a blog for those who never gave up their turntables or records
THIS IS THE SIXTH in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “Let’s Hang On To Our Ticket To Ride” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on June 2, 2019. READ MORE
ONCE UPON A TIME, it looked like the Byrds had a long, successful, productive career in front of them. In 1965, they had two #1 hits, Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, that effectively defined the recently coined term folk-rock. Their two albums were pivotal in the transition of rock musicians from being primarily singles-oriented to being primarily album-oriented. READ MORE
IN JULY 1966, COLUMBIA RECORDS announced that Gene Clark had left the Byrds. A month later, Clark was in the studio recording as a newly signed Columbia solo artist. In November 1966, his first single, Echoes, was issued with great fanfare and considerable expense. Nonetheless, it bombed. In February 1967, his album was issued with considerably less enthusiasm from and a noticeably smaller promotion campaign by Columbia. READ MORE
GENE CLARK’S FIRST SOLO ALBUM came almost a year after his final record with the Byrds. For a long time, GENE CLARK WITH THE GOSDIN BROTHERS was considered rather lightweight, especially from the man who wrote songs like She Don’t Care About Time, Set You Free This Time, and Eight Miles High while with the Byrds. READ MORE
THE BYRDS’ FLIGHT TO ENGLAND in August 1965 began a disastrous tour for the group. Fortunately, it wasn’t an entirely wasted trip, as it inspired Gene Clark to pen some psychedelically-enhanced poetry. Set to a loose melody strummed on an acoustic guitar, this became the basis for Eight Miles High. With assistance from fellow Byrds David Crosby on the lyrics and Jim McGuinn on the complex vocal and instrumental arrangements, it was released as a single in March 1966. READ MORE
I CAN TRULY SAY that I knew it all—The Secret of the Universe. Once. Briefly. I can also say that this essay has little to do with record collecting, but it does touch on psychedelic music of the ’60s, so here it is (instead of on my other, eponymous blog). I wanted to provide this memory about doing acid for the first time in the Fall of 1970. READ MORE
THE MAJOR RECORD COMPANIES usually released new titles on Monday, or at least they did in the ’60s. On April 12, 1965, I rushed home from school and ran upstairs to my room and tossed my books on my bed and pulled my money out of my drawer and ran downstairs to the garage and picked up my bike and zoomed off to Joe Nardone’s record shop and bought Mr. READ MORE
ARGUING THE ‘BEST’ ROCK GUITAR PLAYERS of the ’60 is probably a pretty dumb way to waste time—and “Surfing Guitars” will not be doing that! Considerably more constructive and interesting would be an argument as to who were—and that’s intentionally plural—the most ‘creative’ players. Of course, to reach any kind of consensus there would require that we first agree on a definition of ‘creative’ in that context! READ MORE
IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY—give or take a few hundred days one way or the other—that I finally found a stereo copy of DICK CAMPBELL SINGS WHERE IT’S AT (Mercury SR-61060). I was at a record show in New York, and happily paid $100 for it! I had been looking for a copy for years and may have been the only person there that day willing to pay the seller’s asking price. READ MORE