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Chapter 78: Friend Of The Devil

Folk rock

This lifelong Californian has long been bemused by California’s status as an unattainable, sun-dappled paradise in 60s culture (depicted and subverted wonderfully on Mad Men.) I get it, the weather is nice, but it’s not a symbolic dreamland, The Mamas & The Papas! It’s full of struggling people like everywhere else. You can hear an implicit yearning for some mythical California in all these songs (or explicit, for Joni Mitchell). Simon & Garfunkel and Buffalo Springfield may be cinema’s go-to flower power signifiers, but every note they sing is like a setting sun.
1. Simon & Garfunkel

The Sound of Silence

2. Joni Mitchell

California

3. Buffalo Springfield

For What It's Worth

4. The Byrds

Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)

5. The Grateful Dead

Friend of the Devil

6. The Mamas and the Papas

California Dreamin'

7. Joni Mitchell

Songs to Aging Children Come

8. Van Morrison

Sweet Thing

9. Rod Stewart

Maggie May

10. Neil Young

The Needle and the Damage Done