[lindyhop]

I was trying to listen to the NPR piece about this last night but there was so much static because I was waiting to get past the pay station in the Mickey & Friends parking structure. But there is no static in my memories.

I remember my best friend and I going to Al Kalie's Music in Downey to buy this album the first day it came out. The poor clerk was just pulling it out of the box when we got there. We took it home and listened to it over and over and over again that summer, usually with one ear up against a speaker so we could hear George counting before starting to sing or the footsteps (we thought) in another song. The Beatles layered all that sound so we could take it apart, right? Really we were just obsessed and since it was the first Beatles album in what seemed like forever we had to absorb every molecule.

I haven't listened to the album as a whole in ages but the opening notes of Sgt. Pepper and the whole of A Day in The Life are still as transcendent as ever. (I had to pull out my iPod so I could listen to A Day in The Life again right now.) Abbey Road is probably my favorite album but Sgt. Pepper was transforming and still has power.

Forty years ago? Holy crap.