Recommendations of the editorial team
A genre with contradictions. Because Easy Listening found its way into the music mostly created in California as well as LSD trips. Some of the artists were family-friendly alternatives to the hippie time spirit, other real hippies. Jochen Overbeck says: The melody-loving albums of that time are one of the most beautiful side strands of the Sixties sound-and quite influential.
1. The Sunshine Company – Happy is (1967)
Even the opener leads the listener in the middle of one of the core topics of the genre: “Children Could Help Us Find the Way” is a hymn to childish naivety. The melody introduction takes place over the entire half hour of the album. The group from Los Angeles plays gently, popled popzuss-focused pop-up pops, which was prettied up with mild Latin influences in rhythm and a few orchestral arrangements. The most beautiful: “Four in the Mornin ‘” with his Fuzz guitar, the Beatles cover “Rain” and “Back on the Street”, at the same time the group’s largest charts hit.
2. The Free Design – Kites are Fun (1967)
Sampled in detail by the Avalanches, reixed by Stereolab, Caribou and others, loved by Tyler, The Creator. Why is it already clear in the title track: the band, consisting of members of the New York musician family Dedrick, built a decorative musical world that called on pop as well as Benjamin Britten.
Cembalo, trumpets and strings came here as well as “Bababa” choirs. In terms of arrangements, comparable to the large plants of the west coast, but less hippies.
3. The 5th dimension – Up, Up and Away (1967)
Jimmy Webb, whose greatest success later was the “Wichita Lineman” sung by Glen Campbell, wrote five songs for this debut album, including the title song, which brought it to five Grammys in 1968. The roots of the band in the soul can be seen in particular – as The Versatile, in 1965 they had tried a record deal with Motown. In terms of target group, the change of the band name and the sound was a turnaround: suddenly plates were released for the white mainstream market. As African Americans, they were the big exception in this genre.
4. Roger Nichols & The Small Circle of Friends – Roger Nichols & The Small Circle of Friends (1968)
Names such as Randy Newman and van Dyke Parks appear in the liner notes of this soft pop plate (as a “moral booster”). A good society that points in the right direction: Nichols plays feather-soft west coast pop, sometimes close to Easy Listening and mainly uses foreign material from Burt Bacharach to Lennon/McCartney. Sometimes he opens up, for example in the percussive rattling “Can I Go”. The plate sold slowly, it remained Nichols’ only regular studio album until the 2000s. Last year she was re -published at Wallpaper.
5. The Association – Birthday (1968)
In addition to The 5th Dimension, The Association was the most successful band of the genre. Your fourth album has the best arrangements. Bad tongues say: It is the Sunshine pop album of the (famous studio music combo) Wrecking crew! A look at the credits shows that this is not wrong, but in contrast to many other groups of the time, The Association wrote most of her songs itself. The strongest: “Everything That Touches You”, which you could also imagine as a Byrds number, “Barefoot Gentleman” with his baroque strike and the lively “Time for Livin ‘”.
6. The Clique – The Clique (1969)
The Clique came from Texas and were actually really psychedelic. Singer Randy Shaw took these influences as well as his band members when he was responsible for the Grass Roots and Mamas & The Papas together with Gary Zekley, and whose studio ranking took up this album. Two hypermelodious pop hits reach the band: “Myll Hold Out My Hand” and “Sugar on Sunday”. “Superman” Covert REM 1986 for her fourth album Lifes Rich Pageant.
7. Beachwood Sparks – The Tarnished Gold (2012)
“It’s time to Stop Pretending Those Days Gone”, the Beachwood Sparks sing in the opener of this record. And indeed, the present is really not a guideline to be created here. The Sunshine pop shines from every pore with the Californians, mixed with a good pinch of west coast folk of the Byrds school. But that is okay, after all, the transitions were fluid in the 1960s, and the vocal arrangements in songs like “Water from the Well” sound as if they came directly from Gary Usher’s pop laboratory.
8. The Gordian Knot – The Gordian Knot (1968)
From the University of Mississippi campus, this quartet initially landed in Greenwich Village and finally on the west coast. There it was noticeable Nancy Sinatra, who made it a tour of the US troops in Vietnam. Soon the Knots landed a record contract with Verve Records, with bands like The Velvet Underground and the Mother of Invention in the catalog also a popular label beyond jazz. That fits, even in retrospect: the songs of the only album have an amazing depth.
“The Year of the Sun” would also have suited the “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” soundtrack.
9. Sagittarius – present Tensse (1968)
Gary Usher, his head behind Sagittarius, was a busy musician: in the first half of the 60s he knocked out Surf-Singles in the felt week of the week. As a producer at Columbia Records, he shaped the sound of the Byrds, as if he wrote songwriter with Brian Wilson “in My Room”. The album is his opus Magnum. Together with Curt Boettcher, who almost simultaneously released the Gegin’s The Milline Millery, he merged ten pieces, some of which came from Boettcher’s other band The Ballroom. The highlight: “My World Fell Down”, originally recorded by the British band The Ivy League, comes here with Glen Campbell at the vocals.
10. Captain Soul – Jetstream Lovers (2003)
On the Internet it is claimed that the Great Terry Melcher and part-time beach boy Bruce Johnston should actually produce this record. Two years earlier, they had found warm words for the band’s debut. Unfortunately, that did not happen, but left no consequential damage: better than Ian Grimble (Ua Travis) they would not have done that either. The band from Northampton brings the Sunshine Pop into the new millennium, adds psychedelic and some Merseybeat and here and there feedback.
Pure teaching may not see the album in this list, but you should simply listen to “Captain of your soul”.
This article was first published in the ME 06/2020.