The 60s Rock Experience (3-CD boxed set) Various Artists Shout! Factory, 2005   Buy it online Reviewed by Mark Gallo	When the original owners of Rhino Records launched Shout! Factory a couple of years ago they brought all of the marketing savvy that made Rhino one of the great retrospective labels of the 1980s and 90s. As they did with packages dedicated to 70s soul (Superstars of 70s Soul), Doo Wop (The Only Doo Wop Collection You'll Ever Need) and classic rock (Rock and Roll at 50), they've combed the vaults of various labels for representative and stellar music, added intelligent, succinct liner notes and exquisite graphics (from the Fillmore era-style poster art on the cover to the Michael Ochs archives photos) to create this vital package for fans of the best rock, pop and soul of the 1960s. Most of the 60s could be termed tumultuous, especially the latter half of the decade. These were the confluent years of radical hippies smashing head-on into Madison Avenue. This was when the music started most disturbingly to transmogrify into "the music business." In the late 1960s (and the vast majority of the music collected here falls there, with 13 tunes each from 1965 and 1967, alone) music reflected the times. We knew it was a dangerous world and the music managed to be meaningful and finger-snapping-good at the same time. The war in Viet Nam was as polarizing an event as any in American history, much like the current lines-drawing conflagration. There certainly was something happening here that wasn't exactly clear, and the kids were largely against it -- at least the kids on my block were. The Temptations pointed out there were "cities aflame in the summertime" ("Ball of Confusion"), and Country Joe & The Fish gave us the infamous "gimme an 'F'" ("The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag") in response to the war. There are a few conspicuously missing items on the set, like the Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," but not many. There is nothing from Creedence, Hendrix, Aretha, James Brown, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkle, The Stones or Beatles, etc., (assume the buying of rights as the culprit), but it really doesn't matter so much what's not here as what is. From the opening guitar riff (forever memorialized as "jangly") of the Byrd's take on Pete Seeger's "Turn Turn Turn (To Everything There Is A Season)" to the Hollies' over-the-top "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," The 60s Rock Experience is chock full of mini-masterpieces. Segmented into three sets, labeled The Viet Nam Backbeat, There'll Be A 'Love-In' There, and Message and Meaning, the songs don't always neatly fit the categorization. Edwin Starr's classic "War" might belong in the first category more than the third, but it's all a matter of personal context. Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crystal Blue Persuasion" fits my Viet Nam era memories, but it too is on the third set. "Time of the Season" (Zombies) is Viet Nam to me, but the Chambers Brothers "Time," which still has such emotional resonance 30 years later, fits into my time machine a few years before it all hit the fan, even though they were both recorded in 1968. It's all about context. Paul Revere & The Raiders' "Kicks" is forever tied to Where The Action Is, a TV show that made them household names. It just doesn't connect with the Viet Nam era for me. I do, however, see "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Junior Walker's "Shotgun" as totally in the soundtrack. The Guess Who's "Laughing," found on the third set, is a great tune, but "American Woman" would have worked better thematically. Dion's "Abraham, Martin & John and Jessie Colin Young's Youngbloods' "Get Together" are the standouts on the third set; Scott MacKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)", The Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love" and Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" will strike memory chords on the second disc; and the Byrds' opener, Martha and the Vandella's "Nowhere to Run" and Canned Heat's "On The Road Again" are the tunes that will be most worn on the first disc -- but of the 59 tunes here (why not 60 for the 60s?) there are only a couple that don't get the memory goo flowing. Lyrically and musically astounding, the musical soundscapes shaped by masterful engineers and producers astound, still. This is clever music, thoughtful, beautifully rendered, inspired and wholly in reaction to the times. For those of us who came of age -- socially, politically, and certainly musically -- during this era, the music presented on this box set remains vital. Listen to that trumpet solo on "Spinning Wheel" for validation. Some of the music here is only fun (as if fun can be prefaced with "only"). The Monkees, the Turtles, Dusty Springfield, the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law," the Vogues' "Five O'clock World," the Buckinghams, etc. are classic smile-inducers and they're every bit as well performed as the "heavy" numbers. The Mamas and The Papas' "California Dreamin'" is a masterpiece. Strings behind a folk beat with clever changes at every turn. Check out Canned Heat's reworking of "On The Road Again," one of the first of the blues tunes that made it to radio during the era, pitting Blind Al Wilson's harp and vocals against Henry Vestine's fat guitar. The Lovin' Spoonful's jaunty "Do You Believe In Magic?" (reminding us of how solid John Sebastian's output of the time was), Pacific Gas & Electric's rousing "Are You Ready," the Stone Poneys ( featuring a very young Linda Ronstadt), Van Morrison ("Brown Eyed Girl"), the Association's phenomenal harmony work on "Along Came Mary," We Five, Percy Sledge (with the heart dripping "When A Man Loves A Woman"), Procol Harum, the Supremes with the psychedelic "Reflections" (This was a time when everyone was psychedelicized), the Young Rascals, before they dropped the young ("Groovin'"), and the 5th Dimension doing "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" from Hair, the hottest stage play of the late 60s. This is flat out fantastic beginning to end. Consider Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," an infinitely superior tune to the overplayed "Born to Be Wild," The Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones," one of their few radio embraced tunes, Eric Burdon's magnificent "Sky Pilot," one of the great antiwar songs, and Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," the best of the antiwar lot. Many of the artists represented here can be found performing on the PBS special that celebrates the era and offers this box as a premium. While nearly all of those who perform are surprisingly impressive, the original takes are still the greatest. A dozen of these tunes topped the charts, CJ Fish and The Dead never saw a chart. All of them owned the airwaves 40 years ago. The collection is simply the best ever assembled. Spectacular. | July 2005   Mark Gallo is a long-time freelance music journalist whose byline has appeared in over 30 publications in the past 25 years. He has also been a DJ, publicist and archivist/researcher. When not writing about music he is a social worker.