Born To Rock & Roll

Recently, the official BTRNR iPod had not been delivering the goods.  It seemed hollow, blah, and not very groovy.  In short, it was just not Batusi-tastic.  And that warranted a new playlist, devoted to what is indisputably the coolest year in music history – 1966.  Sure, everyone knows ‘66 as the year of Aftermath, Pet Sounds, Revolver, Blonde On Blonde, Da Capo… but it was also the year garage hit the Top 40, the peak of Motown and Stax, and the hippest AM got before FM started infiltrating the following year.  In 1966, things were still hip, not hippie.  There was psychedlia, but not acid rock.  And it was just really, really fucking mod.

Thus, the 1966 playlist in question contains 175 songs.  And that’s avoiding the total obscurities that showed up 20 years later on Pebbles comps and the blatant crap (Sgt. Barry Sadler, anyone?) that polluted Billboard and Cashbox.

But the question remains – what was the greatest song of 1966?  Well, we’re gonna find out now, aren’t we.

Here’s the deal.  The master playlist of 175 tracks will be shuffled using the finest technology Apple has to offer.  Said list will then be divided into 7 groups of 25, with tracks the paired off in the order they’ve been shuffled and the winner of these head-to-head match-ups advancing to the next round.  And even we know that 25 divided by 2 doth not make for kosher arithmetic, so the 25th track will automatically advance.  A wild card, if you will.  And then we’ll see where we go from there.  The NCAA tourney, this clearly is not.

See below for the Master Playlist itself, in convenient alphabetized form.  You’ll notice that a few of the tracks were released in ‘67, or maybe some in late ‘65.  True though that may be, 1966 was more than a calendar year, it was a state of mind.  Either that or some things were recorded in ‘66 and not released until ‘67, and are just so goddamn 1966 that there’s no way they can’t be included here.  Like the first Doors album, for example.  We are now offically turning the clock back 43 years, so buckle the fuck up and dig the contestants: