2 1967🔗

There was music in the house as far back as I can remember, but not the type that would ultimately influence my future tastes very much. My parents were immigrants from India, my father an aficionado of Karnatic and Hindustani classical music. What I would hear, played on a reel-to-reel tape recorder or inexpensive record player, was mostly that, mixed with Hindi film songs, Broadway musicals, and some Disney soundtracks, presumably a sop to us kids.

We lived in a three-bedroom apartment, in the basement of a duplex, in Ottawa’s west end. In the kitchen there was a clock radio, which my mother would play when she was working there. It was permanently tuned to radio station CFRA, which played what now would be called contemporary easy listening, a mix of safer current top-40 hits and older favourites.

The Beatles dominated pop music at the time, along with blatantly contrived imitators like the Monkees. I quite overdosed on this style of music, but then had to suffer years of peers convinced that they were the greatest band ever. Just when I thought things had quietened down, the Anthology releases on CDs continued the hype through the ’90’s. I seem to be finally shot of them.

There is little in my musical memories to distinguish 1967 from the years immediately before and after it, but I chose this as my starting point because it is the earliest date of release of any pop album in my collection that I still actively enjoy listening to. I have earlier albums that I no longer care much for (Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground) and earlier R&B and soul albums that I’ll exclude for the sake of the concept.

The album is "Forever Changes", by the American rock band Love, fronted by Arthur Lee. I did not hear it in 1967; I would not hear it for more than thirty-five years after its release. After repeatedly seeing references to it in music criticism of the ’90’s, I picked it up on CD in 2003. I was astonished at how fresh it sounded, not like some historical document. It definitely evokes its time in its lyrics, arrangements, and recording, but the songs are varied and compelling.

I have long resented those who came of age in the ’60’s, who seem to have ruined things repeatedly for those of us who followed. I could have used the phrase "OK boomer" a few decades earlier. But "Forever Changes" is like a concentrated dose of what’s best about the Sixties, avoiding both the naive optimism of what came before and the dark cynicism of what came after.

I had very little control over the music that surrounded me at this point, and my choices would narrow further in the years ahead, before I finally managed to gain some agency.