My All-Time Favorite Song From The 1960's is Petula Clark's "Downtown"...

... what's yours?

Yeah, it's piffle from a canned "band," but I love the heavy attention paid to orchestration -- especially in the vocal arrangements -- from that era. The final chorus of that song is so spooky and cool, I just love it.

The Association was no "canned band", not by a long shot. At least three of them had jazz backgrounds, one (Gary Alexander, I think) was classically trained, and all of them were musical prodigies. Even Ruthann Friedman, the 15-year-old fan of the Association who wrote "Windy" about her boyfriend, was ahead of her time.

It may be true that they had their hits with the lighter stuff, but just listen to some of the lesser-known Association tracks. Some of their music especially on Insight Out and Birthday has never been equalled. The Association wasn't just a "guilty pleasure," it was one of those bands that influenced other bands but never got the critical adulation it deserved.

It's certainly worth a second listen.

--p!

Downtown

:)

:yourock:

Written by Burt Bachrach and Hal David, sung by the incomparable Dusty Springfield.

My favorite Petula Clark song, though, is "Color My World" :-)

That is the Jam!

and "These Boots are Made for Walkin"

My mother told me I sang that song over and over till it pissed her off..lol.
Another one was The Wonderer 45. She told me if I played it one more time she would break my record...I played it again :evilgrin:
She chased me around the house w/ it and cracked it on my head. She bought me another one years later..lol. Ahh ..memories.

Actually on edit, I think that was early 70's.

When I think of the 60's I usually think of folk music. So let's say the Byrds doing Dylan's "Turn, Turn, Turn"

Tommy James and The Shondells - Crimson and Clover
Beatles - Come Together
Beach Boys - Time to Get Alone

That those were simpler times? I know that people in every generation must face their own problems, but I would like to think those were simpler times. America has lost it's soul.

those were very, very complicated times. In the mid-sixties our schools were just getting integrated. By the time Martin Luther King was assassinated, all that anger just came pouring forth from the black kids who resented the murder of such a wonderful man and cities were burning. One of my brothers was beaten up every day in the majority black middle school he attended. My oldest brother was overseas in a pointless war serving in the army in Saigon, the middle brother of mine was slated to go, until he lost his fingers in an industrial accident. I think 1968 was probably the most difficult year of my life. I was nine.

And you didn't have all this technology that supposedly was created to make your life simpler, but in reality only enslaves you. I'm a bit of a Luddite if you haven't guessed. (By the by, don't bother posting the irony of my derailing technology, while at the same time using it's benefits, I already realize that.) It is kind of like wrestling though. You have to use your opponent's weight against them.:P

that what you posted really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm a middle aged woman who was the first in my family to graduate from college. I went back to school to study computer science. That's how I support myself.

I do remember the 60's though, very rough period the late sixties and not a bit innocent.

and another song I can't remember the name of, (only a few lyrics) "...this is my song, here is a song, a serenade, to you..."

Petula also recorded this song in French, Italian, and German

Why is my heart so light?
Why are the stars so bright?
Why is the sky so blue
Since the hour I met you?

Flowers are smiling bright
Smiling for our delight
Smiling so tenderly
For all the world, you and me

<snip snip>

chorus...

I care not what the world may say
Without your love there is no day
So, love, this is my song
Here is a song, a serenade to you

For his movie "A Countess in Hong Kong".

Beautiful song -- I love it, too.

--p!

Thank you! I LOVE that song.

Speaking words of wisdom...

I like Downtown, though. I also think about the song "little boxes". Not for it's music but for it's meaning.

but of pet clarks songs I liked Don't sleep in the subway better.

Desolation Row - Dylan
Blowin' In The Wind - Dylan
Eight Days a Week - Beatles
And Your Bird Can Sing - Beatles
Street Fighting Man - Stones
19th Nervous Breakdown - Stones
Heroes and Villians - Beach Boys
Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
Substitute - The Who
The Kids are Allright - The Who
Delilah - Tom Jones
Can't Get Next To You - Temptations
A Change is Going To Come - Sam Cooke
Spanish Harlem - Aretha Franklin
Tears of a Clown - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
What'd I Say - Ray Charles
Sunshine Superman - Donovan
Time Has Told Me - Nick Drake
Day After Day - Shango

You had the whole Ye-Ye Girls music scene, French folk music (which started earlier than the American folk music scene), and some of the most talented, wacked-out composers who ever trod the Earth, like Serge Gainsbourg (newly discovered by American hipsters), Francoise Hardy, Michel Polnareff, Jacques Brel, Etienne Daho, Johnny Hallyday, Jacques Dutronc, and probably a dozen others I have forgotten.

And need I tell any fan of Petula Clark that more than half of her catalog is in French? She married a French record exec named Claude Wolff, and their marriage has lasted a long, long time.

--p!

Many other that I love, but that one will always be special to me.