felser

Agree, SF Sorrow is an underheard classic!

It's all of that. To exclude an important component of the 60s is just not possible. The Beatles were an important of what made the 60s; kids rebelling against their parents. Most parents hated rock 'n roll. You just can't say that to know the 60s you need to look elsewhere. You need to look at all of it. They were all parts of the reaction to the end of WWII. The end of the war brought the end to a tumultous age, perhaps dating back to the onset of the Depression. From 1945 through the 50s, that was a reaction against that tumult. The 60s were a reaction to the mind numbing wish for normalcy (cue Warren Harding) that our parents and the world sought after what happened in previous decades. There is a great book called the War of the World by Niall Ferguson which posits that there was no WWI or WWII but one continuous war from 1900 through the Korean War. Thus, the 50s were reaction to that upheaval and the 60s a reaction to the reaction. I don't disagree with either of these postings. I agree that you don't correct overstating the Beatles' impact by understating it. They were certainly a meaningful part of the picture, which would be otherwise incomplete. I just wanted to stress, as Allen did, that there were other parts of the picture as big or bigger which can't be seen through the Beatles. Even within popular music (Dylan). And you don't grasp the USA 60's without MLK, JFK/RFK, the USSR/Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam being clearly in focus front and center. And Beatles music doesn't begin to adequately address any of those in and of itself. It is part of the tapestry.

I read it back in the early 80's when it came out and really liked it, but that was a long time ago, so I can't say how it's aged.

Thank you Allen. To all, if you want to know about the Beatles, enjoy the books and CD's. If you want to know about the 60's, try reading Arthur Schlesinger's "Robert F. Kennedy and His Times", David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" or any number of other books. Try listening to early Bob Dylan, P.F. Sloan's "Eve of Destruction", Spanky and the Gang's "Give a Damn", the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" or any number of other songs. Hendrix's tweak of Dylan, "Let us stop talking falsely now, the hour's getting late", capture more of the 60's than the entire Beatles catalogue. For us in the US, the Beatles were an escape from the reality of the 60's, not an embodyment of them. "Beatlemania" was so intense largely to flee from the constant awareness of the twin horrors of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the JFK Assassination. "All You Need is Love" was a pleasant fairytale, a pipe dream, not an experiential reality even then. Things may have appeared different in England or in retrospect, but not here then. Especially if you were a teenage boy facing the draft.

Lon, guess it is clean and quiet compared to Philly, but it's the Philly-facing end of the busiest high-tech corridor in Pennsylvania (Route 202 corridor, goes from KOP on the northeast end to West Chester on the southwest end), huge mall, tons of traffic, lots of big drug companies, giant Lockheed-Martin defense contracting facilities, Vanguard world headquarters, Siemens Med division US headquarters (where I work). That being said, the residential neighborhoods are very quiet, great parks (Valley Forge, etc.), it has its charms. But much different than when we were kids back then.

Remember, the AAJ board refers to the Organissimo board as "wild and wooly"!

The book sounds "interesting", but this is a bizarre paragraph. There are many many songs which could make equal/greater claims of equal greater significance of the sea change of those times ("Gimme Shelter", for instance).

Glad to see that Allen is also finally using a photo of himself as his avatar.

I really like him with Branford et al, on the live Sting album, especially his solo on "When The World is Running Down". The only post-Police Sting album worth bothering with to my ears.

I'm only 15 minutes away from them and it still takes about a week. And the backorders keep coming in dribs and drabs. They filled 95% of my two large orders eventually - be patient, and whatever you do, don't reorder a title if it hasn't come from the first order!

I love "Boys"...er, the song, yeah, yeah, the song! Especially on the Hollywood Bowl LP. I was always quite taken with the Carl Perkins covers on Beatles '65, especially "Honey Don't".

PM sent on Richard Groove Holmes - Legends of Acid Jazz (Prestige, 1997) - $8

Actually, they also wrote "Nobody I Know", "I Don't Want To See You Again", and "Woman". Peter was the brother of Jane Asher, McCartney's girlfriend at the time. Somebody else, who knows all these things, should have pointed this out first!

Paul Bryant - Somethin's happening Paul Bryant - Groove time Willis Jackson - Swivelhips Willis Jackson - Gator's groove Willis Jackson - Star bag Willis Jackson - Gatorade Willis Jackson - In my solitude Willis Jackson - Really groovin' Willis Jackson - Shuckin' Willis Jackson - Neapolitan nights Freddie McCoy - Lonely avenue Freddie McCoy - Spider man Freddie McCoy - Funk drops Freddie McCoy - Peas & rice Freddie McCoy - Beans & greens Freddie McCoy - Soul yogi Freddie McCoy - Listen here That's ever LP McCoy made for Prestige - NOT ONE CD issued! Billie Poole - Sermonette Gene Ammons - half of Night lights Gene Ammons - Free again Gene Ammons - Blue groove (not Blues groove) Gene Ammons - My way Kenny Burrell - Up the street, round the corner, down the block Charles Earland - Soul story Johnny Lytle - People and love Johnny Lytle - The soulful rebel Jack McDuff - quite a bit but difficult to tell - at least not Walk on by Don Patterson - Soul happening Don Patterson - Satisfaction Don Patterson - Mellow soul Don Patterson - Holiday soul Bobby Timmons - Holiday soul Bobby Timmons - Chicken & dumplin's Trudi Pitts - Bucketful of soul Trudi Pitts - Excitement of Shirley Scott - Drag 'em out Shirley Scott - Scottie Shirley Scott - Plays Horace Silver Shirley Scott - Like cozy Shirley Scott - Scottie plays the Duke Shirley Scott - Happy talk Leon Spencer - Where I'm comin' from Leon Spencer - Bad walkin' woman Sonny Stitt - Primitivo soul Sonny Stitt - Pow! Buddy Terry - Electric soul Buddy Terry - The natural soul John Wright - Makin' out Johnny "Hammond" Smith - Here it is Johnny "Hammond" Smith - What's going on Maynard Parker - Midnight rider Red Holloway - Sax Strings & soul Joe Alexander - Blue jubilee Well, that'll do - that's over fifty albums. May not be important to Hard Bop fans but they're important in the context of Soul Jazz. PS In addition, there are numerous albums that were not issued by Fantasy but only came out on JVC in Japan or Ace labels in Britain. Some of the JVC titles may be included above but no one told me they were out MG Wow, more than I thought. Not much that will keep me up at night, but there are quite a few titles there that would be nice to have. Thanks for the list.

you just felt like high jacking someone's thread then ? Life must be enormously exciting for you : ) More of a thread enhancement... Saturday night at 8:30, this is the best thing you have to do ? Wowsa : ) Sitting at work waiting for a system recycle by another group so that we can continue computer system maintenance. Organissimo is a mighty fine diversion... BTW, noticed that you also don't have much else going on this fine Saturday night :-)

you just felt like high jacking someone's thread then ? Life must be enormously exciting for you : ) More of a thread enhancement...

That's actually probably worth more than the CD's at this point.

They had to just about surgically remove the earphone from my ear. Saw the Beatles on Sullivan at 9 years old, it was a near-religious experience, got a transistor radio/earphone for my next birthday, lived with that thing and it's replacements day and night for years. Everywhere I walked, under the pillow in bed etc. etc. KQV in Pittsburgh, WAAY in Huntsville, Alabama (where "Eve of Destruction" was banned, probably for the line about "turn around and look at Selma, Alabama), WSAI in Cincinnati, WFIL (WIBG was already past it's prime) in Philly. At home I was listening to WEBN in Cincy and WMMR in Philly to get the FM progressive stuff, but didn't have FM on a transistor radio for a good while.

Just mono it out with a Y cord. Wait 'til I tell you about the set-up I've created to rechannel my monos as fake stereo. With added reverb! only in America...

Well...weren't just about all big hits this length during this period? Yeah, 3:00 appears to have been the unspoken "limit". Spector's "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" broke that barrier, but not withiout some contrversy, as I understand it. Context is everything...As little as 10 seconds or so can be the difference between a pop record of the time sounding nice and tight or just a little flabby. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin" was the first record I ever bought. I was 10. If I remember correctly, they purposely mislabeled the time as something like 2:52 to get airplay.

Yeah, I was stunned at how poor those Decca audition sides were. I'd have passed on them too. There were other groups in England who were very accomplished already, and the Decca sides seemed to show no potential to anything meaningful. As for Please Please Me vs. Revolver vs. White Album, it's apples vs. oranges vs. pears, not a matter of "better", but rather "different". Each had meaning in it's time. As far as the cause of musical advancement, remember that they weren't operating in a vacuum, but rather there were a lot of advancements going on around them (Byrds, Yardbirds, Stones, Kinks, Hollies etc.). The advancements by some of those groups were every bit as stunning as the advancements by the Beatles. If you consider 'Revolver' to be groundbreaking for 1966, what do you call "Eight Miles High", which came out at the same time?

You must live on a much fancier road than I do!

I choose to look at it as being thankful that Fantasy put out as much as they did, and kept it in print as long as they did. It is nothing short of miraculous that they put out CD's by John Dennis, Ada Moore, etc. I'm sure they couldn't have had making big bucks as their only goal there. Really, is there anything in the Prestige/Riverside/Jazzland/Fantasy catalogs of much value that didn't make it onto CD and stay in print for a number of years? We can lament not having favorite titles in the flavor we prefer (K2/Keepnews/RVG, etc.), but even their regular OJC issues always sounded really good given the age of the source material. The full flowering of CD age may be over, but it was an amazing time while it lasted, and we have plenty to listen to for the rest of our lives.

Don't buy the Quad CD's. Wait for the special Quad 8-Track format edition, no doubt will sound fantastic (there's just nothing to compare to the "warmness" of the sound of a first generation 8-track). Hopefully will also be put out on cassette without any Dolby applied, as we all know that any noise reduction detracts from the original music. That will also sound fantastic. No doubt they're having hissy-fits on this topic over on the Hoffman forum.

That's great news! Checked their website. 5 CD set, 'Sidesteps", coming October 6. Good price, too ($59.98 list price). And they also have a new Rickie Lee Jones CD coming (I'm a fan).