Various – Classic Rock – Rock Renaissance IV (CD, Comp) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Media Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

TWL-Box #402-R

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Notes:

Volume 30 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Complete liner notes:

In the summer of 1962, pop singer Tony Bennett lost his heart in San Francisco. By the Summer of Love in 1967, the city had claimed the hearts, souls and minds of a younger generation. San Francisco’s artistically liberated atmosphere fostered the image of a hip Mecca, where alternative lifestyles and easy drug access (LSD was legal in California until late 1966) fueled a rock scene. Scott McKenzie’s gentle San Francisco notwithstanding, San Francisco Girls by the Houston quintet Fever Tree, complete with a barrage of feedback by a guitarist known only as “Michael,” was the ultimate paean to these “milk and honey days.” A fever tree’s bark reputedly prevents malaria; this Fever Tree was immune to hits, disappearing after one chart entry. Hits were not part of the Chocolate Watch Band’s repertoire either, although that group built a small following from exposure on the sound track to Riot on Sunset Strip and on singles like the snarling love-in invitation Are You Gonna Be There.

Quicksilver Messenger Service, one of San Francisco’s homegrown acid-rock bands, originally formed to back ex-folkie Dino Valenti. Drug charges landed Valenti in the slammer instead, but he later joined Quicksilver for its fourth LP, Just for Love, which yielded the group’s biggest single, Fresh Air, in 1970. Valenti sings lead on this samba rocker credited to “Jesse Oris Farrow,” one of his pen names; he had used the pseudonym Chet Powers as composer of the Youngbloods’ Get Together. Like Valenti, the Youngbloods had East Coast folk roots, but they developed their mellow sound before moving to Marin County in 1967. Darkness, Darkness, penned and sung by leader Jesse Colin Young, was produced by future country-rock legend Charlie Daniels.

The magnetic appeal of San Francisco drew top musicians from all over the world. Steve Miller grew up in Texas and played the frat circuit in the Fabulous Knight Trains with his friend Boz Scaggs at the University of Wisconsin. After college Miller drifted south to Chicago, paying some dues at tough blues clubs, and then headed west in 1966. “I knew I couldn’t miss,” Miller boasted. “The Dead and the Airplane barely knew how to tune up at that time: the big highlight was playing In the Midnight Hour out of tune for 45 minutes.” The Steve Miller Band recorded two acclaimed progressive blues-rock albums before singer-guitarist Scaggs left, only to be replaced by another Knight Train alumnus, Ben Sidran. For the Brave New World LP, Miller and keyboardist Sidran coauthored Space Cowboy, a persona that cropped up in Miller’s 1974 hit, The Joker. Britain’s Eric Burdon and his New Animals also made a smooth transition to the San Francisco experience. When I Was Young found them passionately embracing psychedelia, underscored by the provocative Burdon couplet “I met my first love at thirteen/She was brown, and I was pretty green.”

Folk-rock had become synonymous with Southern California, as exemplified by groups such as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Love. The Dirt Band initially counted Jackson Browne among its ranks and an instrument arsenal able to tackle everything from bluegrass to vaudeville. Harpsichord and strings lend an uncharacteristic pop feel to Buy for Me the Rain, which narrowly missed the top 40 in 1967. That same year, Love recorded its classic Forever Changes LP, containing Alone Again Or by guitarist (and former Byrds roadie) Bryan MacLean. The actual single issue, however, was taken from the 1970 Love Revisited anthology.

By 1970, folk-rock pioneers the Byrds had spearheaded so many hyphenated styles that few frontiers seemed left to conquer. The Byrds now featured guitarist extraordinaire Clarence White, who had joined in late 1968 to replace Gram Parsons. Jesus Is Just Alright showcases White and the Stringbender, which he invented with drummer Gene Parsons. This device allowed White to produce pedal-steel guitar effects by raising or lowering the pitch of his Telecaster’s B string.

Metropolitan centers like Philadelphia and Detroit rocked to different beats. Philly’s finest, the Nazz, were Who followers right down to their Mod threads and the Can’t Explain introductory chords on Open My Eyes, a prime example of songwriter Todd Rundgren’s “wall of sound” approach to pop. “Wall of noise” best describes Detroit’s influential metal group, the MC 5. Guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith got the band together in high school, and thereafter the quintet’s reputation owed as much to their white-hot guitar licks as to the profanities and political babble they spouted. Shakin’ Street, sung by Smith, nevertheless stands on a par with the Stones’ Street Fighting Man as a quintessential teen anthem.

In 1966, England’s Melody Maker magazine conducted a poll among rock stars to choose the ultimate supergroup. Eric Clapton won on guitar, Ginger Baker topped all drummers, and Jack Bruce – well, he at least placed high in the bass category. Within three months, Cream was born, a power trio that restructured a tune by Mississippi bluesman Skip James called I’m So Glad for its first LP, Fresh Cream. Power-trio pyrotechnics were also in the cards for Robin Trower, whose rugged Claptonesque lead guitar on Procol Harum’s Whisky Train showed him champing at the bit. Trower left Procol Harum, eventually winning recognition in the Guitar Player magazine poll and criticism for his dogged hero worship at the altar of Jimi Hendrix.

The late ’60s saw the rebirth and creation of many bands throughout England. A revamped Moody Blues, desperate to keep pace with trends wrought by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s LP, composed a “day in the life” song cycle mixing classical music and rock. The album, Days of Future Passed, sold well in the U.S., and the single version of Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) became the Moodies’ first top-40 record since Go Now! in 1965.

The Move proved even more adaptable, changing from Mod to psychedelia. Known at first for destroying TVs on stage and irreverently combining Tchaikovsky and Duane Eddy on record, the Move told British interviewers that the group would be history if Roy Wood’s Blackberry Way didn’t go to No. 1. The bluff worked. Wood’s goal to push pop music’s boundaries beyond those set by the Beatles’ I Am the Walrus resulted in his learning to play oboe, cello and sitar on subsequent efforts, and in the inevitable Move metamorphosis into the Electric Light Orchestra.

Fairport Convention looked forward by turning back, electrifying traditional British music as a complement to its own material, which was inspired by singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Richard Farina. Critics dubbed them “the English Jefferson Airplane,” noting Fairport’s flirtation with West Coast psychedelia and drawing comparisons between the sextet’s female-male lead singer tandem and Grace Slick and Marty Balin of the Airplane. Meet on the Ledge, the first single with the new Sandy Denny-Ian Matthews team, was both a rallying cry and a reminder, in composer Richard Thompson’s words, that “Fairport was never a polite band. It was a loud band.” The same held true for Family. Huge in England but a footnote in America as the group Ric Grech left for Blind Faith, Family cut eight albums. Front and center on these records is the manic bleat of Roger Chapman’s voice, heard in the chorus of Second Generation Woman, which was written, sung and includes a violin solo by Grech.

Of all the significant ’60s acts deserving of Frank Zappa’s pet phrase “no commercial potential,” America’s own Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band had the most lasting impact. Led by Syracuse University literature major Lou Reed and named after an erotic paperback, the Velvet Underground dredged up sordid adult-theme nightmares, such as the man who tastes the whip in Venus In Furs. John Cale’s wailing electric viola documents the sound and the fury. A precocious sculptor, Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) did his R & B thing with Zappa in the Blackouts and the Soots, then formed the first Magic Band in 1964. Abba Zaba is vintage Beefheart, rife with surreal lyrics and an odd bass and guitar solo by Ry Cooder. Beefheart’s music grew so increasingly complex that he taught his musicians their parts phrase by phrase, sometimes using drawings. This Dadaistic sound sculptor and master of wordplay today appears to have abandoned music for good, tucked away in his Mojave Desert trailer, painting for profit and talking to the Gila monsters.

– Charles McCardell

1. Cream (2) – I’m So Glad 3:57
2. Love – Alone Again Or 3:14
3. Eric Burdon & The Animals – When I Was Young 2:59
4. Donovan – Season Of The Witch 4:55
5. The Moody Blues – Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) 4:50
6. The Byrds – Jesus Is Just Alright 2:10
7. Nazz – Open My Eyes 2:39
8. The Chocolate Watchband – Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love In) 2:25
9. The Move – Blackberry Way 3:35
10. Country Joe And The Fish – Flying High 2:38
11. The Youngbloods – Darkness, Darkness 3:49
12. MC5 – Shakin’ Street 2:21
13. Procol Harum – Whisky Train 4:30
14. Family (6) – Second Generation Woman 3:15
15. Fairport Convention – Meet On The Ledge 2:51
16. Quicksilver Messenger Service – Fresh Air 5:20
17. Steve Miller Band – Space Cowboy 4:57
18. Fever Tree – San Francisco Girls (Return Of The Native) 3:57
19. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Buy For Me The Rain 2:24
20. Captain Beefheart, The Magic Band – Abba Zaba 2:42
21. The Velvet Underground, Nico (3) – Venus In Furs 5:06

 

 

Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2630-2 SRC=02 M1S16

Manufactured For Time Life Music
Manufactured By Warner Special Products
Record Company Time Warner
Phonographic Copyright (p) Warner Special Products
Pressed By Specialty Records Corporation
Remastered At Hit And Run Studios
Glass Mastered At Trutone Mastering Labs
Copyright (c) Time-life Books Inc.
Record Company Time Inc.

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