HAVE YOU HEARD?
By Doug Robinson, July 06, 2007


Feelin’ Groovy

This will be my last music column until October, as I’ll be working up in San Diego in August and September. Over the last two years, I’ve used this monthly column to talk about the music I felt deserved wider recognition, and now my out-of-town work ties in nicely with that theme.

In September, I’ll be the musical director of a cool San Diego theatrical concert called Love In: The Musical, intended as a celebration of the 40-year anniversary of The Summer of Love, or “1967” as some call it. Our eight-piece house band will be backing up such ’60s icons as Peter and Gordon, Buddy Miles (Electric Flag, Jimi Hendrix), Jesse Colin Young, and Vince Martell from Vanilla Fudge. The show’s host will be Ben Vereen, and the whole thing will be filmed for a DVD release next year.

The band will be performing around 40 classic tunes ranging from the psychedelic (“Incense and Peppermints,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” “White Rabbit”) to R & B (“I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay”) to British rock (“Sunshine of Your Love,” “Time of the Season”) to the soundtrack from Hair. 

In order to write musical arrangements, this project has forced me to absorb and dissect these tunes. It was no hardship—I love this stuff, having played a lot of it as a prepubescent rocker. The director wants the music to be faithful to the energy and vibe of the times. None of the bands we’re honoring would have played their songs the same way twice in a row, so accuracy is a little lower on the list of priorities. 


I was stunned at how creative popular music was overall back in those days. Bands often went into the studio with nothing prepared, but since they were constantly gigging there was always a riff they could jam on until a song emerged and the engineer pressed “record.” (You didn’t actually think that Creedence Clearwater’s three-chord opus “Suzie Q” was meticulously composed with pen and paper, did you?) Equally impressive was the amount of flaws that flew under the radar—out-of-tune guitars, the buzz of a tube amplifier overloading, even flubbed lyrics. And yet…this music moved millions of us, to the dance floors, to the love-ins, to rise up in protest against the Vietnam War and the establishment in general. 

It’s a far cry from the way music sounds today, with the technology to fix bad vocals, or to tighten up a sloppy drummer’s groove. Now we’re left with technically perfect but dull and formulaic music that sounds like it was composed at a computer as opposed to a band rehearsal. Could what passes for soulfulness on American Idol really stand up next to a single track from Marvin Gaye’s catalog?

Even more mind-blowing is that this diverse music made it to the radio in the first place. In a single year, the Beatles released not only Sgt Pepper but also Magical Mystery Tour; the Rolling Stones released three albums during the same time period. Add to that Cream, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Lovin’ Spoonful, The Turtles, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, The Who, The Mamas and the Papas, and dozens of other unique acts—it was an explosion of original music, one that could never hit the airwaves today with all major radio stations in the states being tightly controlled by one or two companies who send out market-tested playlists from which no disc jockey can diverge. 

Now, it wasn’t all incredible—there was some pretty mediocre stuff from 1967 as well: drippy drug-induced poetry and records obviously made in a hurry which might have benefited from an extra hour of rehearsal. And once the corporate interests noticed that the message of “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out” translated into gold records, the forces of evil brought us contrived fluff like The Monkees (who eventually took their careers into their own hands and turned out some excellent music).

But overall, 1967 seems to have been a year when creativity was allowed to blossom and inspire the listening public. If I had a time machine, I’d bring back some of that artistic diversity, the risk-taking, the messages of peace and love. I’d still want to spend a little more time tuning the guitars, though. 

In closing, I know some of you have downloaded some of my recommendations and I thank you for your trust. I hope to see you at El Café Viejo-Topo this Saturday for guitarist Jaime Valle and his killer quartet. It’s been a while since we’ve had visiting jazz players on this level, so you’re in for a solid evening of music.

Doug Robinson lives and plays music in San Miguel. Read more about the show at www.loveinthemusical.com.