Post by petrolino on Aug 27, 2019 22:24:17 GMT
1968 : Baroque Infusion
Some baroque poppers have called 1968 a transitional year for sunshine pop, folk rock and swirling psychedelia as electronic innovation was stepped up a level. The year 1966 had welcomed the release of 'Psychedelic Moods' by The Deep, 'The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators' by the 13th Floor Elevators and 'Psychedelic Lollipop' by the Blues Magoos, ushering in a magical wave of candy-coloured albums in 1967 that captured the melodic highs of the seasons. Psychedelic folk groups and avant-garde experimentalists flourished while dipping in the pastel sherbert and heaving, boom-heavy live attractions like the Doors, the Electric Prunes, Iron Butterfly and Spirit carved out new performance foundations for electronic rock groups to utilise in the studio. Back inside the studio, innovations with technology persisted, and in 1968, Silver Apples became enshrined as a dominant name within the new electronic underground through the release of their debut album.
Here's three artists who released albums in 1968 that have come to be their defining musical statements of the free love era.
The Fun And Games (Houston, Texas)
"The Fun and Games' Elephant Candy is an exemplary harmony pop and bubblegum album dating back to the late '60s. Its popularity today (especially among soft pop collectors, who have helped pushed copies of the LP into the upper strata of the marketplace) can be traced directly to the group's involvement with über-talented Los Angeles singer/songwriter/producer Gary Zekley. Zekley (who passed away in 1996) had previously struck gold as a songwriter/producer for a group called the Yellow Balloon, co-writing eight of that group's 11 LP tracks, including the hit song "Yellow Balloon." Zekley had already written or co-written (often with his songwriting partner, Mitchell Bottler) numerous soft pop hits, including "Like a Summer Rain" for Jan & Dean and the original version of "Superman" by the Clique (later covered by R.E.M.). By 1968, Zekley's success had led him to be introduced to a California-by-way-of-Texas group called the Fun and Games by UNI Records president Russ Regan. Unlike several of Zekley's groups -- which were mostly a vehicle for Zekley and Bottler's songs, and mostly utilized session musicians -- the Fun and Games were a real group. Nevertheless, Zekley took control of their destiny, and ended up producing the group's sole album, 1968's Elephant Candy, co-writing seven of the 12 songs featured on the album. Elephant Candy wasn't as successful as Zekley's previous efforts, however, and spawned just one Top 100 hit, "Grooviest Girl in the World." Today, many soft pop and bubblegum fans like to point out the song's unintentionally hilarious lyrics, during which the singer sums up his excessive compliments to the groovy girl by stating, "And I'm a guy with impeccable taste" (as if she should be flattered that such an amazing guy would be tossing compliments her way -- such an ego!). It is rather unfortunate that this album hasn't been reissued in the U.S. on compact disc, although "Grooviest Girl" (and other tracks) have appeared on numerous compilation albums, including 25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits."
- Bryan Thomas, AllMusic
'The Grooviest Girl In The World' / 'The Way She Smiles'
Margo Guryan (New York City, New York)
"Take a Picture is a reissue of an underground classic from 1968. Margo Guryan was/is a respected songwriter from the '60s whose songs were recorded by Claudine Longet, Spanky and Our Gang, Jackie DeShannon, Bobby Sherman, Astrud Gilberto, and Mama Cass. Equal parts jazz and soft pop, Guryan's work flows like cream out of the speakers. For the hardcore Guryan fans, please forgive the following analogy for the benefit of those not familiar with her work. Think "Girl from Ipanema" or think "To Sir with Love" with very high feminine vocals, highlighted by complex jazz chord phrasings."
- David Fufkin, Pop Matters
"Margo Guryan is the most original songwriter that I've ever produced, and also something of an enigma. Underneath it all, she's a schooled composer, but she writes moving pop songs. She writes from her heart, but also from her head."
- John Hill, Sundazed
Max Roach & Margo Guryan
'Someone I Know'
The United States Of America (Los Angeles, California)
"The United States of America was never immortalized by Pepsi commercials or Time-Life 20-disc retrospectives: The band barely lasted two years, released only one album (which Columbia's marketing department sat on its hands to promote), and ended up a cult favorite that would later be speculated as a phantom influence for the Krautrock sound. But 36 years after its release, USA's self-titled album still stands above the work of most of their Monterey-era, psych-rock peers, and this long-awaited reissue tacks on 10 tracks' worth of audition tapes, B-sides, and alternate takes.
The band's deft addition of electronic noise and modulation into what would otherwise be soundtracks for the Beach Boys' California or ham 'n' eggs Anglo-rock was several years ahead of its time. Former UCLA ethnomusicology instructor Joseph Byrd concocted miracles with musique concrete-style tape collages and white noise blurts that veered in and out of the songs like uninvited but still welcome guests. He also tackled a dub-like mixology of tape delays and ring-modulated fade-outs and, best of all, distorted and punch-drunk synthesizers that sound indistinguishable from electric guitars. This was a fresh approach to rock from a unique group of musicians: UCLA students who had studied Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen but, as Byrd's liner notes claim, were "ignorant" of rock roots. And, although the band does indulge a few moments of awestruck discovery of their instruments' capabilities, the noise generally works with the music rather than simply being fodder from badge-wearing freaks tying to spook the Organization Man."
The band's deft addition of electronic noise and modulation into what would otherwise be soundtracks for the Beach Boys' California or ham 'n' eggs Anglo-rock was several years ahead of its time. Former UCLA ethnomusicology instructor Joseph Byrd concocted miracles with musique concrete-style tape collages and white noise blurts that veered in and out of the songs like uninvited but still welcome guests. He also tackled a dub-like mixology of tape delays and ring-modulated fade-outs and, best of all, distorted and punch-drunk synthesizers that sound indistinguishable from electric guitars. This was a fresh approach to rock from a unique group of musicians: UCLA students who had studied Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen but, as Byrd's liner notes claim, were "ignorant" of rock roots. And, although the band does indulge a few moments of awestruck discovery of their instruments' capabilities, the noise generally works with the music rather than simply being fodder from badge-wearing freaks tying to spook the Organization Man."
- Cameron Macdonald, Pitchfork
"I’d long been a devotee of Charles Ives – indeed I sometimes incorporated old tunes in my music, as he had. The Time-Life project took me away from the avant-garde, and toward a kind of historical perspective that would likewise color my future. And in the course of working on the Civil War albums I met Dorothy Moskowitz, with whom I was to have a profound musical and personal relationship. The Civil War project turned into a job as staff arranger for Capitol Records. I had always been eclectic as a composer; indeed it was a detriment to my finding a single distinctive “voice” in the avant-garde, as I changed styles with almost every piece. But the opportunity to work with a wide range of styles and artists at Capitol was a godsend. I gained fluency in myriad kinds of music, and I became increasingly interested in the music of India and Indonesia. In 1963 I got a teaching assistantship at UCLA, with the intent of getting a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, and Dorothy and I left for Los Angeles. If I was a tiny fish in the pond of avant-garde New York, I was a pioneer of experimental music in LA. My first year at UCLA I co-founded “The New Music Workshop” with Don Ellis. Don was already a brilliant jazz trumpet player, but at UCLA he studied Indian music, as did Dorothy and I. Don would later use this experience in the additive rhythms and polyrhythmic music he wrote for his big band. In the year we were together, we had concerts of experimental jazz interwoven with music by Charles Ives, Henry Brant, Edgard Varese, Earl Browne, Morton Feldman, and Stockhausen. Dorothy performed John Cage’s Aria hauntingly with a vibrato-less voice she had honed in study with our teacher of South Indian music, Gayathri Rajapur. When Don left the University, I began to take the Workshop in more experimental directions. Increasingly, I was bringing into my own work elements of “happenings,” or what would come to be called “performance art.” So we began to embrace both that and “concept art,” including works by Riley, Young, and the Korean composer Nam June Paik. We began to attract attention outside UCLA, with articles in the Times and various local publications. Without intending to, I became a celebrity. Rumors about my activities circulated, and for years after I was to be amazed at some of the myths (for example, that I had put a live fish inside a piano – a terrific idea, but it never happened). In 1965, with funding from UCLA Associated Students, we did an elaborate set of concerts and events called “The Steamed Spring Vegetable Pie.” (The title was randomly chosen from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.) The final concert of that series closed with LaMonte’s piece in which a giant weather balloon is filled on stage (using a vacuum cleaner). This takes about half an hour, and I was concerned that I would lose my unsophisticated audience, so I put together a blues band to play during it. Our singer was my friend Linda Ronstadt, who had just moved to Santa Monica, and was living with her folk trio in a six-block area that included The Doors, Frank Zappa, and Dorothy and me. The realization that rock was an access to a larger public came out of that concert, and the idea of forming a band began taking shape. It had become clear that my musical activities – together with my increasing political radicalism regarding the Vietnam War – meant I was not going to get a Ph.D., and I left UCLA in 1966. But by then the New Music Workshop had taken on a life of its own. I persuaded a young electrical engineer named Tom Oberheim to build a “black box” containing a very primitive set of wave generators (nothing on the order of Robert Moog’s impossibly expensive first synthesizers, then priced close to $20,000), and it was used in a number of happenings and environments, usually being processed through a portable tape-delay machine called an Echoplex."
- Joseph Byrd, It's Psychedelic Baby
'The Garden Of Earthly Delights'
