The Velvet’s first album (see ABON 0092) contained a wide variety of song types, styles and sounds - from bittersweet, twisted pop songs sung by the Hungarian ice-maiden Nico to distortion-heavy Bo-Diddley-from-another-planet-inspired guitar riffing. But even in the guitar-heavy rockers on that album Lou Reed’s lyrics were prominent in the mix and in revolutionising what could and what couldn’t or shouldn’t be said in a Rock or Pop song.

By the time we reach 1968 and the second Velvets’ album (‘White Light/White Heat’) all the subtlety and narrative focus of the first album - and Nico herself - had been jettisoned. In favour of all-out noise-assault. It had been there in patches on the first album - in ‘Run, Run, Run’ for example - but on the second it was given full rein. And if Lou’s words on the first album liberated lyrics from teenage innocence and naive unworldliness then the guitars, feedback, distortion and dollops of wailing organ noise on the second did something similar for music.

more

By 1968 Herb Alpert was already famous because of his trumpet playing and his Tijuana Brass records. But not because of his singing.

In fact he didn’t have the greatest of voices. He didn’t sing on record very often at all and he must have felt much more uncomfortable and uncertain singing rather than trumpeting. But I remember reading that John Lennon once said something like ‘I eventually started writing on the piano because I got too good at guitar and since piano was less natural to me I rediscovered fresh ideas there’. He could have been talking about Herb’s performance on ‘This Guy’. Because in using his less natural instrument – his voice – he went well beyond what must have been his comfort zone and in so doing he created a track that is more novel, more from the heart and just more expressive than any of his trumpet-playing Tijuana hits.

more

Perhaps not the most technically accomplished twin guitar track ever but easily the most mesmerising. Maybe it’s because they were brothers but John and Tom Fogerty’s guitars seemed to be genetically and instinctively related.

If music can take you to other places then this track has always taken me to the ocean.  The brothers are so in synch on this the first track fron the very first CCR album that they manage to take an old Blues shouting tune by Screaming Jay Hawkins and turn it seamlessly into a sublimely beautiful and undulating piece of magic that, for me, is as near pefect a metaphor for the rolling ocean as I can imagine. The way John’s lead guitar/surf rides alongside, then glides over the steady but undulating roll of Tom’s rhythm guitar/waves and then fades as it dissipates on the beach has always conjured up one thing to me – the ocean.     

Released 1968.

Available on the CD ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’: Amazon