Colossal Reviews

Only Unbiased Product Reviews

Colossal Reviews > 1969 > Page 4

The Band (The Brown Album, 1969) by The Band (Vinyl record album review)

By 1 Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: The Band (The Brown Album)
  • Group name: The Band
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Capitol Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $33.96

The Band (The Brown Album, 1969) by The Band

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but I expect to recognize a couple of its songs. I’ve previously reviewed one of the Band’s records, Stage Fright (1969), and I liked it.

What I expected

Country rock.

What it was actually like

I thought that I would enjoy this record, but I actually found it pretty boring, which was surprising and disappointing. Many of the songs seemed a little half baked, like they had come up with an idea for a song, but just hadn’t worked on it enough to record it.

Up on Cripple Creek, a blues rock song funky bass line, was one that I knew, and might have been the best on the record. Another that I knew was The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, a country rock song that was not as good as I remembered.

I liked the harmonica in Rockin’ Chair, and the tension in Look Out Cleveland that was produced by the contrast of the parts that were more upbeat with the other parts that had a darker tone. I also liked Rag Mama Rag, which was faster and had a country feel in a ragtime context.

I disliked Whispering Pines, which was slower, more wistful and piano-driven, and unsurprisingly I also didn’t care for the horns in Across the Great Divide.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones (Vinyl record album review)

By 1 Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Let It Bleed
  • Group name: the Rolling Stones
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: London Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $27.97

Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m familiar with many of the songs on this record, and think I’m going to love it, though I might only have listened to the entire record once or twice in my life.

Previous Rolling Stones records that I’ve reviewed:

What I expected

I think that Let It Bleed might be the record that I had in mind when I thought I was going to like Their Satanic Majesties Request, which I actually hated, and that I’m going to love this one.

What it was actually like

It’s fascinating to me that this record is bookended by two songs that both became iconic of their era. Gimme Shelter, for someone my age, is indelibly imprinted in my brain due to its use in movies – and with good reason, because it’s a fantastic blues rock anthem with a beautifully distinct eerie sound, and Merry Clayton’s vocals are perfect – so little adds so much.

And then at the end, You Can’t Always Get What You Want also defined its era, or defines it for people from my era. I’ve always been just a little lukewarm about this one, though. Maybe it’s just a case of lopsided excellence between the chorus and the verses.

Another that I loved was Country Honk, which was Honky Tonk Women, but reimagined as a country song. This version was excellent, especially the fiddle.

And the title track Let It Bleed was also a Stones classic with outstanding vocals and wonderful blues rock piano.

For the briefest moment, I thought that Monkey Man was going to be a cover of the Toots & the Maytals song by the same name and that I would be writing my story about seeing Toots live. This blues rock Monkey Man was still very good, but I did wish that it had been around 15% faster.

I liked Midnight Rambler a lot, and thought it was a great expression of the essence of the blues in an electric blues context. The harmonica was wildly good, better than perfect, and the best part was the way that the song increased in intensity as it progressed, but I think it would have been better if the whole thing had been a tiny bit more metal.

I wasn’t thrilled with their version of Love in Vain, the Robert Johnson song, and I strongly disliked the saxophone solo on Live with Me. You Got the Silver was also fine, but not really special.

Overall, Let It Bleed definitely was the awesome Rolling Stones record that I was waiting to hear, and one of my favorite things about it was how different it sounded from the Beatles.

Grade

5/5: love it

The First Songs by Laura Nyro (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: The First Songs
  • Artist name: Laura Nyro
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Verve Forecast
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $134.00

The First Songs by Laura Nyro

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no familiarity at all with Laura Nyro.

What I expected

Acoustic singer-songwriter.

What it was actually like

Well, this definitely wasn’t what I had in mind when I anticipated “acoustic singer-songwriter,” though it may technically have been right. Laura Nyro’s voice on this record was remarkable, and I had to look it up to find out, but she was around just 17[1] when she recorded this in 1966. It’s hard to believe that a teenager could have made these, and it sounds like she might have lived at least twice and maybe three times as long as she actually had.

So what was the style? Most of the songs had a sort of timeless, ageless, jazzy or bluesy lounge act sound, while several of them flipped to the style of a Motown or R&B girl group that’s deeply rooted in its period (early to mid 1960s) and its members’ ages (within a few years of 20).

The first set included Billy’s Blues, I Never Meant to Hurt You, He’s a Runner and Buy and Sell, the last of which was a love song to cocaine – and let’s remember that Nyro was 17 years old when singing it, and might have been even younger when she wrote it. These were my least favorite.

Lazy Susan started out that way, but picked up nicely, and I thought I would like it, but the harmonica was a big distraction. And When I Die, on the other hand, did the same thing, starting out slow and getting faster, and I loved it.

California Shoeshine Boys was much more upbeat, and was one where I thought the harmonica was great, making it my favorite song on the record. Blowin Away, while not as fast, had a similar style, and it felt like Nyro was doing the work of an entire mid 1960s girl group. Wedding Bell Blues also had a great R&B sound.

It was during Stoney End that it occurred to me what I liked so much about this group of songs: it’s not that they sounded innocent at all – nothing about any of this was innocent – but that it didn’t seem to have any of the cynicism that was already seeping into popular music around this time.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 If you know what I mean…

Joe Cocker! (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Joe Cocker!
  • Artist name: Joe Cocker
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: A&M Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $79.00

Joe Cocker!

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

Here’s what I wrote about Joe Cocker’s performance at Woodstock:

… To me, Joe Cocker’s incredible With A Little Help From My Friends is what stole the show. And here’s a fun fact: since it was the theme song of the television program “Wonder Years” that I watched while growing up, and since my parents were big Beatles fans, I probably heard both versions of it thousands of times before becoming an adult, but I don’t think it was until my 20s that I even realized they were the same song. That is, to me, a remarkable tribute to Cocker’s ability to reinvent what had already been perfectly invented for Ringo, the greatest Beatle, by his bandmates.

Besides that, I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a Joe Cocker song.

What I expected

Blues rock.

What it was actually like

It probably needs to be said that Joe Cocker’s voice is amazing, though not amazing in the general sense – more that he was born to make records like this one.

There were a few slow songs that I didn’t much like: Hello, Little Friend, the Leonard Cohen song Bird on the Wire, and the Lloyd Price song Lawdy Miss Clawdy.

On the other hand, Hitchcock Railway had a great tempo, with a soul sound and really passionate, frenetic energy.

I thought that Something would have the highest potential to blow me away, but unfortunately it didn’t and was just ok, much like George Harrison’s original on Abbey Road that I thought would have been better as a straightforward rock song. I especially didn’t care for Cocker’s backing vocals on his version.

She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, also an Abbey Road song, absolutely rocked, and it was as if Faul wrote the song just for Cocker. I especially thought that the piano backing was perfect.

That’s Your Business Now had a very strong Oompa Loompa sound, but it didn’t annoy me.

Dear Landlord, a Bob Dylan song from John Wesley Harding wasn’t terrible; I didn’t really care for either version, but I did love Cocker’s guitar solo.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

Affectionately Melanie (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Affectionately Melanie
  • Artist name: Melanie
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Buddah Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon[1] : $34.69

Affectionately Melanie

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but several months ago I listened to Candles in the Rain, which Melanie recorded after this, and I rated it 4/5.

What I expected

Folk and folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was a good record, less folk than I anticipated, but with a lot more soul style. I liked Melanie’s childlike voice throughout and her vocal adventurousness, but I did not like that the second side was a bit scratchy.

Soul Sister Annie was a standout with a blues style and a bit of soul, good guitars and drums, pretty slow, and I thought that it still would have been a strong song without the vocals, but that the vocal part was great.

Uptown Down was another song that was very interesting to me, since at the beginning I thought it was going to be a soul song, but the verses sounded almost like a kind of proto-rap, which was not what I expected to be hearing on a record from the late 1960s. The very slowly sung chorus was a little weak, though.

Beautiful People is the song that Melanie got famous for performing at Woodstock, and I thought it was fine, but I’m not such a fan of it.

For My Father and Baby Guitar were two more that were pretty simple, but substantially elevated by recording them as soul songs instead of folk, which I enjoyed a lot. I also really liked the guitar distortions and choppy piano at the end of the latter.

One song that I couldn’t figure out was Any Guy, which sounded a bit like musical theater – she sung it in her own very distinctive voice and vocal style, but with kind of a different accent.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 I’m not sure why, but the album cover on my copy appears to be a different version. Maybe there was a later pressing? Or maybe one of the versions was made to be more limited and/or special than the other?