The Musical Box

the kinks: something else by the kinks (released september 1967)

What better way to bid adieu to summer as we know it than with Waterloo Sunset, Ray Davies’ epic love letter to London and the worldly finale to Something Else by the Kinks. As always was the case with The Kinks, Something Else - which also featured the spry Brit-pop of David Watts and brother Dave Davies’ bittersweet Death of a Clown - was eclipsed by, well, something else - namely the release of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band three months earlier. If there was justice in the pop world, The Kinks would have been as big as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. Still, the fading vision of a day’s - or a summer’s - tranquility on Waterloo Sunset remains unequalled in any rock pantheon. It reigns on as a perfect pop song.

With Something Else, we conclude our Summer Album of the Week series. Here is a recap of the picks than have run in The Musical Box every Saturday since Memorial Day weekend.

5/23 - Roxy Music: Avalon (released May 1982)

5/30 - Jeff Beck: Wired (released May 1976)

6/06 - Bruce Springsteen: Darkness on the Edge of Town (released June 1978)

6/13 - Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (released June 1998)

6/20 - Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps (released June 1979)

6/27 - The Rolling Stones: Some Girls (released June 1978)

7/04 - Creedence Clearwater Revival: Cosmo’s Factory (released July 1970)

7/11 - The Who: Who’s Next (released July 1971)

7/18 - Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Imperial Bedroom (released July 1982)

7/25 - Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking (released July 1969)

8/01 - Talking Heads: Fear of Music (released August 1979)

8/08 - Santana: Santana (released August 1969)

8/15 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced? (released August 1967)

8/22 - The Beatles: Revolver (released August 1966)

8/29 - The Beach Boys: Surf’s Up (released August 1971)

9/05 - The Kinks: Something Else by the Kinks (released September 1967)

the beach boys: surf's up (released august 1971)

You know summer is fading when the group most associated with fun in the sun starts an album with a pollution diatribe called Don’t Go Near the Water. With Surf’s Up, The Beach Boys’ grew less infatuated with catching waves and surfer girls and more with a world view that mirrored the group’s own fracturing status. The late Carl Wilson’s plaintive high pop tenor shines through Long Promised Road and Feel Flows. But the last words again go to Brian Wilson who forges Til I Die and Surf’s Up’s title tune into glorious requiems. Even the album cover of a deflated Don Quixote signaled summer’s end. And indeed, after 1973’s Holland, The Beach Boys ceased making credible new music. But even with all its despondency, Surf’s Up remains part of a stunning final chorus.

We conclude out Summer Album of the Week series on Sept. 5 with something kinky. 

the beatles: revolver (released august 1966)

A mere eight months after The Beatles released Rubber Soul, thus establishing an artistic depth and stylistic variance that exceeded the band’s out-of-bounds pop appeal, we received Revolver. While it opens with George’s topical Taxman, Paul quickly cuts deep with Eleanor Rigby, an elegy of devastating loneliness set to a string quartet. Just as things get heavy, Ringo sings the tune that forever endeared The Beatles to children: Yellow Submarine. Meanwhile, George is getting metaphysicial with Love You To while John gets trippy on I’m Only Sleeping and, at album’s end, the pioneering psychedelic exercise Tomorrow Never Knows. Amazingly, Revolver still sounds cohesive and thrilling while displaying The Beatles’ almost frightening escalation of pop art maturity.

jimi hendrix experience: are you experienced? (released august 1967)

Even though the United States didn’t issue Are You Experienced? until three months after it had conquered England, Jimi Hendrix’s debut album was a gold mine (or maybe land mine) filled with pop accessibility, lyrical psychedelia, sly but soulful singing and a guitar voice like no other. Though different from the British version issued in May, America’s edition of Are You Experienced? emphasized pop efficiency and a scholarly blues sensibility. Today’s CD editions merge the two cross-continental versions to make Are You Experienced? something of a greatest hits album. Purple Haze, Manic Depression, The Wind Cries Mary, Third Stone from the Sun, Foxy Lady, Red House, Stone Free, Hey Joe and the mind blowing title tune? All on a debut album? That still seems insane.

santana: santana (released august 1969)

The congas. Not even the otherworldly scream of Carlos Santana’s guitar solos permeate this still-stunning 1969 debut album - an almost unceasingly electric blast of Latin psychedelia - as deeply as its wicked percussion drive. You hear it first as Santana opens with Waiting, a gumbo-like mix of guitar, organ and drums. Congas soon drive the entire album, from the dark-hearted hit Evil Ways (a tune so menacing Santana dropped it from the band’s concert repertoire for decades) to the chant-like drive of Babatunde Olatunji’s Jingo to the almost processional beat of Soul Sacrifice, the tune that broke the band at Woodstock 40 years ago this month. Topping it all was the after hours piano blues of Treat, where Santana showed it could also swing with jazzy vigor. A sublime late summer, late night listen.

talking heads: fear of music (released august 1979)

Released when punk thrived in the underground and disco ruled the airwaves, Fear of Music continued Talking Heads’ march to rhythmic oblivion while it accelerated the band’s ripening pop maturity. The difference was evident right from the album’s onset as producer Brian Eno and guest guitarist Robert Fripp designed a textured mural of groove for the band’s nonsense chants to bounce off. But Fear of Music exhilarates most when singer David Byrne lets loose with lyrics and vocals full of doomsday tics, from the survivalist funk of Life During Wartime to the loss of metropolitan identity in the jittery Cities. “Pull down the shade,” murmurs Byrne during Drugs. “It’ll be over in a minute or two.” Fear of Music, then, is the sound of summer pop hitting the boiling point.

fairport convention: unhalfbricking (released july 1969)

For its third album, Fairport offered not only a band defining album, but a genre-defining one by turning British folk-rock into a Top 20 hit. A young Richard Thompson offered the Dickensian Genesis Hall, an already elegant Sandy Denny (whose parents grace the album cover) served the agelessly poetic Who Knows Where the Time Goes? and the full band turned the folk relic A Sailor’s Life into a neo-psychedelic meditation. And then there was Dylan. How curious that this most overt of British folk ventures would sport three Bob Dylan works, including an epic, Oliver Twist-tinted Percy’s Song. Unhalfbricking was bittersweet, though. A van crash killed drummer Martin Lamble two months before the album’s release. Quite unexpectedly the folky spiritualism with given some very earthly grounding.

the who: who's next (released july 1971)

Cut between two rock epics - Tommy and Quadrophenia - Who’s Next was pulled from the wreckage of a third (Lifehouse) and transformed The Who from a ‘60s mod pop troupe to a worldly rock enterprise. Leading the charge was a My Generation anthem for a new generation, Won’t Get Fooled Again. Its finale lyric became one of the most sobering social verses of its day (”Meet the new boss; same as the old boss”). Baba O’Riley with its “teenage wasteland’ chorus and the savage introspection of Behind Blue Eyes made Who’s Next a staple on rock radio. Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again live on today as themes to two CSI series. But the neglected Pete Townshend gems The Song is Over and Getting in Tune underscore the emancipating drive of The Who’s finest hour.

creedence clearwater revival: cosmo's factory (released june 1970)

This was the first album I ever bought. By the time I had saved up the funds to pay the exorbitant $3.47 price tag, Cosmo’s Factory was already on its third hit single. The more progressive radio stations of the time, though, had moved on to the band’s swampy, 11 minute reworking of the Motown hit I Heard It Through the Grapevine. John Fogerty and CCR hit on all cylinders with this one. Who’ll Stop the Rain and Lookin’ Out My Back Door were pure homespun fancy, Run Through the Jungle and the killer non-single album opener Ramble Tamble embraced psychedelia and Long As I Can See the Light was so full of gospel fire that Cosmo’s Factory nearly broke into the R&B Top 10.  Through it all, Fogerty’s boogeyman-on-holiday voice led the charge. A complete classic.

the rolling stones: some girls (released june 1978).

During the summer when disco duked it out with punk, The Rolling Stones played double agents by co-opting both along with pop soul (Just My Imagination ) the band’s own boozy, riff-savvy rock ‘n roll (When the Whip Comes Down) and purposely outrageous country music (Far Away Eyes). The hits were plastered all over the airwaves, from the dance club friendly Miss You to the maggot-ridden punk picture post card of New York Shattered. The album’s original cover art work incorporated portraits of several female celebs - including, in the third row, the late Farrah Fawcett. Nearly all objected to being viewed as the Stones’ “girls.” Topping it all, the Stones played Rupp Arena that summer in their last States-side swing as a truly dangerous band.