John Phillips's Contribution to the Landscape of Musical History

We start season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs with an extra-long look at “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie, and at the Monterey Pop Festival, and the careers of the Mamas and the Papas and P.F. Sloan.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Up, Up, and Away” by the 5th Dimension.

Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/

Errata: An incorrect version of the file was previously uploaded, with the wrong section edited in at approximately 57 minutes. This was fixed about three hours after uploading, but some streaming services may have cached the wrong file.

Also I say that John Phillips wrote “No, No, No, No”. I got this from an interview with McKenzie, but he must have been misremembering — the song is a cover version of “La Poupee Qui Fait Non” by Michel Polnareff, with English-language lyrics by Geoff Stephens

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