Circa 69: song titles and info on the albums used

Circa 1969 Tape Notes

 

 

                                  Songs on Circa '69 Tape

Side A                                                                    Side B

Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie                                                        In Brooklyn

Prologue/Someday (8/29/68)                                                                       The Boxer

Spinning Wheel                                                                                  Can’t Find My Way Home

Easy To Be Hard                                                                                   Here Comes the Sun

You Should Have Listened to Al                                                         We Can Be Together

Magic Carpet Ride                                                                            Monster/Suicide/America 

Good Shepherd                                                                                              Undun

The Weight                                                                                        A Song For All Seasons

Woodstock                                                                                                 Fire and Rain

FISH Cheer and I-Feel-Like-                                                             Across the Universe

I’m-Fixin-To-Die Rag                                                                               Oh! Susanna

Fortunate Son 

Volunteers

Joe Hill

Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie and Spinning Wheel are from Blood, Sweat & Tears, released either in late 1968 or early 1969.    Prologue/Someday (August 29, 1968) is from Chicago Transit Authority, released in 1969.  Both  BS&T and CTA were produced by the same guy, James William Guercio.

Easy To Be Hard is from Three Dog Night’s 2^nd album, Suitable For Framing, which, like their first album, was released in 1969.  Easy To Be Hard hit the top of the singles charts in July 1969—information I got from the group’s web page, which includes a current photo and has a link that says, “To find out how to book Three Dog Night please click here.”  (History question:  What “giant leap for mankind” occurred in July 1969, about three weeks before Woodstock?)

You Should Have Listened to Al and In Brooklyn are from Al Stewart’s second album, Love Chronicles, released in 1969 and called the “folk album of the year” by Melody Maker magazine.  I bought it in 1974.  Jimmy Page plays lead guitar on this album.        Magic Carpet Ride is from Steppenwolf The Second.  Even though the album came out in 1968, the song is in one of the 1969 scenes from “The Spy Who Shagged Me,” no doubt because it’s a groovy song.  I thought it might have been from 69 until I checked—yes—the  Steppenwolf web site.

Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album, their last album together, was released in November 1969.  It’s the main album that inspired me to make this tape.  The songs on here from the album are Good Shepherd, Volunteers, We Can Be Together, and A Song for All Seasons.          The Weight is from The Band’s first album, Music from Big Pink, released in 1968.  Jackie DeShannon’s version of the song was on the radio starting in January or February 1969—the version most people (including me) first heard. 

Woodstock, written by Joni Mitchell, is on her Ladies of the Canyon  album.  The album was released in 1970, but several songs on it, including Woodstock, have 1969 copyright dates.          One of the anti-war highlights at Woodstock was Country Joe and the Fish’s (revised)  Fish Cheer and I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag, which both appeared on the group’s 1967 album, I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-To-Die.   Machine gun and other war sounds are part of the original song.   I recorded this song, as well as Easy To Be Hard, The Weight, and Magic Carpet Ride, from a CD called The Summer of  Peace, Love and Music, Vol. 3 (1994).

Fortunate Son is from Creedence’s Willy and the Poor Boys, released in November 1969.        Joan Baez singing Joe Hill was another anti-war highlight at Woodstock.   I recorded Joe Hill onto this tape from my prerecorded Woodstock cassette, which I bought in 1970 when the album was released.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was Simon and Garfunkel’s last studio album together, released in 1970.  Most of the songs, including The Boxer, have 1969 copyright dates.           Can’t Find My Way Home, by Steve Winwood, is from Blind Faith (1969).  Eric Clapton, Rick Grech, and Ginger Baker were also in the group. 

Here Comes the Sun, from Abbey Road (1969), is by George Harrison.      Steppenwolf’s Monster came out in 1969.   I had a cassette copy of it back then, but for this tape I bought a clean vinyl copy at Papa Jazz Record Shoppe (in Columbia, SC), where I also bought Canned Wheat Packed by the Guess Who (1969).  The album version of Undun begins with a brief piano solo.

Sweet Baby James, with Carole King on piano, was recorded in December 1969 and released in 1970.  Fire and Rain has a 1969 copyright date.  Stephen Foster wrote Oh! Susanna.

The Beatles, who broke up 30 years ago this month, released different albums in the United Kingdom and the U.S.  Some are the same, but some U.K. releases were not released in the U.S., and vice-versa.  Across the Universe is on Let It Be (1970), a U.S. release, but the version I used here (nature sounds included) is in an EMI (U.K.) Beatles collection I borrowed from Trip Martin and recorded in December 1983.   This version of the song originally appeared on a benefit album for the World Wildlife Fund (other groups besides the Beatles had songs on it) called  No One’s Gonna Change Our World, released in 1969.  Peace!

                                                                                                                      

DWT  April 8, 2000

In the clearing stands a boxer,

And a fighter by his trade

And he carries the reminders

Of  ev’ry glove that laid him down

And cut him till he cried out

In his anger and his shame,

“I am leaving, I am leaving.”

But the fighter still remains

Lie-la-lie . . .

Thanks to Deborah for use of equipment and some CD’s, and encouragement toward finishing this project.