250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 81 The Four Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

 

This is the kind of record that collector slaver at the mouth at like Pavlov's Dig and pretend they prefer to Pet Sounds to irritate their friends. It is a pretty classic package though. An album released at the end of the Sixties by the Four Seasons who had been huge only five years before its release in 1969 but now seemed like dinosaurs.

But here they reinvent themselves. No Big Girls Don't Cry or Walk Like a Man in raging falsettos but melancholic state of the nation elegies in the year of radical protests, drug proliferation and the oncoming decade. It's a beautiful record of the time. As demonstrative of what being alive in 1969 as Abbey Road in some ways.  

I'm glad I've got it. It comes out a couple of times a year. Generally as darkness falls.  Bit I confess this afternoon, halfway through the second side tiday I've fallen half in live with the thing and will be playing it more from now on.