Talk To You – The Small Faces – This is Steve Marriott feeling his way to the soul singer he would be a little later, he isn’t at “Little Tin Soldier” levels but he has the chops for it, and on this piece of garage soul, he seems miles from psychedelia but not miles from the Stones circa 12 x 5, less cool and more heart. The rest of Marriot’s career, all the stuff he’d be doing with Humble Pie, capsizes on his masterwork. The improvisations are pure black soul but the timbre doesn’t have the banged up smoke chilled future sound.
When You Awake – The Band – As aphorisms go “I could wake up in the morning dead” and “If I thought it’d do any good I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood” is way way up there and as the Band songs go, stranded in The Band, this one shines while everything around it also shines. It is like the birth of Americana, a folk world of strangeness somewhere between dream state and a restless wakefulness of the soul balance by nihilism inescapable.
Tallulah – Tori Amos – A personal best, this story of a baby with Native American abstractions, safe with her mother, careens into a maternal grab bag and a metaphor so astounding and visually arresting you can’t not see it once you’ve heard it: “wrapped in your caboose you little fig newton”.
Hello, I Love You – The Doors – The great though well-known secret of the Doors is as art rock bands go, they made a much better pop-art band and only “Light My Fire” and “Love Street” approached this ode to both casual sex and hippie dreams of universal love, a scream of desire and also a scream of unity while the keyboards pounded their way through the addictive tune. Jim could write a smart verbal hook, “won’t you tell me your name” is both off hand and all inclusive.
