Simon & Garfunkel
America
Bridge Over Troubled Water
vs
Canned Heat
On The Road Again
Going Up The Country
Escaping the blues is not easy—it pulls musicians down (up?) whenever they play American music. Canned Heat is blues all the way—they completely surrendered and the completion of their surrender (they mined blues from the 1920s) brought superb results. “On The Road Again” and “Going Up The Country” are easy and uptempo numbers which do more than charm—they pleasantly addict. To listen to Canned Heat is to swim in the sweetest mud of Woodstock—and more.
Paul Simon fights off the blues in “America” with a pretty chord progression of descending steps—a chromatic resistance. “America” trades the traveling life and other classic heartbreak blues themes for one more mundane—a young couple grab some cigarettes and take a bus trip and the boredom of it all is not shied away from; it’s a lovely slice-of-life song which manages to transcend its ordinary surroundings. Simon wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water” playing around with gospel chords—Garfunkel encouraged him to write the third part to the song and make it bigger (Simon heard it as a “little hymn”). Simon relented and wrote the additional verse right there in the studio; Garfunkel sang it, and session musicians (as was normally the case) added magic. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” seems to musically signal the end of the 60s and the start of the 70s: less abandon, more stately, but still a lot of melody.
Winner Simon & Garfunkel
Gerry And The Pacemakers
Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying
You’ll Never Walk Alone
vs
The Troggs
Wild Thing
Love Is All Around
How many great bands formed in England in 1964? The Troggs did. In the spring of 1966 they released “Wild Thing,” and here it is tempting to go all “origin story” and say here was the beginning of punk rock and garage rock; but these assertions are impossible to make. There is something primal and original about “Wild Thing,” however, which is iconic in the simplest terms. “Love Is All Around” (1967) is a perfect flower power/hippie song. And then they were done—by 1969 the Troggs fell into obscurity. They used up their rock god coupons for those two great songs.
The Pacemakers were a bigger act than the Beatles in Liverpool and Hamburg for awhile. Brian Epstein signed them, George Martin worked with them. George Harrison had a girlfriend who had to choose between George and Gerry—and she chose the lead singer of the Pacemakers.
“Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” reminds us that the 60s was so much more than rock n’ roll—the art song flourished, too, and it could be argued that the golden age of popular music in the 60s produced, in some instances, great art, in the traditional sense. Music which was so massed produced, and written and sung by “kids” for “kids” cannot possibly—to this day—be taken seriously enough to be understood as “high art,” but in some ways it certainly was—and “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” is a prime example.
Gerry Marsden shows off his singing chops in “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a cover of a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from Carousel. Both of these bands were amazingly versatile. “Wild Thing” is probably more important in terms of rock history, while there are few songs as gorgeous as “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying.”
Winner The Troggs
Hank Williams
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Your Cheatin’ Heart
vs
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Bad Moon Rising
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
CCR formed in California in 1964, made it big in 1969, and the singer and songwriter of the band, John Fogerty, quit a few years later over artistic control. Fogerty had a great voice and wrote simple, uptempo ballads with intelligent lyrics. “Bad Moon Rising” (about the devil) and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” (about napalm? perhaps not) are transition songs, leaving behind the flowery 60s (huge generalization) for something more professional and ironclad. The “psychedelic” era of the mid-60s gave way to more “roots” music in the U.S. and CCR helped lead this charge.
Hank Williams died of heart failure at the age of 29 in 1953 after a brief but illustrious career. In “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” we get vocals which sound sad and sincere, lyrics dripping with poetry, and music which perfectly accompanies “the setting”—if we can call it that. In “Understanding Poetry,” the classic textbook which Americans used in classrooms from the 1930s to the 1970s, a poem (and we assume, a song), was called a “little drama.” This came true, to some extent, with the rise of videos which began to accompany popular music—but the fact is, a poem (and a song) are “dramas”—but only up to a point. They are not plays. Rhythm is central.
Compared to Creedence, Williams sounds polite—almost like a melancholy recitation of poetry backed by some lovely guitar work.
Winner Creedence Clearwater Revival
Donovan
Sunshine Superman
Hurdy Gurdy Man
vs
The Moody Blues
Nights In White Satin
I’m Just A Singer In A Rock n’ Roll Band
“Nights In White Satin” is tremendously popular among older people. We don’t know how popular it is among the young. It belongs to that time—1950s thru the 70s—when melody and love and angst flowered in popular music with the same fervor expressed by Romanticism in literature from the 1790s thru the 1820s. “I’m Just A Singer in A Rock n’ Roll Band” is similar in feeling, but uptempo. “Nights In White Satin” reached 103 in the U.S. charts when released as a single in 1967. It was re-issued in 1972 and reached number 2. It’s a 60s song, but we think of it as a 70s song. The fate of this hyper-sentimental/deep song was similar to a hyper-sentimental/deep band like Pink Floyd, who began in the 60s but became extremely successful in the early 70s.
Donovan went to India with the Beatles—and helped Paul write the lyrics to “Yellow Submarine.” He belonged to the 60s troubadour movement (one can see it expressed in the Stones’ “Lady Jane) in which musical artists were self-consciously expressing themselves as Romantic poets from a gentle, misty past. The better artists, like Donovan, did not blindly imitate—they were aware that one had to live in the present and that worshiping the past ought to be done with self-awareness and a bit of humor, and shouldn’t be the only thing one is known for. “Hurdy Gurdy Man” sounds sincere in its complaining—like “Nights In White Satin” and is almost as beautiful, though there is a heavy rock backing in “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” as if Donovan didn’t want to sound overly twee as he sang “lo-o-o-ve” in an echo-whisper.
“Sunshine Superman” (1966), with its celtic melody and poetic/romantic lyrics, also has an exciting rhythm—“Sunshine Superman” leads straight to T. Rex territory, who then ushered in glam. Of course these simple influences never happen as we think; all we can really say is Donovan seemed to be juggling a ball or two more than most of his peers.
Winner Donovan
Simon & Garfunkel, The Troggs, and Creedence also advance.
This ends round one. The next round determines the Sweet 16.