If you see a title here of an album you love I recommend you skip this post. It will read like an adolescent scratching away at sacred cows in the hope of causing offence. It's not that. I wanted to open my ears and heart to what was shaping up to be an exciting mix of revisits and first listens. When I mention something here it's not necessarily because I think it's bad music but most typically, albums that begged more time than I had to appreciate them.
Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donovan
Some great songs here including the eerie title track and one of my gateway drugs to pop music from classical as a twelve year old, Hi It's Been a Long Time. The problem with this as I listened to it on long walks to let it settle into memory and engender thoughts was that for every great track there's one that doesn't create an impression. For every Peregrine there's a Teas. Eventually, I didn't have enough to form an opinion on. I'd be writing about my favourites and it would look like skipping.
Elecrtic Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix
I used to love this album but didn't hear it until the mid-2000s and kept listening a I was surprised that Hendrix proved to be a decent songwriter, not just a virtuoso guitarist. 1983, Midnight Lamp and Watchtower are masterworks that show real vision a far as lifting the showman into all round greatness. Except there's so much showmanship still there, so much is guitar pyrotechnics that it's hard for someone who finds that musically indigestible to write about with any understanding. Maybe it's just too big for me.
Wheels of Fire - Cream
From one of the greatest moments in the extended psychedelic era, The White Room, things descend to a mud of white boy blues that, while I like it better now than when I first heard the album as a teenager, does not have the inventive energy and melodic strength of its predecessor Disraeli Gears. There is a lengthy live component which is more what the band were about but it's largely lost on me. It would be an article whingeing about how the album wasn't as good as the first track.
Bookends - Simon and Garfunkel
There's a lot to like on this album like the psychedelic effects of the opening track, Garfunkel's field recordings of people at a rest home and some genuinely beautiful moments but I have a dog in this fight. My year 12 English teacher was a big fan and the way he introduced the idea of pop song lyrics as poetry was with this album. He taught it eloquently and inspiringly. But my most played record at the time was Never Mind the Bollocks which was slowly being usurped by This Year's Model and Armed Forces. I found more in those lyrics and I don't listen to lyrics. By the time Mr Cook sat us down to listen to the oppressively fragile Old Friends I looked up from closing my eyes and trying to connect and saw him softly mouth the words. I could not give this one a fair trial.
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - The Incredible String Band
My sister tried to interest me in these folk in that summer o' 74/75 when I realised I had to pay more attention to rock music if I was going to survive high school. She didn't have this album but I did like one or two tracks from the one she did have. Thinking I'd been neglectful I visited this for the first time this year and couldn't listen to the end. It sounded like everything that repelled me about the psyche folk scene of the late '60s. Sorry, just beyond me.
Shades of Deep Purple - Deep Purple
Sorry, Deep Purple were one of those hand-me-down bands form the previous generation that kids at school would be devoted to. Mine was Led Zeppelin. Perhaps it was just a choice of which one you got to first or was recommended best (those siblings who promoted Led Zep also pushed Sabbath who I never took to). Not the band's fault, of course, but still, something I couldn't approach.
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly
Legendary drum solo that went for most of an LP side. I used to skip Moby Dick which was a lot shorter. I heard the real people part of the song at different points but couldn't bring myself to go there again.
In Search of the Lost Chord - The Moody Blues
My sister had this one, too, and I liked all of them but at last listen earlier in the year it doesn't reach across. Don't quite know why. I like the datedness of Piper at the Gates of Dawn and such. Not this, though.
Music from Big Pink - The Band
Not for me. Have tried and failed too many times to get into them at others' recommendations to no avail.
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - The Small Faces
Some great songs but I cannot get past the diddlyoddlypodogooboo language of the narrator. This from an admirer of James Joyce. Go figure. The thing is I'd have to put that into context and try to be understanding but it would drag me down.
I also really tried to like Otis Reddings' Dock of the Bay album past the title track, Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation, anything by the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, and a fair few others which just didn't make an impression. I have to state here, as well, that time was a big factor. Whether I knew an album or not I would listen to the entire thing every time I went for an extended stroll (which would be long enough to take in a whole 45-ish minute record. I tried with some things but where they repeatedly failed to strike or I lost patience with them and listened to something else or just whatever the sounds around me were I couldn't write about them. Understand that the era was not mine and I had trouble imagining the excitement that met these records when they were fresh. In all examples of what I did write about I discovered in formative teen years when they were older than my time's top 40 but were better. If it's any comfort that does mean that I have very few durable favourites from the mid '70s as they were eclipsed completely by my expeditions to the mid to late '60s. So, no hard feelings, it's just time.
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