The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - In My Own Dream 1968

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's In My Own Dream -- their fourth official release -- marked the point where the band really began to lose its audience, and all for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of their music. They'd gotten past the loss of Michael Bloomfield in early 1967 (which had lost them some of their audience of guitar idolaters) with the engagingly titled (and guitar-focused) Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw. In My Own Dream has its great guitar moments, especially on "Just to Be with You," but throughout the album, Elvin Bishop's electric guitar shares the spotlight with the horn section of Gene Dinwiddle, David Sanborn, and Keith Johnson, who had signed on with the prior album and who were more out in front than ever. More to the point, this album represented a new version of the band being born, with shared lead vocals, and the leader himself only taking three of the seven songs, with bassist Bugsy Maugh singing lead on two songs, Bishop on one, and drummer Phillip Wilson taking one. What's more, there was a widely shared spotlight for the players and more of a jazz influence on this record than had ever been heard before from the group. This was a band that could jam quietly for five minutes on "Drunk Again," building ever so slowly to a bluesy crescendo where Bishop's guitar and Mark Naftalin's organ surged; and follow it with the title track, a totally surprising acoustic guitar-driven piece featuring Sanborn, Dinwiddle, and Johnson. The playing is impressive, especially for a record aimed at a collegiate audience, but the record had the bad fortune of appearing at a point when jazz was culturally suspect among the young, an elitist and not easily accessible brand of music that seemed almost as remote as classical. "Get Yourself Together" was almost too good a piece of Chicago-style blues, a faux Chess Records-style track that might even have been too "black" for the remnants of Butterfield's old audience. It also anticipated the group's final change of direction, when it blossomed into a multi-genre blues/jazz/R&B/soul outfit, equally devoted to all four genres and myriad permutations of each. AMG.

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Jefferson Airplane - Crown Of Creation 1968

Crown of Creation appeared ten months after their last album, After Bathing at Baxter's, and it doesn't take the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's did from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways, Crown of Creation is a more conservative album stylistically, opening with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel" (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song, and Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release -- its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear).  The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent of the time, but it made for a shattering finish to the album. AMG.

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Procol Harum - Grand Hotel 1973

Procol Harum's first album for Chrysalis, Grand Hotel, found the band returning to the grandeur of earlier works such as Shine on Brightly and Salty Dog. Robin Trower's replacement Mick Grabham is capable, even powerful, but not nearly as distinctive as his predecessor; consequently, the material tends to rely more on ornate arrangements than guitar riffs, making this somewhat more dignified than either of their previous studio albums, Home and Broken Barricades. Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid stepped up with strong material, notably the title track, "Toujours L'Amour," and "Fires (Which Burnt Brightly)." While the keyboard and orchestra-based arrangements harken back to earlier triumphs, the lyrics deal less with whaling stories than with social commentary; "A Souvenir of London" is about social diseases, with "T.V. Caesar" about the pervasive influence of television. AMG.

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Blues Project - Planned Obsolescence 1968

One of the first album-oriented "underground" groups in the United States, the Blues Project offered an electric brew of rock, blues, folk, pop, and even some jazz, classical, and psychedelia during their brief heyday in the mid-'60s. It's not quite accurate to categorize them as a blues-rock group, although they did plenty of that kind of material; they were more like a Jewish-American equivalent of British bands like the Yardbirds, who used a blues and R&B base to explore any music that interested them. Erratic songwriting talent and a lack of a truly outstanding vocalist prevented them from rising to the front line of '60s bands, but they recorded plenty of interesting material over the course of their first three albums before the departure of their most creative members took its toll. The Blues Project was formed in Greenwich Village in the mid-'60s by guitarist Danny Kalb (who had played sessions for various Elektra folk and folk-rock albums), Steve Katz (a guitarist with Elektra's Even Dozen Jug Band), flutist/bassist Andy Kulberg, drummer Roy Blumenfeld, and singer Tommy Flanders. Al Kooper, in his early twenties but already a seasoned vet of rock sessions, joined after sitting in on the band's Columbia Records audition, although they ended up signing to Verve. Early member Artie Traum (guitar) dropped out during early rehearsals; Flanders would leave after their first LP, Live at the Cafe Au-Go-Go (1966).

The eclectic résumés of the musicians, who came from folk, jazz, blues, and rock backgrounds, were reflected in their choice of material. Blues by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry tunes ran alongside covers of contemporary folk-rock songs by Eric Anderson and Patrick Sky, as well as the group's own originals. These were usually penned by Kooper, who had already built songwriting credentials as the co-writer of Gary Lewis' huge smash "This Diamond Ring," and established a reputation as a major folk-rock shaker with his contributions to Dylan's mid-'60s records. Kooper also provided the band's instrumental highlights with his glowing organ riffs. Though their live debut sounds rather tame and derivative, the group truly hit their stride on Projections (late 1966), which was, disappointingly, their only full-length studio recording. While they went through straight blues numbers with respectable energy, they really shone on folk- and jazz-influenced tracks like "Fly Away," Katz's lilting "Steve's Song," Kooper's jazz instrumental "Flute Thing" (an underground radio standard that's probably their most famous track), and Kooper's fierce adaptation of an old Blind Willie Johnson number, "I Can't Keep from Crying." A non-LP single from this era, the pop-psychedelic "N1o Time Like the Right Time," was their greatest achievement and one of the best "great hit singles that never were" of the decade. The band's very eclecticism didn't augur well for their long-term stability, and in 1967 Kooper left in a dispute over musical direction (he has recalled that Kalb opposed his wishes to add a horn section). Then Kalb mysteriously disappeared for months after a bad acid trip, which effectively ended the original incarnation of the band. A third album, Live at Town Hall, was a particularly half-hearted project given the band's stature, pasted together from live tapes and studio outtakes, some of which were overdubbed with applause to give the impression that they had been recorded in concert.

Kooper got to fulfill his ambitions for soulful horn rock as the leader of the original Blood, Sweat & Tears, although he left that band after their first album; BS&T also included Katz (who stayed onboard for a long time). Blumenfeld and Kulberg kept the Blues Project going for a fourth album before forming Seatrain, and the group re-formed in the early '70s with various lineups, Kooper rejoining for a live 1973 album, Reunion in Central Park. The first three albums from the Kooper days are the only ones that count, though; the best material from these is on Rhino's best-of compilation. Founding member Danny Kalb died on November 19, 2022, in Brooklyn, New York after a long illness; he was 80 years old. AMG.

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Neil Young - Neil Young 1968

On his songs for Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young had demonstrated an eclecticism that ranged from the rock of "Mr. Soul" to the complicated, multi-part arrangement of "Broken Arrow." On his debut solo album, he continued to work with composer/arranger Jack Nitzsche, with whom he had made "Expecting to Fly" on the Buffalo Springfield Again album, and together the two recorded a restrained effort on which the folk-rock instrumentation, most of which was by Young, overdubbing himself, was augmented by discreet string parts. The country & western elements that had tinged the Springfield's sound were also present, notably on the leadoff track, "The Emperor of Wyoming," an instrumental that recalled the Springfield song "A Child's Claim to Fame." Still unsure of his voice, Young sang in a becalmed high tenor that could be haunting as often as it was listless and whining. He was at his least appealing on the nine-and-a-half-minute closing track, "The Last Trip to Tulsa," on which he accompanied himself with acoustic guitar, singing an impressionistic set of lyrics seemingly derived from Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. But double-tracking and the addition of a female backup chorus improved the singing elsewhere, and on "The Loner," the album's most memorable track, Young displayed some of the noisy electric guitar work that would characterize his recordings with Crazy Horse and reminded listeners of his ability to turn a phrase. Still, Neil Young made for an uneven, low-key introduction to Young's solo career, and when released it was a commercial flop, his only album not to make the charts. (Several months after the album's release, Young remixed it to bring out his vocals more and added some overdubs. This second version replaced the first in the U.S. from then on, though the original mix remained available overseas.) AMG.

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Wallace Collection - Laughing Cavalier 1969

Wallace Collection was a Belgian pop rock group active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Wallace Collection was formed from the ashes of a group called Sylvester's Team, three of which began playing under the name 16th Century along with bassist Christian Jannsens and two members of the Belgian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Raymond Vincent and Jacques Namotte.Wallace Collection based itself out of Britain, naming itself after the famous museum adjacent to their record label's headquarters, EMI. Their debut studio album, Laughing Cavalier, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and was released in 1969. The single "Daydream" became a hit in 21 countries, including going #1 in Belgium. In the wake of its success, the group toured Europe, the United States, Mexico, and South America. They also composed the soundtrack to a French film, La Maison, in 1970. Later singles, such as "Love" and "Serenade", were hits in Belgium and some other countries but did not reach the level of "Daydream", and the group split up in 1971. In 2005 the group re-formed with an altered lineup. 

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José Feliciano - Feliciano! 1968

Released at the apex of his popularity, this was Feliciano's most successful album. It reached number two, largely on the strength of his only big hit single, "Light My Fire" (which is featured here). Soulful easy listening is an oxymoron, but this is about as close as that fusion gets to reality, with passionate vocals and virtuosic flamenco guitar. Besides "Light My Fire," it's dominated by interpretations of the '60s hits like "Sunny" and "California Dreamin'," as well as three Lennon-McCartney tunes. Noted jazz bassist Ray Brown is one of the supporting musicians. AMG.

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Gil Scott-Heron - The Mind Of Gil Scott Heron 1978

This compilation of primarily spoken word poetry is a showcase for Scott-Heron's mastery of rhythm and showmanship. However, too many of the poems are dated political rants that, while occasionally biting and amusing, don't hold up to the passage of time. AMG.

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Egg - Egg 1970

With a strong Canterbury influence implanted into their sound, Egg's first album has the band looking to establish their niche as a progressive group, with Dave Stewart's sharp, effective keyboard work outlining much of the album's overall feel. Mixing jazz and progressive rock drifts, the tracks on Egg contain rhythms and meters that are never at a standstill, with ongoing instrumental action encompassing nearly every track. Numerous classical overtones make for a familiar listen against a backdrop of loose-ended jazz fusion and an unordered yet inviting array of haphazard progressive spillages. The fragmented instrumentals sport attractive inexperience, especially on "Bulb" and "The Song of McGillicudie the Pusillanimous," which also introduce Egg's lighthearted whimsy. Both "Blane" and "I Will Be Absorbed" represent the most colorful example of Egg's progressive rock fundamentals, with quick tempos and assertive keyboard runs. Although Egg's cohesiveness as a band is in its early stages, Dave Stewart ascertains himself as an elite keyboard player throughout the album, later moving on to play with Hatfield and the North and National Health. Egg's next album, 1971's Polite Force, has them sounding firmer and more self-contained, but their debut presents an entertaining example of different progressive genres playing off of one another. AMG.

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Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow 1975

Julie Driscoll's first solo album in five years was a major shock to anybody who remembered her only for her brief stint of pop-shaped glory at the end of the 1960s. Accompanied by a distinctly jazz-lite combo led by husband Keith Tippett, Driscoll only occasionally dips towards old territory, via the shimmering "Mind of Child" and the beautifully bluesy "Oceans and Sky." Elsewhere, the likes of "Lilies" and the title track see her stretching into deeply experimental/jazz fields, with her accompanists -- most notably the horn section of Mark Charig, Elton Dean, and Nick Evans -- driving many of the performances into the same kind of left-field territory as the earliest Robert Wyatt albums. This is no bad thing, of course, but does come as something of a shock if you're expecting anything else. Driscoll's lyric writing is also disappointing -- compared to some of the masterpieces wrought on Open, Streetnoise, and 1969, she seems definitely to be struggling with -- or, at least, not especially caring about -- the words she sang, even as the way she sings them remains staggeringly beautiful, heart-stoppingly evocative. In fact, little about Sunset Glow truly answers the long-standing calls for her to return to front-line action, and it would take another year, and a reunion with Brian Auger, before Driscoll genuinely returned to form. AMG.

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The Plastic Cloud's self-titled album is a strangely compelling and overall delightful mix of West Coast '60s sounds, without any two songs sounding exactly alike, or even displaying the same attributes. Not that any fan of that era will mind any of it, and especially not the Byrds-like harmonies on the opening number, "Epistle to Paradise," which sounds like a more ornate and trippier follow-up to "Renaissance Fair" coupled with "Here Without You." But on "Shadows of Your Mind" the fuzztone guitar cuts in, along with Randy Umphrey's drumming -- which recalls John Densmore's work with the Doors -- for a kind of Buffalo Springfield homage. And "Art's a Happy Man" comes off like a weird amalgam of the early Jefferson Airplane and Spanky & Our Gang. But the ten-minute "You Don't Care" may well bring to mind Big Brother & the Holding Company instrumentally, and the Notorious Byrd Brothers album vocally and psychically. And "Bridge Under the Sky" evokes memories of the Youngbloods. It's all enjoyable and full of pleasant surprises. AMG.

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Poco - Pickin' Up The Pieces 1969

Poco dealt with a lot during the recording of their debut album -- the sudden departure of bassist Randy Meisner, the frustration of working with an engineer who didn't quite get what they were trying for, and a lot of pressure to deliver a solid collection of country-rock songs -- and came up with this startlingly great record, as accomplished as any of Buffalo Springfield's releases, and also reminiscent of the Beatles and the Byrds. Pickin' Up the Pieces is all the more amazing when one considers that Jim Messina and George Grantham were both covering for the departed Meisner in hastily learned capacities on bass and vocals, respectively. The title track is practically an anthem for the virtues of country rock, with the kind of sweet harmonizing and tight interplay between the guitars that the Byrds, the Burritos, and others had to work awhile to achieve. The mix of good-time songs ("Consequently So Long," "Calico Lady"), fast-paced instrumentals ("Grand Junction"), and overall rosy feelings makes this a great introduction to the band, as well as a landmark in country-rock only slightly less important (but arguably more enjoyable than) Sweetheart of the Rodeo. AMG.

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Them - Now and 'Them' 1968

The average '60s rock fan should be aware of this vital fact about Now & Them right away: This is not the version of the band that is most familiar, with Van Morrison on lead vocals. In fact, Morrison does not appear at all on this album, the first of the obscure LPs recorded by a reorganized Them after Morrison's departure for a solo career. For that simple reason, it cannot be compared to Them's previous recordings, either in quality or in style. Getting beyond that, it's not a bad record, though not a particularly good one, and pretty lacking in consistent direction. Perhaps because this was recorded in Hollywood (where Them was based at the time), it has a surprisingly American sound in many places. Yet their new sound, whatever it was, didn't coalesce, and the record seemed almost the work of several bands rather than one. There was fairly hard-nosed British R&B in the cover of John Mayall's "I'm Your Witch Doctor," American-styled blue-eyed soul on the cover of Timi Yuro's "What's the Matter Baby," bubblegummy psych-pop on "Truth Machine," echoes of the Monkees and the Association on "You're Just What I Was Looking for Today," a muted "Gloria" rewrite on "Dirty Old Man (At the Age of Sixteen)" (whose Strawberry Alarm Clock-like harmonies dilute the original arrangement, cut by the group slightly earlier on a non-LP single), disposable jazz-blues on "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out," Standells-styled garage rock on "Walking in the Queen's Garden," and an inferior cover of "I Happen to Love You" (done better by both the Myddle Class and the Electric Prunes). The big problem, however, was that the group simply did not have a lead singer miles within Van Morrison, nor did they write original material miles within what Morrison penned for the earlier Them records. For all that, it does contain one nice, lengthy, haunting raga rock piece, "Square Room," undoubtedly the most original work on the record, and the album's highlight. The 2003 CD reissue adds mono single mixes of "Walking in the Queen's Garden" and "I Happen to Love You" as bonus tracks. AMG.

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The Mind Garage - A Total Electric Happening 1968

Mind Garage was an American psychedelic rock and roll band from Morgantown, West Virginia, and a progenitor of Christian rock music. Their "Electric Liturgy" performed in 1968 was the first documented Christian rock worship service, and their 1969 eponymous debut RCA album was one of the earliest Christian rock albums released. 

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Graham Collier Sextet - Down Another Road 1969

The irony of Graham Collier's output being reissued on CD through a small Spanish label is mitigated by the knowledge that at the time of this reissue, the bassist/ composer was living in Spain. This is one of several splendid recordings of Collier reissued by the label and this one maintains the high level of quality achieved by the others. While Collier performs on bass it is his extraordinary compositional and organizational skills for which this recording will be remembered. The rather ordinary instrumentation of sax, trumpet, and trombone backed by a rhythm section might have seemed utterly conservative in the late '60s, but Collier infuses the medium with a stately flair that lays the groundwork for some outstanding soloing by Harry Beckett on flugelhorn, Nick Evans on trombone, and Stan Sulzmann on saxes, all three of whom would to lead successful careers. Pianist Karl Jenkins makes a surprisingly good showing on oboe, and his interaction with Beckett on the lengthy "Danish Blue" features his sharply focused tone. At heart, Collier is an instigator: He sets up the framework for his improvisers. Sometimes he incorporates rock riffs but mostly he stays squarely within the boundaries of modern jazz writing. His arranging skills have been compared favorably and fairly to those of Gil Evans and Charles Mingus, and the influences are there, but Collier is an original writer. His works are generally tonally centered and contain melody, but he encourages collective improvisation and stretched harmonies. His pieces carefully balance emotional depth and intellectual rigor, with wonderful harmonies and consistently high levels of performance. This one hits the mark with its carefully constructed compositions and magnificent improvisations. AMG.

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Colours - Atmosphere 1969

Among the many unmemorable late '60s psychedelic bands that put out a record or two, Colours do stand out from the pack a bit for a couple of reasons. One is that they were among the relatively few American bands to adopt a very British-orchestrated pop-psychedelic style, which must have been honed by incessant listening to every track the Beatles did in 1967. The other is that their bassist was Carl Radle, who soon went on to play in Delaney & Bonnie and, shortly afterwards, Derek & the Dominoes, as well as with J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton the solo artist. Colours drummer Chuck Blackwell also achieved some renown in the early '70s by playing with Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Taj Mahal, Freddie King, and other artists.

However, the prime architects of Colours' sound were songwriters Jack Dalton and Gary Montgomery. They wrote all of the material on Colours' 1968 self-titled debut album on Dot, a competent if unexciting derivation of the sort of florid, bouncy, multi-textured songs the Beatles did on their 1967 LPs and singles. The problems? The songs weren't one-tenth as memorable, and the arrangements not nearly as clever or intricate, even if there was obvious attention paid to detail, with full harmonies and varying overlays of horns, strings, and even a sitar. Colours did make one further album, 1969's Atmosphere, on which no musicians other than Dalton and Montgomery are credited. AMG.

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John Berberian & Rock East Ensemble - Middle Eastern Rock 1969

Released originally in 1969, MIDDLE EASTERN ROCK is a unique, compelling fusion record from Armenian-American oud player John Berberian. The Rock East Ensemble, Beberian’s backing band, consists of the artist’s standard group, which specializes in traditional Armenian music with a jazz edge, and American session musicians who bring more of a rock sound. The results, which blend elements of psychedelia, free jazz, surf music, and various klezmer, African, and Middle Eastern textures, are dazzling and are sure to thrill anyone with a taste for rare "outside" albums. AMG.

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Max Roach - We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite 1960

The cover art for 1961's We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite is a grainy black-and-white photo of three Black men at a lunch counter looking on. There is a white man wearing a soda jerk's uniform apprehensively looking at the camera too. During the heyday of the civil rights era, this was an incendiary comment directed at a still-segregated U.S. that arrived just after the Montgomery Bus Boycott and student lunch counter sit-ins. Roach was a bebop innovator who had recorded several standard-setting outings with trumpeter Clifford Brown, and he was a longtime civil rights activist. He is accompanied on this five-track, 36-minute opus by a cast of assenting musicians including singer Abbey Lincoln, tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Walter Benton, trumpeter Booker Little (a teenaged Roach protégé), trombonist Julian Priester, bassist James Schenck, conguero Babatunde Olatunji, and percussionists Ray Mantilla and Tomas DuVall. The suite is divided into sections: "Driva' Man" and "Freedom Day" (both with lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr.) are set during the Civil War -- although the latter makes room for future struggle. "Triptych" is a three-section duet by Lincoln and Roach rooted in the present-day struggle at home, while the final two movements, "All Africa" and "Tears for Johannesburg," reflect the fight for equality on the African continent.

"Driva' Man" commences with Lincoln singing Brown's lyrics as a deep blues, accompanied only by intermittent snare. The horns enter along with Schenk. Hawkins delivers an uncharacteristically gritty, almost guttural, angular solo, instrumentally expressing the blues sung by Lincoln to highlight the harsh realities and indignity endured by Black people since slavery. "Freedom Day" offers the three-horn frontline introducing Lincoln with a hard bop vamp. Little claims the foreground with a commanding solo rooted in color and sorrowful melodic invention, followed by impressive solos from Benton, Priester, and Roach. "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace" is a centerpiece duet between the drummer and Lincoln, and one of the most abstract tunes either artist ever cut. She intones wordlessly before the intensity ratchets, and begins screaming to meet the drummer's frenetic rolls, fills, and accents before coming full circle. Lincoln sings Brown's words again on "All Africa," driven by Olatunji and the other percussionists. The lyric "It began with a beat and a hum" introduces an exposition on Black music and culture's central place in the development of history and civilization. Roach's closer "Tears for Johannesburg" also offers bluesy, wordless singing from Lincoln. Driven by the composer's and Schenk's taut vamps, the frontline horns meld Latin and African folk music, modal jazz, hard bop, and even classical music in a swinging, incantatory flow underscored by fluid, fiery improvising from Roach and the percussionists.

Despite its rather rudimentary recording quality, the music on We Insist! remains urgent, relevant, and provocative. Its assertion that freedom and equality are necessary for society to function and thrive resonates as poignantly and intensely amid the global civil rights struggles of the 21st century as it did in the 20th. AMG.

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