Thank you so kindly! Glad to potentially expand your horizons a bit too, as if that really needs doing. (grin)

You should hop on over to allmusic and check a couple samples from the album. I won’t say it’s life changing, at least not in a good way, but it really does bear listening to once. There’s no way to truly appreciate how bizarre the thing was until you hear it yourself.

It’s funny to look back at the Beatles catalog too. They were an incredibly prolific band, and continued on as solo artists after they broke up in 1970. I’m continually amazed at how many truly great songs they had.

I remember seeing Switched On Bach around Grandma’s place at one point, so you’re probably right that it was Ray’s. Or it could have been your Dad’s too. At one point he surprised me by playing Jean Michel-Jarre’s Oxygene. I never would have guessed he had even heard of Jarre, let alone owned the album.

To my credit, I did mention that The Carpenters formed in 1968. However, according to my research, their first album, Ticket to Ride, wasn’t released until 1969.

For some reason I always see the Monkees as an early prototype for today’s boy bands. They had some good songs, but there’s the eternal question of how much of that stuff was actually theirs and how much was hired guns.

Blackbird is one of my favorite little tunes of all time. There are so many beautiful covers of it out there, not to mention the original.