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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 94. The Beau Brummels – Triangle (1967)

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A San Francisco band named after an 18 th century English dandy, this is their fourth studio album and by this time they were reduced to a trio, hence the name of the album I guess. The music is a country rock/beat pop/psychedelia crossover that has a lot of variety to the style of the songs. Some tracks, such as Triangle or the Randy Newman cover Old Kentucky Home are in much more of a country style, while It Won’t Get Better is much more laid-back and bluesy. Are You Happy Now is a bit of lively folk/pop while Only Dreaming Now slows things down and brings in a bit of gypsy accordion. More psychedelic elements (inevitably for 1967) occur in the longer tracks (most of the tracks on here are of the two-and-a-bit minutes of the classic pop sing), with The Painter of Women being a bit baroque with harpsichord, and its parade of archetypal characters is both very Dylanesque and also prefigures elements of prog. The Keeper of Time manages somehow to sound like a mix of a lushly orches...
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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 93. The Young Rascals – Groovin' (1967)

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  The Young Rascals are included, I think, as an exemplar of the “blue-eyed soul” genre; soul music played by white people, in other words. Imagine if The Monkees played covers of Dusty Springfield songs, and that’s kind of what we get here. Some tracks, such as A Girl Like You and I’m So Happy Now are upbeat, punctuated by horns, very poppy soul, sounding a little like Happy Together by The Turtles, while others are slower, like Find Somebody and How Can I be Sure?, but still souful. And, actually, what I said in the opening paragraph is reversed, as it was Springfield who did a cover of How Can I Be Sure. It also sounds like Cilla Black could have sung it, with its waltz beat and traces of French accordian. Bits and bobs of other musical influences can be found as well – Sueno uses Spanish guitar, while the title track Groovin’ uses laid-back Latin beats. If you’ve heard any tracks off this album, chances are that it’s Groovin’, which was one of the Rascals’ biggest hits. The...
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1001 Albums YouMust Hear Before You Die: 92. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band – Safe As Milk (1967)

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  Beefheart, real name Don van Vliet, is known to me as being somewhat Zappa-like (he and Zappa work together quite a lot), but this, his debut album, starts off fairly straightforward, with the hard rock/blues Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes, I Do, then onto more psychedelia rock with Zig Zag Wanderer and Call on Me. There’s more blues in Plastic Factory and Where There’s Woman. Since the album features a young Ry Cooder it’s perhaps not surprising that there are a lot of blues. Dropout Boogie is much more like a Zappa track, a chant-like exaggerated vocal over a mix of hard grind and twinkly breaks. Like Zappa, it’s fundamentally a good tune that kind of satirises itself by going over the top – Beefheart has a slightly quavery voice like he’s putting on a silly voice, but I think this is his natural singing voice. As does I’m Glad, which is a kind of slow rock and roll/soul number. Electricity is a fun track featuring a theramin, and here Beefheart’s tight-throat vocals really work with the...
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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 91. Moby Grape – Moby Grape (1967)

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  The next batch of albums feature three artists I’ve never heard of, and one that I have heard *of* but (aside from a collaboration with Frank Zappa), I’ve never heard (Captain Beefheart). But first, Moby Grape, part of the San Francisco sound, and maybe a little like Jefferson Airplane in sound, but more towards country rock and less psychedelic. And they’re good, by gum, when they’re good. I’m picking up a bit of Wishbone Ash as well, which is unsurprising perhaps as both groups have multiple inter-weaving lead guitars. Maybe a little like another overlooked group, Fanny (yes, British readers, that was their name). The trajectory of Moby Grape is a sad one, because they could have been much bigger than they were, could easily have been a familiar name like many of the other groups arising from the Summer of Love. But they were beset with mental illness, legal and money problems, lengthy disputes with a grasping manager, but they somehow limped on into the start of the twenty...
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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 90. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

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I mean ... there’d be riot and blood in the streets if this one didn’t make it into any “best albums” list. Does it live up to its reputation? I think so. It’s not necessarily the first “concept” album in the sense of thematically linked songs (in fact, Sinatra started the whole list off with one of those), but it is an early example of the tracks being held together by an overall soundscape. Not as much as Pink Floyd will do later on, but the overall sense is that the album is a concert by performed the Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s very musically varied. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds dabbles in psychedelia (but after a steady diet of Californian psychedelia actually feels quite quaint and polite). She’s Leaving Home, with its strings, feels more like a tune from a musical, and is all the better for it.   Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite is quite vaudevillian. Ringo’s best song, IMO, With A Little Help From My Friends, along with When I’m Sixty Four and Lovely Rita are probably th...
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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 89. The Monkees – Headquarters (1967)

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  This is the first album where the Monkees got to write their own material and play their own instruments, their third studio album that came after the first season of their TV show; I guess they wanted to demonstrate that they were something other than a manufactured band. Since it charted at Number 2 to the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper, it can’t be too bad, and it isn’t. The only one that I’ve heard on compilation albums is the delicate, and somewhat wistful, Shades of Grey sung by Davy Jones. The others vary from a little bit jangly Byrds style like You Just May Be The One to more vaudevillean Kinks-esque observational songs like Mr Webster (about a retiree), or Randy Scouse Git (which isn’t, as you might think, a pop at any of The Beatles although it was inspired by a party held by them that the Monkees attended. It’s actually a reference to the character in Til Death Us Do Part played by Tony Blair’s father-in-law, Tony Booth). Others are little nuggets of oddness, like Band ...
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1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 88. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)

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  The Experience comprise Hendrix, drummer Mitch Mitchell, and bassist Noel Redding, and the three form the archetypal “power trio” of rock. Between them they shout out some hard and heavy pure rock, but it’s arguably Hendrix doing things previously unheard with a guitar that really makes the sound. Fuzz and wah-wah, tremolo bends, and the most gloriously anarchic noise you can imagine. There are some classic on here – Purple Haze, Fire, Foxy Lady, but not all of them are powerful rock, which makes the whole album that much more interesting. Third Stone From The Sun is a trippy song with hypnotic beats, distorted vocals and noises. The Wind Cries Mary is a relatively gentle number although for me it’s never felt like Hendrix has the voice to carry of a song of this nature. Hey Joe, on the other hand, is a classic murder ballad given the Experience treatment, turning it into something that the Louvin Brothers or Ramblin’ Jack would barely recognize (but I hope would approve of). ...
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