For some reason, the comments on yesterday’s piece about Procol Harum triggered a paroxysm of nostalgia. I decided to put together an iTunes playlist of my favourite 45s from my last year at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. That would be September 1967 to June 1968. The charts are online at Everyhit.com which made it easy. Most of the tracks that I wanted were either in my iTunes collection already* or available from the iTunes Music Store. The only real frustrations were that I couldn’t find anything by the Herd or the Honeybus. (No, you won’t have heard of either group.)
The result – 21 tracks – fits nicely on a CD-R. Here’s the playlist. It wasn’t a bad year, was it? Of course I had to slide over such chart-topping marvels as Richard Harris’s “Macarthur Park” and Pigmeat Markham’s “Here Come De Judge”!
- Flowers In The Rain / The Move 2:25
- Homburg / Procol Harum 3:56
- San Franciscan Nights / Eric Burdon & The Animals 3:24
- Kites / Simon Dupree And The Big Sound 3:50
- Hello, Goodbye / The Beatles 3:29
- The Mighty Quinn / Manfred Mann 2:53
- Nights in White Satin / The Moody Blues 4:26
- Pictures of Matchstick Men / Status Quo 3:11
- Green Tambourine / The Lemon Pipers 2:27
- (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay / Otis Redding 2:39
- Lady Madonna / The Beatles 2:18
- Lazy Sunday / The Small Faces 3:06
- Mony Mony / Tommy James & The Shondells 2:53
- This Wheel’s On Fire / Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity 3:31
- Lovin’ Things / Marmalade 3:10
- Baby Come Back / The Equals 2:30
- Hurdy Gurdy Man / Donovan 3:18
- Jumpin’ Jack Flash / The Rolling Stones 3:43
- Fire! / Crazy World Of Arthur Brown 2:59
- Mrs. Robinson / Simon & Garfunkel 4:04
- On The Road Again / Canned Heat 3:26
(And why did I include “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers? Am I just a sucker for phasing**? I actually have a soft spot for them: they produced what I consider to be one of the finest rock-raga hybrids ever, a 9 minute 10 second opus entitled “Through With You”.)
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* Often as part of a compilation CD. I don’t think I’d actually buy anything by the Marmalade these days (Although I did back in 1968.)
** Actually I am. You’ll notice that quite a few of these songs use, or abuse, what was undoubtedly the sound effect du jour. Check out “This Wheel’s On Fire”, for instance.