1967, The Year in Review, P4

The Next 10 Albums for my Top 30 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 Mothers of Invention
Absolutely Free

Released 1967/03/26

The Mothers of Invention’s debut album Freak Out! showed plenty of promise but Absolutely Free, their second, was the one where it all started clicking.

Across side one, Zappa and crew weave a rich, ridiculous tapestry of recurring motifs—plastic people, vegetables, the shallowness of American culture, prunes, and oh so much more—woven throughout, peaking with the divine absurdity of the “Call Any Vegetable / Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin / Soft-Sell Conclusion” suite, a three-part composition that was their best fusion of amusing lyrical nonsense and musical experimentation to date.

All the Zappa musical trademarks are on exhibit on Absolutely Free: deliberately overwrought crooning, blowing jazz workouts, spoken word snippets, musical quotations from Stravinsky and Holst, and moments of borderline musical chaos. Album opener “Plastic People” is one of the band’s more enjoyable expressions of Zappa’s anti-suburban, nonconformist politics, and “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” one of the most renowned.

Clearly, the band was one of the most intriguing of its time, and they would only keep improving to close out the decade.

Listen to more Mothers of Invention (and Frank Zappa).

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 182

Moby Grape
Moby Grape

Released 1967/06/06

The eponymous debut album from San Francisco rockers Moby Grape is justifiably remembered as one of the undisputed classics of its era.

“Hey Grandma” rides a nice groove toward a catchy chorus, and “Indifference” is charged and catchy throughout. “Sitting by the Window” Is one of the better mellow ‘60s contemplative pieces, with a warm, alluring guitar accompaniment that cascades nicely in between refrains. “Omaha,” “Changes,” and “Lazy Me” are all satisfying rockers in a mildly psychedelic, garage-rock vein.

In fact, there are no real missteps here, and that’s perhaps the album’s major shortcoming—one wishes perhaps they hadn’t played it so safe. (Grape guitarist and soon-to-be-acid-casualty Skip Spence would flip the opposite way on his solo album, which had nary a conservative moment on it.)

Playlist Note:  Most of this album seems to be unavailable of Spotify.  I could find the album, but most tracks were greyed out. Of my three selected tracks (“Hey Grandma,” “Sitting by the Window,” and “Indifference,”) only one was available. Worth the effort to track down, I’d say.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 085
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 121
• NME Writers All-Time 100 (1974), No. 090

Kaleidoscope (US)
Side Trips

Released 1967/06

Known for eccentric compositions and exotic arrangements—instruments played include autoharp, banjo, bass, bouzouki, clarinet, dulcimer, fiddle, goblet drum, guitar, harmonica, harp guitar, mandolin, organ, piano, resonator guitar, saz, twelve-string guitar, veena, viola, and violin—the odd collective of California psychedelic folkies Kaleidoscope were bound to be inconsistent.

But their high points are truly excellent. Their first three albums are almost equally worthwhile; a well-chosen single-CD compilation (the ones I’ve seen don’t quite fit the bill, sadly) would be even better, to filter out some of the false steps.

On their debut Side Trips, perhaps their best and most consistent album, the band successfully tries on a variety of styles, from the Arabic flavor of “Egyptian Gardens,” “Keep Your Mind Open,” and the opening of “Why Try”; to the pop and psychedelic rock of “Please” and “Pulsating Dream”; to the traditional folk sounds of covers “Oh Death” and “Hesitation Blues” and the jazzy Cab Calloway cover “Minnie the Moocher.”

(There’s another band called Kaleidoscope from the same time period, this one from the UK, that has two tracks on the Nuggets II compilation. Their work is trippy and psychedelic in more of a pop-rock vein.)

Listen to more Kaleidoscope.

Read more in my top 200 of the decade.

Nina Simone
High Priestess of Soul

Released 1967

There are none of Nina Simone’s career highlights on High Priestess of Soul—you’ll have to look elsewhere for “Mississippi Goddam,” “Sinnerman,” and “Four Women,” among others—but the mix of songs on High Priestess of Soul is uniformly excellent, the variety rich, and the overall appeal unmatched among her other albums of the time, making it perhaps the best of many good Nina Simone albums from her ‘60s peak.

Nina Simone is not merely a soul singer, of course. A jazzy big band propels “I’m Gonna Leave You,” “The Gal from Joe’s,” and the fiery chain-gang piece “Work Song.” She turns Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” into jazz-pop song. And gospel infuses “Take me to the Water,” “I’m Going Back Home,” and the hushed, urgent, “Come Ye.” Throughout, her fusion of jazz, soul, gospel, and more is both engaging and compelling.

Listen to more Nina Simone.

Read more in my top 200 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 364

Magic Sam
West Side Soul

Released 1967 (sources: AllMusic.com, 45Worlds.com; but Wikipeida says 1968); it was recorded 1967/07/12 & 1967/10/25.

Once you hear Chicago soul crooner Magic Sam, you’ll never forget him. He belted out passionate bursts of emotion punctuated by a distinctive, warbling vibrato, transforming any song into something haunting and magical. There’s something about the way he sings “All of Your Love”—belting out that soaring, sustained “aaaaaaaaall” before cascading down over the “of your lo-e-ah-uv”—that just grabs hold of me.

It reminds me of an affect that crept into Jack Bruce’s voice around the same time, especially at the end of his vocal lines. And even though Cream had released two albums before Magic Sam had released just this one, I assume Sam influenced them, and not the other way around. (His singles date back to the ‘50s, so I assume those blues-lovin’ Brits were big fans far before Disraeli Gears.)

Magic Sam’s distinctive voice propels songs like “My Love Will Never Die” into the blues stratosphere, and his guitar playing is pretty great, to boot. “I Don’t Want No Woman” shows all his skills at their finest. Not to be missed.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 215

The Incredible String Band
The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion

Released 1967/07

Like Kaleidoscope, The Incredible String Band stood the standard folk sound on its head. Anyone for a shot of folk-sitar with a ragtime piano chaser? Songs about Mad Hatters and Minotaurs? This here’s what you need.

The critical favorite seems to be The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, but I prefer this one, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. Both albums have a few equally excellent high points. But every song on Onion is at least very good, and the musical experiments never lose sight of the listener’s musical attention, never lose themselves in their trippy indulgences.

Stepping away from the sound of their more traditional folk debut, the Incredible String Band enriched their songs with a wider variety of newly acquired exotic string instruments—including bowed and bass gimbri, mandolin, oud, sitar, and tanpura. Eastern sounds grace the marvelous “Mad Hatter’s Song,” in both the sitar accompaniment and the vocal inflections, in a song that lyrically seems to be less about Lewis Carroll’s character than an intriguing diatribe of spaced-out metaphysics. Clear album highlight “The First Girl I Loved,” however, remains firmly grounded in reality, speaking to a former girlfriend with honesty and without bitterness; it’s one of the most genuine love songs I’ve ever heard, even though the fire has passed.

Both 5000 Spirits and Hangman are worth checking out, but Spirits is probably the place to start.  Plus, the cover is just classic—is that some sort of hermaphroditic angel soring overhead?  What a trip.

Listen to more Incredible String Band.

Read more in my top 200 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 304

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Safe As Milk

Released 1967 (Wikipedia discography page lists 1967/09, but the album page lists 1967/06; 45worlds.com says 1967/08)

Before there was the crazed, angular, free-form psychotic blues of Trout Mask Replica, all was Safe as Milk. Here we see Captain Beefheart and the boys at an early stage, still essentially a garage rock band fronted by a lead singer with a mangy Howlin’ Wolf growl, prone to occasional lapses into R&B and with the occasional sprinkling of psychedelia.

Tame in comparison to Trout, Milk still comes across as pretty full-on weird compared to just about anything else. “Zig Zag Wanderer” could have fit nicely onto the garage-rock Nuggets compilation (alongside their earlier single “Diddy Wah Diddy”) and album opener “Sure ‘Nuff ‘n Yes I Do” is a catchy blues-rocker; but the blues of “Grown so Ugly” begins to veer into deranged territory and “Electricity” sounds like a bit of frazzled proto-alt-rock—with Theremin, no less! And I’m not even sure how to describe “Abba Zaba”—some sort of strange, pseudo-tribal chant?   Album closer and Franken-song “Autumn’s Child” feels like unintentionally camp psychedelia mashed with an R&B slow-burner. It’s an eclectic mix of songs, to say the least.

But for Beefheart it’s surprisingly accessible. At least 90% of all sane human beings would be more than content with one Captain Beefheart album, and Milk might be the easiest entry point for the uninitiated. It’s the perfect place to get one’s feet wet in the murky swamp that is Beefheart.

The mentally disturbed—and those few, special sane folk who harbor an unsettling affection for the bizarre—may of course want to explore the Beefheart experience further, first most likely in the direction of his ‘60s classic Trout Mask Replica, and probably next toward the final albums of his career, from the late-‘70s through the early ‘80s, at the conclusion of which he hung up his singing hat and turned to painting.

(For the interested, those last few albums would be—in chronological order, and in order of recommendation: Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), Doc at the Radar Station, Ice Cream for Crow. Nuff said.)

Read more in my top 200 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 080
• 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die (2005)
• Uncut 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No. 143

Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield Again

Released 1967/10/30

Led by Stephen Stills and Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield crank out a varied disc of country twang and psychedelia-tinged rockers.  It’s not entirely consistent (none of their albums were), but the high points are classic.

The album opens with the guitar churn of “Mr. Soul,” by far Neil Young’s best song with the band. (Truly, it kicks ass.) Elsewhere, he gets more experimental, most successfully in “Broken Arrow,” which grafts several different musical segments with snippets of unrelated instrumentation and crowd noise. “Expecting to Fly,” on the other hand, is to my ears a groan-inducing use of weepy strings backing a maudlin melody; it gets tons of critical props, but it’s more adventurous than effective in my book.

Stephen Stills’ contributions are consistently solid, particularly the rockers “Bluebird” and “Rock & Roll Woman” and the mellow “Everydays.” And Richie Furay contributes a few good songs, too, most notably the country-ish “A Child’s Claim to Fame.”

All in all, Buffalo Springfield Again is the best album by one of the most significant bands of the era.

Listen to more Buffalo Springfield.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 081
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• The Rolling Stone 200 Essential Record Collection (1997)
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 188

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Axis: Bold As Love

Released 1967/12/01 (UK), 1968/01 (U.S.)

For me, Axis: Bold as Love was always the lesser of the big three Jimi Hendrix albums.  Are You Experienced? of course reigns supreme, one of the very best albums of all time, and Electric Ladyland stood out for its spacy excursions into the stratosphere, leaving Axis stuck somewhat in the middle.  It wasn’t as good as Experienced, nor as distinctive as Ladyland.  Honestly, I don’t think I listened to it much.  I remember I knew a guy in grad school who claimed it was his favorite Hendrix album, but I seriously think he was just being contrarian.

However, for this project I listened more, and further listening pays off.  Nothing here grabs me quite like the other two albums, but my ears now tell me it’s an album almost as good. The rocking “Spanish Castles Made of Sand” and “Wait Until Tomorrow,” tender “Little Wing” and “Castles Made of Sand,” and guitar freak-out “If 6 was 9” all number among his strongest songs.

Listen to more Jimi Hendrix.

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 043
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• The Rolling Stone 200 Essential Record Collection (1997)
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No . 082
• Uncut 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No . 085
• Paste 60 Best Albums of the 1960s, No . 053

Leonard Cohen
Songs of Leonard Cohen

Released 1967/12/27

Before embarking on the retrospective listening project that has become this website, I knew singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen mostly through his 1992 album The Future and a 12-song greatest hits package of his early work (whose cover was humorously co-opted by a Ween album I bought around the same time).

His debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen—like all his early releases—is a collection of hushed, brooding, mostly acoustic, poetic musings, and it ranks among his very best. Already having garnered critical acclaim as a poet and novelist, Cohen showed himself a master of the songwriting form as well, creating haunting, personal songs of love, devotion, and betrayal that burned with an intensity rarely seen in popular music.

Many of the songs here are undisputed classics—“Suzanne,” “So Long, Marianne,” “Hey, That’s no Way to Say Goodbye,” and “Sisters of Mercy” all make an appearance on that greatest hits package, for example—and some of the deeper album cuts are spellbinding, most of all “Teachers” and “The Stranger Song.”

It’s no coincidence that those last two aforementioned tracks are propelled by rapid-fire acoustic guitar plucking accompaniment—Cohen’s lyrics can cut to the bone with the power of his striking imagery and the nature of his confessions and accusations, and when the arrangements provide just the right push behind him, the results can be utterly captivating. Other times, when the arrangements grow too spare or start to drag, it’s easy to lose interest, especially if you’re not in the mood. Cohen can get a bit heavy, it must be said.

But when you are in the mood—or when Cohen puts you there—the experience is unforgettable.

Listen to more Leonard Cohen (coming soon).

Read more in my top 100 of the decade.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’60s, No. 032
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005)
• SPIN: The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s, No . 015
• SPIN: 25 Greatest Albums of All Time (1989), No . 019
• Rolling Stone 100 Best Albums of All Time (1997), No . 051
• NME Greatest Albums of the ’60s (1993), No. 026
• Paste 60 Best Albums of the 1960s, No . 027

Here’s the complete 1967: The Year in Review playlist for you—three tracks per album. Enjoy! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1e1BVflx3qmV3ltV9Sm1ai?si=5ff84dadbfe941b7

More 1967, The Year in Review

More Years in Review of the 1960s…

Cover Art Citations:

• Absolutely Free: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1132341
• Moby Grape: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4418119
• West Side Soul: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15462472
• Buffalo Springfield Again: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=202462
• Axis: Bold As Love: By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12839100
• Songs of Leonard Cohen: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=933489
• Side Trips: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17745733
• High Priestess of Soul: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7177696
• The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17176693
• Safe As Milk: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1995479