Today’s Random Weekend selection hails from The Zombies’ acclaimed 1968 album Odessey and Oracle (their misspelling, not mine).
Like so many famous albums, this one wasn’t widely celebrated upon its release but over the decades it has been recognized as a seminal record in the baroque pop genre.
Best known for single ‘Time of the Season‘ (“What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich like me?”), Odessey and Oracle is solid from start to finish. Today’s track is the Side One closer and a celebration of the flower power movement.
The opening verses’ references to “neon darkness” and a “nameless changing crowd” seem like nods to another 60s touchstone, Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Sounds of Silence.’
Just drifting slowly through a crowded street
With neon darkness shimmering through the haze
A sea of faces rippling in the heat
And from that nameless changing crowd
A sweet vibration seemed to fill the air
I stood astounded staring hard
At men with flowers resting in their hair
A sweet confusion filled my mind
Until I woke up only finding everything was just a dream
A dream unusual of its kind
That gave me peace and blew my mind
And now I’m hung up on a dream
They spoke with soft persuading words
About a living creed of gentle love
And turned the arm to sounds unheard
And showed me strangest clouded sights above
Which gentle touched my aching mind
And soothed the wanderings of my troubled brain
Sometimes I think I’ll never find
Such purity and peace of mind again
Meet Me In Montauk 
I really only am familiar with”Time of the Season.” Guess I should give the rest of the album a listen. So very 60’s!