Tijuana Mania

As we spend the season awash in doe-eyed fortieth anniversary reflections on the complete awesomeness and revolutionary cultural significance of the Monterey Pop Festival, the birth of Rolling Stone magazine, the Summer of Love, and most siginficantly, the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I stumble across this, Billboard's list of top ten albums of 1967:

1. The Monkees, More of the Monkees
2. The Monkees, The Monkees
3. Soundtrack, Dr. Zhivago
4. Soundtrack, The Sound of Music
5. The Temptations, Greatest Hits
6. Soundtrack, A Man and a Woman
7. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, S.R.O.
8. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream and Other Delights
9. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Going Places
10. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

So while the intelligentsia were tuning in, turning on and dropping out to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the rest of America was listening to three records by the king of hepcat lounge lizard music, two by the Pre-fab Four, three movie soundtracks and a package of previously released Motown singles. Sometimes you can only see the revolution in the rearview mirror.