OK, 25 albums of the Sixties. This is a hard one, especially as for the first half of the decade at least, the single was king. Being an old bastard,I have listened to so much music from this era that my list would probably change from day to day, but this is what it looks like today at least.
1. Davey Graham - Folk, Blues And Beyond
An astonishing mostly ignored album, with acoustic guitarist Graham soaking up blues, jazz, Eastern European and Indian influences and serving up a whole that could have reinvented the way music was made had anyone bothered to listen. It features great playing, not only from Graham himself, but also bass player Danny Thompson among others.
2. The Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat
Unpleasant, rabid nasty minded slabs of music and noise. Just what rock should be.
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland
Yeah, Hendrix could play the shit out of a guitar, that is a given, but on this album he displayed a mastery of the studio that George Martin and his mop tops could only claw at in the dark.
4. B.B. King - Live At The Regal
The finest blues album ever recorded, B.B is in inspirational form on guitar and vocal.
5. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (The dog and dustbin album)
Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, not to be confused with later bland models. Jeremy Spencer's Elmore James impersonations get in the way a little, but Green's interpretations of classic blues themes are spot on.
6. Fleetwood Mac - Then Play On
And Green's swan song with Mac, just two years later. This is a dense collection of experiments, moving away from the blues and wearing it's heart on it's sleeve.
7. The Beatles - Revolver
The last Beatles album where the arrangements don't fuck up the songs too much, either from over orchestration or under achieving. And the songs themselves, brilliant.
8. Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Syd at his most incoherently coherent, Waters with wonderful sub McCartney bass. This was the future, man!
9. The Graham Bond ORGANization - There's A Bond Between Us
Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were never better. Add Graham Bond and the lovely Dick Heckstall-Smith and you get blues referencing jazz pointing somewhere else. An amazing album.
10. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
Electric Dylan, Electric blues, one for the desert island.
11. Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere
The template for grunge Neil. "Down By The River" might be my favorite murder ballad of the 60's.
12. Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
This album is to country what "Live At The Regal" was to the blues.
13. The Mothers Of Invention - Freak Out
I am not one of the "The first line-up was the best" facists, but there is a warped freshness about this offering that Uncle Frank never achieved again. Musically nowhere near later releases, but there is something about this that still draws me in, five hundred and sixty years later.
14. The Hollies - Evolution
It is funny how some albums seem to be viewed by history as groundbreaking and new and brilliant, while others get overlooked. The Hollies were a Brit pop band, but they were allowed to explore more interesting areas on their albums. This is full of great writing and recording as well as the great lost single, "Look Through Any Window". I sometimes think History must have a really crap record collection.
15. The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones
I am a big fan of first albums. The artists as they first imagined themselves to be, before the trappings of success and the machinations of the biz screw them up too much. Yes, The Stones did make fine if flawed albums towards the end of the decade, but this is the album of a bunch of blues fans trying to reinterpret the music they love without any secondary agenda. There is an honesty here that I think is missing from everything else they ever recorded.
16. Pentangle - The Pentangle
The 60s saw numerous "supergroups", bands formed from musicians who had made their reputations elsewhere first. Most of them do not feature in this list, but Pentangle does. I thought of including a Bert Jansch album in this list, but he will get his turn when the 70's rolls around. The guitar and song writing talents of jansch and Renborn and the sub;lime bass of Danny Thompson plus the unjustly criticised Jaqci McShee make for a wonderful debut.
17.Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking
The Fairports before folk rock took hold completely. Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny to the fore.
18. Muddy Waters - At Newport 1960
Muddy kicked in the decade with a fine band line-up and a vibrant blues album.
19. Audience - Friend's Friend's Friend
Audience got a little acclaim for later work, but this is Howard Werth's masterpiece. progressive rock that was not up its own arse.
20. The Shadows - The Shadows
Forget any snobbish "They used to back Cliff Richard" crap. The influence on every aspect of guitar music from 1959 on was influenced by Hank B Marvin and this album demonstrates part of the reason why.
21. The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society
Pure genius. Sgt. Who?
22. The Who - My Generation
Again, a debut album, this is the genuine representation of the Marquee's maximum R&B band, or at least the closest vinyl ever came to it. Entwistle's bass is worth the price of entry alone.
23. Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You
This is one of the few albums I can play from start to finish and not want to skip a track. That is the highest praise I can give.
24. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
"Communication Breakdown" is an exercise in compact concise rock, "Dazed And Confused" shows how to stretch out. All the blues rock you could ever need.
25. Paul Simon - The Paul Simon Song Book
Recorded in 1964 before duo atrocities. Pure versions of a songwriters stuff.
As I finish this, I am thinking that I could change at least half of these. No "Pet Sounds"? A great album, but not on my mind obviously when I did this list. So much of the Sixties is tied up in 45's that don't translate to albums, so there are many significant people missing here. I stand by the list though. Bring on the 70's.
