My Top 10 Albums

I chuckle when I see these Top 10 album challenges floating around social media.

You know them.

The ones that start out with a wordy post-challenge by a friend to post a photo of an album that has influenced them.

No words or descriptions. 

Just a photo.

As if...

I laugh because most of my Facebook friends are fellow baby boomers.

Meaning we came of age relatively during the same time period of the 1960’s and 70’s.

And my laughter isn’t at the albums they post but rather that one would be so naive to think that they could sum up their musical influences with just 10!

After growing up in the most turbulent time period of our existence.

Just 10 to show your influence seems somewhat insufficient.

It’s like asking Babe Ruth to list his favorite home run from 714 of them.

But I’m here to help.

Because as a fellow baby boomer I’ve researched the subject some , had my own radio show in college and consider myself a “musicologist”.

So follow along...if you will bear me the time because times, well they are a changing!

So most of us were born into the early 60’s.

Ah, the Eisenhower era of our parents was transitioning into the Camelot years of JFK.

It was a tranquil, peaceful time of our society.

Our Best Generation fathers had returned from war and began suburbia living.

And we were the tail-end of that suburbia.

Our decade began with the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans.

We were being asked to forge a new frontier by not what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country.

Hope, inspiration and a “Fly Me to the Moon” mentality existed.

In fact, our music consisted of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby.

Holdovers from our parents generation.

But we wanted more.

And we got it like a sledge hammer to the head.

November 22, 1963 in Dallas shattered our suburbia innocence.

Our world had been rocked.

We went from inspirational words of “ask not” to asking “why?”

The new generation of Americans dropped their torches and were left seeking answers.

And we got a few from a group of English lads calling themselves The Beatles.

The fresh-faced, young lads from Liverpool led the British Invasion in June of 1964.

Just three short months after Dallas.

Their fresh faces and mop tops inspired us with juicy, lighter lyrics of love, hope and inspiration.

Our collective pain was soon lifted from bullets and violence and soothed by lyrics wanting to hold our hands.

We quickly forgot Frank, Elvis and Bing and replaced them with John, Paul, George and Ringo!

Soon others followed including The Animals, Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones and Herman’s Hermits.

Not to be outdone, America countered with surf music and everybody was “Surfin U.S.A.” when The Beach Boys had their first #1 hit in 1964.

And Frankie and Annette captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of teenagers with “Beach Blanket Bingo” on the big screen.

Suddenly life seemed better. Happier. Together.

The Turtles wrote a song about that, too!

What inspiration we didn’t get from our music we got from that new box in our living room called television!

Soon the airways were full of fun and light-hearted “sitcoms” featuring storylines of a live-in-the bottle Genie, a Gomer in the Marines, a witch who had magical powers by twinkling her nose and a bunch of castaways stranded on an island.

Suddenly the heavy social mood of the times had been lightened. 

Or so we thought.

The civil rights movement of the sixties suddenly boiled over and the lighthearted mood was replaced with marches and movements.

Peaceful at first they eventually became violent.

A new generation of American music groups sprung up and began noticing.

Suddenly “Happy Together” morphed into America’s new generations’ first protest song “What It’s Worth”.

You know the words,

“Something’s happening here,

What it is,

Ain’t exactly clear,

There’s a man with a gun over there,

Telling me I got to be square,

It’s time to stop children,

What’s that Sound,

Everybody look what’s going down.”

While all of this was percolating the Vietnam War had escalated to over 500,000 American troops.

JFK’s brother got involved and suddenly the civil rights movement morphed into a peace movement.

But the powers that be responded by killing Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in hopes of stifling the dissent.

However the movement continued through song.

As the hair began growing longer and the pant bottoms got wider,  a new generation of American songwriters responded.

David Crosby was so pissed off following RFK’s death he wrote “Long Time Gone” to protest.

“Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness,

You got to speak your mind if you dare,

But don't, no don't, no, try to get yourself elected,

If you do you had better cut your hair.”

The next year, the long-hairs assembled in upstate New York for their own protest.

Soon Peace, Love and Rock and Roll were born.

The “Ask Not” generation suddenly became the “Make Love Not War” movement.

The torch had been replaced with a flower!

Jimi, Janis and Jim replaced John, Paul, George and Ringo!

And guess what?

We could not only listen to them but we could see them nightly on the television, too!

Thanks to Sonny and Cher, The Smothers Brothers and Dick Cavett!

We also had a new listening device.

FM radio. (One of My Favorite groups later wrote a song about that!)

Soon our entire albums were played in their entirety until wee hours of the morning.

The New Frontier landed a man on the moon at the end of the decade and things began looking up (pun intended)!

But as the new decade began we couldn’t be satisfied with happiness and hope.

A new president had been elected on “peace in our lifetime” but soon his National Guard turned their sights on protesting students in Ohio.

Neil Young was watching and David Crosby handed him a guitar.

As our airwaves broadcast the images live on television we soon heard the words:

“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, 

We’re finally on our own, 

This summer I hear the drumming, 

Four dead in Ohio!”

Now you begin to see why 10 doesn’t even begin to answer the question!

We’re just getting started!

Soon after “Ohio,” Jimi, Janis and Jim checked out early.

Their flames burned too bright in the 60’s and well, they just couldn’t handle a new decade of music.

But they left us their hits which lived on in our cultural vast waste land.

“Foxey Lady”, “Hey Joe”, “Piece of My Heart” and “L.A. Woman”!

By the time Marvin Gaye brought MoTown into the protest movement with “What’s Going On” in 1971...

Soon the new president who gunned down students was “gunned down” himself by new bullets—tapes!

And a new wave of music began in Southern California.

All in one spot in West L.A.—“The Troubadour”.

Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young, James Taylor, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt all had their starts at The Troubadour. 

(Along with Elton John and Billy Joel and a few others.)

New protest music centered around leaving your restless troubles behind and searching for new answers.

Words like,

“Well I’m a runnin’ down the road tryin’ to loosen my load,

I’ve got seven women on my mind,

Four that want to own me,

Two that want to stone me,

One says she’s a friend of mine,

Take It Easy...

Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona

Such a fine sight to see,

It’s a girl my lord in a flat bed Ford,

Slowin’ down to take a look at me”

The Eagles were born with that song to millions of teenagers.

They would respond in 1975 with “Hotel California” and end the decade with “The Long Run”.

In between we found other restless protesters like The Doobie Brothers “Rockin’ Down the Highway”, Jackson Browne “Running on Empty” and who could forget Terry Kath burning up the bridges in “25 or 6 to Four”.

That would be a good place to end this sojourn of music but we’d miss disco!

I know.

The generation that grew up liking Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison and morphed into Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young into The Eagles had found disco!

It wasn’t our fault.

A guy named Vinny Barbarino jumped out of our televisions into a white leisure suit and we became...Bee Gees fans.

Musical heresy!

What in the name of Jim Morrison had just happened.

But you have to admit. It was good stuff.

And the juxtaposition was telling.

“Stayin’ Alive” was a hit in 1977 when a bloated Elvis said, “I’ve seen enough!” and he left the building!

And just when the Bee Gees and John Travolta popularized disco we also discovered Earth, Wind and Fire, The Commodores, Donna Summer and K.C. and the Sunshine Band!

But we’re not done musically shape-shifting.

Just as we were grooving to a new beat, Vinny Barbarino does it again and puts on a Cowboy hat, Wranglers and boots and begats “Urban Cowboy”!

But it’s ok.

Because a lot of our old familiar faces are on the soundtrack.

The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Walsh, Charlie Daniels, Jimmy Buffet.

It was all good.

And this is where my musical journey ends.

It’s not for me that the music stopped in 1980. 

But rather that seems like a good bookend to my life up until that point.

A decade that began in the 1960’s with Sinatra, Elvis and Bing ends with John Travolta!

I know.

I’ve skimmed over a lot of music.

And some I was probably inspired by along the way.

But this will have to be good enough.

Now you can see why I can’t do a Top 10 music list that inspired me.

Because I’m tired. 

By the end of the 70’s, we’d seen a young Michael Jackson on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand singing “ABC” with his brothers in the beginning to dancing with monsters in “Thriller” at the end!

Tom Johnston and “The Rockin’ Down the Highway” Doobie Brothers had morphed into Michael McDonald and “Minute by Minute”.

And by the time Terry Kath’s Chicago had become Peter Cetera’s “If You Leave Me Now”...

Well, just like Elvis, I’ve seen enough and I’m just done.

It’s been a “Long Run”!