Music Sunday: The "Year Before 1969" Edition

It occurs to me that a lot gets said and written about 1969 and the music it produced. It was a landmark year, after all, with Woodstock and Altamont, and all the hoopla that surrounded those events. But what about the year before? How was 1968, musically speaking?

Well, Led Zeppelin performed in public for the first time, as The New Yardbirds (just two months after The Yardbirds had disbanded). Calling themselves The New Yardbirds made some sense, as Jimmy Page had played with The Yardbirds. Other bands starting up during the year included Yes, Rush, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath (as Earth). Cream disbanded, and so did the Buffalo Springfield. Before Cream broke up, the band played a farewell performance at Royal Albert Hall, the last time Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker performed together until 1993, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Here is "White Room", from Cream's farewell concert. I'm not sure what the narration at the beginning of the clip is about:



And this is the band's performance of "Sunshine of Your Love" from the Rock and Roll Induction ceremony in 1993:



While not an immediate break-up, The Monkees ended the run of their television series, for which the band had been created in 1966. The show ran for 58 episodes. I've written here before about my belief that, especially once allowed to record their own music and have some creative input into what they were doing, The Monkees weren't really that bad a band. The movie they made, also in 1968, was not nearly as well-received as their TV series, but the band soldiered on, with some defections (Peter Tork left in 1969 and Michael Nesmith left in 1970) until 1971. There were reunions later on, of course, but very rarely did all four members of the band get back together for very long at a time.

The songs that were popular in 1968 ran a wide range of genres and styles. The biggest song of the year was The Beatles' "Hey Jude", and "Lady Madonna was also a big hit for the band that year as a single, although it did not make it onto one of their albums until 1970. "Lady Madonna" was the last Beatles' single released on the Parlophone label, with all subsequent recording coming out on the Beatles' own Apple Records:



And then there was this, "I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", by a band called The First Edition. It's hard to tell whether this song was advocating for better living through chemicals or warning against that way of life, but it's an interesting song of its time. And, yes, that is Kenny Rogers singing lead:



From the film "The Graduate", Simon and Garfunkel had a hit in 1968 with "Mrs. Robinson". Here is a live performance of the song from that year:



"The Weight" one of The Band's best-known songs, also was released in 1968. This performance is from their appearance at Woodstock in 1969:



Of course, there was music in 1968 that protested the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. One of the best of those was this song, "Sky Pilot", by Eric Burdon and the Animals:



So, there's a little taste of the music of 1968. As always, I encourage you to go find more on your own, because there is never enough time or room here to share everything I would like to share.

Music Sunday: The Simon and Garfunkel Edition

Some Sundays, I wake up with no idea what I'm going to write about and share for Music Sunday. Other Sundays, I know exactly what I want to do with the post of the day.

This week, I've known for a couple of days what I'm going to share today.

I spent a good part of the past week reading Tom Brokaw's book from 2007, Boom! Voices of the Sixties. Somewhere in the pages of the book, Simon and Garfunkel were mentioned. My first thought at that reference was that I haven't heard any of their music in quite a long time, and that Music Sunday would be the perfect reason to go looking for some of their work.

And so, that's the plan for today.

Simon and Garfunkel actually met when they were in elementary school, in 1953, and started writing songs together in 1955. They recorded a single, "Hey, Schoolgirl", in 1957, calling themselves Tom & Jerry. The song got enough play that they appeared on American Bandstand. It doesn't sound exactly like what would become their signature folk style:



After some later success on the Greenwich Village folk scene and recording several songs that did not initially get much notice, the singers went their separate ways, with Paul Simon moving to England. While he was there, however, "The Sound of Silence" began getting some airplay. When Simon returned to the US, the duo got back together. I found this live performance of "The Sound of Silence", from a 1966 television broadcast:



They followed in 1965 with "I Am A Rock". I think this live performance might be from the same 1966 Canadian television broadcast as the previous clip. In the clip, Simon introduces the song as perhaps his "most neurotic" song:



One of my own favorites of Simon and Garfunkel's songs is "Scarborough Fair", from 1966. They manage to make the traditional ballad from Britain sound as antique as it is, even in this performance from the duo's 1981 reunion concert in Central Park:



Along with "The Sound of Silence" and "Scarborough Fair", the song "Mrs. Robinson" appeared in the 1967 film "The Graduate". This is the 1968 recording of "Mrs. Robinson", on the album "Bookends". It is a different, more complete version than appeared in the film:



"Bridge Over Troubled Water" was Simon and Garfunkel's biggest hit, here from the Concert in Central Park in 1981. It has never been one of my favorite songs, but this particular performance is very good:



"Cecelia" is also from the "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album, and I like it much better. The conventional wisdom is that the song is about a girl, but Paul Simon has indicated that it is actually about St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music and has more to do with trouble writing songs than with girl trouble. Take your pick; the song works either way:



Simon and Garfunkel broke up, mostly for good, in 1970, but they have reunited several times for performances, including an appearance on the second episode of "Saturday Night Live" on October 18, 1975, and for the previously mentioned Concert in Central Park in 1981, which was attended by over half a million people.