If I were like most people writing about music on the internet, I would be dedicating this space to a review of the best (and maybe also worst) of 2011. However, I have spent very little time listening to new music this year; it will probably be several months more before I even get around to obtaining all of the several albums that Taiwanese artists I know personally have released in the past year, let alone listening to all the mainstream artists and critical favorites here and in the West. When I do want to check out some of last year's notable music, all of those other year in review articles will certainly come in handy, even if I'm likely to disagree with many of their assessments or be unmoved by their top choices (I also have a more general problem with the tendency to post such lists several weeks before the year is even over -- how can you declare your picks to really be the best of the year when something better might be released the week after you release your choices?). My own focus is still mostly on older releases, though I will attempt to evaluate how newer albums in particular genres (say, Taiwanese aboriginal pop music) or by older artists fit into the historical context.
Since I have just begun this blog, I'm still uncertain of the direction I will take. I will certainly do more entries like my previous one on my own compilations of songs from particular eras or by particular artists. I will also try to include some essays (whether new or old) about Asian pop music. I may also review individual classic albums or do my own "best of" lists of albums and songs. While I will try to keep an ear open for good new music, there is so much great music (and music that while maybe not great is interesting for other reasons) from the past that I should have no shortage of topics even if I never mention anything brand new at all.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era
Original Version
Vol. 1
1 Sunshine of Your Love (Bruce/Brown/Clapton) Cream
2 Purple Haze (J. Hendrix) The Jimi Hendrix Experience
3 Somebody to Love (D. Slick) Jefferson Airplane
4 Born To Be Wild (M. Bonfire) Steppenwolf
5 Turn! Turn! Turn! (Anoymous/P. Seeger) The Byrds
6 Good Vibrations (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys
7 White Room (J. Bruce/P. Brown) Cream
8 White Rabbit (G. Slick) Jefferson Airplane
9 Eight Miles High (Clark/McGuinn/Crosby) The Byrds
10 Proud Mary (J. Fogerty) Creedence Clearwater Revival
11 American Pie (D. McLean) Don McLean
Vol. 2
1 25 Or 6 To 4 (R. Lamm) Chicago
2 Space Oddity (D. Bowie) David Bowie
3 For What It's Worth (S. Stills) Buffalo Springfield
4 Magic Carpet Ride (J. Kay/R. Moreve) Steppenwolf
5 Layla (E. Clapton/J. Gordon) Derek and the Dominoes
6 Saturday In The Park (R. Lamm) Chicago
7 Lola (R. Davies) The Kinks
8 I'd Love To Change The World (A. Lee) Ten Years After
9 All The Young Dudes (D. Bowie) Mott the Hoople
10 Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress (Clarke/Cook/Greenaway) The Hollies
11 Walk On The Wild Side (L. Reed) Lou Reed
New Version
Vol. 1
1 Sunshine of Your Love (Bruce/Brown/Clapton) Cream (1967/11)
2 Purple Haze (J. Hendrix) The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967/03)
3 Somebody to Love (D. Slick) Jefferson Airplane (1967/02)
4 Born To Be Wild (M. Bonfire) Steppenwolf (1968/01)
5 Turn! Turn! Turn! (Anonymous/P. Seeger) The Byrds (1965/10)
6 Paint It Black (Nanker Phelge [Jagger/Jones/Richards/Watts/Wyman]) The Rolling Stones (1966/05)
7 Tomorrow Never Knows (J. Lennon) The Beatles (1966/08)
8 Good Vibrations (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys (1966/10)
9 The Red Telephone (A. Lee) Love (1968/01)
10 Heroin (L. Reed) The Velvet Underground (1966/12)
11 White Room (J. Bruce/P. Brown) Cream (1968/08)
12 White Rabbit (G. Slick) Jefferson Airplane (1967/02)
13 Eight Miles High (Clark/McGuinn/Crosby) The Byrds (1966/04)
14 Astronomy Domine (S. Barrett) Pink Floyd (1967/08)
15 Fixing A Hole (P. McCartney) The Beatles (1967/06)
16 Proud Mary (J. Fogerty) Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969/01)
17 Sympathy for the Devil (M. Jagger/K. Richards) The Rolling Stones (1968/12)
18 American Pie (D. McLean) Don McLean (1971/11)
Vol. 2
1 25 Or 6 To 4 (R. Lamm) Chicago (1970/02)
2 Space Oddity (D. Bowie) David Bowie (1969/07)
3 For What It's Worth (S. Stills) Buffalo Springfield (1967/01)
4 Magic Carpet Ride (J. Kay/R. Moreve) Steppenwolf (1968/09)
5 Time Of The Season (R. Argent) The Zombies (1968/04)
6 A Whiter Shade Of Pale (Brooker/Reid/Fisher) Procul Harum (1967/05)
7 All Along The Watchtower (B. Dylan) The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968/09)
8 Layla (E. Clapton/J. Gordon) Derek and the Dominoes (1970/11)
9 Saturday In The Park (R. Lamm) Chicago (1972/07)
10 Everyday People (S. Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968/11)
11 Lola (R. Davies) The Kinks (1970/06)
12 Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In (Rado/Ragni/MacDermot) The 5th Dimension (1969/03)
13 In The Year 2525 (R. Evans) Zager & Evans (1969)
14 I'd Love To Change The World (A. Lee) Ten Years After (1971/08)
15 Woodstock (J. Mitchell) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (1970/03)
16 All The Young Dudes (D. Bowie) Mott the Hoople (1972/07)
17 Mama Told Me (Not To Come) (R. Newman) Three Dog Night (1970/05)
18 Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress (Clarke/Cook/Greenaway) The Hollies (1971/07)
19 Walk On The Wild Side (L. Reed) Lou Reed (1972/11)
Ever since I first started seriously listening to music in college, I have enjoyed making compilations. In fact, aside from actually listening to music I like and occasionally singing or playing guitar, it is probably the music-related activity I get the most pleasure from. Nowadays I have so many ideas for compilations that many of them have never actually been completed; there are basically just lists of songs. But I have from time to time actually finished putting together compilations, many of which I have to say sound pretty good (though I can always think of ways to improve them). A number of them have also been complimented by others, so in at least those cases, my self-satisfaction is perhaps to some degree warranted.
The first significant compilation I ever made was done when I was in college, about two decades ago. Like all my early compilations, it was done on cassette tape (CDs were still relatively new, and CD burners were still years away); in other words, it was what many people at the time called a mix tape. I had only recently started to regularly listen to classic rock, and I decided to make a compilation of some of my favorite songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s. As I recall, most of the tracks I included were from vinyl 45s. These were reissues, not the original singles, but from perspective at the time this was a plus, as they had a well-known track by the artist in question on both sides of the single (this is one reason a lot of artists were represented by two tracks, even if both were classic tunes). Some of the tracks I think came from other tapes or perhaps from vinyl albums (the closing track on the A side must have come from one of these sources, as on singles it was split into two parts, but the version on my compilation was clearly the album version, as it had no break in the middle). Unfortunately I don't recall the details about the making of the compilation, including the time and where I was living at the time, but I probably used a stereo system that belonged to one of my roommates which had a turntable and two tape players.
I made an effort to minimize the space between tracks and to choose songs that segued into each other well. Since of course I had no computer programs to work with, all this had to be done be careful timing. This applied also to length of the compilation, which I carefully calculated to make maximum use of the space on the cassette tape. Recording of course had to be done song by song, with frequent use of the pause, rewind and fast forward buttons as well as the record button (from what I recall, I would play to the end of the last song recorded, immediately hit pause, press down record while the tape was still paused, then set up the song to be recorded, only releasing the pause button just before the song began to play). I initially only filled one side of a 90 minute blank tape. This first compilation opened up with Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love", followed by Jimi Hendrix's classic "Purple Haze". Then came "Somebody to Love" by Jefferson Airplane, "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, and in a more folky vein, the Byrds' recording of "Turn! Turn! Turn!". The Beach Boys' psychedelic masterpiece "Good Vibrations", followed by two more songs from Cream and Jefferson Airplane, "White Room" and "White Rabbit" (a particularly fitting pairing). The Byrds' "Eight Miles High" came next, and then Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary". Closing the compilation was Don McLean's allegorical history of rock 'n' roll in song, "American Pie".
A lot of different people who heard this compilation praised it. Of course it helped that all the songs were great, but I think I also sequenced them in a way that worked pretty well. If I had been more familiar with the music of the period than I was at the time, I would have been tempted to include more variety in terms of artists (and I have indeed done that with the CD versions, as I'll explain later), but since space was limited, it's perhaps just as well that I didn't have too many choices. Though I've made many compilations since then, not many have worked better than this one did.
For a long time -- perhaps a year or more -- the B side of the cassette tape that I'd put the compilation on remained blank. I spent quite some time choosing songs to go on it, and only when I had enough to fill the 45 minutes did I start to work on the new compilation (or the second half of the two part compilation). The lead-off track was Chicago's "25 Or 6 To 4" (which could hardly be more different from the commercial pop they were doing in the late 1980s), followed by David Bowie's first big song, "Space Oddity". Next was Buffalo Springfield's protest song "For What It's Worth", then "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf and the full version of "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes (aka Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and friends). Then came another track from Chicago, "Saturday In The Park", the Kinks' classic "Lola", "I'd Love To Change The World" by Ten Years After, and "All The Young Dudes" performed by Mott the Hoople (and written by David Bowie). Next came the latter-day (and somewhat atypical) Hollies classic "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress" and the closing track, Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side".
I never felt the second half of the compilation flowed quite as well as the first half, but nevertheless I think it worked pretty well, and it had a somewhat greater variety of material, since only one artist appeared twice (though Steppenwolf had also appeared on the first half). Combined, the two halves were a very solid combination of tracks from the late 1960s and early 1970s. At some point, certainly after finishing the A side but quite possibly before completing the B side, I gave the compilation the title A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era, from a line in "American Pie". Though perhaps slightly pejoritive-sounding, as it implied the hippies of the era were, as it were, spaced out, it seemed appropriate and I've retained it.
When recently I finally got around to making a CD version of this compilation, I faced a few dilemmas. The main problem was that as the original had been designed for the two sides of a 90 minute cassette tape, it wasn't possible to put both halves of the original compilation on one CD. If I just put the two halves of the compilation on a CD apiece, then each CD would only have about 45 minutes of music, which seemed rather wasteful (just as had been the case back when I was using cassette tapes, I always like to make the most of my blank CDs). The only option left was to expand the compilations. The next problem, then, was choosing what songs to add and how to fit them in with the original selections. I could have just added the new songs on the end of each CD, but it seemed better to add them in as if they had originally been part of the compilation, particular as on the first part I wanted keep "American Pie" as the closing track.
In choosing new songs, I restricted myself to ones from the same time period as the original selections (basically 1966 to 1972) and also tried to pick ones that were similarly representative of that era, with a particular preference for slightly psychedelic tunes. One of the purposes of the original collection had been to collect songs that I didn't have elsewhere, so I didn't include any songs by artists like the Beatles. This no longer held true, as for many of the artists in the original compilation I had acquired compilation CDs or in a few cases original albums (though there are a few artists I still have no songs from beyond what is here, such as Steppenwolf, Ten Years After and Mott the Hoople). Therefore, I didn't feel constrained from including a few suitable songs from other artists in my CD collection.
On the first CD I added a couple of songs each by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, plus a song each from the Velvet Underground and (Syd Barrett-era) Pink Floyd. Aside from their importance and popularity, it seemed particularly appropriate to have some songs from the Beatles and the Stones because, like the Byrds' "Eight Miles High", they are referenced in "American Pie". For the Beatles in particular it was of course difficult to pick just two songs (one other excellent candidate from them was "Strawberry Fields Forever"), but these two fit in quite well. On the second side, I included a greater variety of artists, with songs from The Zombies, Procul Harum, Sly & the Family Stone, The 5th Dimension (though I have some reservations about this choice, due to the nonsensical lyrics -- even if they are representative of the era), Zager & Evans, CSN&Y, and Three Dog Night, plus an additional song from Jimi Hendrix. My particular song choices from these artists also deliberately included songs written by several great singer-songwriters who otherwise would have gotten left out entirely, namely Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman (in Joni Mitchell's case I would have used her version of the song, but it was considerably longer than the CSN&Y version). I tried to fit the new songs in a way that maintained the standards set by the original sequencing, and also with an eye on chronology, though I made no attempt to stick to a strict chronological order since the original compilation was not arranged chronologically.
There were of course many songs I considered but ultimately had to leave out. I would really have loved to put in "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, but at eight minutes in length I would have had to cut at least two other songs to get it in there. It would also have been nice to have a Janis Joplin song (probably "Piece of My Heart"), since women are seriously underrepresented in this collection, but as there are prominent female vocals on the songs from Sly & the Family Stone and the 5th Dimension plus a song written by a woman (the above-mentioned Joni Mitchell song), not to mention the Jefferson Airplane tracks on the first part of the original collection I reluctantly decided to do without, since including a Joplin song would have meant leaving something else out (though if I were to redo it, I might consider substituting "Piece of My Heart" for "Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In"). But despite the omissions, I think the expanded CD versions of A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era are, like the original, a pretty enjoyable listening experience.
Vol. 1
1 Sunshine of Your Love (Bruce/Brown/Clapton) Cream
2 Purple Haze (J. Hendrix) The Jimi Hendrix Experience
3 Somebody to Love (D. Slick) Jefferson Airplane
4 Born To Be Wild (M. Bonfire) Steppenwolf
5 Turn! Turn! Turn! (Anoymous/P. Seeger) The Byrds
6 Good Vibrations (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys
7 White Room (J. Bruce/P. Brown) Cream
8 White Rabbit (G. Slick) Jefferson Airplane
9 Eight Miles High (Clark/McGuinn/Crosby) The Byrds
10 Proud Mary (J. Fogerty) Creedence Clearwater Revival
11 American Pie (D. McLean) Don McLean
Vol. 2
1 25 Or 6 To 4 (R. Lamm) Chicago
2 Space Oddity (D. Bowie) David Bowie
3 For What It's Worth (S. Stills) Buffalo Springfield
4 Magic Carpet Ride (J. Kay/R. Moreve) Steppenwolf
5 Layla (E. Clapton/J. Gordon) Derek and the Dominoes
6 Saturday In The Park (R. Lamm) Chicago
7 Lola (R. Davies) The Kinks
8 I'd Love To Change The World (A. Lee) Ten Years After
9 All The Young Dudes (D. Bowie) Mott the Hoople
10 Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress (Clarke/Cook/Greenaway) The Hollies
11 Walk On The Wild Side (L. Reed) Lou Reed
New Version
Vol. 1
1 Sunshine of Your Love (Bruce/Brown/Clapton) Cream (1967/11)
2 Purple Haze (J. Hendrix) The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967/03)
3 Somebody to Love (D. Slick) Jefferson Airplane (1967/02)
4 Born To Be Wild (M. Bonfire) Steppenwolf (1968/01)
5 Turn! Turn! Turn! (Anonymous/P. Seeger) The Byrds (1965/10)
6 Paint It Black (Nanker Phelge [Jagger/Jones/Richards/Watts/Wyman]) The Rolling Stones (1966/05)
7 Tomorrow Never Knows (J. Lennon) The Beatles (1966/08)
8 Good Vibrations (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys (1966/10)
9 The Red Telephone (A. Lee) Love (1968/01)
10 Heroin (L. Reed) The Velvet Underground (1966/12)
11 White Room (J. Bruce/P. Brown) Cream (1968/08)
12 White Rabbit (G. Slick) Jefferson Airplane (1967/02)
13 Eight Miles High (Clark/McGuinn/Crosby) The Byrds (1966/04)
14 Astronomy Domine (S. Barrett) Pink Floyd (1967/08)
15 Fixing A Hole (P. McCartney) The Beatles (1967/06)
16 Proud Mary (J. Fogerty) Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969/01)
17 Sympathy for the Devil (M. Jagger/K. Richards) The Rolling Stones (1968/12)
18 American Pie (D. McLean) Don McLean (1971/11)
Vol. 2
1 25 Or 6 To 4 (R. Lamm) Chicago (1970/02)
2 Space Oddity (D. Bowie) David Bowie (1969/07)
3 For What It's Worth (S. Stills) Buffalo Springfield (1967/01)
4 Magic Carpet Ride (J. Kay/R. Moreve) Steppenwolf (1968/09)
5 Time Of The Season (R. Argent) The Zombies (1968/04)
6 A Whiter Shade Of Pale (Brooker/Reid/Fisher) Procul Harum (1967/05)
7 All Along The Watchtower (B. Dylan) The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968/09)
8 Layla (E. Clapton/J. Gordon) Derek and the Dominoes (1970/11)
9 Saturday In The Park (R. Lamm) Chicago (1972/07)
10 Everyday People (S. Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968/11)
11 Lola (R. Davies) The Kinks (1970/06)
12 Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In (Rado/Ragni/MacDermot) The 5th Dimension (1969/03)
13 In The Year 2525 (R. Evans) Zager & Evans (1969)
14 I'd Love To Change The World (A. Lee) Ten Years After (1971/08)
15 Woodstock (J. Mitchell) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (1970/03)
16 All The Young Dudes (D. Bowie) Mott the Hoople (1972/07)
17 Mama Told Me (Not To Come) (R. Newman) Three Dog Night (1970/05)
18 Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress (Clarke/Cook/Greenaway) The Hollies (1971/07)
19 Walk On The Wild Side (L. Reed) Lou Reed (1972/11)
Ever since I first started seriously listening to music in college, I have enjoyed making compilations. In fact, aside from actually listening to music I like and occasionally singing or playing guitar, it is probably the music-related activity I get the most pleasure from. Nowadays I have so many ideas for compilations that many of them have never actually been completed; there are basically just lists of songs. But I have from time to time actually finished putting together compilations, many of which I have to say sound pretty good (though I can always think of ways to improve them). A number of them have also been complimented by others, so in at least those cases, my self-satisfaction is perhaps to some degree warranted.
The first significant compilation I ever made was done when I was in college, about two decades ago. Like all my early compilations, it was done on cassette tape (CDs were still relatively new, and CD burners were still years away); in other words, it was what many people at the time called a mix tape. I had only recently started to regularly listen to classic rock, and I decided to make a compilation of some of my favorite songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s. As I recall, most of the tracks I included were from vinyl 45s. These were reissues, not the original singles, but from perspective at the time this was a plus, as they had a well-known track by the artist in question on both sides of the single (this is one reason a lot of artists were represented by two tracks, even if both were classic tunes). Some of the tracks I think came from other tapes or perhaps from vinyl albums (the closing track on the A side must have come from one of these sources, as on singles it was split into two parts, but the version on my compilation was clearly the album version, as it had no break in the middle). Unfortunately I don't recall the details about the making of the compilation, including the time and where I was living at the time, but I probably used a stereo system that belonged to one of my roommates which had a turntable and two tape players.
I made an effort to minimize the space between tracks and to choose songs that segued into each other well. Since of course I had no computer programs to work with, all this had to be done be careful timing. This applied also to length of the compilation, which I carefully calculated to make maximum use of the space on the cassette tape. Recording of course had to be done song by song, with frequent use of the pause, rewind and fast forward buttons as well as the record button (from what I recall, I would play to the end of the last song recorded, immediately hit pause, press down record while the tape was still paused, then set up the song to be recorded, only releasing the pause button just before the song began to play). I initially only filled one side of a 90 minute blank tape. This first compilation opened up with Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love", followed by Jimi Hendrix's classic "Purple Haze". Then came "Somebody to Love" by Jefferson Airplane, "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, and in a more folky vein, the Byrds' recording of "Turn! Turn! Turn!". The Beach Boys' psychedelic masterpiece "Good Vibrations", followed by two more songs from Cream and Jefferson Airplane, "White Room" and "White Rabbit" (a particularly fitting pairing). The Byrds' "Eight Miles High" came next, and then Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary". Closing the compilation was Don McLean's allegorical history of rock 'n' roll in song, "American Pie".
A lot of different people who heard this compilation praised it. Of course it helped that all the songs were great, but I think I also sequenced them in a way that worked pretty well. If I had been more familiar with the music of the period than I was at the time, I would have been tempted to include more variety in terms of artists (and I have indeed done that with the CD versions, as I'll explain later), but since space was limited, it's perhaps just as well that I didn't have too many choices. Though I've made many compilations since then, not many have worked better than this one did.
For a long time -- perhaps a year or more -- the B side of the cassette tape that I'd put the compilation on remained blank. I spent quite some time choosing songs to go on it, and only when I had enough to fill the 45 minutes did I start to work on the new compilation (or the second half of the two part compilation). The lead-off track was Chicago's "25 Or 6 To 4" (which could hardly be more different from the commercial pop they were doing in the late 1980s), followed by David Bowie's first big song, "Space Oddity". Next was Buffalo Springfield's protest song "For What It's Worth", then "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf and the full version of "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes (aka Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and friends). Then came another track from Chicago, "Saturday In The Park", the Kinks' classic "Lola", "I'd Love To Change The World" by Ten Years After, and "All The Young Dudes" performed by Mott the Hoople (and written by David Bowie). Next came the latter-day (and somewhat atypical) Hollies classic "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress" and the closing track, Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side".
I never felt the second half of the compilation flowed quite as well as the first half, but nevertheless I think it worked pretty well, and it had a somewhat greater variety of material, since only one artist appeared twice (though Steppenwolf had also appeared on the first half). Combined, the two halves were a very solid combination of tracks from the late 1960s and early 1970s. At some point, certainly after finishing the A side but quite possibly before completing the B side, I gave the compilation the title A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era, from a line in "American Pie". Though perhaps slightly pejoritive-sounding, as it implied the hippies of the era were, as it were, spaced out, it seemed appropriate and I've retained it.
When recently I finally got around to making a CD version of this compilation, I faced a few dilemmas. The main problem was that as the original had been designed for the two sides of a 90 minute cassette tape, it wasn't possible to put both halves of the original compilation on one CD. If I just put the two halves of the compilation on a CD apiece, then each CD would only have about 45 minutes of music, which seemed rather wasteful (just as had been the case back when I was using cassette tapes, I always like to make the most of my blank CDs). The only option left was to expand the compilations. The next problem, then, was choosing what songs to add and how to fit them in with the original selections. I could have just added the new songs on the end of each CD, but it seemed better to add them in as if they had originally been part of the compilation, particular as on the first part I wanted keep "American Pie" as the closing track.
In choosing new songs, I restricted myself to ones from the same time period as the original selections (basically 1966 to 1972) and also tried to pick ones that were similarly representative of that era, with a particular preference for slightly psychedelic tunes. One of the purposes of the original collection had been to collect songs that I didn't have elsewhere, so I didn't include any songs by artists like the Beatles. This no longer held true, as for many of the artists in the original compilation I had acquired compilation CDs or in a few cases original albums (though there are a few artists I still have no songs from beyond what is here, such as Steppenwolf, Ten Years After and Mott the Hoople). Therefore, I didn't feel constrained from including a few suitable songs from other artists in my CD collection.
On the first CD I added a couple of songs each by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, plus a song each from the Velvet Underground and (Syd Barrett-era) Pink Floyd. Aside from their importance and popularity, it seemed particularly appropriate to have some songs from the Beatles and the Stones because, like the Byrds' "Eight Miles High", they are referenced in "American Pie". For the Beatles in particular it was of course difficult to pick just two songs (one other excellent candidate from them was "Strawberry Fields Forever"), but these two fit in quite well. On the second side, I included a greater variety of artists, with songs from The Zombies, Procul Harum, Sly & the Family Stone, The 5th Dimension (though I have some reservations about this choice, due to the nonsensical lyrics -- even if they are representative of the era), Zager & Evans, CSN&Y, and Three Dog Night, plus an additional song from Jimi Hendrix. My particular song choices from these artists also deliberately included songs written by several great singer-songwriters who otherwise would have gotten left out entirely, namely Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman (in Joni Mitchell's case I would have used her version of the song, but it was considerably longer than the CSN&Y version). I tried to fit the new songs in a way that maintained the standards set by the original sequencing, and also with an eye on chronology, though I made no attempt to stick to a strict chronological order since the original compilation was not arranged chronologically.
There were of course many songs I considered but ultimately had to leave out. I would really have loved to put in "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, but at eight minutes in length I would have had to cut at least two other songs to get it in there. It would also have been nice to have a Janis Joplin song (probably "Piece of My Heart"), since women are seriously underrepresented in this collection, but as there are prominent female vocals on the songs from Sly & the Family Stone and the 5th Dimension plus a song written by a woman (the above-mentioned Joni Mitchell song), not to mention the Jefferson Airplane tracks on the first part of the original collection I reluctantly decided to do without, since including a Joplin song would have meant leaving something else out (though if I were to redo it, I might consider substituting "Piece of My Heart" for "Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In"). But despite the omissions, I think the expanded CD versions of A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era are, like the original, a pretty enjoyable listening experience.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Introduction
For a long time, I've been wanting to set up a blog devoted exclusively to music, and this is it. I listen mostly to classic rock and pop from the latter half of the 20th century, but I also listen to some current artists, a little bit of early 20th century pop, and some jazz, blues, and classical music (though I don't expect to be posting much, if anything, about the latter genres). I also have an interest in popular music from non-English speaking countries, particularly East and Southeast Asia. I have hundreds of CDs by Western pop and rock acts and hundreds more by acts from Taiwan (where I live now), and a fair number from neighboring countries like Thailand, Japan, and China (including Hong Kong).
I am especially interested in the history of popular music, and so I often collect music out of historical interest. In addition to reading a fair amount about the history of popular music in the US and the UK, I have done quite a bit of research on Taiwanese popular music history, and published a few articles on this topic. I probably ought to have a separate blog dedicated to Taiwan music history, so I haven't decided whether I will post on Taiwan music here. I probably will do so occasionally, or I will at least post a few of my old essays. If I have a blog devoted to Taiwan music, I may try to post mostly in Chinese (even though it's a lot harder for me to write in Chinese than English), so this may end up being an outlet for English-language writing on Taiwanese pop. Still, my initial posts will probably be mostly on Western rock and pop. Anyway, I hope at least some of my posts will be informative, entertaining, or inspiring (as in inspiring an interest in obtaining certain albums or songs, or making various music compilations) to a few people.
I am especially interested in the history of popular music, and so I often collect music out of historical interest. In addition to reading a fair amount about the history of popular music in the US and the UK, I have done quite a bit of research on Taiwanese popular music history, and published a few articles on this topic. I probably ought to have a separate blog dedicated to Taiwan music history, so I haven't decided whether I will post on Taiwan music here. I probably will do so occasionally, or I will at least post a few of my old essays. If I have a blog devoted to Taiwan music, I may try to post mostly in Chinese (even though it's a lot harder for me to write in Chinese than English), so this may end up being an outlet for English-language writing on Taiwanese pop. Still, my initial posts will probably be mostly on Western rock and pop. Anyway, I hope at least some of my posts will be informative, entertaining, or inspiring (as in inspiring an interest in obtaining certain albums or songs, or making various music compilations) to a few people.
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