So, the sixties (and this series) draws to a close. The decade of promise and possibility ends on a sour note with the Manson murders and the apocalyptic scenes at the Stones’ Altamont festival. In the singles charts, despite a decade of the greatest social and cultural upheaval the modern age has known, things don’t look that different from when we came in. Elvis is back, the Ventures are still playing surf music and we even get the Lettermen giving it the vocal harmony thing like it’s 1959 again.
Outside of the seemingly conservative singles chart though some exciting debuts by the Stooges and Bob Marley, David Bowie re-releases his own debut as “Space Oddity”, Monty Python is first aired on the BBC and the 70s looks to be even more exciting than the 60s (it wasn’t in the end, but…!).
This series has been hugely enjoyable and a real education for me. Listening to a decade of music in tiny fragments like this has given me a real feel for the mood and atmosphere of the times that is difficult to sum up precisely in words but can only be caught with sound.
And ( at least for me) FM’s conquest of the airwaves is nearly complete. A year in which some truly horrible stuff made the top 40 ( Sweet Cream Ladies anyone?) while an amazing amount of stuff was being featured on what was still being called “underground” FM stations. There were crossovers of course of which I’ll mention – Creedence, Creedence & more Creedence. They were everywhere, produced one of the tightest albums ever made (Green River) & still make me take notice 40+ years on. I & a bunch of shipmates went to see them in the fall & they were just terrific. After the concert we were raving over it & one guy actually made the comment he didn’t like it ’cause they sounded too much like their records. My buddy D J ( he’d played in a band) near went apoplectic & we had to step between them ( there might have been beer involved). Me I’m Too Busy Thinkin “Bout My Baby & Doin’ the Soulful Strut. Score H =87 DH = 40
Japanther – Thanks so much for doing this series. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely.
thanks for your participation and enthusiasm Fintan, i’m in awe of your collection of amazing tunes and would love to have been right there along with you, rushing home to play the new Beach Boys 7″ as a young teen, high school dances to all that great soul, funk and Motown, and later, driving around with your mates and hearing amazing, timeless tunes like these blasting out of the stereo in their raw form without the baggage of history and expectation put on them by decades of serious music journalism, just enjoying the music for what it is in that way that only teenagers can do! cheers!
A lot of RRers are 69ers!!
Thanks for this series, Japanther. I like your thoughtful write-ups!!
‘A lot of RRers are 69ers!!’
I’ll say it before pairubu does…
Fnarr!! Fnarr!!
But seriously, 1969 is one of my favourite years in music (along with 1968 and 1970). It had everything. Hendrix, Free, Deep Purple, Led Zep the best of the Beatles, some awesome Mowtown tracks…..just everything. I enjoyed listening to that.
BTW, panthersan, I missed the beginning of this series so maybe I missed some detail but were they all just some random hits from those years, US hits, UK hits or No. 1′s from both?
I think we decided it was the top 100 (or thereabouts) of the US Billboard charts for that year, which explains why so much great music is missing!
Tracklistings and downloads are here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2011/10/download-ten-secs-of-every-hit-song-of-the-60s.html
It well worth a quick scan through the whole lot, or even a careful listen, fascinating stuff for me who knows relatively little
I was a really nice series and great fun!!! But a little frustrating as I would hear a part of a song and want it to continue ! ! !
Thanks for the effort of putting the tracks together – It must have been a lot of work. ! ! !
I confess I haven’t listened to these posts, but I have scanned the titles. I’m only slightly younger than fintan so the era also covers most of my adolescence. There seem to be significant differences between (my memory of) the UK charts and these, particularly in the early and later parts of the decade. We obviously also had a lot of dross that hit number one, but it seems to be different dross. From ’64 to ’67 there are a lot more titles/artists I recognize, which must have been because of the UK pop explosion at that time that went on to flood the US charts, inspiring the foundation of many US acts whose records came back over here. Then we apparently diverged again. Interesting.