1968

Another winner, but it is the 60s after all.  Today I will reverse the order.  I think  it's more effective that way.  I typically do,  so I don't know what the last few  were all about...

10.  Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
Morrison's first major personal statement is perhaps the birth of improvised rock.  It is impossible to ignore the jazz influence, but his Irish roots and blue-eyed soul are perhaps even more  prominent elements.  Here he has evolved from Them's shouter and pop hit-maker into the legend most  people think of today.  Musically, it is sonic poetry flowing like the rain on the grassy hills with its flutes, strings, and upright bass while the lyrics Celtic storytelling akin to Joyce, Thomas, et al.  Like many good albums, it's a lot like the album cover.

9.  The Jimi hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland
Jimi's final proper studio album and the Experience's last may be his best work.  Good reason too as he, Redding, and Mitchell take their music even further than the first two albums.  His work with Band of Gypsies is foreshadowed as much as what could have come had he made  it into the 70s.  Keyboards play a bigger part and songs flow even more naturally in and out of a classic structure and cosmic noise explosion.  Featuring some of his most memorable and lasting work it sets the standard very high for heavy jammy psychedelia spanning both rock and jazz.

8.  Blood, Sweat & Tears - Child is Father to the Man
At last!  Jewish soul music.  After establishing his name as one of New York's greatest musicians in The Blues Project and with Bob Dylan, Al Kooper puts a big group together with his buddies.  While "horn rock" became an embarrassment shortly after his departure, BS&T's debut is nothing short of perfection.  White kids who loved the sounds of the Apollo bust it out with killer songs with a distinctly Semitic sense of humor that would satisfy any Woody Allen fan.  Kooper's keyboards astonish on each track and highlights include "House in the Country" which predicts the post-hippie attitude with a lot more fun than Joni Mitchell or God forbid, the Eagles, and a cinematic cover of Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory."

7.  Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes
Tropical teen beat brought to you by Gilberto Gil.  These swinging teens with home-made pedals make the trippiest party album of the decade with dirty and percussive force that transcends any language barriers.  Their originals are as heady as anything coming out of California with titles like "Trem Fantasma" (Ghost Train) and "Ave Lucifer" (Lucifer Bird) and their reinterpretations of Tropicalia standards like "Bat Macumba" and "A Minha Menina" often best or at least equal versions by their elder composers.  The gap between garage psych and tropicalia, naturally an essential for anyone who is pro-fun.

6.  The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow
The first rock opera and the one that should have finally broken England's wildest band into the US.  The Pretties fall into the British Underground with the likes of Pink Floyd and new drummer Twink with this masterpiece of heavy psych.  The concept may be loose but that keeps its tragic tale a bit less goofy.  It would sadly be Dick Taylor's final statement with the band for many years and he wails at his best on "She Says Good Morning" and "Balloon Burning," the latter easily being the best song of the year.  While the titular character's life may not be realistic, make much sense or be relate-able, from "S.F. Sorrow is Born" to "Loneliest Person" the listener is definitely taken on a journey through a lifelong tragedy and it's mark is a heavy one, the kind the Pretties would continue to explore.

5.  The Outsiders - CQ
I am a bit behind on Nederbeat, but I do know that it's hard to beat the Outsiders' final album.  Firstly, look up the album cover.  The fact that such aesthetics were released at this time is enough to qualify it for this list.  Flawless songs that drip with loneliness and desperation all based around the use of HAM radio and often recorded though one only adds to that.  Frontman Wally Tax' Gypsy roots come out throughout this otherworldly psych/punk album.  Album opener "Misfit" could pass for the Sex Pistols if not for the vocals and the gorgeous ballad "You're Everything on Earth" is a heartbreaking tale prescient of cyberlove before the home computer was even a pipe dream.  It's even sadder than that.  The titles get even better with "It Seems Like Nothing's Gonna Come My Way Today" and "Happyville," a song from a stripper's perspective.  By the way, "CQ" is the HAM radio call for any response at all.

4.  Caravan - Caravan
Canterbury's best band makes their stunning debut here besting their former Wilde Flowers band mates in the Soft Machine.  One  of the most synchronized bands of all time, Caravan hone their free-form skills into short pop songs that don't skimp on the psych and prog.  This one is a bit darker than where the original quartet and a half would go on their following masterpieces with particularly strong results on the Gregorian "Cecil Rons" and "Ride."  Even more than usual, David Sinclair's keyboards stand out, but the playing from cousin Richard (bass), Pye Hastings (guitar), and Richard Coughlin (drums) are as masterful - Hastings' guitar establishing itself as easily the most tasteful in progressive rock.  Here his and Richard Sinclair's vocal interplay may even be at its best, creating a sound much greater than the sum of its parts.

3.  The Move - Move
The Birmingham's supergroup's debut is another often dismissed as another spotty singles collection slapped together with too many covers, but I disagree strongly.  The move were another group of five stratospheric professionals, much like Moby Grape, who the America-obsessed Brits even have the good taste to cover.  Roy Wood's songwriting may be the star, but Bev Bevan's drumming - the perfect medium between Bonahm and Moon, Tony Visconti's string arrangements, and Carl Wayne's swagger are major players as well.  Each distinct vocalist even gets a spotlight, best seen in Tervor Burton's Eddie Cochran cover "Weekend" and Bevan's freakishly low bass on his rendition of "Zing! Went the Strong of My Heart."  "Fire Brigade" is not only one of the most exciting singles of the decade, but the basis of "God Save  the Queen," and despite what you may have heard, "Cherry Blossom Clinic" is a lot better than it's "revisited" form on Shazam.

2.  The Zombies -Odessey and Oracle
Al Kooper makes yet another appearance on the list for producing these poorly-named choir boys  with a dark side.  Engineered by Beatles regular Geoff Emeric, it is best known for posthumous hit "Time of the Season," experts know it for its use of  the mellotron and impeccable vocals.  The band is falling apart, but intends to leave the world with an LP that surpasses their transcendent early singles like "She's Coming Home" and "The Way I Feel Inside."  That was a task that would require songs about girlfriends in jail, sad old maids, and the brutality of World War I.  Songwriters Chris White (bass) and Ron Argent (keys) build a symphony of psychedelic baraoque pop with an avant-garde edge smoothed out by Colin Blunstone's croon.  The Zombies left this physical plane with an album as mythological as its title, lurching around the Earth to its now legendary status.

1.  The Kinks - The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society
Ray Davies may dismiss this album as incomplete, but what it would sound like in his vision would be unfathomable.  The songwriter's obsession with the glorious past of the British Empire is the primary theme on this fantastical pop record.  The harpsichord remains a big part of the Kinks' sound, but rather than keeping it baroque, it functions as much as a rock instrument as the rest.  Nostalgia runs through the whole album on tracks like the title opener, the similarly-named "Village Green," "Picture Book," and "Do You Remember Walter?".  Power also rears its ugly head on the likes of "Johnny Thunder" and "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," prepping fans for the turns the band would make on their next two records.  Luckily, the Carrol-esque fantasies of "Phenomenal Cat" and "Wicked Anabella" and the hard-rocking calypso of "Monica" keep it light.  Play it with not just your friends, but all their best friends too.

This was tough.  It took a long time and I moved things around a whole lot.