Bluebeat Setlist for 9/1/07

Here is my most recent setlist for The Greatest Decade radio station (see post below), which played on my computer yesterday. The duration of the program was about 90 minutes.

1. Love Street – The Doors (Waiting for the Sun) – Every time I hear The Doors music from this period, I think of the Weimar Republic! Had forgotten all about this song: nice tune, interesting lyric.
2. Reach Out I’ll Be There – The Four Tops (Greatest Hits (Motown)) – One of the most enduring of all Motown classics. This time, I paid close attention to the background vocals: love those sudden shouts they use to ratchet up the excitement. The clip-clop rhythm of the opening had always sounded to me like somebody slapping their knee with spoons, which, knowing Motown and the improvisational genius of its musicians, might very well be the case.
3. Stanley’s Song – The Byrds (Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde) - Country-era Byrds: just okay, not one of their best.
4. No Reply (Demo) – The Beatles (Anthology Vol. 1) – The saddest song John Lennon had ever written up to that time, but on this run-through, the whole band can’t stop cracking up! Lennon, ever the class clown, keeps repeating the rhyme phrase from the first verse – “your face” – at the end of every verse, with hilarious results. The John-Paul harmony on the middle eight is subtly different from the released version, and just as exciting. The song finally breaks down, but they know it’s too good to abandon, so they’ll do it again until they get it right. (It first appeared as the opening song on Beatles for Sale.) There’s a very interesting story to this song. John based the idea on an old tune by The Crests (Johnny Maestro’s first group), in which the very stupid hero, who is something of a Peeping Tom, spies on what he thinks is his girlfriend kissing another guy, only to discover that he’s got the wrong house and it’s a different girl entirely! In Lennon’s version, though, he’s not at the wrong house, it is his girl, she is with another guy, and he’s toast! But, being the gentleman he is, he gives her a chance at forgiveness. (The scary vibe of Run for Your Life was a full year, and a creative eternity, away.) In this first period of their recording career, the sheer fun of playing, and being Beatles, always trumps the unhappiness and anxiety that underlie so many of those early songs.
5. Sunflower River Blues – John Fahey (Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes) – From the super-famous to the super-obscure… but just as magnificent. A typically perfect early instrumental, by the master who created the solo acoustic “art” guitar genre (his disciples include Leo Kottke).
6. Don’t You Think It’s About Time That We All Be Free – Mabel Hillary (Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966) – This album is one of the unknown gems of my Bluebeat “collection.” No soundtrack of the 60’s is complete without civil rights songs and chants, and this album provides an excellent sample of them. Very raw and churchy sound: a great sample of the Black Gospel style that Aretha would take to the bank in 1967 (see, also, 9 below).
7. Talkin’ About the Good Times – The Pretty Things (S.F. Sorrow (bonus track)) – In the lead-up to their masterpiece album, S.F. Sorrow, the Pretties, during this transitional period, recorded several singles as stunning as they were unsuccessful. One of the best was this one, which features superb (and heavily compressed) electric guitar work by ex-Rolling Stone Dick Taylor, some cool Beach Boys-influenced vocals, and special effects that sound so much like psychedelic-period Beatles (specifically, Strawberry Fields Forever, including the false ending) as to border on parody. Yet it all hangs together. It’s amazing how completely this great band, which started out solidly in the R&B camp, like The Stones, adapted to the psychedelic revolution, and then expanded its meanings.
8. Big Boss Man – Elvis Presley (Tomorrow Is a Long Time) – It’s quite amusing to hear Elvis tackle this tune, which I associate with Pigpen of The Grateful Dead. This belongs to a period in which The King, prodded by the counterculture he’d unwittingly helped create, was experimenting a little, and he does a pretty good version of it, but is altogether too polite to deliver the rage the song implies.
9. Anyone Who Had a Heart – Dusty Springfield (Stay Awhile – I Only Want to Be With You) – Dusty does a fine job (as usual) on this Burt Bacharach-Hal David weeper, which had been a number one hit for her countrywoman, Cilla Black, in early 1964.
10. Walk With Me Lord – Fannie Lou Hamer (Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966) – (See 6 above) This is a gospel tune sung by one of the great heroines of the Civil Rights movement in America, Fannie Lou Hamer, who could neither read nor write… but expressed herself very well in song.
11. Secret Love – Marvin Gaye (Together – Take Two) – Although credited to Gaye alone, this album actually consists of duets with Mary Wells and (in this case) Kim Weston. In this performance, there’s the usual, lovely blending of Gaye’s and Weston’s voices, and the tune allows Gaye to show off his sophisticated supper-club-style phrasing. But the greatest duets were awaiting the arrival, shortly thereafter, of Tammy Terrell (see 20 below).
12. Homeward Bound – Simon and Garfunkel (Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme) – Good to hear Si and Gar again on one of their best early songs.
13. Is That a Ship I Hear – The Tornados (Archive Series) – The great, demented British producer Joe Meek was up to his usual tricks with this instrumental, the sound of which has been compressed to such a degree that it sounds as if it were recorded on Mars.
14. The Gallery – Joni Mitchell (Clouds) – From her second album, which was even more impressive than her debut, comes this lovely ballad, on which Joni, double-tracking her own harmony, sounds very pretty indeed.
15. I’m Leaving – The Creation (We Are Paintermen) – I enjoy the satirical tune “Painter Man” which was a Top Forty hit in the U.K. for this interesting British band, but this song did not make much of an impression on me.
16. Rock and Roll Woman – Buffalo Springfield (Buffalo Springfield Again) – Stephen Stills showing off his musical chops once again… and why not?
17. Had to Cry Today – Blind Faith (Blind Faith) – From Blind Faith’s one and only album. Clapton always disparaged this “supergroup” he put together with Stevie Winwood (once and future leader of Traffic), but they made some incredible music together and this is a very poignant tune.
18. Summertime – Martha High [with James Brown] (James Brown’s Original Funky Divas) – Actually, this was recorded by Ms. High and Brother James in the 1970’s (the album contains material from both decades, featuring many of the women who sang with Brown, including Tammy Montgomery, who later changed her name to Tammy Terrell - see 20 below). It’s a moving performance, with the Godfather and Martha beginning the track with a spoken intro that laments the problems of the world – poverty, pollution – then proceeding to the Gershwin tune itself, on which both Brown and the high-voiced Ms. High do an admirable job.
19. One Long Glance – The Pretty Things (Emotions) – (See 7 above) The Pretties are still feeling their way into psychedelia at this point, but they’re making progress.
20. Come and See Me – Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell (The Complete Duets) – Has there ever been a more exciting male-female duet partnership in the history of popular music? (This song, BTW, was co-written by Harvey Fuqua, Marvin’s mentor.)
21. Love Me Two Times -- The Doors (Strange Days) – We end as we began, with The Doors and this terrific hit from their appropriately-titled second album. I don't think I'd ever heard this through headphones before, and the sound of it is definitely enhanced when you can hear the two harpsichords, one in each channel, driving the tune forward.

So, in less than two hours, we’ve covered an incredible amount of ‘Sixties ground. But this is typical of this channel of mine – every listen is an adventure. Stay tuned!