Customer Reviews

The Rock 'n' Roll Era: The '60s: Keep On Rockin' (Time Life Music)

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Most of the tracks on this CD are available in other collections or on compilations of the individual artist or group. What really makes this worthwhile is the particular selection of hits from 1960-1964. There is a certain "flavor" to the 60s pop music that this CD captures. Moreover, there are a couple of songs that didn't seem to get much AM radio playing time back then but are, in my estimation, great to hear again. In this case the playlist has The Ventures "Perfidia" and Dion's "Little Diane". The sound quality is of course excellent.

All are the original hits played on the radio. The big hits are My Boyfriend's Back, Nadine, Spanish Harlem, Come and Get These Memories, The One Who Really Loves You, Little Diane, Dear Lady Twist and Maybe I Know. Peanut Butter was played too much. Some of these I never heard like Lover's Island, It's Gonna Work Out Fine by Ike & Tina Turner and All In My Mind. But it is a good collection. My personal favorites which make this worth having are: Spanish Harlem, Come and Get These Memories,Perfidia, The One Who Really Loves You, If You Got To Make a Fool of Somebody and Maybe I Know.

It was ordered for my mother-n-law Birthday, she loves the music. It was received in great condition and was here within 2 weeks.

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock `n' Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of '68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that <em>Zeitgeist</em> today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some "hot" song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and...ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip " inside" stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say doin' the do in case the kids are around, and about the local "custom" (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic "watching the submarine races."

Whee! That's maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I'm not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation shows a dreamy girl waiting for her platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boy friend. Lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boy friend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-"Have you heard Spanish Harlem. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let's say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to ... for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc, etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what on that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation on this CD