Review:

on 2011-03-05 CharlesMartel Said:

Everyone has one of these albums, an album of sixties pop classics. It is one of those albums which forms the centrepiece of a lot of parties because you can be sure that, whoever likes what and objects to listening to this, no one will have any insurmountable objections to listening to some good old sixties pop. So, albums like these pop up all the time, and get bought. Sometimes they appear on TV being advertised at special prices which are ridiculously low. But whatever, albums like these are essential and everybody needs one.

This is nothing more and nothing less than that. You will recognise every single track on it, (unless you are a dullard who only knows one genre of music or a devotee of fake RnB who thinks that black music begins and ends with Macy Gray). This was music which came from an era when popular music could still change the world. This was pop music from the days before the world divided into pop and the rest; the days before the record companies' efforts to control the direction and the taste of popular music became overpowering; the days before pop became largely synonymous with transient, inoffensive pap put out by manufactured creations of record company A&R men.

Anyone who has read my reviews of other compilations will know what I am going to say next. Too true - everyone has one, everyone will say, '...but XYZ is missing!' This is quite right. There is at least one of my favourite tracks from the era which should have been on her and is not. My XYZ is the Monkees' "I'm A Believer". I had to go elsewhere to find that. Other than that, why would anyone not like this compilation?

Surprisingly, but thankfully I suppose, there are no Beatles or Rolling Stones tracks here. I say thankfully, because we all have Beatles and Rolling Stones albums anyway, don't we? The same might go for the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Who, but this is an album of tracks by one-hit-wonders and artists who never quite captured the popular imagination to the same extent as the greats. Most of the artists featured on this compilation are in such a vein - Gary Puckett and the Union Gap; Frank Ifield; Simon Dupree; Arthur Brown. Each produced a single great song for which they will be eternally, and gratefully remembered, but the rest of whatever they did pretty much nobody knows of cares. There is also no Motown stuff, but that really belongs in a different collection of classics from the sixties so that is probably a good thing as well.

What you have then are songs which epitomise all that was good about sixties pop. Short, sharp songs; call and response refrains; catchy melodies; and lyrics which catch you in a good mood and hold onto you. No virtuosity, no flash, just good honest music which sounds as good today as it did when it first came out. These are songs we have all heard and most of us probably have a great deal of affection for. They are songs from a time when music was simpler, when even life seemed simpler. They are the songs of our youth. Isn't that really the way it should be.

The omission of that quintessential Monkees' song apart, this is a great compilation - or one like it is.
Rating: 8/10