As detailed ad nauseum in past Pencil Storm blogs I started listening to rock & roll music from the back seat of my sainted Italian father’s Oldsmobile at five years old in 1957, while my 12-year old sister Dianne commanded the dials of our dashboard radio from her front-seat perch. (My 15-year old brother Al shared the back seat, peering out the window; dreaming, dreaming.)
Detailed here are the first five PERFECT rock & roll songs I heard on that (and later, other) radios: songs that combined music, lyrics, power, performance, attitude (and sometimes tenderness) into five fine, fine, superfine packages; the first five songs I wouldn’t change ONE SECOND of…….
THE REVOLUTION STARTS HERE, 1957
I chose this clip over some of the more obvious ones (there’s an Ed Sullivan Show take I’m sure most of you have seen) for not only the matronly-host intro, but for the general “There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?” vibe. And I have to wonder; Did those debutantes of 1957 find Buddy Holly & the Crickets icky & weird, or did they kinda dig the proto-rock & roll they were lucky enough to be seeing, in their finest formal gowns?
TWO 60’S SONGS THAT ESTABLISHED HOW I THOUGHT ROCK & ROLL SHOULD SOUND, AND HOW I STILL THINK IT SHOULD TO THIS DAY.
(By the way, 1965’s Rave-Up by The Yardbirds was the first album I ever bought with my own money, courtesy of the 50 cents an hour I made working at the Dairy Queen across the street from my house on the West Side of Columbus. My previous LP’s had all been Christmas and birthday presents from the family.)
It’s something of a cliche, but you’ve gotta crank these next two tunes UP LOUD for the full effect, cats & kittens.
THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES, 1967
The first perfect rock & roll ballad I ever heard.
(Incidentally, rock & roll lyrics are not poetry and vice versa, but “I begged for her to tell me if she really loved me / Somewhere a mountain is moving, I fear it’s moving without me” in the 2nd verse of this rather sublime tune comes close to the best of Frost, Dickinson and their brethren & sistren of the written word.)
And then, later in 1967, everything began to change. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and suddenly the “Concept Album” reigned, forever demolishing the one-hit wonder garage-band 45-rpm singles format I grew up loving from five to fifteen. Psychedelia was on the horizon, The San Franscisco bands were just about to render the 3-minute song as quaint as an Elizabethan minuet, country-rock was rearing it’s sleepy, laid-back head, and somehow this tune that I loved from Buffalo Springfield captured it all in one great 4:29 minute tune. Bye-bye rock & roll; hello ROCK.
Ricki C. just turned 70 last summer and only occasionally fervently wishes it was still the 1960’s; apparently this week was one of those times.