CD/Sounds of the Sixties
By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
Shout Factory is continuing its efforts to release some of the best American popular music with two new CDs.
The 60s Rock Experience is about as complete representation of the American rock scene that one could squeeze onto three CDs. For anyone who is interested in the music of that era, this is a must-have.
The collection is broken into three classifications: "The Vietnam Backbeat," "There'll be a 'Love-In' There," and "Message and Meaning." The songs collected not only are for the most part Top Forty hits, but they reflect the politics and the social movements of the times.
Among the songs are psychedelic hits such as "Incense and Peppermints," "Magic Carpet Ride," and "Crimson and Clover"; straight pop such as "The Beat Goes On," "Five O'clock World"; classic soul such as "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "Nowhere to Run"; and protest tunes such as "War" and "The Fish Song."
There's even a significant one hit wonder, Zager & Evans' "In the Year 2525."
While I'm sure that there are some favorites not represented on the collection one of the Venture's great instrumental hits or a Frank Zappa tune would have fitted the format this compilation makes a great audio time capsule.
Another audio time capsule is Shout Factory's re-release of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Growing up in the 1960s, I can not underestimate the popularity of Alpert and his albums of instrumental pop music. His songs such as "A Taste of Honey" and "Whipped Cream" on this disc got play on Top Forty rock stations for youthful audiences and yet wound up appealing to their parents as well.
Alpert who was not of Latino heritage, but rather was the son of Russian and Romanian Jews had been in the music industry for several years by the early 1960s when he was inspired by a mariachi band fanfare at a Tijuana, Mexico, bullfight.
Whipped Cream was the fourth Tijuana Brass album and the first one in which Alpert actually formed a permanent line-up of musicians. The first three had been done with studio musicians.
Although it would be easy to see Alpert's bright bouncy brass-heavy arrangements as pop music cliches from the 1960s, that would be a disservice to them. These are solid musical performances that are presented in a way that actually bridged generations at a time when much of pop music was designed to appeal to only one age group.
The CD comes with a great booklet that details much of Alpert's career, a poster of the original and memorable cover art of a young woman covered in whipped cream it was really shaving cream and two additional tracks that had not been previously released.
Nostalgic to some and retro to others, Whipped Cream & Other Delights holds its own musically 40 years after its first release.
For more information on these releases, log onto www.shoutfactory.com
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