718. revolution

“It’s 1969 and Nina Simone, one of the great voices (and souls) to ever descend upon music, delivers the closest thing she’ll ever have to a pop album. Artists covered include Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, even the Beatles (sort of) with Revolution less of a cover, more of a rousing riff on John Lennon’s call to consciousness (if not arms). Music to change the world either way. Or as a friend once put it, if this is what a political meeting sounded like, I’d join a f***ing party.” (Philip Random)

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728. Mother Upduff

It’s 1969 with the Euro hippie underground in a state of serious flux and eruption in the wake of all the uprisings and insurrections of 1968. Nevertheless Can, four German weirdoes and their American singer, poet, frontman (who will soon go at least slightly mad) find a few moments to throw down a strange little ditty about the Upduff family and their troubled trip to Italy. WARNING: if your grandma dies while traveling in a region populated by well organized car theft rings, don’t wrap her up in a tarp and tie her to the top of the car.

753. Phallus Dei

West German hippie artist types Amon Duul weren’t even a band really, more committed to overthrowing the whole corrupt western system than something as bourgeois as “making it” in music. Which led to an inevitable split. Who knows what exactly happened to the politicos? But the others renamed themselves Amon Duul II and unleashed an album called Phallus Dei (translating as God’s Phallus) upon the world. And big and virile and scary it was, particularly the side long title track.

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766. I’m Tired

In which Savoy Brown emerge from the depths of their trad-blues commitments to deliver a uniquely laid back but strong 1969 truth – a time when, if you were properly cool, you had very long hair, smoked a lot of dope, and didn’t mince words when it came to your opinion on the f***ed up state of the world, man.

SavoyBrown-1969

774. starship

In which the legendary MC5 kick things so hard, loud and superlative that the very rules of physics break down, all known boundaries of space and time dissolve, music and noise fuse as a higher sonic form, Sun Ra‘s starship is encountered roughly halfway to Jupiter (or perhaps Africa), and entire galaxies are set blissfully free.

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790. Willie the Pimp

Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart in full-on freak mode from 1969’s Hot Rats. Dare a freak ask for more?  Yeah, actually, or more to the point, less of the noodly jamming that eats up so much of the nine plus minutes running time, and more of the Captain being the Captain. But really, who’s complaining?

Beefheart+Zappa-1969