The soundtrack for a new golden age.
It’s June of 1967 and I’m about to graduate from high school. It was a pivotal year. A year that changed the way we listened and heard. Rules were broken, new pathways were charted. We got our ears opened and our eyes followed.
I’ve been thinking about times when the need for deeply rooted change and opportunity beckoned. Times when entirley new things were brought to life.
Times of profound change are rare. Sometimes you can feel them coming and sometimes they sneak up on you.
A whiff of change is in the air today. We’re ready for an age inventiveness, courage, leadership and compassion, for everyone. A time to birth exceptional ideas and experiences. We’ve been here before.
1967 was the year that my music obsessed friends and I pounded the NYC streets from Stuy Town to the Village, to be out in the midst of something that we knew was changing. We hit the streets on freezing days, pavement slick with slush, shoes soaked with ice water, and hot as the devil nights with steam pouring out of manhole covers.
We walked and talked a mile a minute, making weekly stops at Dayton Records on 8th street, to rummage though the bins for the latest releases. We waited in line at the Cafe Au Go Go, full of anticipation and crept down those funky, dark stairs to be blasted away.
It was the year of Sgt. Pepper, Are You Experienced, After Bathing At Baxters, Between The Buttons, Buffalo Springfield Again, Dear Mr. Fantasy. Motown was still on the radio mixing it up with the Stones, Hendrix and the Beatles. The Rascals, The Blues Project, Richie Havens, the Youngbloods and the Spoonful were our hometown hero's. Jimi was back from England playing at Salvation. It was the music that gave us license to be daring, inclusive, creative and make a difference. It paved our way into the future.
The breakthroughs of ’67 gave us new ears to hear music. They gave us new benchmarks for measuring creativity. They gave us a template for going past the limits into uncharted territory to reveal something remarkable. We have that opportunity again.
To tune in to that time of change, here’s a mix of music (click below) that’s a soundtrack of the golden age of ’67 and for one that’s about to dawn.
May it inspire you to make positive, equitable change.
Be well, be safe. Listen in. Turn it up.
Dedicated to the memory of Chuck Fitzgerald and Josh Lipton. Rock on brothers. I’m sure you’re playing in that angel band.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Penname publication
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