Monday Music "The Age of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" By the 5th Dimension

Yes This should have dropped yesterday....but it didn't....I will have my wife flay me with a wet noodle as punishment.

I heard this song playing on my "60's Gold" channel on my Sirius XM, on my way to work and it reminded me of my Dad, I don't know if I had covered this song before, but if I did, it was a long time ago.   I remembered this song being on my Dads reel to reel recorder.  It to me did showcase the 60's to me musically and it was to me considered a "bookend" song for the decade.

   The image above is what most people think of when they hear this song, the peace, and love generation the counterculture had gone mainstream and it changed music forever.
    Now there are a few people like me and others like my Dad and others that were around during this time, when we hear the song, this is the image that we think of,

UH-1 (Huey) dropping men off on a mountain during an operation.

 This song and a couple of others pretty much described the 60's to millions of people.  The 60's was a revolution in music and massive social change and upheaval.  We had several prominent people assassinated during this decade from the assassination of J.F.K which scarred the national psyche to the possibilities that might have been.  From the death of M.L.K and finally Robert Kennedy.  Those were the low points, the War in Vietnam was raging all over American television so the people were actually seeing "War" for the first time.  To the high point of the moon landings in 1969 that helped ended the decade that changed America.  I remember a comment my Dad made about this song, he had said that "Let The Sunshine In" described Vietnam...Depending on the season...Either no sun or too much, there were no half measures...  "

"Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" (commonly called "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "The Age of Aquarius" or "Let the Sunshine In") is a medley of two songs written for the 1967 musical Hair by James Rado and Gerome Ragni(lyrics), and Galt MacDermot (music), released as a single by American R&B group The 5th Dimension. The song peaked at number one for six weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in the spring of 1969. The single topped the American pop charts and was eventually certified platinum in the US by the RIAA. Instrumental backing was written by Bill Holman and provided by session musicians commonly known as the Wrecking Crew. The actual recording is something of a "rarity"; the song was recorded in two cities, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, then mixed together in the studio, afterwards.

The song listed at number 66 on Billboard's "Greatest Songs of All Time".

This song was one of the most popular songs of 1969 worldwide, and in the United States it reached the number one position on both the Billboard Hot 100 (for six weeks in April and May) and the Billboard Adult Contemporaries Chart. It also reached the top of the sales charts in Canada and elsewhere. Billboard ranked it as the No. 2 record overall for 1969.

The recording won both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group for the Grammy Awards of 1970, after being published on the album The Age of Aquarius by the 5th Dimension, and also being released as a seven-inch vinyl single record.

The lyrics of this song were based on the astrological belief that the world would soon be entering the "Age of Aquarius", an age of love, light, and humanity, unlike the current "Age of Pisces". The exact circumstances for the change are "When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars." This change was presumed to occur at the end of the 20th century; however, astrologers differ extremely widely as to when. Their proposed dates range from 2062 to 2680.

Astrologer Neil Spencer denounced the lyrics as "astrological gibberish", noting that Jupiter forms an astrological aspect with Mars several times a year and the moon is in the 7th House for two hours every day. These lines are considered by many to be merely poetic license, though some people take them literally.