Progress 1968

Rock's golden age happened to correspond with the golden age of vinyl. The first of a series that explores this music year by year, this book documents the albums you should hear and own from 1968. It includes more than 350 recommendations, 46 of which are featured as essential.

A LAVISH GUIDE TO THE ALBUMS THAT MATTER

The greatest albums from the greatest period in the history of popular music were disseminated on 12-inch circles of pressed black plastic. There were other formats but none that competed for dominance, and the whole point of rock was to separate an album culture from singles-based pop.

The fact that rock artists found other ways to fill those 12-inch circles than simply collections of three minute songs, in defiance of the economics, the commercial pressures, the disapproval of their labels, and radio playlists, is the joy of the age. Individual singles from the period exist in undifferentiated globs to be plucked out of history at random and discarded just as quickly. It is the albums of that period, albums half a century old, that last and will continue to last as long as there are people with ears to enjoy them.

This series of books documents the golden age year by year, revealing how a succession of remarkable developments took place over a very short period of time. The golden age of rock was gone in a flash, but within its brief lifespan every year was different, and it left us every form of music that followed.

In each volume, Scott Meze discusses the overall changes in rock — what was happening and why — and lists the albums that you should hear and preferably own in whatever format is most convenient to you.

1968

This was the pivotal year for rock, the year everything changed. The band that had led the ascent on culture’s pinnacles, infusing into its sound folk, classical, world music, even free jazz, and rendering all these other musics obsolete, had now abdicated its position at the head of the assault. Where the Beatles had once confidently signposted the future, other artists and bands stepped in, each pointing in a different direction.

By the end of 1968 the cultural appropriation was complete. Rock bands were playing with orchestras and recording elaborate multi-part suites. Much of this music rejected tension and release for the sensation of the moment. Folk artists had either all electrified or were incorporating rock and jazz rhythms into their work. Jazz itself either compromised its standards or raised its game to attract a rock-fixated college audience. In all cases, rock was the winner, and every other form of music accommodated itself to rock to survive.

Special features include:

• An introduction that places the year in context
• An exploration of how the rock infrastructure developed in 1968, including changes in recording technology, concert venues, sound and staging, touring, festivals, management styles, record labels, radio and other media, rock journalism, the business of promoting and investing in performers, and drugs
• A look at the significant singles of the year
• The rise of the album as a physical object of worth, including gatefold sleeves, cover gimmicks, double and triple albums, thematic and narrative concept albums, long songs and side-length suites, the creation of the album as a guided journey that you played from start to finish, quadraphonic, and the acceptability of swearing
• Separate in-depth sections on movements in 1968 in psychedelia and psychedelic rock, prog rock, folk and roots music, blues, blues rock and heavy metal, soul, jazz, electronic music, and all kinds of fringe music from David Axelrod to Captain Beefheart
• Two full pages on every featured album, including a graphic representation of the vinyl surface