1968 - The year hard and heavy truly exploded on us!

[PeterG]

In 66 and 67 bands like Cream, Hendrix, Amboy Dukes, The Doors, Vanilla Fudge, The Who and even The Kinks, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were already delivering some heavy stuff!

So by 68 the hard, heavy, plodding, fuzzy sound was well established, and it really was the year "heavy rock" took off and this was evident everywhere when everyone and his dog kicked in with some proper and really good heavy albums. Then, the fantastic well known releases of 69 and 70 by some of the best known bands (Sabbath, Zeppelin,Purple, Cooper, MC5) cemented the sound forever.

Some examples first from 1967:
Cream - Disraeli Gears
JHE - Are You Experienced?
The Amboy Dukes - s/t
The Doors - s/t
Vanilla Fudge - s/t
The Who - Sell Out

1968
JHE - Electric Ladyland
Cream - Wheels of Fire
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum
Jeff Beck - Truth
Status Quo - debut
The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow
Steppenwolf - s/t third album
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Big Brother/Janis - Cheap Thrills
Rolling Stones- Beggars Banquet
Spirit - s/t
Free- Tons of Sobs
Gun - s/t
Vanilla Fudge - Renaissance

[Brian Griffin]

Not to mention the Tet Offensive

BG

[PeterG]

Sorry, I don't know that band. Are they American?

[Trane]

no Procol Harum?? (unless you don't consider them "heavy")

HP Lovecraft or The Collectors also did heavy albums

[Nijinsky Hind]

Heres an obscure one.
Dick Wagner & The Frost... Released some heavy singles in 68, on the Vanguard label
Became "The Frost" a year later.
Dick Wagner went on to chip in guitar parts for alice cooper, kiss, lou reed, and even Peter Gabriel
http://www.wagnermusic.com/discography.htm

[SteveSly]

Heres an obscure one.
Dick Wagner & The Frost... Released some heavy singles in 68, on the Vanguard label
Became "The Frost" a year later.
Dick Wagner went on to chip in guitar parts for alice cooper, kiss, lou reed, and even Peter Gabriel
http://www.wagnermusic.com/discography.htm

Not obscure if you lived in Michigan. They were huge here in the state.

[Nijinsky Hind]

Not obscure if you lived in Michigan. They were huge here in the state.

I have The Frost LP, but the album was 1969... Will give it a play soon.

[Calabasas_Trafalgar]

Lee Michaels-Carnival of Life

[PeterG]

no Procol Harum?? (unless you don't consider them "heavy")

Correct, I don't. In the same way that I don't consider bands from that period like Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Small Faces or Bowie heavy. Loud, fast melodic pop/rock isn't automatically heavy. The actual playing and the beat and the forward guitars and bass and heavy drumming have to be there to make it hard and heavy.

[Scrotum Scissor]

HP Lovecraft [...] also did heavy albums

Not really. Love both albums though, espec no. 2.

Kaleidoscope, on the other hand, did some attemptively heavy stuff (like "Cuckoo").

The sole album by The Savage Resurrection (released late '68) was pretty heavy in places, although also too damn BlueCheer-counterfeiting to be particularly interesting.

The Bubble Puppy were relatively heavy, as were Quicksilver Messenger Service when playing live (check the Cancer Moon album).

[BravadoNJ]

...and so started Led Zeppelin

[PeterG]

Not really. Love both albums though ).

I agree, I don't hear any heavy elements in HP Lovecraft at all. But they were a great psych/garage band, easily as good as Love, and better in places.

The sole album by The Savage Resurrection (released late '68) was pretty heavy in places, although also too damn BlueCheer-counterfeiting to be particularly interesting.).

Agree again, some good stuff on there. Whatever happened to them I wonder.

[Trane]

Correct, I don't. In the same way that I don't consider bands from that period like Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Small Faces or Bowie heavy. Loud, fast melodic pop/rock isn't automatically heavy. The actual playing and the beat and the forward guitars and bass and heavy drumming have to be there to make it hard and heavy.

Yeah, now that you say it, I vaguely remember a debate about your perceptions of "heavy" and what it meant to others.

[spacefreak]

I think that 1968 had been a rather explorative year for hard rock. How many "hard" albums? "Vincebus Eruptum", "Truth", "Tons of Sobs", "Wheels of Fire", "Electric Ladyland", "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", "Steppenwolf 3", "Gun"? Not many in my opinion. The year of the Big Bang explosion, when the formula was more or less cemented, was 1969.

[PeterG]

Yeah, now that you say it, I vaguely remember a debate about your perceptions of "heavy" and what it meant to others.

Yea, but I don't really think that hard rock is as open to as much defintion debate as say, prog, jazz or folk. I think that with hard rock the general consensus i.e. the majoirty view, is usually not far wrong.

[PeterG]

I think that 1968 had been a rather explorative year for hard rock. How many "hard" albums? "Vincebus Eruptum", "Truth", "Tons of Sobs", "Wheels of Fire", "Electric Ladyland", "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", "Steppenwolf 3", "Gun"? Not many in my opinion. The year of the Big Bang explosion, when the formula was more or less cemented, was 1969.

I had you in mind Spacey, when I created this thread yea...68-69 man.....melding together in a fungal cloud of love and acid

[Trane]

Yea, but I don't really think that hard rock is as open to as much defintion debate as say, prog, jazz or folk. I think that with hard rock the general consensus i.e. the majoirty view, is usually not far wrong.

Well, if Procol's sound on their first three albums is not heavy, then I don't think that a lot of these albums you cited in the OP are any heavier, IMHO

The Doors - s/t
The Who - Sell Out
Status Quo - debut
The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Big Brother/Janis - Cheap Thrills
Rolling Stones- Beggars Banquet
Not to mention the three JHE albums

not exactly the next-door neighbour to Blue Cheer or Amboy Dukes in terme of hard/heavy

[Enid]

Blue Cheer noted to be a Psychedelic Rock band ...by my sister's hippie friends in 68' ..were also very influential to the development of 2 other styles of Rock music that surfaced in the 70's. In 68', they were responsible for presenting a much higher volume of amplification that even Jimi Hendrix himself claimed was much too loud for his ears. They were a bit "out of bounds" for 68' and that's the message or vibe I get when listening to Jimi Hendrix interviews and he recalls the night he went to see them perform. Canned Heat went to see Blue Cheer perform in 68' and as a result...Henry Vestine and Blind Owl Wilson purchased more powerful guitar amps causing Fito to bang the crap out of the drums just to be heard. The sound Blue Cheer produced was in fact the premature developmental stages of the "Metal" sound. Some people have observed in the past that the song "Moonshine" by Free contained the basis of sound ...later to develop further in Black Sabbath's music and particularly indicated on Sabbath's debut album. Paul Rodgers begins the lyric by singing "Sitting In A Graveyard" while the guitar and bass are creating a "dark" sound. A sound that can't be attributed or even connected to Psychedelic guitar playing short of having distortion. Blue Cheer, (who I can no longer listen to), were very dark sounding for 68' with their strange little intro to "Summertime Blues" ..which if that particular section had been re-done by a Metal band, it would be instantaneous to make it's connection with Metal in it's early developing stages at a time when it was called "Hard Rock". Some people have observed that Question Mark and the Mysterians "Too Many Teardrops" was the first song recorded in history to define a Punk Rock sound/style. I believe that a percentage of guitar sound in Blue Cheer's music is Punk Rock or had developed an attitude to play differently in the mid to late 70's when Punk was becoming an underground scene in N.Y.

I wasn't thrilled over the technical advancement in "stomp boxes" of the 70's "Stadium Rock" era ..when guitar players were free to cover up their mistakes in Rock soloing. When Rock music was taken seriously..Hendrix had other things on his agenda. The sole purpose of playing at loud volumes was to re-create ideas for music. Just as The Beatles had done with the use of mellotron and the suggestions from George Martin to add horns or orchestral arrangements, Hendrix was blending his experimentation with feedback and backwards looped guitar to change the sound of Rock music. The British Blues scene in London had been gradually circulating a few years prior to Brian Jones meeting up with Alexis Korner and the popularity of playing Blues in London became more of an awareness to America when The Rolling Stones appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. The entire British Blues Boom era was fascinating and 68' was one of the most important years.

[Digital_Man]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "heavy." I don't consider the Doors particularly heavy unless you are referring to the lyrical content. Heavy usually seems to mean "guitar heavy." In that case I don't even really think Iron Butterfly or Steppenwolf are that heavy. I would say Cream, Hendrix, Yardbirds, LZ and Blue Cheer and not much else from that time period imo.

[klothos]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "heavy." I don't consider the Doors particularly heavy unless you are referring to the lyrical content.

+1

See? We can agree on stuff

[Digital_Man]

+1

See? We can agree on stuff

Yeah but where's the fun in that?

[klothos]

good point!

[Digital_Man]

I always thought it was more like 1970 with the first Black Sabbath album, Uriah Heep's first, Deep Purple's "in rock" and Led Zeppelin's "the immigrant song." There are other lesser known examples too(such as Bloodrock and Sir Lord Baltimore). I don't deny that there was stuff in 69 and even earlier but to me Heavy rock or proto metal or even heavy metal proper started in 1970.

[klothos]

I always thought it was more like 1970 with the first Black Sabbath album, Uriah Heep's first, Deep Purple's "in rock" and Led Zeppelin's "the immigrant song." There are other lesser known examples too(such as Bloodrock and Sir Lord Baltimore). I don't deny that there was stuff in 69 and even earlier but to me Heavy rock or proto metal or even heavy metal proper started in 1970.

I agree: 1970 is about right. Before that, some of Steppenwolf, Hendrix, Cream, Amboy Dukes, Deep Purple, Zep's, and Spirit's songs in particular were the seeds. "I Can See For Miles" by The Who also has seeds, but the heavy metal scooped mids overdrive amplifier settings was probably an unknown variable back when it was recorded so the guitar parts are too "clean", for lack of better terms. It really wasnt until Black Sabbath that a "Commercially Sucessful Heavy Band" existed. That thick heavy metal drive between the guitar's amp settings (Preamp on "11" and scooped mids, 1K in particular) and the use of root-5th-octave power chords combined with the thick support from the bass and drums were staples of Black Sabbath's signature that served as a blueprint for countless bands afterward.

Some of the other bands, like MC5 and Blue Cheer, are less "heavy" and more of a "wall of sound" ...Blue Cheer was just loud but loud doesnt necessarily equate heavy.....

[spacefreak]

but to me Heavy rock or proto metal or even heavy metal proper started in 1970.

Well, in 1969 we had:

MC5 -Kick Out the Jams
Led Zeppelin -I & II
Grand Funk
Frost -Frost Music
Cream -Goodbye
Free
Gun -Gunsight
Stooges
Leslie West -Mountain
Vanilla Fudge -Near the Beginning
Edgar Broughton Band -Wasa Wasa
Spooky Tooth -Spooky Two
Open Mind
Banchee
Bent Wind -Sussex
Andromeda
Writing on the Wall -Power of the Picts
High Tide -Sea Shanties
Damnation of Adam Blessing
Fuse
Joseph - Stoned Age Man

Something was happening on the loud end of things...