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James Taylor (1968) (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: James Taylor
  • Artist name: James Taylor
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Apple Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Buy it on Amazon: $32.50

James Taylor (1968)

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record, but I’ve previously reviewed two other James Taylor records:

What I expected

Maybe folk rock.

Also, the label is Apple Records and there’s a song on the record called Something in the Way She Moves, but the lyrics are included in the album and it’s not the same song as George Harrison’s song Something.

What it was actually like

I think I probably liked this record a little better than James Taylor’s others, but not much better.

One interesting thing about it was the extensive use of harpsichord and violin. Songs with harpsichord included Brighten Your Night With My Day and Taking It In, which had a good, lively tempo also. Violin songs included Knocking ‘Round the Zoo, Sunshine Sunshine and Carolina in My Mind.

Rainy Day Man was more of a normal folk rock song in the style that I had expected.

Something in the Way She Moves was 100% forgettable, so here is George Harrison performing his completely different song that only suggests a similarity.

Don’t Talk Now was a totally boring folk rock song with a repeating “nah nah nah” line, but did have great electric guitar in the background, especially towards the end.

Something’s Wrong sounded like it started with Greensleeves, but was otherwise bad. Night Owl sounded like a marching band song, with a horrible atonal horns part.

Circle Round the Sun was Taylor’s version of I Know You Rider, but I don’t know why anyone would choose his version over another.

The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream had an intro that sounded like a Moody Blues song, but turned into a pretty standard good blues song.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble
  • Group name: The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: ATCO
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $4.49

The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am not familiar with this group at all.

What I expected

I’d guess maybe jazz-rock fusion, but not as electric or psychedelic as The Mahavishnu Orchestra?

What it was actually like

I wouldn’t say it was jazz-rock fusion. It definitely had an experimental quality to it, and was primarily rock with a lot of jazz influence, as well as R&B and classical.

Sounds Of Time, for example, was like a mid 1960s rock song but with a distinct jazz sound, and tight vocal harmonies, and then a jazzy guitar solo that was much more psychedelic.

Studeao Atlantis, however, had the same tightly harmonized vocals – and I didn’t care much for them in this case – in a song that was far more psychedelic jazz. There was a guitar riff that was instantly recognizable as… I’m not sure what, exactly… maybe it was just meant to sound vaguely “eastern,” but it definitely worked, and I loved the jazz percussion and the whining guitar.

Another that I loved was Monkey, more of an R&B song that was definitely written for dancing, and that had a great guitar solo.

Poor Pauline was a Beatles parody, and specifically a serious attempt to channel Faul’s granny shit, and they actually did a good job at it. Mr. Tree also sounded oddly like a Beatles parody, but with more of a synthesizer sound.

Began To Burn and She’s Gone were both more conventional rock songs, but of the two, the latter was more rhythmic and I liked it a lot better.

Besides those, Bach’s Trio Sonata No. 1 In C Major (2nd Movement) was more or less as its title suggested, and I thought Pick Up In The Morning was weird, with kind of a silly sounding chorus, but good!

The Seasons, which consisted of four parts – a) Fall (with harpsichord), b) Winter (with organ), c) Spring (with chirping birds, running water and a keyboard) and d) Summer (with whistling, guitar, then carnival whistles, then back to what it had been, then back to Mr. Tree) – did not make a whole lot of sense.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

Blood, Sweat & Tears (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Blood, Sweat & Tears
  • Group name: Blood, Sweat & Tears
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $105.00

Blood, Sweat & Tears

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve definitely heard of Blood, Sweat & Tears and expect to recognize some of this music, but can’t name or imagine a single Blood, Sweat & Tears song.

What I expected

Describing the band, the album itself says: “Brash and exciting, their music is a wedding of rock and jazz.”

What it was actually like

This record was terrible. I didn’t expect to love it, but it was a thousand times worse than I imagined. But it was definitely “brash”!

Here’s what I hated the most: if you take bad rock music and mash it up with bad jazz music, it doesn’t turn into something brilliant. There’s nothing clever at all about that. It’s like The Godfather: Part II taking a boring storyline set in 1970s Las Vegas and another boring storyline set in 1920s New York, alternating boring scenes between those two boring storylines, and trying to tell people that it’s a masterpiece.

Blood, Sweat & Tears definitely had plenty of musical talent, but so much of this record was filled with anti-melodic, arrhythmic, even atonal crap – in a word, “brash.”

I recognized Spinning Wheel. And When I Die had some distinct Oompa-Loompa tendencies.

Probably the dumbest part of the whole record was opening and closing it with Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie. That might have made sense for a different record, made by a different band, but all it did here was highlight how much crap the rest of it was.

The only part I liked was the few bars of Blues – Part II that channeled Sunshine of Your Love.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through

Back Here On Earth by Gordon Lightfoot (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Back Here On Earth
  • Artist name: Gordon Lightfoot
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: United Artists
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: could have been either of my parents
  • Buy it on Amazon: $95.99

Back Here On Earth by Gordon Lightfoot

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve previously reviewed two Gordon Lightfoot records from several years later than this one:

What I expected

I guess folk, but also have a hunch that this will have more of a rock sound, as it’s from 1968.

What it was actually like

Back Here On Earth definitely did not have more of a rock sound. I’d characterize it as a folk-rock-country record, with a bunch of the songs definitely emphasizing the country and a bunch of others emphasizing the folk-rock.

Long Way Back Home, for example, was more country, and I might have have heard it before. Unsettled Ways was similar, a country style song that was pretty simple, not trying to do too much, but doing it well; Long Thin Dawn was like that too, but with some vocal harmonies – and how weird was it to hear a country song about Canada?

Bitter Green, The Circle Is Small (I Can See It in Your Eyes), The Gypsy and If I Could were all pretty boring. Affair on 8th Avenue was on one of the other Lightfoot records: I didn’t like it then and didn’t like it now, either.

Marie Christine was not that much different from the others, but I liked the guitar that sounded the tiniest bit like a sitar, which made it maybe the catchiest song on the record.

Cold Hands from New York started to remind me at some point of Lightfoot’s later work, but the lyrics and story were very Bob Dylan. Don’t Beat Me Down was also a bit Dylanesque, even mentioning a “joker” character, and I liked it too.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Electric Ladyland
  • Group name: the Jimi Hendrix Experience
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Reprise Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $36.70

Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I listen to Hendrix somewhat frequently, but as I review my digital collection of his work, I think it’s a playlist based on Are You Experienced, with only a small number of songs from other records added to it, that I must have put together around two decades ago, including just whatever I was able to… obtain… at the time. I suspect that I must have listened to Electric Ladyland in full at some point, but I have no recollection of when that might have been.

What I expected

Psychedelic rock.

Also, how amusing is the coincidence that I reviewed Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding yesterday, and even remarked then on All Along the Watchtower being as much a Hendrix song as a Dylan song, and now today’s record is the Hendrix double LP with that song on it? This wasn’t planned, by the way – I’m just pulling the records off the shelf in the order that they got put on the shelf, which is the order that they got pulled out of the moving box.

Maybe that’s also the order that they were put into the moving box in my parents’ old house, and maybe that reflects the order in which they were sitting on a shelf in their basement for the past 40 years, and maybe that’s a reflection of someone having listened to both versions of All Along the Watchtower, Dylan’s and Hendrix’s, one and then the other, at some point in the late 1970s, then putting the records away and letting them sit next to each other until I go through them in 2022. But it’s probably just a coincidence.

What it was actually like

One of the things I wanted to know when listening to Electric Ladyland was whether All Along the Watchtower really is head and shoulders above all the other songs in quality, which would explain why it was a hit in the 1960s and why it’s a favorite of mine, or whether it was more or less chance that I listened to it the most and liked it the best. And the answer is that it is actually far better than any other song on this record (far better).

There were other good songs, of course. I liked that Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland), for example, had kind of a soul sound.

Voodoo Chile was a great slow electric blues song and was quite powerful, but there was absolutely no way that it needed to be almost 15 minutes long. Why not cut a concise version of it, and then have the space for two or three other great songs on the same side? Also, I was quite confused because it was clear that the lyrics were not about the only Spanish speaking country I’ve ever visited, but rather were about a “voodoo child,” just pronounced without the “d.” Tricky!

1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) was another song that was comically long – way too long. It was interesting and trippy, but I don’t understand why around 27-28 minutes had to be taken up by it and Voodoo Chile. That’s well over half of a single LP.

Musically, I really liked the hard rock sound of Crosstown Traffic, but lyrically, I was somewhat uncertain. The chorus sounded like:

You’re just like (crosstown traffic)
So hard to get through to you (crosstown traffic)
I don’t need to run over you (crosstown traffic)
All you do is slow me down
And I’m trying to get on the other side of town

So, am I missing something, or was this seriously a rock song about… traffic?

Little Miss Strange had an interesting and weird mix of vocals that sounded like they came from the British Invasion era, with psychedelic tempo-bending music.

I also loved the wild guitar solo on Come On (Part 1), and the jazzy sound on Rainy Day, Dream Away.

Grade

4/5: would listen again