I remember it like it was yesterday. We were standing outside our apartment building on Grumman Avenue in the Weequahic section of Newark with our bikes getting ready for another all-day bike trip through Hillside and Irvington. The canteens were filled with tap water. The little transistor radio was dangling from the handlebars. Then “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians came on the radio and we freaked. The only time we ever got to hear it was when it came on the radio. That’s when we ran upstairs to finish the song on my buddy’s huge furniture radio with the booming bass. Man, we loved that song. We were 15. It was 1966.
“96 Tears” is one of 48 songs on Jon Savage’s 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded (Ace Records U.K.), two discs meant to be a soundtrack to his book of the same name. It’s the most fun I’ve had with a various-artists package in quite some time. Most I remember. Some I don’t. You may know “Night Time” by The Strangeloves due to Lenny Kaye choosing it for his Nuggets collection. Ten to one you don’t know “The Quiet Explosion” by The Uglys. I didn’t. Now it’s my new pick to click. At least in my household.
Highlights abound. Before Dusty Springfield settled into her sultry swamp groove, her “Little By Little” was a real rocker. There’s TV themes from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman. There’s James Brown, The Who, Link Wray, King Curtis, The Velvet Underground, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Joe Tex, Love, Otis Redding, Four Tops, The Yardbirds, The Supremes, Tim Hardin and even David Bowie.
I knew “Barefootin’” by Johnny Winter but Robert Palmer’s New Orleans original beats all. Then there are those songs that have lain dormant having been forgotten about for my adult life but, upon hearing, bring back a Technicolor kaleidoscope of smell, vision, feel and wonderment that puts me right back on Grumman Avenue where we threw our pink Spaldeen high-bounce balls against the stoop for hours on end. I’m talkin’ bout “Cool Jerk” by The Capitols, “Along Comes Mary” by The Association, “Working In The Coalmine” by Lee Dorsey, “Land Of 1,000 Dances” by Wilson Pickett (a song I demanded to do in my first band, The Rock Garden), “Psychotic Reaction” by Count Five, “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game” by The Marvelettes and “Hand On To A Dream” by Tim Hardin. The only thing missing is “Morning Glory” by Tim Buckley (Jeff’s dad).
I would’ve rather had “Pushin’ Too Hard” by The Seeds (a Los Angeles band that pre-dated punk) instead of Savage’s choice of “The Other Place” but the former came out in 1965. Similarly, I would’ve rather had “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” by The Electric Prunes rather than “Ain’t It Hard” but the former came out in 1967. Savage, the Brit who wrote England’s Dreaming in 1991 which chronicled the rise and fall of The Sex Pistols, is hip enough to include “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a Texas band led by the infamous Roky Erickson, whose talent withered due to drugs and mental illness after he helped pioneer early examples of psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll. He’s still around and can be seen in and around the many clubs of Austin like a Founding Father of everything alternative.
It is absolutely amazing to me at 64 that this one year when I was 15 contained such a wide and esoteric assemblage of different genres all rocketing on the charts in three-minute bursts of all-out creativity on AM radio. FM Radio dented my brain that year too. There were no playlists back then. Each individual DJ played whatever the hell they wanted and my musical vision grew as I listened intently to WOR-FM and, a year later, to WNEW-FM where DJs like Murray The K, Scott Muni, Rosko, Alison Steele and Jonathan Schwartz molded my multi-genre aesthetic.
Now Jon Savage has brought it all back home.
