Tag: 1964

1964, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, 2019, Movies, TV

The Up Documentaries (1964, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, 2019)

When I first was trying to figure out how I would sum this up, I said “probably the most ambitious documentary project ever.” I should have said “in English” as this idea was actually not invented by this series. Rather, the Germans beat the British to it by a few years. Due to typical Anglo …

1964, Movies

Woman in the Dunes [砂の女 or Suna no onna] (1964)

This is a really distinct and kind of crazy film that pairs a plot that could be in a horror film with a bit of a retelling of the story of Sisyphus. It is also, perhaps, the most incredible use of sand in a movie in film history. Very mild spoilers

1964, 1966, Music

Lightfoot! (1966) by Gordon Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot was born in 1938. He was relatively old when he released his debut album. And, though this shouldn’t matter, it’s really apparent in 1966, when this was released. Because something happened in the early ’60s after Lightfoot began his career, while he was refining his style, recording his debut but, importantly, well before …

1964, Music

Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian (1964) by Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash always had a little bit of a rebellious streak in him, one which conflicted with what was acceptable to many Americans at time. (Think of the famous middle finger or, a few years after this, recording albums at prisons.) One assumes that is one reason why he made this record, aside from a …

1964, Music

Where Did Our Love Go (1964) by The Supremes

A lot of Motown albums don’t hold up that well 55 years later, as many of them if not most of them are sort of built the same way that rock and roll albums of the ’50s were built – a bunch of hit singles, their b-sides and then a bunch of dross that was …

1964, Music

All Summer Long (1964) by The Beach Boys

I just listened to A Hard Day’s NIght for the nth time before listening to this record, because they both came out in the same month. And the problem with doing that is that the Beatles record makes All Summer Long sound like it is from another time; as if popular music has passed the …

1964, Music

The Rolling Stones (1964)

If you were British when this came out, and especially if you were a kid in Britain which didn’t have access to London’s blues scene (or any of the other blues scenes, if they existed), this record was likely a revelation to you – dirty, gritty, blues-based music (more blues-based than anything you’d ever heard …

1964, Music

Ain’t That Good News (1964) by Sam Cooke

I can understand the reluctance to listen to pre-British Invasion LPs individually. So many of them are scattershot collections of singles, b-sides and filler and you’re often better off listening to a curated greatest hits package, unless you’re a really big fan of the artist, and want to hear them even at their laziest or …

1901, 1902, 1910, 1911, 1935, 1958, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1987, Music

Ives: Symphonies Nos 2 and 3; The Unanswered Question (1966) by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Berstein

This is a compilation of the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Berstein’s performances of the middle symphonies and The Unanswered Question, originally a piece paired with another but one that has found a lot of attention as a standalone.

1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1966, 1976, 1996, Movies

Bernard Hermann: The Film Scores (1996) by Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen

This is a hilariously named compilation – it implies some level of completeness – but it’s actually an interesting survey, focused almost exclusively on Hitchcock scores.

1926, 1930, 1932, 1942, 1953, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1971, 2003, Music

Complete Organ Works (2003) by Maurice Durufle, performed by Friedhelm Flamme

The pipe organ must be one of the seriously neglected instruments of 20th century “classical” music, at least from the perspective of us musical naifs. I mean, even though there are plenty of notable organ and organ-centric compositions, very few of those have actually made it into mass awareness. The little bit of organ music …