The Seismic Sixties

All my earliest memories come from this decade.  My first books and first movies.  Bambi at the drive-in.  Mary Poppins.  The mysteries of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  The Bounty Trilogy.  Jules Verne.  First explorations of nature in my backyard.  First day of school.  My first library card.  Reading books in the ‘back back’ of the light blue station wagon.  My first fishing pole – catching sunnies and, once, a snapping turtle, in the Saddle Brook.  My first trip on an airplane – visiting the pilot in the cockpit.    Watching the Apollo astronauts on TV.  The shooting of Bobby Kennedy.  The Vietnam War on the evening news.  Hippies making out in Glen Rock Park.

So in the spirit of that immense decade, here are my top films, books and music of the 1960s.  To see the complete lists, check out the menu at the top of the page.

Favorite 60s Films

 (Fellini, 1963)
Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux [My Life to Live] (Godard, 1962)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
La dolce vita (Fellini, 1960)
À bout de souffle [Breathless] (Godard, 1960)
Repulsion (Polanski, 1965)
Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
L’avventura [The Adventure] (Antonioni, 1960)
El ángel exterminador [The Exterminating Angel] (Buñuel, 1962)
Jules et Jim [Jules and Jim] (Truffaut, 1962)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
La jetée [The Pier] (Marker, 1962)
Nóż w wodzie [Knife in the Water] (Polanski, 1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
Le procès [The Trial] (Welles, 1962)
The Servant (Losey, 1963)
Bande à part [Band of Outsiders] (Godard, 1964)
Faces (Cassavetes, 1968)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969)

Favorite 60s Books

Thomas Pynchon  V. (1963)
Gabriel García Márquez  One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Tom Wolfe  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Kurt Vonnegut  Cat’s Cradle (1963)
James Watson  The Double Helix (1968)
J.D. Salinger  Franny and Zooey (1961)
Jorge Luis Borges  Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (1962)
William Hinton  Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1966)
Doris Lessing  The Golden Notebook (1962)
John Barth  Giles Goat-Boy (1966)
William L. Shirer  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1960)
Anthony Burgess  A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Richard Taylor  Metaphysics (1963)
Frank Rhodes  Fossils (1962)

Favorite 60s Music

Patsy Cline  12 Greatest Hits (1957-1963)
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles   The Ultimate Collection (1959-1972)
Wes Montgomery  The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (1960)
Freddie King   Hide Away: The Best of Freddy King (1960-1966)
Etta James   The Sweetest Peaches: The Chess Years, Part 1 (1960-1966)
Bill Evans  Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961)
Johann Sebastian Bach  St. Matthew Passion (Klemperer) (1961)
Dexter Gordon  Go (1962)
Lee Morgan  The Sidewinder (1964)
Gustav Mahler  Das Lied von der Erde (Ludwig/Klemperer) (1964-1966)
Joe Henderson  Inner Urge (1965)
Wayne Shorter  Speak No Evil (1965)
Sun Ra   The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (1965)
John Coltrane   A Love Supreme (1965)
B.B. King   Live at the Regal (1965)
The Beatles   Rubber Soul (1965)
Bob Dylan   Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Various Artists   Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era (1965-1968)
Richard Wagner  Tristan und Isolde (Chor und Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele/Böhm; Nilsson; Windgassen; Ludwig) (1966)
Bob Dylan   Blonde on Blonde (1966)
Larry Young  Unity (1966)
Various Artists   Chicago/The Blues/Today! (1966)
The Beatles  Revolver (1966)
Albert King   King of the Blues Guitar (1966-1968)
Jefferson Airplane  The Worst of Jefferson Airplane (1966-1969)
Janis Joplin  Greatest Hits (1966-1970)
The Velvet Underground  The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
The Beatles  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Aretha Franklin  The Very Best of Aretha Franklin: The ’60s (1967-1970)
Van Morrison  Astral Weeks (1968)
The Beatles  The Beatles [White Album] (1968)
Claudio Monteverdi   Orfeo (Ensemble Vocal et Instrumental de Lausanne/Corboz) (1968)
Various Artists   Tropicália: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound (1968-1970)
Dusty Springfield  Dusty in Memphis (1969)
The Who  Tommy (1969)
Crosby, Stills & Nash   Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969)
The Band  The Band (1969)
The Beatles  Abbey Road (1969)

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