Extravagant music of the sixties.

You may remember that I'm a big fan of the 60s Decade channel on XM satellite radio. In the last couple of days, I've caught a few great examples of overdone recordings from my favorite era. They're all overdone in different ways, but all seem to me to share a kind of exuberance that belongs to the 60s. The songs are:

"Alice's Restaurant" ("Shrink, I want to kill.")

"The Year 2525" ("Everything you think, do, or say/Is in the pill you took today")

"MacArthur Park" ("In love's hot, fevered iron/Like a striped pair of pants")

"In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" ("In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey,/Don’t you know that I love you?")

And let me add that back in the 60s I saw one -- and only one -- of these songs performed by the original artist. See if you can guess which.

Which is the most fun to hear again today? Oh, they all were deliciously fun!