Noticing the light had changed

Can’t go back to the 60s or 70s without making a stop at the Beatles, can we? Picking one or two of their best would be a fool’s errand, but perhaps a couple dating from somewhere around the Summer of Love, eh? You know—when they’d lost the Carnaby Street look and started pushing the envelope, but before they got involved in the whole Yoko Ono range war. (Lennon didn't start writing anti-war songs until a little later, so—regrettably—the likes of "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" don't go here.)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in June of 1967, so it should qualify. I was never a huge fan of the title track, but “A Day in the Life” is something I can get behind.

Also, here’s “Within You, Without You”, on account of Harrison’s whole Maharishi period. If you want to invoke the zeitgeist of the end of the 60s, you just have to let in some macrobiotics, however you choose to ingest them. This was way before the whole non-fat vegan gluten-free hand flapping you get today. This was go-to-India-experience-nirvana-and-amoebic-dysentery macrobiotics.

Taken one track at a time, it isn’t bad. But you have no idea what it was like to grow up with album after album of imitations of this kind of thing being played at full volume, cutting through the haze of smoke of one sort or another.

One more—from Magical Mystery Tour, which was released earlier in 1967. I’ve just always loved “Hello, Goodbye”. Besides—get a gander of the duds. Man—the 60s.