Music Reivew: Various Performers - Summer Of Love: The Hits Of 1967

You know, I was all of six years old during the "Summer of Love", 1967, but for some damn reason when I was a teenager in Toronto Ontario Canada in the pre punk 1970s that era seemed to be the epitome of what music should/could be. You have to remember 1976 meant for most of us that the radio was full of disco schlock, plastic corporate rock, or the masturbatory excesses of progressive poop.

I had an older brother with a record collection, an aunt who had lived in Toronto's one block hippie district when it mattered (1967) and had a boyfriend that had played with Lighthouse during the late 60s early 70s, and a feeling that I had missed out on something really cool by being born a decade too late. So I grew my hair long, and went to see the movie Woodstock whenever it played at the revue cinemas, and took to wearing an army fatigue jacket.

Of course I had a highly idealized vision of what the music of the era was like, and knew nothing about what type of music was being played on popular radio at the time. I just assumed that the line up of acts that appeared at Woodstock, plus a few others; the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan, was all anybody listened to back then.

It wasn't until much later that I found out there was just as much dreck around in 1967 as there was in 1977 or 1987. I don't remember it shattering too many illusions but I do remember thinking, or maybe hoping, that even the pop dreck of that era had to be better then the Captain and Tennille doing old Neil Sedaka hits or "Disco Inferno" by whoever was responsible for that abomination.

Now in 2007, thirty years since the so-called "Summer of Love" Time Life, Sony/BMG, and Universal Music have gotten together to release a two CD one DVD set called Summer Of Love: The Hits Of 1967 in commemoration of the anniversary. In what seems to me a stroke of brilliance unexpected from corporate music, the reason for the two CDs is to delineate between the music that was being played on the AM stations and the FM stations.

I have to admit that my first reaction on seeing this was a Time Life presentation was to be highly skeptical. I mean talk about your ultimate mainstream, un-hip organization. What could they possibly know about what "really" happened during that time? It sounded as ludicrous as getting Walt Disney World creating a retrospective of Punk Rock.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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