I was alive in 1969 but was unaware of almost every record I've written about from then this year in the series 1969@50. I was still under ten and if I liked any pop music at all it was something cute they played on the radio. A year and a bit later I discovered the world of classical through an ABC radio show called Sunday Morning Concert. That tied in with my fascination of previous centuries and drawing scenes from them. My point is that none of these albums were on my radar at the time. The ones I've featured were mostly heard well after their release (in some cases decades) and they are the ones that have stuck with me and which I still listen to. Here are some I'd marked as candidates but could not stir myself into celebrating. That doesn't make them bad records just short of my taste or ones that have too few tracks I love. Anyway...
BAYOU COUNTRY: Creedence Clearwater Revival - This is one the other side of the mass of material from the late '60s/early'70s that I can't get into for a number of reasons but mainly related to a reliance on a blues-rock vocabulary that I am alienated by. This band improved immensely and swiftly in subsequent releases with John Fogerty proving a mighty writer, singer and guitarist but that was in the future.
KICK OUT THE JAMS: MC5 - I didn't hear this one until a few years ago though I was apprised of the band's place in rock history from my teens. A friend's sister had a copy of the album High Times which contained one great song (Over and Over) and a lot of blues-rock workouts that left me cold. This debut is boldly a live album intended to pass along the excitement of an MC5 show with its haranguing between song calls to action and a hard rock set that ends in a fashionably Eastern-influenced jam. When I reformatted my cds and gave most of the hard copies away to friends or donated them locally, I just added this to the pile without making flacs, never thinking to revisit it. It's not that it's dated with its "sisters and brothers!" yells, it's just not my kind of music, regardless of how stirring it might have been to witness. They did the right thing by their fans, I'm just not among their fans.
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING: King Crimson - The title track is good but I can't get into the rest of it.
UNCLE MEAT: The Mothers of Invention - Sigh. This is one of the most exhausting records I've ever tried to listen to. I am defeated.
TROUT MASK REPLICA: Captain Beefheart - Of all the avant rock I was aware of like this or anything by Frank Zappa, my resistance to this stems from the feeling I get that it is done less from musicality than a need to be anti-conventional. It just sounds cold to me. Contrast that with the following decade's Residents who did seem to put music of conviction in the blend of recording as event and showbiz.
A SALTY DOG: Procol Harum - Like The Band, The Faces, Jeff Beck Group and many others from the turn of this decade I find it too hard to connect with the music. I wonder if it's because they start from a part of the reimagined blues timeline that left me cold. I will give this one points for committing to its overall feel and trying to stretch a little beyond this but I struggled to listen all the way through and couldn't have done it justice in a fuller write-up.
GOODBYE: Cream - For me it was one great album and a lot of extended blues-rock. Sorry, it's just a deaf spot for me. All of Disraeli Gears and about three tracks off Wheels of Fire and I need to declare myself an infidel.
IN A SILENT WAY: Miles Davis - Utterly sublime workouts of poignant melodies by a jazz supergroup on the verge of inventing jazz/rock fusion but avoiding everything that tainted that genre with overly rarefied noodling and nerve-defying complexity. This is a solid favourite of mine which I enjoy quite frequently in an SACD in 5.1. It's beautiful but it's hard to describe.
THE GILDED PALACE OF SIN: The Flying Burrito Brothers - Good album but by flac-ed copy left the best song (Sin City) only half complete. I kept trying to remember where I'd seen the CD but it never turned up and by the time I went to write up the next one the time was past. Perhaps I'll write it up as an unheard classic on its own.
SONGS FROM A ROOM: Leonard Cohen - This would really take too long a run up for me to do justice to and every time I tried I kept getting lost. I'll feature the early Cohen canon in a dedicated article later.
ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM: The Moody Blues - great childhood favourite and important to my own musical development but missed the date. Perhaps an article about what seems to be an unjustly forgotten band of innovators.
SCOTT 4: I know. How could I? He's got everything I like including a lean towards cinema rather than rock. I immersed myself in the record for a few weeks and emerged with only a few tracks to return to and the sense of a single approach to arrangement that quickly got on my nerves. I love, however, Boy Child and The Rhymes of a Woman.
UMMUGUMMA: Pink Floyd. For a long time this set was a punk joke, chiefly for the endless instrumentals with titles that ended with phrases like "... and grooving with a Pict." When I finally attempted to listen I gave up well before the halfway mark and never returned. I've really got into this bands stuff from before and after but this and some of the earlier seventies records just don't connect and I think I'm still right about that (the same way I was right to find The Stranglers ghastly old yobs with occasionally good songs).
There are probably more.
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