Born To Rock & Roll

Onward and upward…

A Side: “Hanky Panky”, Tommy James & The Shondells – A frat rock nugget originally recorded in ’63 that sank without a trace, only to be resurrected by a Pittsburgh DJ two years later and given a new lease on the charts.  It hit #1 for two weeks in July of ’66.  That said, it still sounds like it’s from the Kennedy Era.

B Side: “Satisfaction”, Otis Redding – Keith Richards used a Gibson Fuzz Box on ‘Satisfaction’ to emulate the horn section the Stones didn’t have.  Otis, on the other hand, did not have to worry about such Limey trivialities and tears into the lyric with so much gusto that people automatically assumed HE wrote it, and not the Glimmer Twins.  Which, of course, was bullshit.  Anyway, it’s great – but it can’t touch the original.

Winner: Otis does not lose to a Shondell.  Please.

*

A Side: “Sookie Sookie”, Don Covay - Soul doesn’t get much greasier than Don Covay.  And when Don is imploring little Sookie to “let it hang out, baby” over a relentless Steve Cropper-powered groove, it transcends mere grease to achieve pure filth.

B Side: “If I Were A Carpenter”, Bobby Darin – And here, we find the Bronx’s second-hippest native son (numero uno is, of course, Dion DiMucci) shaking things up a bit by getting all bohemian and mellow with Tim Hardin’s wimp classic.  Which he does very well, of course, because he was Bobby Darin and could sing the hell out of anything.

Winner:  “Sookie Sookie” five dollar!  The song extolls the virtues of drinking turpentine, for God’s sake – how do you top that?

*

A Side: “Tomorrow Never Knows”, The Beatles – Yes, the song that ushered in a whole new era of rock, the first time the Beatles went psychedelic, the cherry on the Revolver sundae, Lennon meets Timothy Leary meets the Tibetan Book of the Dead… you’ve heard all the superlatives before.  Ringo kicks ass here, too – he was on fire in ’66.

B Side: “Don’t Look Back”, The Remains – Appropriately, the Remains provided support on the Beatles’ ’66 tour.  Tough-as-nails R&B-infused garage punk out of Beantown – with Barry Tashian’s Yankee jive-ass preacher schtick fronting a remarkably tight twin-guitar attack.   Paste called them “America’s greatest lost band”; we call them the missing link between the Stones and J. Geils.  And “Don’t Look Back” flat-out rocks.  A shame these guys called it quits at the end of ’66.

Winner:  “Don’t Look Back”, because fun always beats out avant garde.

*

A Side: “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’”, Nancy Sinatra – Quite simply one of the coolest songs ever recorded, and one that completely captures the spirit of ’66.

B Side: “Secret Agent Man”, Johnny Rivers – Quite simply one of the coolest songs ever recorded, and one that completely captures the spirit of ’66.

Winner: Wow – showdowns like this weren’t supposed to happen for a couple more rounds.  Two obscenely cool songs sung by two unbearably cool people.  Nancy has the looks, the style, the voice, and the kick-ass upright bass line; Johnny has the bad-ass James Bond-themed lyrics and an absolutely lethal guitar riff.  “Secret Asian Man” it shall be.

*

A Side: “When A Man Loves A Woman”, Percy Sledge – Let’s just forget about that cover version for a minute – you know the one.  Yeah – erase it from the memory banks and focus on the original.  This is a pure-soul, high-drama torch song, and Sledge wrings the anguish out of every syllable.  The organ sets the mood and the absolutely sublime drumming provides an anchor underneath Percy’s wailings.

B Side: “Little Latin Lupe Lu”, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels – Sorry, Mitch, but the Righteous Brothers cut the definitive version of this and all others, including yours, have no choice but to wilt in comparison. 

Winner: Nothing personal, Mitch – we’ll be seeing you again very soon.  “When A Man Loves A Woman”.

*

A Side: “All Or Nothing”, Small Faces – Their tour de force.  What dynamics – the mid-tempo verses, the tension-ratcheting build-up to the chorus, and then – BOOM! – a football terrace-worthy chorus for the ages.  And that’s just the first 45 seconds – it gets better from there.  Steve Marriott, the Littlest Soul Man, really begins to turn on the shrieks (“come on, children, YEAH!”), and Kenny Jones conducts it all with drumming that is the definition of controlled power.  An astonishing song and performance.

B Side: “End Of The Night”, The Doors – Heavy on (and of) atmosphere, a little lacking in substance and melody, yet a perfect snapshot of the early, spooky, dangerous Doors back when Mr. Mojo Risin’ was the King of the Sunset Strip with a head full of acid and mystique as opposed to a burly, bearded, drunken bluesman.  It’s Robby Krieger’s eerie, swooping slide guitar that makes the song, though.

Winner: An interesting album track vs. arguably the greatest UK single of the decade?  No contest - “All Or Nothing”.

*

A Side: “For What It’s Worth”, Buffalo Springfield – Steve Stills’ cooly detatched take on the Sunset Strip riots, since then appropriated for all sorts of baby boomer shit that, if you forget to listen, can render the song neutered.  The little guitar-wriggle/bend/twang after “paranoia strikes deep” is one of the most inspired licks in rock history.

B Side: “Trouble Every Day”, Mothers Of Invention – Frank Zappa’s first-person psychodrama about watching the Watts Riots unfold on TV, over a feverish garage-blues jam that really begins to heat up into a full-fledged freak out (we know, we know) at around the 5:20 mark.

Winner: Two sides of the same coin, really.  “For What It’s Worth” is probably the better song… but the Mothers take this one based on the pure agita (both lyrical and musical) displayed here. Much cooler band name, too.

*

A Side: “Kicks”, Paul Revere & The Raiders – It’s Anti-Drug-PSA-a-go-go!  “Kicks” is a textbook example on how to structure a rock & roll song – a cool guitar line to kick off the moody verse, a slow build, an explosive, stomping chorus with great backing vocals, and then repeat it all a few more times.  Mark Lindsay is one of the more underrated singers of the era, and the whole Revoluionary look doesn’t hurt, either. 

B Side: “All Your Love”, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers – Gibson Les Paul, meet Marshall Amp.  Marshall Amp, meet Gibson Les Paul.  It was here that these two great flavors were first combined, at the behest of Eric Clapton, no less (did you know that Clapton got his first Les Paul in a trade with future Police-man Andy Summers?  You do now.)  The guitar is so tasty, in fact, that you barely even notice Mayall’s weird castrato vocal.  Well, ok – you do (and you laugh at it, and even maybe imitate it if you happen to be in your cups), but it doesn’t really detract from the song.

Winner: The British were coming, but Paul Revere won.  Historical import aside, “All Your Love” contains nothing as compelling as the chorus to “Kicks”.

*

A Side: “Rain”, The Beatles – “Rain” is noteworthy for quite a few things – its status as the b-side to “Paperback Writer” was the first real hint that the Beatles upcoming album was going to be travelling to very strange places; backward vocals over the fade out; no band before or since has ever looked as cool as the Fabs in the accompanying video; Paul & Ringo lock in to one of the fiercest grooves ever captured on tape (in large part to Paul’s octave-jumping on the slippery Rickenbacker).

B Side: “Why Pick On Me?”, The Standells – And “Why Pick On Me” kind of sounds like a Sonny & Cher song. 

Winner:  “Rain” was a b-side.  A b-side!  Didn’t even make Revolver.  When you’re hot, you’re hot.

*

A Side: “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, The Four Tops – Levi Stubbs is an animal and he tears into this vocal like a lion into the soft white underbelly of a wounded baby gazelle.  The first back-up vocals you hear are the other three Tops going “RAWR!”.  Motown never sounded so feral, before or since.

B Side: “Heatwave”, The Who – Fun, but decidedly sub-maximum R&B. 

Winner:  “Reach Out”. We’re not gonna be the ones to tell Levi that he’s losing out to a skinny white guy with a nose the size of a ride cymbal covering a song on his own label.  Hell no.  Doesn’t matter that he died last October.

*

A Side: “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White”, The Standells – Garage rock-by-numbers that doesn’t really go anywhere.  Interesting only because of it’s decidedly mid-tempo pace and persistent cowbell.  Bonus points for inspiring a Minor Threat cover 17 years later. Yes, that’s a stretch.

B Side: “Good Lovin’”, The Rascals – Cool guitar riff and boundless enthusiasm aside, this song is kind of, well, gay. And you can tell Mr. MD we said so.

Winner: You can still hum “Good Lovin’” ten minutes after the first time you hear it.  The same thing can’t be said for the hookless “Good Guys”.

*

Wildcard: “Along Comes Mary”, The Association – The Association always looked and sounded like they were heading to play a glee club party only, in this case, to take a wrong turn and wind up at the love-in.  “Mary” is basically a thinly-vieled euphamism to weed.  Grass.  The Pot.  Marijuana.  There’s no other excuse for this shit: 

“And when the morning of the warning’s passed

The gassed and flaccid kids are flung across the stars

The psychodramas and the traumas gone

The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars”

That is fucking ripe!  Chock full of their trademark fey “Bup-bum-bum-bum” vocal interjections, but the ultra-groovy flute solo is just too fun to ignore.

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This entry was posted on June 23, 2009 at 8:37 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: 1966

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