The MarshallDog Review: 1969 albums

Showing posts with label 1969 albums. Show all posts

Monday, September 25, 2017

Johnny Cash - At San Quentin (1969)

Leonard Cohen - Songs From A Room (1969)

Bee Gees - Odessa (1969)

So... Bee Gees. Everyone knows "Staying Alive" by Bee Gees, and everyone loves that one song by Bee Gees. So clearly there are two things that could make this listen and review a total disaster. First, are there actual Bee Gees fans out there that salivate over entire albums by this band? Not that popularity alone would legitimize whether or not an album or band were good. But a band that had such an Earth-smashing hit like "Staying Alive" you'd think would get some sort of fandom. I just never hear from such fans, unlike say people who love ABBA. Second, this album came out before "Staying Alive" and disco became big. What the hell is early Bee Gees going to sound like? Actually, since I only know that one song, and for all I know it's a total outlier, what the hell are Bee Gees going to sound like at all?

Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking (1969)

Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis (1969)

The Beatles - Abbey Road & Across The Universe (1969)

In my previous review I noted that The Beatles next project after Yellow Submarine was going to be an album called Get Back. The idea, proposed by Paul McCartney, was for The Beatles to go back to their roots of playing live shows and recording the bulk of their music live as a group, as opposed to the four members largely doing their own thing and collaborating on overdubs later. Recording together proved not to be the tonic to reunify the band, and the recording sessions for the Get Back album were put on the shelf. At some point they were able to get in the studio and record a set of songs they really liked, and that became today's subject for review.

The Beatles - Yellow Submarine, Get Back/Don't Let Me Down, and The Ballad of John and Yoko/Old Brown Shoe (1969)

Now that I've had time to recover from "the white album", which really messed me up and made me feel depressed, I can move on and... well, review some more Beatles material from around the same period. This is a very small sample that probably doesn't all fit together. Then again most of the stuff The Beatles were putting out at this time wasn't part of a cohesive whole so there's no real problem reviewing it as one chunk.