16 REASONS WHY THE Ô60s WERE THE
BEST
ÒFighting to
stay freeÓ #177... September
2013
And now, ladies and gentlemenÉ
Éit has occurred to me that it is no longer possible for most people who
love contemporary music and its history to fairly judge what came before. Radio,
which once embraced history, now obscures it. Demography rules, meaning if you
grew up during the 1960s, you are out of the advertising sweet spot, so your
music is harder to find on conventional radio. ThatÕs nothing you didnÕt
already know.
Something else you
probably already know: ask anyone about the best era for contemporary music,
and the answer he or she is most likely to give will be that era when he or she
was a teenager or in college. That makes sense, as weÕre more likely to
associate any music that came later with life not being as easy. But maybe
thereÕs a way to determine the real best time for music, judging by what the
world was like when that music was made.
I didnÕt grow up in the
Ô60s. I grew, just not that far up. I loved the music because itÕs all I knew;
I wasnÕt aware of the history or what came before, or maybe IÕd have liked the
Ô50s better.
So that decade shouldnÕt
be an automatic-best-time-ever for me personally. ThereÕs your disclaimer. That
said, letÕs go over why I feel the Ô60s were indeed the best era ever for popular
music.
1. A LABEL WILD WEST. Three
record companies? Try 43, plus all
the indies that had a better shot at striking gold with a record, even if it
happened just once.
2. NO CRITICS. Alright,
there were critics, but they were focused on Ôadult music.Õ Meaning the only
people with music recommendation clout wereÉ? Anyone? Radio DJs! What a
concept, huh? It took until the decadeÕs end for Rolling Stone et al to bring
criticism to rock Ôn soul, and itÕs been downhill for the DJ ever since.
3. NO PLAN, AND NO QUALITY
CONTROL. Just release the freaking song and see what happens. That WAS the plan,
or lack thereof. Unless you had the nationwide distribution muscle of Columbia,
RCA or Capitol, you hoped some station somewhere would play your song and it grew
from there. Those, of course, were always the best stories. Which brings us toÉ
4. RADIO RULED. The idea
of a DJ playing a song from an album because he or she likes it - and the
listener response is so strong that the label releases a single, and that
single goes to #1 Ð not that unusual during the Ô60s. That was the story of Kyu
SakamotoÕs ÒSukiyakiÓ in 1963, but it could have been the story of a dozen
other chart-toppers in that era. Of course, radio ruled because there was no
other way to hear new music short of buying a record. With more stations
independently owned and operated, it meant more of those stations could take a
chance on a song someone heard as a potential hit. Which explains why, with
more station owners and more labels, there were more hits.
5. PHYSICAL MUSIC Ð AND
45S Ð RULED. While itÕs never been easier than now to measure song
popularity, there was a greater commitment and clearer love of a song involved
when a person made the effort to go to the store and buy the 45. Which leads us
toÉ
6. SALES RULED TOP
40. Until the late Ô60s and more request-driven formats, most top 40
stationsÕ weekly rankings were based on the top selling songs in the listening
area. If you did that today, many songs would become radio hits earlier. ThatÕs
what you had then. This is why the songs stations added each week (and there
were more of those) had greater importance: the many listeners who heard the
countdown or saw the list in stores knew instantly if a new song would hit or
miss. And because it was about sales, a record not necessarily for top 40Õs
primarily teen audience could live, and live comfortably, alongside the
trendiest of the trendy. Anyone who ever heard Al Martino followed by the
Stones on 1960s top 40 understands.
7. MORE HITS FASTER. We covered this a little
above, but it deserves its own reason. The pace of popular music was frenetic
because of top 40Õs wide reach: it was easier to get to everyone quicker, and
therefore easier for us kids to buy records on the spot (compared to today,
where in some cases it could take as long as a year for a song to become an
accepted mainstream hit). There was one way to hear music, one type of station
you could depend on for the hits, and one way to buy those hits. The Ô60s was
the last era of such pop purity, before radio formats splintered, songs were
available in multiple formats and the number of station and label owners shrank
and, in the process, made the hit making machinery much more structured.
8. THE DANCE CULTURE. Yes,
there were dances and ÒBandstandÓ in the late 1950s, but it wasnÕt until the
Ô60s Ð and Chubby CheckerÕs ÒThe Twist,Ó really Ð that dances defined pop
music. A sociologist would have a field day (in fact, probably already has had
one) examining the evolution of teen dances just during these ten years. From
ÒTwistÓ to ÒThe JerkÓ to ÒTighten Up,Ó the history of contemporary music during
the 60s was in great part a history of dances and the kids who lived to learn
them.
9. MUSIC WASNÕT AS
DERIVATIVE. Although many of those dance-based hits of the early Ô60s
may have sounded like what came before - and like each other - there was plenty
of innovation in contemporary music before the point of explosion in the
mid-Ô60s, particularly in three areas: R&B, pop production (not just Phil
Spector, but his name surely tops the list) and folk. As for music after 1964,
as most of us know, the gloves were off.
10. AMERICA, MEET
CALIFORNIA. At the time it may not have seemed like a, pardon the expression, sea
change, but thatÕs exactly what it was, and not just musically, when ÒLetÕs go
surfin, nowÓ opened the Beach BoysÕ debut national hit, ÒSurfinÕ Safari.Ó Over
the next few years the Beach Boys created not just the fascination with the
West Coast but also, through the imagery of most songs, a youth-based soap
opera of boards and bikinis, romance and racing, that even with sound alone
rivaled daytime drama (and the beach movies they surely inspired). We may have
taken it for granted at the time, but Brian Wilson and Mike Love raised the bar
for song lyrics and storytelling.
11. THE BEATLES. Not just their music,
which is of course chiefly responsible for the changes in pop that came after,
but how they were marketed. The Beatles phenomenon has never been duplicated,
much as others have tried. Anyone who remembers 1964 can tell you that thereÕs
never been another situation like that, where radio and fans fell head over
heels for an artist to the point of every one of their songs being played all
day long, and to the point where promotions and products were developed around
the Beatles. During those first six months of 1964, you would really had to
have gone into hiding to not know about them.
12. SONGS THAT SAID
SOMETHING. As early as 1965, many artists were making a purposeful 180-degree turn from
standard teen-targeted fare lyrically, commenting on the state of the world and
taking a deeper view of love and life itself. Folk-rock, and acts like Bob
Dylan, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel, was the catalyst for this change, but
by 1967, it had become almost more the rule than exception. Which segues nicely
intoÉ
13. SONGS WITH ÔLYRICAL
BALLS.Õ Because parents had tuned out rock Ôn roll, and major
corporations werenÕt yet involved in the music and radio businesses, artists
were able to get away with a lot more than they do now. ItÕs amazing how the
songs of that period that made reference to drugs or sex, or spoke out against
the war and government, have been given a pass on todayÕs classic rock and
classic hits radio. Had most of these songs come out now, artists would have
had to re-record them or they may not have been played at all. And that brings
us toÉ
14. THE NEWS MATTERED ON
ROCK RADIO. There were always listeners whoÕd twist the dial when the news came on
top 40 every hour, but if you stayed and listened Ð like I recall having done
at the same time Barry McGuireÕs ÒEve of DestructionÓ was a hit Ð youÕd have
appreciated the symbiotic relationship between news and music during that time.
Because of the lyrical nature of so many songs, having both on the same station
was not just important (and, at the time, required by the FCC) but maybe even
necessary. From a historianÕs perspective, it is amazing to listen to an
unscoped aircheck from radio during the Ô60s and, because of news being there
and prominently, hear the true soundtrack of the Ô60s.
15. MOTOWN. It
wasnÕt the first record company to manufacture its own distinct sound Ð Sun did
that with rockabilly, as Philles had with Spector Ð but it was the first to
consistently bring rhythm-based music to a mass appeal audience. Over most of
the decade, Berry Gordy et al created a music brand as dependable as Colgate or
Cheerios: when you saw the Motown label, you knew what you were gonna get. And
while some may have accused Motown of Ôwhite-washingÕ R&B, their successful
run in no way stunted the evolution of the genre, which exploded in the late
60s with Aretha, Otis and so many releases out of Chicago, Philadelphia,
Memphis and beyond.
16. LIVE MUSIC EVOLVED. Prior
to Monterey, Woodstock et al, the
idea of what a live contemporary music performance was had already changed with
concerts that enhanced the experience of enjoying the recorded song, such as
the T.A.M.I. Show. It was performances that werenÕt necessarily all live - like
on TVÕs Shindig and Hullaballoo - that suggested what live
rock could be. A wave of artistry that made performance as important as what
came out of the studio took that to the next level and wrote the book for what
we see in concert today.
NOW THIS
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