WP Layout theme advice for present html site

Hey,

I have a set of websites I call THE YEARS which have been up about 4 years and do poorly – static with very few outside links. I think a WP makeover to give better appearance and some much needed SEO benefits. For the moment I want to work with just the Sixties.
http:/sixties60s.com.

I could use a little advice on the initial layout if you would. Maybe if yall just clicked around there for a minute, the right layout and theme would come to you easy like.

I would like the same layout, two columns with a 300 sidebar. I like the present navigation, it is important to keep the NEXT and PREVIOUS moving in categories and years. I fear standard menus will go unheeded.

With 10 years and 8 categories there are 80 “pages” which I would like to keep as such. Each category has 4 or 5 sub categories. I could do each category as static pages I suppose, but I think it may be better SEO to make those sub categories into articles with keywords. Though I would like to have search results come back to the page the article is on rather than the article itself. I would also like each article title to just open a comment block, not a new article screen. The full sub category would be presented with the only the comment link active.

Thanx
RJ