The Summer Before the Summer of Love - July 1966

Left Click to Play - Right Click to Save
July1966

In the Summer of 1966, you could feel that change was in the air. It was almost tangible. The 1950’s roots of rock and roll swelled and then ebbed, and then found itself revived again with the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. By 1966, inspiration and creativity were the two main ingredients in pop music, and artists drove the music business more than vice-versa. It was thirty-nine years ago – it sounds like it could have been yesterday, like it should have been yesterday, but it might as well have been centuries ago. Today, the music business no longer operates like this, but at least we still have the songs and memories of an era when music became the driving force for a burgeoning youth culture, defining a generation as an entity unto itself. Today’s pop music is lost in a morass of corporate culture, profiteering, niche marketing, and crass categorization. Back in 1966, it was all just about the music.
Here’s a list of tunes that are to be covered in today’s show;

1) Summer in the City – The Lovin’ Spoonful
2) Wild Thing – The Troggs
3) Sunny – Bobby Hebb
4) Little Red Riding Hood – Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs
5) I Saw Her Again – The Mamas and the Papas
6) They’re Coming to Take Me Away – Napolean XIV
(as a ‘Great Miss’)
7) Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat – Bob Dylan (as a featured album track from the Summer of 1966)
8) Mother’s Little Helper – The Rolling Stones
9) Lady Jane – The Rolling Stones
10) I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love – Petula Clark
11) Trains and Boats and Planes – Dionne Warwicke
12) (fade-out – “Trains and Boats and Planes – Fountains of Wayne

Oh, I should point out one caveat – our poor, harried engineer, Mike Tietjen, was having a bad day and the levels go array from time to time, along with a few missed cues…you get the idea. The show opens with Mike bringing up the wrong microphone, resulting in about ten seconds of echoing silence…oops. Never mind, underneath the gaffs is a pretty fun show.

That about sums it up – lots of diversity, boatloads of creativity, crammed into one hour of music (and talk) that still sounds fresh, wonderful, and new almost four decades later. Hope you enjoy it!