I’m almost at the end of month one of what began as a spur-of-the-moment project; that’s why the first entry on Stone the Crows is so truncated, I didn’t have much time to think about it. I have a historical event post lined up for tomorrow, but tonight I’m going to namecheck some albums I’ve missed out and add a couple of thoughts about the experience so far.
Many of these will be familiar if you’ve followed Andy Long’s posts on Twitter using the hashtag #FiftyYearOldAlbums. But not all, and I’ve been thinking about that–because, even though I’ve been deliberately eclectic to represent my own tastes, I still filtered a few out, such as Tony Bennett’s Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today. (It’s actually an interesting album in the same way that The Wild Women of Wongo and They Saved Hitler’s Brain are interesting films.) What I’ve been thinking about are my own reasons for neglecting some records rather than others, the reasons why I thought some worthy of comment and others not. The core reason is subjective, naturally enough: mostly its because I didn’t think them interesting enough to take the time with, even if I like the artist (such as Rory Gallagher).
Anyway, for whatever reason, and omitting compilations, I passed over
- Taste : On the Boards
- Badfinger : Magic Christian Music
- MC5 : Back In the USA
- Chicago : Chicago
- The Guess Who : American Woman
- Argent : Argent
- Joan Baez : One Day At A Time
- Glen Campbell : Try A Little Kindness
I also missed off a Dusty Springfield album with a January 1970 US release date that didn’t appear in the UK until later in the year under another title.
So far I’ve enjoyed the experience of writing these, though they consume more time than I expected, even for just a few paragraphs. I certainly enjoyed the trips I took to the National Library of Scotland to read through New Musical Express and Melody Maker for January 1969 through to March 1971.
That reading will emerge in planned posts through the year, either as copies of reviews or interviews or as short essays/comments on racial attitudes, gender attitudes, and language. One thing that did strike me, that I haven’t mentioned yet, and was somewhat poignant, even at a distance, were the news items and interviews with people who we, half a century later, know didn’t have long left to live or whose lives and careers did not go as expected for various reasons. They include Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morisson and Nick Drake, all of whom appear later in the year.
Incidentally, strictly speaking the ‘historical event’ I have lined up for tomorrow began on 30 January 1970 in New Orleans (spoilers), but the main events were in the early hours of 31st January there and thus early morning 31st in the UK.
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