would see a virtual explosion of ambitious, conceptual albums. While it is difficult (perhaps impossible) to produce any really definitive list of every significant or canonical work released 50 years ago, I have done my best to search out what seems to me a more or less sumptuous compilation of the most remarkable albums and songs of this magnificent musical vintage. This selection was based on personal opinion, as well as the views expressed on several web sites that offer up their own versions of the greatest releases by artist and year. Most importantly, however, such a project is only possible for me due to the amazing existence of Spotify, since I can now listen to thousands of releases that were previously only legendary to me.

 

I think that a simple read-through of what all is contained in this list will be enough to amaze most music lovers with the quantity, quality and variety of music that was evolving during this extraordinary period. There are no doubt still some serious omissions here - and I fondly request that anyone add their own suggestions. But looking at the selections here, I seriously see very few that I would dare to delete. I welcome everyone interested to check out this remarkable wealth of a concentrated artistic legacy for themselves. I plan to explore these titles more closely here in the months to come, but since you are lucky enough to live in the digital age, I invite you to start right away.

 

January

Paul Revere & the Raiders: Just Like Us! (January 3)
The Isley Brothers: "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" (January 12)
Simon & Garfunkel: Sounds of Silence (January 17, 1966)
          "I Am a Rock" (single)
Simon & Garfunkel: "Homeward Bound" (January 19, 1966)
The 13th Floor Elevators: "You’re Gonna Miss Me" (January 17/May, national release)

February

The Rolling Stones: "19th Nervous Breakdown" (UK: February 4/US: February 12)
The Temptations: "Get Ready" (February 7)
The Walker Brothers: "The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore" (February 15)
The Lovin’ Spoonful: "Daydream" (February 19)
The Young Rascals: "Good Lovin’" (February 21)
The Yardbirds: "Shapes of Things" (February 25)
John Coltrane: Ascension

March

Brian Wilson: "Caroline, No" (March 7)
The Who: "Substitute" (UK: March 4/US: April 5)
The Byrds: "Eight Miles High" (March 14)

The Beach Boys: "Sloop John B" (March 21)
Dusty Springfield: "You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me" (March 25)
The Rolling Stones: Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) (US: March 28)
           "19th Nervous Breakdown" (single)
 Love: Love
          "My Little Red Book" (single)
Love: "My Little Red Book"
The Lovin’ Spoonful: Daydream
           "Daydream" (single)
The Mamas and the Papas: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
          "Monday, Monday" (single)
The Mamas and the Papas: "Monday, Monday"
Monks: Black Monk Time
Sam and Dave: "Hold On! I’m Comin’"
 

April

Neil Diamond: "Solitary Man" (April 4)
The Supremes: "Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart" (April 8)
Manfred Mann: "Pretty Flamingo" (April 15)
The Rolling Stones: Aftermath (UK: April 15/US  version: June 20)

          "Mother's Little Helper" (UK version - US single)
          "Paint It, Black (US version - single)
          "Lady Jane" (US B-side)
          "Under My Thumb"
Percy Sledge: "When a Man Loves a Woman" (April 16)
James Brown: "It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World"
Cher: "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" (single from The Sunny Side of Cher)
The Seeds: The Seeds
          "Pushin' Too Hard" (single)
Wayne Shorter: Speak No Evil

May

The Temptations: "Ain’t Too Proud to Beg" (May 3)
The Rolling Stones: "Paint It, Black" (US: May 7/UK: May 13)
Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston: "It Takes Two" (May 12)
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds (May 16)

         
          "Wouldn’t It Be Nice" (single)
          "You Still Believe in Me"
          "Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"
          "Sloop John B" (single)
          "God Only Knows" (single)
          "I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times"
          "Caroline, No" (single)
Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (May 16)

          "Visions of Johanna"
          "I Want You" (single)
          "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" (single)
          "Just Like a Woman" (single)
           "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Bob Dylan: "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" (May 16)
The Beatles: "Paperback Writer" / "Rain" (US: May 30/UK: June 10)
Simon & Garfunkel: "I Am a Rock"
Frank Sinatra: Strangers in the Night
          "Strangers in the Night" (single)
Ike & Tina Turner: "River Deep - Mountain High"

 

June

Jimmy Ruffin: "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" (June 3)
Bob Dylan: "I Want You" (June 10)
The Hollies: "Bus Stop" (June 17)
The Beatles: Yesterday and Today (US: June 20)
          "I'm Only Sleeping"
          "And Your Bird Can Sing"
The Mothers of Invention: Freak Out! (June 27)

          "Hungry Freaks Daddy"
          "Trouble Every Day"
The Animals: Animalisms (UK: June/Animalization (US: July)
The Creation: "Making Time"
Bobby Hebb: "Sunny"

 

July

The Rolling Stones: "Mother’s Little Helper" / "Lady Jane" (US: July 2)
Frank Sinatra: "Strangers in the Night" (July 2)
The Lovin’ Spoonful: "Summer in the City" (July 4)
The Beach Boys: Best of the Beach Boys (July 5)
The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows" (July 11)

The Yardbirds: Roger the Engineer (American version: Over Under Sideways Down (July 15)
          "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (single)
The Beach Boys: "Wouldn’t It Be Nice" (July 18)
The Byrds: Fifth Dimension (July 18)
          "Eight Miles High" (single)
John Mayall with Eric Clapton: Bluesbreakers (July 22)
The Supremes: "You Can’t Hurry Love" (July 25)
The Troggs: "Wild Thing" (July 25)
Count Five: "Psychotic Reaction"
Donovan: "Sunshine Superman" (US: July/UK: December)
Tim Hardin: Tim Hardin 1
          "Reason to Believe"
The Left Banke: "Walk Away Renee"
Love: "7 and 7 Is"
Roy Orbison: The Classic Roy Orbison
Wilson Pickett: "Land of 1,000 Dances"
The Velvet Underground and Nico: "All Tomorrow’s Parties"

August

The Beatles: Revolver (UK: August 5/US: August 8)

          "Taxman"
          "I’m Only Sleeping" (UK version only)
          "Eleanor Rigby" (single)
          "Here, There and Everywhere"
          "Yellow Submarine" (single)
          "She Said She Said"
          "And Your Bird Can Sing" (UK version only)
          "For No One"
          "Got to Get You Into My Life"
          "Tomorrow Never Knows"
The Beatles: "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine" (UK: August 5/US: August 8)
Small Faces: "All or Nothing" (August 5)
The Monkees: "Last Train to Clarksville" (August 16)
The Four Tops: "Reach Out I’ll Be There" (August 18)

Donovan: Sunshine Superman (August 26)
          "Sunshine Superman" (single)
          "Season of the Witch"
The Who: "I’m a Boy" (UK: August 26)
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band: East-West
Jaques Dutronc: "Et mois, et mois, et mois"
Bob Dylan: "Just Like a Woman"
Wilson Pickett: The Exciting Wilson Pickett
          "Land of 1000 Dances" (single)
? and the Mysterians: "96 Tears"

September

The Rolling Stones: "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" (UK: September 23/US: September 24)
The Remains: The Remains (September 26)
John Coltrane: Meditations
Eddie Floyd: "Knock on Wood"
Bert Jansch: Jack Orion
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels: "Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly"

October

Hermit’s Hermits: "No Milk Today" (UK: October 8)
The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations" (October 10)

The Monkees: The Monkees (October 10)
           "Last Train to Clarksville" (single)
Simon & Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (October 10)
          "Homeward Bound" (single)
The Supremes: "You Keep Me Hangin’ On" (October 12)
Otis Redding: Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (October 15)
          "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" (single)
          "Try a Little Tenderness" (single)
Simon & Garfunkel: "A Hazy Shade of Winter" (October 22)
The Kinks: Face to Face (October 28)
           "Sunny Afternoon" (single)
Tim Buckley: Tim Buckley
The Spencer Davis Group: "Gimmie Some Lovin’"
Lorraine Ellison: "Stay with Me"
The Seeds: "Pushin’ Too Hard" (1966 re-release)
The Yardbirds: "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago"

 

November

The Temptations: "(I Know) I’m Losing You" (November 2)
Aaron Neville: "Tell It Like It Is" (November 9)
The Monkees: "I’m a Believer" (November 12)
Otis Redding: "Try a Little Tenderness" (November 14)
The Easybeats: "Friday on My Mind" (November 17)
The Kinks: "Dead End Street" (UK: November 18)
Frank Sinatra: That’s Life (November 18)
The Animals: Animalism (November 21)
Donovan: "Mellow Yellow" (US: November 24)
The Four Tops: "Standing in the Shadows of Love" (November 28)
Paul Revere and the Raiders: "Hunger" (single - from the album Spirit of ‘67, November 28)
Jacques Dutronc: "Les play boys"
The Electric Prunes: "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)"
Tom Jones: "Green, Green Grass of Home"
Love: Da Capo
          "7 and 7 Is" (single)
          "She Comes in Colors" (single)
The Lovin’ Spoonful: Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful
          "Summer in the City" (single)
Loretta Lynn: "Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)"
The Music Machine: "Talk Talk"
The 13th Floor Elevators: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
          "You’re Gonna Miss Me" (single)

December

Buffalo Springfield: Buffalo Springfield (Original release: December 5, 1966)
Cream: Fresh Cream (December 9)
          "I Feel Free" (single)
The Who: A Quick One (December 9)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe" (UK: December 16)
Cat Stevens: "Matthew and Son" (December 30)
Fred Neil: Fred Neil
          "Everybody’s Talkin’" (single)
Fred Neil: "Everybody’s Talkin’"
Cream: "I Feel Free"
Bob Lind: "Elusive Butterfly"
The Velvet Underground and Nico: "Sunday Morning" / "Femme Fatale"

 

Other Releases

Cannonball Adderley: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (from the album Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at ‘The Club’
Antoine: "Les elecubrations d’antoine"
Barbara: "La plus belle histoire d’amour"
The Barbarians: "Moulty"
Georges Brassens: "Supplique pour etre enterre a la plage de Sete"
Jacques Brel: Ces Gens-La
Ray Charles: "Let’s Go Get Stoned"
Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisors
Ornette Coleman: At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm, Vol. 1
Lee Dorsey: "Get Out of My Life, Woman"
Lee Dorsey: "Working in the Coal Mine"
Roy Harper: Sophisticated Beggar
Slim Harpo: "Baby Scratch My Back"
Skip James: Today!
Krzysztof Komeda: Astigmatic
Los Bravos: "Black Is Black"
Loretta Lynnn: "You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)"
Roscoe Mitchell: Sound
Ennio Morricone: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Robert Parker: "Barefootin’"
Wilson Pickett: "Mustang Sally"
Michel Polnareff: "La Poupee qui fait non"
Baden Powell and Vincias de Moraes: Os Afro Sambas de Baden e Vincius
James & Bobby Purify: "I’m Your Puppet"
Lou Rawls: Live!
Johnny Rivers: "Secret Agent Man"
The Seekers: Come the Day
The Shangri-La’s: "Past, Present and Future"
Sandie Shaw: "Love Me, Please Love Me" (from the album Love Me, Please Love Me)
Nina Simone: Wild Is the Wind
Nancy Sinatra: How Does That Grab You?
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazleton: "Summer Wine"
The Sonics: Boom
Sun Ra: The Magic City
Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 2
Cecil Taylor: Unit Structures
Koko Taylor: "Wang Dang Doodle"
Ike and Tina Turner: River Deep - Mountain High
          "River Deep - Mountain High"
The Troggs: "I Can’t Control Myself"
Junior Walker & the Allstars: "(I’m a) Road Runner"
Doc Watson: Southbound
Walter Wanderley: Rain Forest
Larry Young: Unity