33. Pentangle: The Pentangle

34. Cream: Wheels of Fire

35. Earth Opera: Earth Opera

36. The Nice: Thought of Emeralist Davjack

37. Lead Zeppelin: Lead Zeppelin

38. The Holy Modal Rounders: The Holy Modal Rounders

39. Reubin and the Jets: Cruising with Reubin and the Jets

40. The Fugs: It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest

Soul too at its best is simple, real communication, and blacks have been as enfeebled as have whites by rock's ills. Motown has reached such a pinnacle of commercial success, has over-extended itself to such an extent, that its grasp on reality and its vital resources have been hopelessly dissipated. What can the Supremes and the Temptations have to say to us when they're boffo! at the Copa and are crooning medleys from the Rogers and Hart song book. The Supremes singing Love Child and nasally complaining of "tenement slums" are little less than fatuous. And when the business demands such incessant production of singles and albums, how can Motown's material not become thin. Thus two current releases, I Heard it through the Grapevine and I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, are revivals of hits less than a year and a half old. And the Temptations are imitating Sly and the Family Stone. As for Aretha, she's simply been asked to perform too many concerts, to make too many records. This, coupled with marital problems and several injuries, made Aretha Now the disappointment it was, coming after the genius of Lady Soul.

With Otis no longer on the scene and those who survive him so weak, the only bright spots in soul in 1968 were Sam and Dave and a remarkable single, Lovers' Holiday, by Peggy Scott and JoJo Benson. Their follow-up, Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries, although selling better, is a pale copy of their earlier single, but Lovers' Holiday, harsh and gutsy, deserves to become a classic in the tradition of Hold On! I'm Comin'!.

Blues are not really in the province of this article and will be passed over lightly, but bluesmen too have been hard hit by commercialism. Muddy Waters turned to preposterous psychedelic remakes of his past masterpieces, Junior Wells came on like a poor man's James Brown, Albert King told audiences that little white girls whose parents wouldn't allow them to ride in their boyfriends' GTO's had the blues, and Buddy Guy, after making the best blues album of the year, A Man and the Blues, also switched over to sockin' it to 'em on his second album, a live recording, with disastrous results. One man who didn't sell out was Magic Sam, who made a good, raw album on the Denmark album.

By this time I have managed to write an entire article without once mentioning either of my favorites albums of the year. One reason for setting them apart from all others as works of genius is the fact that they don't fit into any schematic view of rock. That neither album got beyond number 80 in the charts further attests to their total individuality.

Although Laura Nyro's Eli and the Thirteenth Confession sported a perfumed cover to lure unsuspecting browsers, and although the Fifth Dimension's versions of two of the album's songs made the top ten, this debut Columbia album (there is an unimpressive 1967 Verve-Folkways release) was apparently too far beyond the comprehension of listeners. After all, what can one make of a section of a song (Timer) in which the tempo changes every other measure, or of lines such as "Dig them potatoes/ If you never dug your girl before," of a voice which is quintuple- and sextuple-tracked and which spans two octaves as if they were two notes? A song like The Confession has never been heard on a rock album before:

"I keep hearin

daddy thru his grave