1967, The Year in Review, P3

1967 wasn’t a typical year in music; anything in this year’s top 20 might easily make any other year’s top 12.  In fact, half of the albums below made my top 50 of the decade.  Without further ado, here are…

The Next 8 Albums for my Top 20 Albums of 1967

Note: Some of this commentary is adapted from that in No Hype No Trends Music’s 200 Best Albums of the 1960s.

As always, you can jump to the playlist at the bottom of each post to listen while you read.

Within each tier (Top 6, Next 6, etc.), all albums are listed roughly chronologically (all release dates from Wikipedia, unless otherwise noted).

The Rolling Stones
Between the Buttons [UK]

Released 1967/01/20

This was always one of my favorite Stones albums, even when I knew it was a notch below their greatest.  Somehow, I unknowingly ended up with the UK import version of the LP when I was younger, and I was surprised to discover later that the US version was best known for “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” which weren’t even on my copy.

My version had no real hits to speak of, but the album tracks are just terrific.  “My Obsession” is a churning, grinding rocker, “Connection” jittery and crisp, and the terrific “Complicated” a fusion of both styles. “Yesterday’s Papers” has a baroque pop harpsichord in the background, and both “Cool, Calm, and Collected” and album closer “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” have a playful, music-hall feel.

Two of the better songs were left off the US version of the album: “Please Go Home” is a raucous rocker with some wicked, tumultuous guitar in the background; and “Back Street Girl” tells the story, very tenderly, of an upper class snoot very sweetly putting his lower class mistress in her place. Elsewhere, Jagger portrays more complex female characters, most notably in “Complicated” and “Cool, Calm, Collected.”

Never before had the Stones had as rich a variety of sounds, played so convincingly. It was clear that they were on the cusp of great things ahead.

Listen to more Rolling Stones.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 107
• Rolling Stone: 100 Best Albums of the Past 20 Years (1987), No . 070
• Rolling Stone 100 Best Albums of All Time (1997), No . 086
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 355

The Creation
We Are Paintermen

Released 1967
(released only in Germany, Netherlands, France, Sweden)

Is it the music I’m drawn to, or the story behind it?—a UK band playing in relative obscurity (but well-known enough that the Who tried to recruit their guitarist), never even seeing a record released in their own country, finally getting their due by garage rock obsessives, record collectors, and the occasional movie director.

The story isn’t that fabulous, actually—similar tales are far too common—but the music itself certainly is.  Yes, the album is uneven, in the way that many excellent albums of the time were, as bands tried to find their voice in a musical landscape that was rapidly changing before their very eyes; there are the obligatory unnecessary covers, and they try on perhaps too wide a variety of styles.  But the album as a whole is just great.

The classic Nugget cut “Making Time” (featured on countless ‘60s compilations, as well as the Rushmore soundtrack) features perhaps the first recorded use of electric guitar played with a violin bow; more important, it rocks.

And there are many other great tracks here to fall for. “Through My Eyes” is a great, plodding grind of a garage rock song, immensely likable; and “Nightmares” is an early-psychedelic treat, with some cool shuddering guitar noises in the background. “Can I Join Your Band,” “Biff Bang Pow,” and “Try and Stop Me” are good, raucous fun. “If I Stay Too Long” is a convincing (read, “non-sappy”) ballad, and “Tom Tom” is a silly but catchy-as-hell riff on nursery rhymes.

God knows why they chose “Painter Man” as the second single from the album; I, at least, find it one of the least appealing songs on the album. (Someone must have liked it, though—it was the band’s biggest hit.) The rest of the band’s originals are terrific, thoroughly enjoyable British Invasion rock at its best.

Playlist Note:  This album itself appears to be unavailable of Spotify.  However, all the tracks from the album are available on the compilation Our Music is Red… with Purple Flashes, as well as How Does It Feel to Feel? and others.

Listen to more Creation.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

James Carr
You Got My Mind Messed Up

Released 1967

James Carr could sing to tear your heart out, and his You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up stands firm as an undisputed soul classic.

Otis Redding is an obvious influence. Carr’s career was far shorter than Redding’s—mental health issues plagued him his entire life (although Redding’s career was of course cut short, too).  But on this one album he perhaps surpasses Redding, singing with as powerful a passion but a stronger sense of melody.

The songs are darker, too. To those accustomed to the discordance of alternative rock, You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up may at first listen seem nothing more than a typical soul album. But a closer look reveals something altogether more complex. Every song seems laced with a suggestion of a troubled mind, of obsessions and mood swings. As is evident even in some of his song titles, his love songs give hints of the bipolar disorder from which he suffered—he doesn’t just fall in love, he suffers a “Love Attack,” and his lover gets his “…Mind Messed Up.” On perhaps the album’s finest moment, “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man,” he equates the disappointments of love to the sensation of drowning. The singing adds to the tension, as he pushes the emotion to an intensity unparalleled in soul music.

The album is best known for the hit “The Dark End of the Street,” but for me that track really works best as a hushed, haunting respite from the turmoil of the most impressive songs. Yet, even here, in the tale of an illicit affair, the imagery of shadows and gloom pervade Carr’s every line. As a whole, no matter which songs you prefer, the album is a masterful performance.

Read more in my top 50 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 279

Paco de Lucia
La Fabulosa guitarra de Paco de Lucia

Released 1967

La Fabulosa Guitarra de Paco de Lucia is a masterful display of traditional flamenco guitar virtuosity, from one of the greatest guitarists of all time.  It’s possibly the best of de Lucia’s albums that I’ve heard from the period before he began incorporating jazz and other musical influences to lead the Nuevo Flamenco movement in the mid- to late-‘70s—although in fact all his albums from that period are worthwhile. His playing, at turns hushed and sensitive, at other moments cascading in turbulence, is always spellbinding.

Read more in my top 50 of the decade.

John Fahey
Volume 1: Blind Joe Death [1967 re-recording]

Released 1967
(source: JohnFahey.com, re-recorded version.
Original release 1959, second release 1964)

In my purely non-technical terminology, I’d say that John Fahey plays a kind of old-fashioned acoustic country blues guitar in a way that seems pretty straight up at first glance but has an undercurrent of weird to it that I find hard to put a finger on.  There’s no doubt, though, that Fahey is another guitar great.  Almost any of his ‘60s albums are worthy of a nod here, but this one, his first, is probably my favorite.

There is a slight problem with including Blind Joe Death here in 1967:  it was first released in 1959.  But really, that was an independent pressing of only 100 copies; Fahey re-recorded most of it in 1964 and all of it again in 1967, and the 1967 version is the one I know.  (He seems to have partially re-recorded and re-released most of his albums in 1967, I assume because he had begun to become more widely known.)

I have this one ranked the highest, but The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites and The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death are just about as good. Great acoustic guitar throughout.

Listen to more John Fahey (coming soon).

Read more in my top 50 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music, bubbling under the top 3000 albums of all time

Pink Floyd
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Released 1967/08/04

Back when I was really into Pink Floyd, in my early-to-mid-high school classic rock days, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn didn’t do all that much for me.  I liked some of it, but its eccentricities didn’t appeal to me as much then as now. I do remember thinking that “Bike” was a delightful piece of playful lunacy (although I would hardly have expressed it that way at the time). But I listened to that song more on the compilation Relics than here.

The ‘70s seemed to be a time of consolidation, when musicians (and record companies) took the naïve experimentation and spontaneity of the ‘60s and figured out how to more clearly, coherently, and comprehensibly present it.  It’s a strange misconception we have, culturally, that when we think of classic rock, we think of the ‘60s—when the bulk of classic rock as we know it (from the radio, at least) was in fact a more packaged, formulaic product from the ‘70s.  To someone used to Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, an album like Pink Floyd’s debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn must have seemed to originate from an entirely different universe.

My tastes at the time were more in line with Floyd’s great ‘70s albums than with this unfettered, unfocused outpouring of psychedelic weirdness.  It’s more raw, more fresh, less sure of itself—and less consistently accomplished, true.  But nowadays that suits me just fine.

The space-rock reference point, album opener “Astronomy Divine” (inexplicably omitted from the American release) begins with a muffled, distorted recitation through a megaphone that sounds (deliberately, I must assume) as if it were an interplanetary communication, followed by a succession of beeps, like some sort transmission in code from a distant star. The music flows from there, meandering and swirling like a ship adrift in the cosmos. With one song, they invent the entire space-rock genre. The extended free-form instrumental masterfully “Interstellar Space” extends the theme.

The propulsive and catchy “Lucifer Sam” is an album highlight, probably the best actual rock “song” of their early career. The mostly instrumental “Pow R. Toch” and “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” add more experimental improvisation. Elsewhere, in harmless little ditties like “The Scarecrow,” the band sounds a little charming, and not a little dated. I fear “The Gnome” must have inspired legions of prog-rockers to take up Tolkien narratives.

The whole album is capped off by “Bike,” which sounds a bit like a love song written from the point of view of a ten-year-old.

Listen to more Pink Floyd.

Read more in my top 50 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music  top albums of the ’60s, No. 027
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• SPIN: The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s, No . 021
• The Rolling Stone 200 Essential Record Collection (1997)
• Rolling Stone: 100 Best Albums of the Past 20 Years (1987), No . 079
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 347
• NME Writers All-Time 100 (1974), No. 021
• NME Greatest Albums of the ’60s (1993), No. 034
• Uncut 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No . 057

Small Faces
There Are But Four Small Faces [US release]

Released 1967/12

I don’t believe I heard much Small Faces on the album-oriented classic rock radio of my high school and early college years, the primary time in my life that I actually listened extensively to ‘60s music.  Back then, my awareness of the ‘60s UK scene was to some extent limited to prominent British Invasion acts—the Beatles and Stones, of course, and the Who and the Kinks (although it was mostly the ‘70s and later stuff of both bands that I knew and liked best)—and a few later acts like Led Zeppelin.  I knew next to nothing of the Small Faces.

But the Small Faces had a number of excellent albums.  Any doubt of the extent of their greatness (and obvious influence) could be quickly dispelled by a cursory listen to a few key tracks from their eponymous 1966 debut (“You Need Loving” comes to mind), which should sound eerily familiar to Led Zeppelin fans.

This album, on the other hand, comes a year and a half later, and it’s probably their best.  I’ve listed it here under its U.S. version, There Are But Four Small Faces, which is a repackaging of their (second) eponymous album (released 1967/06/23 in the UK by Immediate Records), incorporating some excellent UK non-album singles into a mix of the best tracks from the UK album.

The two releases share several terrific songs—from the R&B groove of “Talk to You” and the powerful soul-rock fusion of “My Way of Giving”  to the psychedelic pop of “(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me” and “Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire.”

And the tracks added for the US release—in particular the catchy, trippy “Itchycoo Park,” one of the only Small Faces songs I remember from my classic rock radio days; the phenomenal, climactic R&B explosion of “Tin Soldier”; and the gentle psychedelia of “Here Come the Nice”—make it an essential, one of the great albums of the era.

Playlist Note: For the playlist itself, I’ve included the eponymous UK release (not the US release mentioned here). The key singles added to the US release appear in the singles playlist instead.  More great music for you!

Listen to more Small Faces.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 306

The Who
The Who Sell Out

Released 1967/12/15

I was always a bigger fan of The Who’s more serious, bombastic early ‘70s material than their more spritely ‘60s work.  I didn’t have The Who Sell Out until I somehow got addicted to a 2005 a capella version of the album by Petra Haden (whose father Charlie would certainly be featured my ‘60s Years in Review if I hadn’t decided to list jazz separately).  I loved Haden’s rendition, even though my friends told me they thought it sounded like a bad high school choir project.

What The Who Sell Out lacks in hits (only one) it makes up for in wit.  The Who’s sense of humor is on full display, both on the mock ads on the cover and in the songs and commercial interludes which make up the music of the album. “Mingy Stingy” is a terrific modern-day Scrooge tale, and “Tattoo” (my choice for best song on the album) tells the highly amusing story of two brothers who get tattoos to make themselves more manly. “Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand” is a wonderfully appealing song, which may or may not have a twisted subtext to the ambiguous lyrics.

And as for that cover, I in particular love the Heinz Bean bathtub. How many rock stars today would have the sense of humor to pose for that photo?

Today The Who Sells Out is often considered one of the Who’s best, and for good reason.  (I still secretly prefer Haden’s a capella version better, but don’t tell any of my many friends who mocked me for it.)

Listen to more of the Who.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 060
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 113
• NME Greatest Albums of the ’60s (1993), No. 044
• Uncut 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No . 191
• Paste 60 Best Albums of the 1960s, No . 039

Here’s the complete 1967: The Year in Review playlist for you—three tracks per album. Enjoy!

More 1967, The Year in Review

More Years in Review of the 1960s…

Cover Art Citations:

• You Got My Mind Messed Up: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6803547
• La Fabulosa guitarra de Paco de Lucia: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26373664
• Volume 1: Blind Joe Death [1967 re-recording]: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22041368
• The Piper at the Gates of Dawn: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12938216
• Between the Buttons [UK]: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17025183
• There Are But Four Small Faces [US]: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60852158
• Small Faces (Immediate): By May be found at the following website: https://i.scdn.co/image/ed4b7f4ab2625a24303d349a6cb6fbb52d75fbc5, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60881913
  
• We Are Paintermen: Source, www.discogs.com
• The Who Sell Out: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1443513
• The Who Sell Out (back cover): Source, Discogs.com