"It was 50 years ago today..."

I woke up this morning to cloudy skies.  I put on music that I thought matched the atmosphere--Sarah Jarosz's "Run Away," "Midnight Lullaby" by Tom Waits, and Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Georgia On My Mind."  Then, as the sun began to peak through, I remembered that it's June 1--the date on which a Beatles album with seismic effects on rock music, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," was released 50 years ago in America.

After playing the original album in its entirety, I listened to the 18 tracks on the economy-size deluxe edition.  Among the highlights:

• A Day In The Life (Take 1 With Hums) (As a child, the structure of "A Day In The Life" struck me as one of the band's most impressive achievements.  It still does.  It's interesting to hear this rendition with a piano line instead of the orchestral crescendo that would lead into Paul McCartney's "Woke up, fell out of bed..." sequence and a group hum at the end instead of the famous last piano chord.)
• Fixing A Hole (Speech and Take 3) (It's enjoyable to hear McCartney sing a somewhat looser version of a tune I think is underrated, by Beatles standards.)
• Getting Better (Take 1/Instrumental and Speech At The End) (I've always liked the optimistic vibe of this tune, and it's a pleasure to realize, after all this time, how credible it sounds just as an instrumental.)
• Good Morning Good Morning (Take 8) (I like hearing John Lennon sing this without production gimmicks layered over his voice.  Some listeners might find it disorienting to hear the tune without the chorus, but it's a fun work-in-progress version.)
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (Speech and Take 8) (McCartney's yowl during the intro is well-placed and wouldn't have been out of place on the album.)
• Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 26) (A respectable experiment with a faster tempo.  Although "Strawberry Fields..." wasn't on the album, it was released as a single in 1967.)

It's also a pleasure to hear previously unreleased studio banter come to life five decades later, showing bits of the debate and experimentation that went into the group's creative process.  It speaks well of the music-buying public that this seminal concept album still garners monster sales and appreciation.  Here's hoping that anyone who enjoys the album as much as I do has time to hear it today.