In a churchyard by a river

Pink Floyd - More - 1969

Some bands seem to find their "own sound" right away. There may be an evolution in the quality with which that sound is conveyed, and there may be some tentative moves in the evolution of a band in which they try different things, but the trademark sound is there from the beginning. Some other bands take a bit of time until they settle for a sound.
Pink Floyd is, perhaps, the most radical example of that. Started off as a clearly psychedelic band, then moved a bit into a more experimental, melodic, space rock in their second album, and then they released this.
This is, in all likelihood, the least favourite Pink Floyd album in everybody's mind. Recorded somehow by commission, to be the soundtrack of a completely forgotten movie by Barbet Schroeder, this one is a transition album if there's ever been one. Which is a polite way of saying that it feels as if it completely lacks direction.
But, in a way, I think that that lack of direction and variety is both its weakness and its strength. It showcases them doing from sweet and almost sappy folk ballads, to some of the heaviest numbers they've ever written, with some remains of psychedelic sounds tossed in for good measure, among other things.
I hadn't listened to this one in full in such a long time that I had completely forgotten about most of the songs. It's not the most exciting listen that you can have, but it's a very important album because it gives a nice historical perspective on the band's evolution, and it does have some beautiful and very interesting songs.

• The song that maybe approaches the most to the sound they would have in the future, is "Main Theme". It has a similar sound to "Let There be More Light", from their previous album, with a kind of slowed down take on the beginning sequence of the song from A Saucerful... (the sequence that sounds a lot like the Placebo song). Also, the slide guitar in the second half reminds me a bit of some sounds from "Shine on you Crazy Diamond", from Wish You Were Here. 
• "The Nile Song" and "Ibiza Bar" are amongst the heaviest songs they would ever record. They remind me a bit of the sound of "Young Lust", from The Wall.
• "More Blues" is, I think, the closest they ever came to standard blues they ever played. 
• There's also some flamenco here. "A Spanish Piece" is, well, exactly that. A very short piece in which Gilmour plays flamenco guitars, and says something like "tequila Manuela", "I kill you" (pronounced "keel", of course), and a few more things. 

Look upstanding with your head held high

Alice Cooper - Pretties for you - 1969

And talking about taking some time to find your own sound, here's the debut album of Alice Cooper. 

Alice Cooper the band, not the singer, who at the time was Vincent Furnier, but also was known as Alice Cooper. 

This one is heavily influenced by psychedelia, and some tracks could have actually been written by Syd Barrett. Some are even crazier. There are a lot of changing and unusual time signatures, strange sounds, and different influences.
I like Alice a lot, and this one is never going to be close to my favourite albums, but there are some moments that I can enjoy a lot, and this one is definitely one that I would earmark as "to return to", out of the ones I was less familiar with. 

• Officially, this album was produced by Frank Zappa, although their manager would complain that Zappa wasn't there during recording day, and that he never even listened to what they had done. Still, credit where credit is due, Alice Cooper himself has said more than once that Frank Zappa was the only one who believed in them and liked them at the time everybody was laughing at them.
• As can be imagined, this album was a major failure both for critics and sales. Even for crazy, psychedelic late 1960s, this may have been a bit too much. 
• The song "Reflected" would be the only single from this album, and it would become "Elected" a few years later in Billion Dollar Babies.
• Legend has it that the band's name, Alice Cooper, was the name of a 17th century witch, and it was revealed to them during a seance via an ouija board. This story is completely untrue, of course, but much more interesting than the truth is, I'm sure.
• The quality of this video is terrible. Still, I think it has a lot of value, in an archeological sort of way. 

What was that promise that you made?

The Doors - The Soft Parade - 1969

And this one is quite the opposite of what we've had so far today. This is the involution in the music of The Doors. 

As soon as the album started, the first thing I thought was "brasses? really??". And yes, I know that "Touch me" also has them, but I always took it to be a one off, and had never really paid any attention to this album. 

There was a lot of things that were wrong at the time in the band. They had been touring a lot, for one, what took away time for them to actually write songs. Morrison was more interested in drinking, movies and poetry than in the band, and their producer decided that it would be a good idea to experiment a bit more (you know, because The Beatles, and everybody else), to use brasses and strings, and more jazzy sounds. The most direct consequence of this was that the songwriting was split, and we have Morrison's songs, which are in a style more similar to what they used to do (although I think of generally lower quality), and the songs written by Bobby Krieger, more experimental and with more use of brass and strings.

And Morrison's voice wasn't clearly the same. I don't know if the drinking had already started taking its toll, or if he simply didn't care enough. Whatever the case, his voice sounded too rough, lacking in any modulation, pretty much the same in all songs. 

• Of course, "Touch me" is still a classic, and a great song. Still, at times it feels as if he wasn't really putting any feel in the singing.
• "Shaman's Blues", written by Morrison, is not one of his best songs, but it does have a quite interesting guitar solo halfway through it. 
• The title track, starts with Morrison speaking, a bit as a preacher would. Only that hearing him shouting "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer" makes me think more of a drunk about to have the mother of all bar brawls, than any kind of preacher.

Random thoughts

• This year started pretty strong, but then seemed to deflate a bit, didn't it? It's gonna get better, though. The second half of the year is pretty amazing.
• I have all of Alice Cooper's albums. It's probably the artist of whom I actually have the largest amount of albums, among other things because the guy's been rocking for pretty much 50 years!!