Bert Jansch is the debut album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch. The album was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder at engineer Bill Leader’s house and sold to Transatlantic Records for £100. Transatlantic released the album, which went on to sell 150,000 copies. It is also mentioned in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The record includes Jansch’s best known tune “Needle of Death,” which was inspired by the death of a folk singer friend of his, Buck Polly.
PLAY LOUD! Blistering freakybeaty b-side of their third and final mega-valuable 45 – produced by Joe Meek (probably not enjoyed by Violet Shenton downstairs!). Written by their new guitarist Ray Fenwick (Steve Howe had just left) and keyboardist Jeff Williams. Tom Ladd on vocals.
[via Ryoko Ife]
In the film Help!, at the opening of the song, the head of the cult, Clang (Leo McKern), appears from underneath a manhole cover in the middle of Ailsa Avenue, London, where parts of the film were shot. He stays there for the whole song, which the Beatles play in Lennon’s quarter of the Beatles’ shared flat. The flute part of the song is performed by George’s in-house gardener (who also trims his grass carpet with chattery teeth). They are watched by Ahme (Eleanor Bron), and at the end of the song, Harrison passes out after Ahme produces a giant needle for Starr, who is wearing the ring the cult is seeking.
[via Chris McGovern]
“My Generation” is a song by the British rock group The Who, which became a hit and one of their most recognizable songs. The song was named the 11th greatest song by Rolling Stone on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and 13th on VH1′s list of the 100 Greatest Songs of Rock & Roll. It’s also part of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and is inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic and significant” value. In 2009 it was named the 37th Greatest Hard Rock Song by VH1. The song, composed by Pete Townshend at the age of twenty in 1965, was written for rebellious British youths called Mods, and expressed their feeling that older people “just don’t get it”.
Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop charts in 1955 with his rendition of Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons”, a sparsely arranged coal-miner’s lament that Travis wrote in 1946, based on his own family’s experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Its fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and rock & roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…
With a unique clarinet-driven pop arrangement by Ford’s musical director, Jack Fascinato, “Sixteen Tons” spent ten weeks at number one on the country charts and eight weeks at number one on the pop charts, and made Ford a crossover star. It became Ford’s ‘signature song.’
[via Harriet Amster in Arlington, Texas]
Today sees two releases on Immediate Records: the first being Fifth Avenue, which I produced, with a version of the Pete Seeger / The Byrds ‘The Bells of Rymney’ and my composition; ‘Just Like Any One Would Do’ and also Nico’s ‘I’m Not Sayin (the Gordon Lightfoot song, produced by Andrew Loog Oldham). The b-side was titled ‘The Last Mile’, produced and written by me. I routined with Nico in her muse flat that she had during her stay in London. Editorial note: he’s keeping all the details to himself! This was before Nico was to go to New York and become part of the magical Velvet Underground. ~ Jimmy Page
[via Jimmy Page]
A fine Randy Newman song from “Take It Easy With The Walker Brothers”, the band’s 1965 debut album. A most graceful rendition from 22-year-old Scott.
[via Ronald Jensen]
“Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)”, often abbreviated to “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, is a song adapted entirely from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible (with the exception of the last line) and put to music by Pete Seeger in 1959. Seeger waited until 1962 to record his own version of it, releasing the song on his The Bitter and the Sweet album on Columbia Records. 45% of the royalties for the song are donated to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, because, in Seeger’s own words, “[in addition to the music] I did write six words.” The song became an international hit in late 1965, when it was covered by The Byrds, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #26 on the UK Singles Chart. Thus, the song easily holds the record as the #1 song with the oldest lyrics.
[via Christian Shannon]
The Turtles and a Bob Dylan cover song. Later they had a bigger hit “Happy Together”. Couple of Turtles’ members joined later in Frank Zappa’s “happ’ning”…
Audio (good sound):
Video (poor sound):
[via Otaku, Tokyo, Japan]
One of her most pop-oriented albums, but also one of her best and most consistent. Most of the songs feature dramatic, swinging large-band orchestration, with the accent on the brass and strings. Simone didn’t write any of the material, turning to popular European songsmiths Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, and Anthony Newley, as well as her husband, Andy Stroud, and her guitarist, Rudy Stevenson, for bluesier fare. Really fine tunes and interpretations, on which Simone gives an edge to the potentially fey pop songs, taking a sudden (but not uncharacteristic) break for a straight jazz instrumental with “Blues on Purpose.” The title track, a jazzy string ballad version of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins classic, gave the Beatles the inspiration for the phrasing on the bridge of “Michelle.”
[via Lars Villemoes]
