Customer Reviews

Cruisin 1965

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Those of you who grew up listening to the incredible (and now late, great) Robert W. Morgan on KHJ in LA will get a kick out of this album. It's essentially an aircheck from one summer day in 1965, shortly after KHJ went on the air and basically took over LA pop radio for five years. The songs are all hits of the day in their full versions, unlike a real aircheck where the songs would be abbreviated. This is a great album in the series.

Back when Bill Drake's "More Music" format first hit the airways, I decried it as the death of creative rock radio as we knew it. Forty years later, I bought Cruisin' 1965 and welcomed it back with open arms. Robert W. Morgan was quick, witty and as smooth as butter, using the KHJ jingles and hitting musical posts like the master he was. When the Cruisin' series first came out, I complained because it didn't have the greatest hits from each year; imagine 1965 without The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Stones or Motown. But in reality, Cruisin' 1965 sounds just the way Top 40 was back then, with a pastiche of hits that ran the gamut from The Ramsey Lewis Trio to Roger Miller. You buy a Cruisin' album to rediscover a fabulous retro radio experience . . . and there were few better than Robert W. Morgan on Boss Radio KHJ! The one flaw? Increase Records lost the rights to some of the songs on the originally released vinyl series. On a tightly produced radio reconstruction, that can be the kiss of death. On Cruisin' 1965, the surgery is a bit more arthroscopic, so it is still a great listen. But the surgical cuts still cost it one star in my book!

I bought the first LP version in 1973, then the cassette later on and now the CD. No way this album could be improved for those living the golden era of pop music circa 1965. It truly leaves nothing out. Fromthe cartoon cover to the jingles, to the airchecks to the song selection. In fact the whole Crusin' series is top notch but 1965 is the best of the best.

To this day I can remember seeing the orange cartoon mail carrier in my local post office, "Mr. Zippy" reminding folks to USE THAT ZIP CODE! I loved "Eve of Destruction," the social commentary against the Vietnam War.

On 2/12/2000 I heard Barry McGuire, along with John Michael Talbot sing this wonderful social classic and that was such a treat. I also loved the 1965 Studebaker commercial. (I was a child of a Ford Falcon sedan household, loved that car so much that I would, 30 years later name my dog after that very cool car).

I would have given this a 4 or maybe a 5 star rating, but "the Name Game" cost it a star (or two). I just can't stand that idiotic piece and have found it impossible to listen to ever since I was a very young child. In adult life, I find I hate the "Name Game" as much now as I did as a child. It was the very first thing I hated to the point of being unable to listen to. It is sheer torture.