1. Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals. Having enjoyed this song for my entire life you can only imagine how much more I began to cherish this song after seeing Goodfellas (quite possibly my favorite film), and that single camera shot scene at Henry and Karen walk into the restaurant. Seriously, does it get ANY better?
2. Sunny Afternoon - Kinks. I could not pass on placing the Kinks on this list...pure 60's, but yet, somehow, still relevant and fresh today.
3. Louie Louie - The Kingsmen. Maybe the first true drunk party song. And I have been known to tip a few.
4. Hold On I'm Comin' - Sam & Dave. I will not turn this song off if its being played...one of the best blues cuts ever.
5. I'm Waiting For The Man - Velvet Underground. Seriously, when filling out this list, how can you not put the Beatles, Beach Boys and many others here? Well, I chose to go this route...as the Velvet Underground in the 60's laid the groundwork for the changes to come in the world of rock music. How many new artists out there today can you attribute to having been influenced by VU? Plenty, me thinks...plenty.

1. Jefferson Airplane...White Rabbit..."Feed Your Head, F|eed Your Head"...cause lord knows theyre too stoned to feed themselves and they're rather skinny and peckish already

2. The Rolling Stones...You Can't always Get What You Want...released in 1969 it's a nice summation of what the love generation was feeling post utopia burnout...I'm sure its use in a film disqualifies thischoice and colors my impresion of it

3. Buffalo Springfield...For What It's Worth...Another quasi cautionary tale..or rather an observation that things may not be as groovy as everyone might have thought

4.The Mothers Of Invention...Hungry Freaks Daddy...Mr Zappa and Co waving their freak flags and givin their fingers to the man early 1965...

5.The Beatles...With In You With Out You...the song ends with sobbing...

ugh, I don't know nothin' about quintessential... so I will pick my favorites:

1) Spirit in the Sky - Norman Greenbaum - this song makes me wants to dance in fields in my hippie shirts and maybe a headband.

2) Under My Thumb - The Rolling Stones although I associate this song with a winter day in 1988 cranking it in my high school's scene shop ...

3) Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles - and I say it's alright

4) Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix mostly because I also like butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and especially fairy tales

5) Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkle oh I love S&G but I love them so much for creating a song that would later become one of my all time favorite covers.

that was me btw

"Quintessential" is just my fancy-pants way of saying "songs that sound like they're really super-duper distinctively of that era."

I wanted the actual topic title to be shorter.

I was going to do all songs with prevalent tremolo ("Gimme Shelter," Them's version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," The Smoke's "My Friend Jack" from Nuggets, etc.) but that would short-change the subject.

1. Sly & The Family Stone, "Hot Fun In The Summertime." Integration works, people!! Sly was all about uniting, even if it was just to get freaky with white girls, but this song is why they made $500 CD Players in the 80's... so you can press the repeat button and hear a song over and over again. A perfect song to start a Florida summer (which is today, btw). And fitting since the county fair is back in town.

2. ? & The Mysterians, "96 Tears." These aliens from Mars (or Mexico?) stormed America and went straight to the top the same way their cousins would do it in '96 (you remember, right? When Bill Pullman was our President).

3. John Coltrane, "A Love Supreme." Far from my favorite, but easily his most important. If The Shape Of Jazz To Come changed everything at the end of the '50s and Bitches Brew changed everything at the end of the '60s, this was the recording which shaped the five greatest, most adventerous years of jazz ('64-'69).

4. Moby Grape, "Hey Grandma." As far as psychedelic music goes, they had it all. Incestuous members shared by other bands (Jefferson Airplane), fuzz-drenched guitars, LSD, and at least one member who would mentally crumble under excess drug usage (see also: Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators, etc.). As good as they were, though, their opening move reflected the inherent irresponsibility of '60s excess (releasing five singles all at once), and basically it was all downhill from there (kind of like what the '70s were about).

5. Laura Nyro, "Stone Soul Picnic." Basically, a black girl trapped in a white girl's body, Laura was the vanguard white soul queen (Dusty Springfield had England). She had the confessional folk edge that Carole King would flesh out in the '70s, she had the soul of Patti Labelle, with whom she'd team up with, and she had the theatrical, experimental vocal stylings which Buffy Saint-Marie and Tim Buckley would also draw from.

I'm gonna have to go with the 60's songs most stuck in my head...from having the same set of parental albums played over and over again for the next few decades.

1) DONOVAN, Sunshine Superman - 1966
So MANY Donovan songs to choose from...Mellow Yellow, Hurdy Gurdy, and I almost went with the singsongy one that I hear in my head whenever I say juniperjupiter's user name - "Jennifer Juniper"

2) CAT STEVENS, Here Comes My Baby - 1967
While not really indicative of the classics to come from him in the 70's...this is a beautiful pop song and was sampled masterfully by Wes Anderson in his masterpiece.

3) PETER, PAUL, & MARY, Blowin' in the Wind - 1963 (Dylan's)
From "In the Wind" - so very, very hippie-dippie...I used to love this version as a kid, made me teary every time.

4). SIMON and GAFUNKEL, Sounds of Silence - 1965
THIS is quintessential 60's to me. Honestly never tire of this song. Or this album really.

5) The BEATLES, Octopus's Garden (Abbey Road) - 1969
Now, this may not be "quintessential", there are so very, very many Beatles songs to choose from. But my album memory has me as a kid, fingering through my mom's albums with her maiden name written on the inside cover (and crossed off for the "K" moniker)...this album may not have been one of those...but at my very first school Hooker Oak I think...we would sit around in our kindergarten class and sing...during singing hour...Octopus's Garden was the very first Beatles song I knew (and probably still know) by heart.

To come up with just five was a trick but here goes:

Pressure Drop - Toots and the Maytals
Simmer Down - Bob Marley and the Wailers
Baby I Love You - Aretha Franklin
Born on the Bayou - CCR
I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles

Maybe not quintesential, but consider these five and how they have completely shaped what I listen to now...

oh...but I Saw Her Standing There is pretty quintessential...although, when you get to the Beatles - almost every song works. As one can learn by watching the last two shameful weeks of American Idol as they murder the Beatles songbook.

Oh man. I wanted to include a Creedence song, but I ran out of room. Good call.

1. the byrds - turn! turn! turn! (to everything there is a season). 1965.
2. manfred mann - do wah diddy. 1963.
3. the kingsmen - louie louie. 1963. i learned all about this song at the EMP in seattle.
4. norman greenbaum - spirit in the sky. 1969. (though i'm more partial to a different version, it is decidedly NOT 60's.
5. herman's hermits - mrs. brown you've got a lovely daughter. 1965

oh, i could go on and on.

I can't believe you did this without a Beatles song!

i did it on purpose! :)

1. Mustang Sally - Wilson Pickett

2. Green River - CCR, someone played this very loud one day in summer on a peaceful lake in northern Wisconsin and that pretty much flipped the switch for me.

3. 7 and 7 is - Love, wow what lyrics this song has. "If I don't start crying, it's because that have I got no eyes" "Trapped inside a night, but i'm a day"

4. Dirty Water - Standells

5. Down in the Boondocks - Billy Jo Royal, very young listenin' to ma's records. those were the days.

Kick out the Jams--the MC5

Most of my other "quintessential" songs come from the 70's.

Thanks, Dan for the opportunity to go down memory lane!
I was there & so much was happening, so many changes. I couldn't pick just five songs. So I have Five categories with a smattering of songs in each.

1. Early Rebellion: A teenager rebelling against the hypocrisy of nuclear bomb-dropping, segregationist, Leave It to Beaver, cookie cutter 1950's America. The only time you have any freedom at your Catholic HS where boys & girls are kept separate except is the occasional dance. Horrified nuns cover their ears as the DJ cranks the volume up as we literally scream the lyrics:

The Animals "We've Gotta Get Out of this Place"
The Rolling Stones "I Can't Get no Satisfaction"
The Troggs "Wild Thing"
Paul Revere & the Raiders "Louie, Louie"
The Surfaris "WipeOut"
The Beach Boys "In My Room"
The Beatles "She Loves You" & "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"

2) Hippie Sweetness/Flower Power: The summer of love. Went to a private (Jesuit) university in San Francisco just as Flower Power, the Haight Ashbury (10 blocks from campus) & counter-culture revolution explode. We were watched, protected from everything including drug experimentation & free love (translated as irresponsible "free" sex)as the first class of girls allowed onto the all boys campus. Grace Slick & the Jefferson Airplane had a victorian house near campus & gave free concerts. Also saw Donovan, Ravi Shankar, Peter, Paul & Mary, & The Chambers Brothers. Took part in peaceful anti-war candle-light vigils. Stopped wearing make-up, skipped classes , took off my bra & quit shaving my armpits.

Scott McKenzie "If You're Going to San Francisco"
Harper's Bizarre "Feeling Groovy"
Lovin’ Spoonful "Summer in the City" "Daydream"
Donovan "Mellow Yellow"
The Zombies "Time of the Season"
All the Music from "Hair" but esp. "Hair"; "Aquarius"; "Good Morning Starshine"
The Young Rascals "Groovin"


3) Harder-edged Hippies/Psychedelics: Some (but not me)discovered drugs taken to open the mind could also be an escape from the reality that non-violence won't always be met with non-violence.

Jefferson Airplane "White Rabbit"
Big Brother & the Holding Company w Janis Joplin "Take Another Piece of my Heart"
The Doors "Come on Baby Light my Fire"
Iron Butterfly "In A Gadda Da Vida"
Steppenwolf "Born to Be Wild" "Magic Carpet Ride"

4) Anti-War Movement. Protests grew. So did the violence. They wanted to end a war, maybe all war. It was painful for all Americans to watch it devolve into non-peace. Heard Joan Baez speak of her husband, jailed in a federal prison (he could have gotten off easier but chose to go) for burning his draft card. Later my brother would be drafted. I cried, a lot. Even if he escaped death he would never be the same person.

The Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today"
Arlo Guthrie "Alice's Restaurant"
The Animals "Sky Pilot"
Edwin Starr "War"
Marvin Gaye "What's Going On"
Barry McGuire "Eve of Destruction"
Richie Havens "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"

5) Martin Luther King - the anti-segregation movement: Many were looking to be free from oppression in the 60's: hippies, freedom from boring, suburban lives & capitalism; women, freedom from the trap of being important only if they stayed home; young men, free from having to commit war; whites & blacks joined to free black people from the oppression of segregation. We wanted freedom, now. Took longer than we hoped. Still have a way to go before people will let go misconceptions of eachother.

Janis Ian "Society's Child"
The Rascals "People Got to Be Free"
Joan Baez "We Shall Overcome"
Jackie DeShannon "What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love"
Dion "Abraham, Martin & John"
The Youngbloods "Get Together"
Marvin Gaye "Mercy Mercy Me"












Blood Sweat & Tears "Spinning Wheel", And When I Die", "God Bless the Child"