1966: That’s The Bag I’m In (Reloaded)

On Halloween 2026, I will be 60 years old. I thought I would share some of my favorite playlists over the next few weeks including some I’ve posted before but with current updates, and a few I’ve kept private over the years. Here’s an absolute favorite that I shared about four years ago with my usual lengthy blog essay accompanying it. In the past year or so I switched the YouTube (and Spotify) playlist back to private as I had to update and replace the videos that occasionally get removed from the platform. Then I started adding more and more songs to it as I kept discovering cool new-to-me tunes. For the past several months I’ve fine-tuned it and wrote another essay with plans to make it public. That’s when I realized I had completely forgotten that I had done this thing four years ago! Oh man, I’m getting old. It turns out my new essay basically covers most of the same things I had already written about. So let me just refresh and reload the basics here.

It started many years ago as one of those internet quizzes. “What was the #1 song the day you were born?” Mine was “96 Tears” by ? & The Mysterians. I’ve long been proud of being a ‘66 baby since it was considered the fulcrum point of the ‘60s garage phenomenon. Every year in the history of popular music is loaded with incredible stuff, so it’s ridiculous to say one year was better than another, but 1966 was out of this world (I believe I called it “THE GREATEST YEAR IN POPULAR MUSIC!” multiple times). So naturally after I found the answer to the question, I had to make a playlist of some of my favorite music from that year. I cleverly made a 66-song playlist which has since grown into a monster. I tried to balance things between the well-known classics and obscure gems. Some of the well-known titles are just insane: “You’re Gonna Miss Me”, “You Can’t Hurry Love”, “Psychotic Reaction”, “Talk Talk”, “Knock On Wood“, “River Deep Mountain High”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Hold On, I’m Coming”, “Shapes of Things”, “Wild Thing”, “For What It’s Worth” and “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” are all titles that the most casual fan of ‘60s music should know, and they’re just the beginning of a bottomless pit. To think they all came out in the same year is astounding.

Obviously being a ‘60s Garage freak I could’ve easily gone crazy including every Nuggets, Back From The Grave or Teenage Shutdown song I’ve ever loved, so I held back at first. Then I just said “screw it”. I make playlists that take an entire day or two to listen to and it’s mostly for me and the one or two friends that might actually listen to it, so why not include everything I could think of. Plus, I’ve discovered so many more things from ‘66 that I hadn’t ever heard till now. Eventually, I had to trim it down because it really was getting out of hand, but at nearly 9 hours and approaching the 200 song mark, it’s still pretty ridiculous. In addition to loads of Garage bands (and plenty from Texas!), I included some great R&B/Soul, Country, Blues, Jazz, and various music from some of my favorite films of 1966.

I had two basic rules for this playlist:

1. Only one song by each artist. That may seem weird, but also keep in mind, my brain is always in mixtape mode. I don’t just throw a bunch of songs together. Every song is strategically placed. There’s many flows and sets, and the last block is meant to be an exciting finale.

2. The versions included had to have been released in 1966. As I explained before, I made at least one exception.

The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” was released in November of ‘65 but the single was a bust. It wasn’t until after the release of The Seeds’ debut album the following April that a local L.A. DJ started spinning the tune heavily, and the song was reissued as a single in July. It reached the Top 40 by the end of the year and was still selling into ‘67. So why did I bend the rules for this song? Well, “my rules” basically. Also, I just think it is one of the most quintessential ‘60s Punk songs. “You’re pushing too hard, pushing too hard, on me…” Like, get off my back, man. “All I want is to just be free. Live my life the way I wanna be. All I want is to just have fun. Live my life like it’s just begun.” That’s ‘60s Punk in a nutshell.

There were a few other tricky circumstances where I chose to bend my rules. Houston’s The Fanatics’ (aka Neal Ford & The Fanatics) cover of The Zombies’ “Woman” (aka “I Can’t Believe”) was recorded in 1966 but never released until 1994. Likewise, Denton/Dallas band The Beefeaters ‘66 recording of “Don’t Hurt Me” was unreleased till the ‘80s and just this year got issued on a 45 finally. And you may be thinking, “Wait a second, Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground didn’t bust out till 1967.” As I explained before, yes their debut albums are from ‘67, but… The Velvets’ “Sunday Morning” b/w “Femme Fatale” was released in December of ‘66 and was their second single. And the Jimi Hendrix Experience made their recording debut in the U.K. the same month with “Hey Joe” b/w “Stone Free”. Another tune that is more associated with ‘67, and Vietnam for that matter, is Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”. The song was actually a reaction to the Sunset Strip riots that happened in November of ‘66. The single was released on December 10th, five days after it was recorded. It was also added to the re-release of their debut album. It’s one of the most overplayed songs of 60’s, but I’ve always dug it.

As I’ve also mentioned before, the hardest decisions I made were picking songs by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Both acts produced some iconic music in ‘66. Initially I picked “I’m Only Sleeping” from The Beatles’ Revolver, but “Tomorrow Never Knows” is epic and I knew it would be great as the first song on the mix (before I picked “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” theme). Then there’s the “Paperback Writer” b/w “Rain” single. Like I said, it wasn’t easy.

The most popular Rolling Stones song of all time (legitimately the most streamed, downloaded, requested etc.) is “Paint It Black”, from ‘66. So many others to choose from: “19th Nervous Breakdown”, “Mother’s Little Helper”, “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?” However, “Out of Time” is my #2 all-time favorite Stones song, and it seems a fitting way to end everything.

I made some other changes from the original playlist. I wanted to avoid using certain songs I’ve used on other playlists, so I passed on “Inside Looking Out” by The Animals, “Shapes of Things” by The Yardbirds, “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, and “Gloria” by The Shadows of Knight in favor of some other favorites. One of my all-time favorites is The Monkees’ “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”, but I’ve used it too many times before so I decided to give Paul Revere & The Raiders’ original version some love. Of course “Stepping Stone” and “Last Train To Clarksville” were both written by Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, but don’t get me started on that…

There’s so many more things to say here but I don’t have another 60 years to go over everything and I covered most of it years ago. I’ll share the link to that old blog below. Of course I’m always open to discussing this stuff and will answer any questions about it. Chances are as time goes by I will add more songs to the playlist but I promise I won’t do another write-up about it. Recently I’ve seen a few others celebrating 1966 as their birth year too, but also for the fact that it was such an incredible year in music. So, I dedicate this to all the ‘66 babies out there.

I prefer YouTube but there’s also a Spotify version. However I still can’t find every song on that platform. Coming soon, another playlist based on a year from my life. What could that be? It’ll be more crazy fun I can promise that.

YouTube:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLee3Mlng_XWI&si=YD3vgrPNH9kPnxOE