HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”
Herman’s Hermits
Herman’s Hermits On Tour
1965 | MGM

Herman’s Hermits seem to me to be the ultimate faceless British band, sent across the ocean to capitalize on “Beatlemania.” Sort of the Candlebox of the mid 1960’s: the group’s manager, Mickie Most (again, predating svengalis like Colonel Tom Parker and Malcolm Mclaren) sought to create a clean-cut and non-threatening image for the band. This  career pattern garnered Herman’s Hermits a pair of US #1 hits, before the changing musical climate of the 1960’s rendered the group redundant, a novelty. Just like the Beach Boys!
More on Herman’s Hermits | “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”
Herman’s Hermits
Herman’s Hermits On Tour
1965 | MGM

Herman’s Hermits seem to me to be the ultimate faceless British band, sent across the ocean to capitalize on “Beatlemania.” Sort of the Candlebox of the mid 1960’s: the group’s manager, Mickie Most (again, predating svengalis like Colonel Tom Parker and Malcolm Mclaren) sought to create a clean-cut and non-threatening image for the band. This  career pattern garnered Herman’s Hermits a pair of US #1 hits, before the changing musical climate of the 1960’s rendered the group redundant, a novelty. Just like the Beach Boys!
More on Herman’s Hermits | “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”

HIDDEN GEM
Richard & Mimi Fariña
Reflections in a Crystal Wind
1965 | Vanguard

I became familiar with Richard & Mimi Fariña’s music through a short bio about Richard in his 1966 novel, Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me, a work which focuses on the life and times of a college drop-in and dropout as he seeks solace, wisdom, and kicks through the counterculture. Fariña wrote the book while attending Cornell University – friends on campus included Thomas Pynchon – so we can rightly assume that the details therein form a telling portrait of both Fariña himself and his ’60s enclave. By any account I’ve read, he was a brilliant, waywardly talented individual, “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” and all of those dashed, explosive phrases that come to mind when a figure affiliated with the Beats or the Beat-ish is under consideration. Mimi was a character in her own right.
More on Richard & Mimi Fariña | Reflections in a Crystal Wind

HIDDEN GEM
Richard & Mimi Fariña
Reflections in a Crystal Wind
1965 | Vanguard

I became familiar with Richard & Mimi Fariña’s music through a short bio about Richard in his 1966 novel, Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me, a work which focuses on the life and times of a college drop-in and dropout as he seeks solace, wisdom, and kicks through the counterculture. Fariña wrote the book while attending Cornell University – friends on campus included Thomas Pynchon – so we can rightly assume that the details therein form a telling portrait of both Fariña himself and his ’60s enclave. By any account I’ve read, he was a brilliant, waywardly talented individual, “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” and all of those dashed, explosive phrases that come to mind when a figure affiliated with the Beats or the Beat-ish is under consideration. Mimi was a character in her own right.
More on Richard & Mimi Fariña | Reflections in a Crystal Wind

Vince Guaraldi Trio
“Christmas Time Is Here”
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Music by Vince Guaraldi; Lyrics by Lee Mendelson
1965 | Fantasy Records

It’s strange to find myself wishing for the triumph of uber-consumerism to help the economy, especially when unchecked capitalism in many of its incarnations is what got this country into financial dire straights in the first place, but here I am, albeit sheepishly, doing exactly that, especially once Black Friday officially kicked off the season. Perhaps this uncomfortable irony explains the greater than usual cultural significance of A Charlie Brown Christmas, even to a nice Jewish girl like me, with its counterleveling message of the import of spirituality and community over commercialism and greed, all graced, of course, by Charles Schulz’s humor. The opening track of the second side, “Christmas Time Is Here,” with music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi and lyrics by television producer Lee Mendelson, sets the more serious undertone, particularly in the last stanza with children’s voices singing “Christmas time is here / we’ll be drawing near / Oh that we could always see / such spirit through the year / such spirit through the year.” More somber than the other songs on this soundtrack scored by Guaraldi in 1965, it has just the right amount of Americana nostalgia without overdoing it to render it a classic, palatable to even the cynical. It’s also a beautiful melody, with a delicacy that matches Schulz’s underlying sensibility. Initially, CBS didn’t want to air the show and particularly disliked the music. They believed that it would be over the heads of younger audiences. Apparently not, since this project has proven to be one of the most successful of the 17 projects on which Guaraldi collaborated with Mendelson until Guaraldi died in 1973.

by Alicia Dreilinger

Hidden Gem:
John Fahey
The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
1965 | Riverboat (re-released 1997 | Takoma)

Equal parts dense and capacious, terrestrial and unknown, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, originally distributed in the sixties, offers entree not only into the weird and transcendent nature of John Fahey’s creativity, but into the weird and transcendent nature of creativity itself. The entire album, a dreamlike concatenation of guitar-driven musings, is filled with modest, yet picayune paradoxes that unfold in surprising ways.
More on Record Review: The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death