IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA

When my older brother brought this album home in 1968, I was a nerdy 11-year-old just starting to get interested in rock and roll. I really liked the shorter songs on the first side of the album even though they were a bit heavier than I was used to, and had a vocalist sounding like Tom Jones(!) was singing very seriously.

The title track was catchy, and I knew it from radio play. But the extended version was too spacy, jammy and long for my as-yet untrained ears. Listening to it today reminds me how good this whole album was, especially from a psych/proto-prog standpoint. The lyrics can sometimes be a bit sappy at times, but that sort of endears the album to me.

Anywho, just thought I'd give this some props, 55+ years after first hearing it! Let's go 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.