The [your name here] Awards!

1967

Best Movie
Bonnie and Clyde
Cool Hand Luke
Dirty Dozen, The
Graduate, The
Point Blank

Winner:

Worst Movie
Docter Doolitle
Catalina Caper

"Winner":

Best TV Show
Bewitched (Season 3)
Star Trek (Season 1)
Get Smart (Season 2)
Hogan's Heroes (Season 2)
Dragnet (Season 1)

Winner:

Best Game
Battleship


Battleship has existed as a pen and paper game as far back as World War I but the version we all know and love with the folding plastic boards and plastic pegs was made by Milton Bradley in 1967.  My trick with the game has always been to put the destroyer right underneath the four-peg battleship and perpendicular to it.  That way if an opponent sinks the battleship they may make the mistake of thinking they've actually sunk the carrier and never be able to find the destroyer.  It confuses the hell out of them and it's always fun to turn your board around at the end to reveal how you fooled them.


Best Hit Song
"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

There were actually two hit version of this song within a pretty short time, the second was a solo version by Diana Ross which almost sounds like some sort of lounge singer rendition and is mostly pretty wack.  This is the original version by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell which shows up over and over again in movies.  I believe this is the last song from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack that will be showing up in this awards thing.  There's something of a rawness to this version and I especially like the intro where Gay and Terrell are trading off lines.  That really builds things up well before it explodes into that epic chorus.

"Happy Together" by The Turtles


The Turtles were an American rock band who clearly really wanted to fit in with the British Invasion.  They had a handful of hits in the 60s but this was by far their biggest hit and is the one that has endured and for good reason.  The song is a love song, but a particularly intense and passionate one about a very specific kind of young person's romance where the line between love and obsession is a little gray.  It's entirely possible to look at these lyrics and imagine that it's actually being sung by this creepy stalker guy who'd just been "imagining" this whole romance and is simply proposing this relationship he's put way too much thought into.  Dark.

"Light My Fire" by The Doors


There are actually a lot of people who make something of a point of explaining that they don't like The Doors.  This is almost entirely a response to some of the more pretentious elements of Jim Morrison's songwriting and persona and the esteem with which certain kinds of college students hold him.  This is unfortunate because it focuses entirely on one aspect of a band which had many different strengths.  This song, which was written by guitarist Robby Krieger, was their biggest hit and for good reason.  It features some groovy organ solos and a solid groove.  Morrison's voice is perfect for the song and the lyrics manage to be passionate and a little cryptic. 

"Penny Lane" by The Beatles

The Beatles killed it on the album charts in 1967 but on the singles chart their only eligible hits were "Love is All You Need and "Penny Lane" and it wasn't a very difficult choice between those two.  The song is a nostalgic look back at Lennon and McCartney's hometown and a specific street that they remember fondly.  There is a real Penny Lane in Liverpool (the street signs have been stolen regularly) and the song does have a power to really paint a picture of it.  It also features a Piccolo Trumpet solo by a guy named David Mason, who was paid 27 pounds for his contributions.  

"Ruby Tuesday" by The Rolling Stones


If Keith Richards' biography is to be believed, Ruby Tuesday is a song about an ex-girlfreind of Richards who Richards had contacted the parents of and told about how deep into drugs she was getting (trying to imagine how bad off someone would have to be for Keith fucking Richards to be all like "you have a problem"), which resulted in her being legally grounded by the state and forced into rehab.  She saw this as a betrayal and quit speaking to him.  The song was meant to be something of a sad goodbye.  Of course that could all just be bullshit, there are conflicting stories suggesting that it was written in a hotel room one night about some random groupie.  Whatever the inspiration the song is really affecting and has an incredible melody.  Also, they somehow managed to make a great song that prominently features a damn recorder.

Winner:

They peaked at 54 and 8 respectively.  

This is the Hot 100 for 1967, which is my one and only source for elligibility
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1967

For the record, I would have ranked Strawberry Fields above Penny Lane (narrowly) and Walrus below it.

1965

Best Movie
Battle of Algiers, The
Red Beard
Repulsion
Kwaidan
Juliet of the Spirits

Winner:

Worst Movie
Ship of Fools
Help!
Good Times, Wonderful Times

Winner:

Best TV Show
Bewitched (Season 1)
The Dick Van Dyke Show (Season 4)
The Defenders (Season 4)
The Addams Family (Season 1)
The Outer Limits (Season 2)

Winner:

Best Game
Operation

Most board games focus on strategy but Operation is more of a test of basic motor skills and hand-eye coordination. I'm not sure if this was one of the first electronic games but it might be one of the first ones to have survived this long.  It's "you verses the computer" set up makes it one of the few board games you can pretty much play on your own, though it at its most fun when you're watching someone else play it and and try to distract them into screwing up in some way.  The damn thing should come with an airhorn.

Trouble

Trouble is basically one of the most simplistic games you're likely to find but it was turned into a classic though some canny presentation.  It's a board game that gives you this bubble thing to house your dice and gives you slots that your pegs can fit in as they go around the board.  It's one of the few board games that you could conceivably play in the back seat of a car during a bumpy road trip.

Winner:



Best Hit Song
"It's the Same Old Song" by The Four Tops

By 1965 the Motown machine was so efficient that this song was actually envisioned, written, recorded, mastered, and released within a 24 hour period... at least that's what legend would have you believe.  Recently they've uncovered an earlier demo of the song by The Supremes which means that the song couldn't have been written on that fateful day, but either way the song remains a classic.  Fun fact, the song is featured in the credits of the movie Blood Simple but had to be removed from the VHS release for licensing reasons and was replaced by Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer."

"Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was a major cultural force in the 60s but his songs weren't always necessarily chart hits.  This magnum opus, however, proved a bit too big even for commercial radio to ignore.  The six minute song feels soaring and epic despite being fairly rooted in folk music, albeit a form of electronic folk music that would lead to those "Judas" accusations.  Dylan delivers these lyrics in a way that's just so damn foceful it makes you sit up and listen and want to figure out what each line means.  Rolling Stone magazine once proclaimed it the greatest song ever written and while I don't know that I believe that exactly I can't argue with it too much.

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones

Does this need explaining? Umm, the riff is immortal, the lyrics are a bit boundary pushing, the stuttery chorus works really well, the riff is awesome.  Did I mention that riff?  Rolling Stone once declared it the second best song of all time.  It's a standard of a genre.

"Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles

This was a really competitive year for my designated Beatles slot.  The title track from the Help! soundtrack came out this year, so was Eight Days a Week, and so was their classic Yesterday.  Yesterday is almost certainly the more important song and the one that broadened their audience in a bigger way, but for my money the best of the bunch was Ticket to Ride.  The song was credited Lennon-McCartney but is generally seen as being mainly Lennon's song, though Lennon and McCartney's account of that differs.  The song is a bit bluesier than some of their earliers stuff and it's one of their more rock and roll songs of the era.  

"The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Lyrically this song, about a seemingly chipper guy who's actually sad about losing his woman, is good but nothing terribly special.  The verses aren't necessarily the greatest either.  But that chorus... holy hell is it one of the most perfect things in the history of music.  That soaring hook is this powerful is so wonderfully executed and the way it just emerges out of this mellow kind of ordinary R&B song really gives it an extra impact.

Winner:

Except if you were a Black person getting hosed in the streets. Oh wait... yeah, seminal year.

You're white and British. 1965 would have been a great year for you to be alive. James Bond. British Invasion. Monty Phyton. Last time you guys were relevant.

1964

Best Film
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Woman in the Dunes

Goldfinger

I Am Cuba

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The


Winner:

Worst Film
Mary Poppins

Time Traveler, The

Jack Frost

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Hercules Against the Moon Men


"Winner":

Best TV Show
Gunsmoke (Season 9)

The Dick Van Dyke Show (Season 3)

The Defenders (Season 3)

The Twilight Zone (Season 5)

The Outer Limits (Season 1)


Winner:

Best Game
Rock Em' Sock Em' Robots


Is this really a game?  Eh, maybe not, it's probably more of a toy but when played with correctly there is a winner and a loser so I think it counts.  I don't know that there's a whole lot of strategy to the thing, but it's withstood the test of time for a reason.


Best Hit Song
"Baby Love" by The Supremes


Before the British Invasion came along the biggest two biggest things in music were weird "dance crazes" and songs by African American girl groups.  The greatest beneficiaries of the latter trend were probably The Supremes, who unlike most of the other girl groups of the era, were not the product of super-producer Phil Spector but were instead an in-house Motown group.  "Baby Love" is one of their most famous songs, I think in part because there was a lyrical complexity to it that might have been missing from other lesser songs.  The relationship being described seems to be both deep but also troubled and kind of sad and the song explores that pretty effectively.

"Dancing in the Street" by Martha and the Vandellas

Martha and the Vandellas were ostensibly another Motown girl group in the mold of The Supremes, but their signature song "Dancing in the Street" didn't really sound the same stylistically as the songs of the other girl groups of the time.  It's a lot livelier and its lyrics aren't about pining after some boy.  Entire book have actually been written about the song's importance as it became an anthem for the Civil Rights movement with its lyrics about parties happening in various cities began to be seen as an allegory of sorts for nationwide demonstrations.  Once you start hearing it that way it kind of becomes hard not to hear it like that.


"A Hard Day's Night" by The Beatles


1964 was the year The Beatles broke into America and to say they broke big would be an understatement.  There were no fewer than nine different Beatles songs on the year-end top 100 singles and there was even a week when The Beatles held all five of the top spots on the Hot 100.  So there were a lot of options, and yet picking the best song of the bunch wasn't really that hard.  A Hard Day's Night is probably one of the later releases of the year and the development kind of shows.  They're really comfortable with what they're doing at this point and they manage to deliver this really fun song and the way they say "you know I fee-eel alright" sounds really cool.

"The House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals

The British Invasion primarily consisted of young wealthy white English dudes trying their best to sound like grizzled old Bluesmen.  One of the more convincing stabs at this was probably The Animals rendition of "The House of the Rising Sun," a cover of a traditional blues standard about a whorehouse (sorry, a "gambling house") in New Orleans.  Something about this particular cover just seemed to stick, the band seems to be uniquely "on" but more importantly the frontman Eric Burdon just sings the hell out of it and somehow seems to be tapping into veins of deep sorrow and regret despite being a graduate of the Newcastle Art College.  


"I Get Around
" by The Beach Boys

The standard line about The Beach Boys is that they were a goofy band that made songs about surfing until Brian Wilson got ambitious, buckled down, and made a great personal album that could compete with The Beatles only to then go insane and fail to follow up on that promise.  There's truth to this narrative but I feel like it does a bit of a disservice to the band because it undervalues their earlier hit, which were in fact these wonderful little pop confections that deserve some respect in their own right. "I Get Around" is probably my favorite of these.  It has solid vocal harmonies, a catchy beat, and solid teenage wish fulfillment lyrics.  Basically everything you want out of a Beach Boys song. 

Winner:

A Hard Day's Night was clearly a better movie than Help! but Help! plainly had the better soundtrack (which isn't to say either soundtrack is bad).  

1963

Best Film
Leopard, The
8 1/2
High & Low
Birds, The
Contempt

Winner:

Worst Film
How the West Was Won
Sword and the Stone, The

Winner:

Best TV Show
Gunsmoke (Season 8)
The Dick Van Dyke Show (Season 2)
The Defenders (Season 2)
The Twilight Zone (Season 4)
The Untouchables (Season 4)

Winner:

Best Game
Mouse Trap

Did anyone actually bother playing the board game part of this board game?  Whenever I got my hands on it I'd just set up the Rube Goldberg contraption and lit it rip, but I guess it is technically a board game about getting wedges of cheese or something.  

Best Hit Song
"Be My Baby" by The Ronettes

1963 was kind of the peak year for African American girl groups and credit for that is often given to the producer and future murderer Phil Spector, who invented a production method called the "wall of sound."  Others have suggested that the press that was given to Spector was an attempt to give a white guy credit for the accomplishments of black women, as with most things the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  "Be My Baby" is probably the most representative hit of this sound and represents the genre at its simplest and most sincere.

"Da Doo Ron Ron" by The Crystals

Phil Spector's other girl group of choice was The Crystals and it represents the livelier end of the sound.  The song is built around a set of nonsense words which were originally just meant to stand in for whatever final lyrics they came up with when the song was done, but they ended up liking it so much that they just left it as is.  It's catchy as hell.

"He's So Fine" by The Chiffons

This is the only of the three girl group songs I've nominated here that wasn't produced by Phil Spector, but that didn't stop him from trying to illegally reclaim it seven years later while working with George Harrison.  That lawsuit might be the song's most lasting legacy but it's a pretty good song in its own right too.  The whole "Doo-Rang, Doo-Rang" refrain stands out even in an era that had a lot of nonsense choruses like that.

"Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen

Sometimes important breakthroughs are made by accident and that's clearly what happened with "Louie Louie," a legendary song by a group of one-hit wonders called The Kingsmen.  The song is actually a cover of a rather normal sounding song by a dude named Richard Berry, but The Kingsmen's version was recorded under terrible circumstances and the singer basically needed to shout in order to get his vocals recorded.  The resulting recording was a shoddy little piece of work with incomprehensible lyrics but something about the energy of the whole thing struck a chord and became a hit.  In many ways the damn thing is essentially the first Punk Rock song. 

"Surfin USA" by The Beach Boys

This is kind of a dubious choice as "Surfin' USA" is damn near the same song as Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" to the point where it's practically just a watered down cover but it does add one very key element that elevates it a little: that falsetto "everybody's going surfin" right before they say the title.  That gives a bit of release to the build up in the chorus and the "inside outside U.S.A." in the background is also a nice element I guess.  Such are the advantages of being a vocal group rather than a solo artist I guess.

Winner:

1961

Best Movie
Hustler, The
Yojimbo
Through a Glass Darkly
Judgment at Nuremberg
Guns of Navarone, The

Winner:

Worst Movie
Fanny
Curse of the Werewolf, The
Reptilicus

"Winner":

Best TV Show
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Season 6)
Peter Gunn (Season 3)
Gunsmoke (Season 6)
The Twilight Zone (Season 2)
The Untouchables (Season 2)

Winner:

Best Game
Stratego


I only ever played this game once at a friend's house but it always seemed pretty neat.  It's almost like the most elaborate game of rock, paper, scissors ever devised.  


Best Hit Song
"Blue Moon" by The Marcels

The Marcels were a notable group in that they were a racially integrated band back in the days when that was very much not accepted in certain parts of the country, which is probably part of why I can't find any footage of them performing back in their heyday.  No amount of bigotry could hold back their most famous song "Blue Moon" though as it's basically the perfect example of what a doo-wop song is supposed to sound like.  The bass scat singing in the background sets a beat very nicely, the lead vocalist gives a great contrast, and the other vocalists are also on point.

"Calendar Girl" by Neil Sedaka

Even by novelty song standards this thing is on the corny side.  The dude really just wrote a song about how much he loves this chick in every damn month in the calendar and kept a relatively straight face doing it. That the song works is mostly a testament to how well Neil Sedaka sells it as a vocalist.  He hits those "yeah yeah"s at the beginning of the chorus really well and also pulls off that "I love I love I love" bit pretty well. 

"Hit the Road Jack" by Ray Charles


"Hit the Road Jack" actually started as an a cappella by a guy named Percy Mayfield.  Ray Charles added a driving piano part to the song and smoothed out the vocals while adding his entire group of background singers to the song.  I like the way that Ray is really able to sell his part in all this as it would have been easy for him to either come off as a total cad here or as spineless and aggrieved but he hits a really good balance on this recording.

"Little Sister" by Elvis Prestley


Lyrically this song is pretty strange.  It's about a dude who's dating the younger sister of a former girlfreind and begging her not to be a cheating bitch like her sibling.  There are a lot of question marks to this.  For one, just how much younger is this "little sister," cause, ick.  Also it's mentioned that he's known this girl since she was really little... that's also weird, please tell me he wasn't old enough to have been dating the big sister when that was going on.  Also why is this girl so happy to listen to this guy shit talk her sibling?  Not a lot of family loyalty.  All that having been said this is still an awesome recording. It's one of Elvis' harder rocking numbers and has really cool guitar parts thoughout and Elvis' vocals are quite strong.

"Stand By Me" by Ben E. King

It's been estimated that between two major chart runs (once in '61 and again in '86 when the movie of the same name came out), numerous covers, and royalties from various media uses this song has earned at least $27 million dollars making it the 6th most profitable song of all time (behind Happy Birthday, White Christmas, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, Yesterday, and Unchained Melody).  I can see why, the bass line is really effective and the lyrics have kind of a kind of melodramatic urgency to them ("if the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall" etc) that Ben E King somehow manages to really sell.

Winner:

If I didn't know better I would have guessed that was some kind of sequel to Too Many Cooks

The Hustler over Yojimbo? Bold move, sir.

Nah.

Yojimbo isn't even better than Fistful of Dollars.