Music Sunday: The "1969 Revisited" Edition

Last month, I wrote about the Woodstock festival in 1969. Musically, at least, and maybe culturally, Woodstock stands at the height of what we know as "The Sixties" (not to be confused with the chronological decade of the 1960s, because the two really don't completely coincide). But, even had Woodstock never happened, 1969 would stand as an extraordinary year in music.

This is true for many reasons, and in many genres in music, but rock music had one of its best years in 1969. Crosby, Stills and Nash and Led Zeppelin each released their first album (and Led Zeppelin also released their second album). Janis Joplin released her first solo album. The Beatles released "Abbey Road", which wasn't well thought of critically then, but has since come to be regarded as one of their best, if not the best album they ever made. The Who released their rock opera, "Tommy". It was the year that Marvin Gaye recorded "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", Bob Dylan recorded "Lay Lady Lay", and Johnny Cash recorded "A Boy Named Sue". And it was the year that John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their "Bed-in for Peace" in Amsterdam and in Montreal. It was in Montreal where they recorded, on June 1, in their hotel and with a room-full of friends, "Give Peace a Chance":



Johnny Cash released "A Boy Named Sue", written by Shel Silverstein, into the world in 1969, at a time when country music was mostly seen as a southern phenomenon. Nonetheless, besides being a number-one song on the country charts in the United States, it reached number two on Billboard's Hot 100 and number one on the magazine's Adult Contemporary chart. Here is a live performance of the song that, from the looks of it, was recorded at one of Cash's prison shows:



The difference between this performance and the radio version of the song is that in the radio version, the phrase "son of a bitch" and the word "damn" near the end of the song were censored out. 1969 was a landmark year in many ways, but the powers that be were still convinced that the republic would collapse if someone said (or sang) a cuss-word over the public airwaves. Nevertheless, the song won both Best Country Song and Best Country Performance, Male, at the Grammy Awards in 1970, when the music of 1969 was honored.

One of the surprises on Janis Joplin's first solo album, "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!", is that she sings the Bee Gees song, "To Love Somebody". It just seems so unlikely. Yes, she has her own way with the song, as she did with every song she sang. As far as I'm concerned, she improved it greatly:



Blood, Sweat, and Tears' self-titled album was actually released in 1968 (and won Album of the Year at the 1970 Grammy Awards, as their deadlines for consideration are known to be slightly elastic), although my favorite song from the album was released in 1969. "Spinning Wheel" was written by the band's lead singer, David Clayton-Thomas. Here is the longer album version:



And now for something completely different...1969 was also the year that David Bowie released "Space Oddity". And, this is one of the things I like about the music released in 1969; it isn't all the same:



And, one more oddity, of a different kind, before I finish this up for the day: The Doors, with strings and horns. "Touch Me", from the album "The Soft Parade", was a bit of a departure. This live performance, from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, if I'm not mistaken. There was some feeling among Doors fans at the time that this song, and the album, was sort of a sell-out by Jim Morrison and the band, but I like it:



There's so much more good music from 1969 that I would have liked to share here. Which means that there is probably another 1969 post somewhere, sometime in Music Sunday's future.

Music Monday (this week only): The Some of My Favorites, Plus Video Discoveries Edition

So, Sunday was a little busy for me this week. I had something all planned for Music Sunday, a little celebration of Bruce Springsteen's birthday. That's a little redundant now, since his birthday has passed, but in a slightly tardy recognition of the day, here is "Born to Run", which will probably always be my favorite Springsteen song.



Something I've tried to avoid here most of the time is simply inflicting my own favorite songs on you. However, if you're a music lover of any kind, you will know that there are days when you just want to hear what you want to hear. This is that kind of day for me. Despite the fact that autumn is here in the Northern Hemisphere, the high temperatures are still in the 90s F, which displeases me a great deal. Additionally, my job search isn't going well, my allergies are still in full rage, and I'm in a generally cranky mood. So, today I've been in search of my favorite music.

First of all, not because it is my absolute favorite song in the world but because I think it is apropos of the current political, economic, and social climate, and because it is a brilliantly written song, here is John Lennon's "Working Class Hero". It is certainly, in all its rawness, my favorite Lennon song.



Perhaps my favorite song of all, if I had to name one, is this one, "Desperado", by The Eagles. As sad a song as it is, I love it's call to the loners and the lonely to let someone in, to let themselves be loved, and it's recognition that it is probably much more difficult to be loved than to love.



Gordon Lightfoot is one of my favorite singers and songwriters, and this is not only the first song of his I ever heard, but my favorite among many favorites of his work, "Don Quixote":



While I was looking for that song, I happened on this video, that I've never seen before and did not know existed, a 1969 duet of Lightfoot's song "For Lovin' Me", performed with Johnny Cash. The quality of the sound and video aren't wonderful, but the song and the performance both are:



Going from favorite songs to favorite bands, I had to include something from U2. The problem here is that there is no way I could begin to pick out a "favorite" U2 song. While I was looking, however, I stumbled on something else I didn't know existed, a video for the song "Electrical Storm", a collaboration between the band and Anton Corbjin. Corbjin's filmmaking is often surreal, and so is this. But, it is so striking that I could just could not stop watching:



But, although I can't choose one U2 song as a favorite, one of the songs on that list has to be "One". There are at least three "official" videos for "One". This is by far my favorite and, I think, the most remarkable of the three:



And with that, I'll close this Monday Edition of Music Sunday. I hope to be back to the regular schedule next week.

Music Sunday: "Sunday Morning Coming Down" Edition

I don't like Sundays any more.

I used to like Sundays when I was a child. Sunday was outing day. My family went on some kind of outing nearly every Sunday, even on days when my father had to work. Many times, we would just go for a ride somewhere, to see what we could see. Other Sundays, we would go to a museum, or to Griffith Park Observatory, or to Disneyland (back in the days when it didn't cost an arm and both legs to get in).

Gasoline costs too much to do that now, and I miss those outings a lot. With my arthritis, it is even difficult for me to get out and take a long walk on a Sunday. That was something we used to do as a family on Sundays, as well, sometimes just walking around town for two or three or four hours.

Not being able to have those Sunday outings any more puts me out of sorts sometimes. This is one of those Sundays, and so it has been difficult for me to get into the mood to write the usual Music Sunday blog post. There just wasn't any music that I wanted to hear. I even asked for recommendations from friends. And I got some good recommendations. Just nothing that moved me enough to share with you all.

And then I remembered "Sunday Morning Coming Down". Written by Kris Kristofferson, it was first recorded in 1969 by Ray Stevens. Kristofferson has also recorded it, as did Johnny Cash. I like this cover, which I just discovered, by Trace Adkins:



And here is Kristofferson and Cash singing the song, in 1978:



Not an upbeat song, to be sure, but it made my Sunday a little more bearable. I hope your Sunday was better, wherever you are.

Just a note: I've seen this song identified both as "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". I have no idea which is correct.

Music Sunday: Music Plus Book Review Edition

I grew up listening to rock music. I also spent a lot of that time reading the writing of Robert Hilburn, the legendary music critic for the Los Angeles Times. So, when I discovered that Hilburn had written a memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon and Other Tales From a Rock’n’Roll Life (Rodale, 2009; 280 pages), I had to read it.

I’m glad I did.

Hilburn, who wrote his first story as a freelancer for the Times in 1966 and was hired as full-time pop music critic and editor in 1970, is a fabulous writer. He spent his career at one of the epicenters of the music industry, and he writes about his adventures with grace and wit and a great deal of insight. As part of his job, he met and interviewed and reviewed the biggest and most legendary names in music, and became friends with not a few of them. These friendships did not stop Hilburn from calling these performers on the missteps in their recordings and in performance, although he writes about being worried that his relationships with these artists could be seen as a conflict or interest or result in bias toward them.

Hilburn also writes about his questions concerning continuing to write about music aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults as he aged, addressing his doubts in the context of covering musicians who kept making music, sometimes relevant, sometimes not so much, as they aged. I found this interesting as a person of a certain age who still loves rock music but finds fewer and fewer new artists whose work I can relate to as I get older. Hilburn quotes Paul McCartney on the subject, recalls that at one point Mick Jagger said that he couldn't envision still singing “Satisfaction” at the age of thirty but has continued singing it much longer than that, and celebrates the fact that Johnny Cash’s work remained relevant until the end of his life.

Then there are the stories. Hilburn recalls being the person John Lennon would call to spend an evening with during Lennon's year-and-a-half long “lost weekend”, spent primarily in Los Angeles, when he needed to remain relatively sober to get up for an early meeting the next day. He relates serious and deep discussions he had about the music with Bruce Springsteen. He talks about the difficulties inherent in interviewing people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. He explores his ability to connect with musicians much younger than himself, such as Kurt Cobain, and from very different backgrounds, such as Ice Cube. He describes hanging out with the members of U2 in and out of the recording studio.

In the course of all this, Hilburn pulls no punches in writing about artists he admires and those he finds, following Bob Dylan’s three categories of musicians, “superficial”, which in Hilburn’s eyes includes some very big name acts and musicians. But Hilburn spends much less time on the superficial than he does on the natural performers and the supernatural performers, Dylan’s two other categories.

I’ll leave you to read the book to discover how various performers Hilburn discusses fit into which category. If you think this is my way of making you read the book rather than giving away the good parts, you’re absolutely correct. Every music lover should read Corn Flakes with John Lennon.

Because it is Music Sunday, I’m going to end this review with three of the artists and performances mentioned by Hilburn in the course of his book.

One of the musicians that Hilburn had a friendship with was Johnny Cash. He calls Cash's cover of "Hurt" "stirring" (p. 194):



Another artist Hilburn has high praise for is Bruce Springsteen, whose "Brilliant Disguise" Hilburn described as "a chilling reflection about commitment" (p. 148):



Hilburn said that U2's album, "The Unforgettable Fire" "confused" him, but he called two of the songs on the album, "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Bad", "brilliant" (p. 141). Just last week, I shared the band's performance of "Bad" at Live Aid, so here is "Pride":

Music Sunday - Eclipse Edition

Happy Music Sunday!

Because there is an eclipse of the sun today, I thought I'd just leave you some sunshiny music, so I can go outside and monitor the eclipse when it starts here, at about 2:30 p.m. local time. We won't get the full effect; this part of California is a bit outside the path for that. But, we should get a pretty cool view, anyway.

Here's George Harrison and a few friends, with Here Comes The Sun. An obvious choice.



And John Denver, all by himself, singing Sunshine On My Shoulders.



And then there's Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love



In case you're wondering what all the hoopla about the eclipse is about, here is a little primer from NASA.



And, finally, because this is an annular eclipse, known as a "ring of fire" eclipse, I'll leave this last song for today with you.



That was Johnny Cash, singing "Ring of Fire" on the Grand Ole Opry in 1968.