ReZoom

It was a hot, August morning in 1966 when I pedaled my threesspeed Schwinn to Sam Goody's and plunked down $2.69 (plus tax) for a spanking-new copy of "Revolver."

At 12 years old I didn't know it, but buying my first album made me part of a cataclysmic event: the dawn of rock's LP era. Until then, like every kid, I purchased my music one hit at a time, on those little paper-sleeved 45s – the MP3s of the analog age.

Before the Beatles made long-play recordings standard for rock, "rock records" meant 45s packed into girls' mini-cases or guys' ratty shoeboxes. LPs were a waste of your allowance – a couple of hits awash in filler. Then everything changed. Bob Dylan raised the standard of songwriting and the Beatles brought a pop sensibility to that new songcraft. Suddenly, it was mandatory for rock acts to not only write their own stuff, but also to conceive their music as cohesive albums.

And as everyone our age knows, what followed was the greatest music EVER.

Or was it?

• "Anybody with an ounce of sense would agree that Nirvana is as good as Bruce Springsteen." — Robert Christgau, the "Dean" of rock critics, former longtime music editor of the "Village Voice."

Well, not all of it was all that great. Through the hindsight filter, we only remember the best stuff. To most, the ‘60s was the Jimi Hendrix Experience, not Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Even so, some years stand out. Just as 1956 was an epochal year in the birth of rock and soul – Elvis became a phenomenon; James Brown cut "Please Please Please" for King Records; 1967 was an incredible year for progressive rock.

There was the first Hendrix record, first Doors, first Grateful Dead, first Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick, first Pink Floyd, first Janis Joplin, Cream's "Disraeli Gears," Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" and, of course, "Sgt. Pepper's."

So was music just better from 1965-1985?

• "It certainly gets more credit than it deserves as an instigator of change, but it was a conveyor of change. The rock back then wasn't afraid to be vulgar, to confront conventional ideas of good taste. It wasn't a white/black thing. It was a mix for the unwashed." – Dave Marsh, cofounder of Creem magazine, former associate editor of Rolling Stone and editor of Rock and Rap Confidential.

Nostalgia aside, I think it was.

It really was a new era. Ideas that have become rock institutions – bluesrock, folk-rock, world-music, jazz-rock, even funk – were still fresh. LPs and the new progressive FM radio format freed musicians from the three-minute single. As with other freedoms, some weren't ready for it and others abused it. Most guitarists didn't have enough to say to warrant half-hour solos; but Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Duane Allman all could turn that space into magic.

• "But it really had nothing to do with the baby boom. Electric guitars became cheap, transistor radios became cheap. Integration, migration, the Vietnam War, the fact we became the richest working class in history and then the bottom fell out. You couldn't ask for more fertile ground for John Lennon." – Dave Marsh

Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you learned guitar licks sitting at your turntable, playing records over and over at 16 RPM, trying to catch every note. That inexact method left room for creativity as you struggled to fill in the blanks. When the Band's Robbie Robertson inducted Elmore James into the Rock ‘n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, he reminisced on how a Canadian kid who'd never heard of slide guitar bloodied his fingers emulating James' sound without a bottleneck. He never became a great slide guitarist, but he did become Robbie Robertson.

Part II: Check out papa's brand new bag.

Want more Music? Check out these stories.

Music to My Ears: David Hood

Tips on Downloading Music

Or, Click here to check out our Music section.