1965 in Review

Apr 16, 2024

My brief stint in the music of 1965 is over. I have more thoughts on the process than I do on the year, at this point, but I’ll spare you from reading about me failing to write blog posts.

The Music

Assuming I was good at record keeping, I listened to 23 albums. All of them I really really listened to, and a lot of them I listened to a number of times. The full list is below, but some notables:

  • Beatles - Rubber Soul: I had a good long Beatles kick the past few years, so this was ripe, but Rubber Soul is rock solid and I love it more than I did before.
  • Jackson C. Frank - Jackson C Frank: I have a feeling this wasn’t really an “of the time” album, so much as it was popularized later in memorial. Or maybe that means it’s even more “of the time”? That’s fine, because I’m glad I found it. This is one of the few I had never heard, and never even heard of.
  • Ben E. King - Seven Letters: He had a long career and I was somewhat familiar with his songs, but this is a cool whole piece of music and I was not expecting it at all.
  • John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: This is one of those renowned and definitive late jazz albums that everybody loves. No surprise there.

Most Played: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

Overall, there actually wasn’t as much music as I was expecting. I’m sure I’m missing a ton. I intentionally avoided a whole slew of Jazz. There was a lot of Soul/R&B and country that is probably great, but didn’t seem to fit the spirit of “The Album Era.”

I definitely added some new music to my permanent rotation, and I definitely got a bit of a sense of what music might have been like that year. By all measures, that was my intention and this was a huge success.

The List

  • The Beach Boys - The Beach Boys Today!
  • The Beatles - Help!
  • The Beatles - Rubber Soul
  • The Bee Gee’s Sing & Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs
  • Ben E. King - Seven Letters
  • Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch
  • Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
  • Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
  • The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man
  • Frank Sinatra - September Of My Years
  • Jackson C. Frank - Jackson C Frank
  • Joan Baez - Farewell, Angelina
  • John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
  • John Fahey - The Transfiguration Of Blind Joe Death
  • The Kinks - The Kink Kontroversy
  • Merle Haggard - Strangers
  • Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
  • Nina Simone - I Put A Spell On You
  • Otis Redding - Otis Blue
  • Paul Simon - The Paul Simon Songbook
  • Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Going To A Go-Go
  • Them - The “Angry” Young Them!
  • Wilson Pickett - In the Midnight Hour
  • The Yardbirds - Having a Rave Up with The Yardbirds