My most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is an all 60’s special, which means that in addition to making a good case for the comeback of short songs, I was able to fit a lot into an hour. Featuring: a teenage Dolly Parton, a spaced out Joe Meek oddity, brutal heartbreak soul, a take on “Bend Me, Shape Me” that weighs a thousand tons, Peruvian garage rock, Ronnie Spector spitting pure rage at an unnamed man, an absolutely deranged Brian Wilson-produced version of “In The Still of the Night,” a cameo from the queen of rockabilly, an Indonesian Beegees cover, and of course, plenty of girl groups.
I love how 60s vocals sound as if everything is being sung with the caps lock on and too many exclamation points–they really grab you by the throat. I love how a song about a woman being disinterested in having sex manages to be anything but prudish or coy, and instead sounds like a venomous, gravelly diatribe delivered from somebody’s dirty basement. I love the unabashed melodrama and the blown-out, gritty production. I love how markedly less prim the musical ethos was than what preceded it, how much more raw and punk. This is one of my favorite musical eras and a lot of these songs make me cry–perhaps least explicably, “Egyptian Shumba,” which is still one of my all-time favorites–so I hope you enjoy this music as much as I do! You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist: 1. Lou Christie & The Tammys – Outside The Gates Of Heaven 2. The Exciters – Get Him 3. Timi Yuro – What’s A Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You) 4. The Cookies – Softly In The Night 5. The Cats Meow – La La Lu 6. Little Frankie – I’m Not Gonna Do It 7. Claudine Clark – Party Lights 8. The Models – Bend Me, Shape Me 9. Screaming Lord Sutch – Don’t You Just Know It 10. Wanda Jackson – Fallin’ 11. The Ronettes – He Did It 12. The Honeys – In The Still Of The Night 13. Joe Meek – Orbit Around The Moon 14. Rosie Lopez – I’ll Never Grow Tired 15. The Crystals – He’s A Rebel 16. Dream Team – There He Is 17. Los Saicos – Ana 18. The Ikettes – I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song) 19. The Tammys – Egyptian Shumba 20. Dara Puspita – To Love Somebody 21. Ben E. King – Don’t Play That Song (You Lied) 22. The Shannons – Little White Lies 23. Solomon Burke – If You Need Me 24. Dolly Parton – Gonna Hurry (As Slow As I Can)
I hope that if it’s still torrential downpouring where you are, this gets to you in time to be a helpful addition! Peter Walker is a Boston-born steel string guitar legend who left home at 14 to begin his lifelong project of musical study and research. He traveled, toured, and hitchhiked through America, Mexico, North Africa, Algeria, Morocco, and Spain, but it was seeing Ravi Shankar perform in San Francisco in the early 60s that sparked his fascination with Indian classical–he went on to study under both Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. In the mid-60’s he embedded himself in the Greenwich Village folk scene, becoming close with Sandy Bull, Karen Dalton, Joan Baez, and eventually Timothy Leary, for whom he served as a “musical director.”
This was the first of two full lengths he recorded before a 40 year hiatus, until he was later coaxed out of retirement by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records in 2007, at which point he went on to release a slew of new material and tour extensively. Though his interplay with Appalachian (and more generally American) folk, Indian raga, and flamenco was still taking shape upon the release of Rainy Day Raga (his follow-up “Second Poem To Karmela” leans into Indian traditions much more explicitly), I love it for its raucous joy, tumbling lines of masterful fingerpicking building into extended crescendoes before a long cooldown. A very appropriate indoor rainy day soundtrack. For fans of