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In 2004, I made the strange, abrupt decision to spend the last of my money on a Rental Car, to fill it up with all of my posessions, to leave Chicago and return to Las Vegas, where I had grown up, where my Mom still lived alone.

I drove for three days straight, and I remember when I finally arrived at my childhood home in Suburban Las Vegas, I collapsed on the floor as if I had just completed a marathon. My exhaustion wasn’t so much physical, but emotional. Staring at the cieling, I felt like I was still moving, torpedoing down the highway. It had been six years since I had left Las Vegas, and I had changed so much since then. Being back in that place, I felt so much relief, but also like I might rip in half.

You might think my Mom would be anxious about her 24 year old, college drop-out son moving back in to his childhood bedroom, but honestly, she was relieved. I think she had been scared for me the whole time I was away.

I set up a little area on the floor of my old bedroom, some sleeping bags and pillows, a shelf for my favorite books. I had a plastic record player and some computer speakers, and one of the records that I found in my Mom’s house was Farewell to the First Golden Era by The Mamas & The Papas.

The Mamas & The Papas had put out their first 3 albums in just one year between February 1966 and February 1967. Each of those first 3 albums, had been in at least the top 4 in the US, and Farewell to the First Golden Era consolidated the impressive sprint of hits into one collection.

Later, I would learn all kinds of sad and disturbing things about The Mamas & The Papas, but at this point all I knew about them was their great early singles, which shine with optimism and gentleness and fun, ballasted by wistful heartache. Pop groups that have girls and boys singing together in this way always evoke something utopian to me, and whoever sequenced this record had the benefit of being able to switch between those ensemble songs, with their big, thick washes of sound, and the more directly delivered solos. If you just consider the vocal entrance of each song, you’ll notice how they alternate.

  1. Dedicated To The One I Love - SOLO (but doubled)
  2. Go Where You Wanna Go - CHORAL
  3. Words of Love - SOLO
  4. Look Through My Window - CHORAL
  5. Dancing In The Street - SOLO

  6. Monday, Monday - CHORAL

  7. Creeque Alley - CHORAL
  8. Got A Feelin’ - SOLO (but doubled)
  9. Twelve-Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming To The Canyon) - CHORAL
  10. I Call Your Name - SOLO
  11. I Saw Her Again Last Night - CHORAL
  12. California Dreamin’ - CHORAL

This alternation and balance between solo and ensemble singing mirrors, at the album level, a formula that is at work in their biggest hits (for instance, think of how effective the “Stopped into a church…” entry is in “California Dreamin’”). There is plenty of innocent, low-stakes fun to balance the soaring melancholy that was their calling card. The Farewell collection feels like a perfectly sequenced mixtape.

For me, lying in a sleeping bag on the floor of my old bedroom, the pop energy of the tracks, already naturally high, was turned up even higher by a fluke of my cheap, belt-driven turntable. It spun a little faster than the standard 33 1/3 rpm, making the tempos faster, the pitches higher (and slightly more on key). I only figured this out later, upon hearing a CD version of their greatest hits. I had an extremely negative reaction to the songs playing at their actual speed. In contrast to what I had known, they sounded sluggish and sloppy. It cracked my illusory concept of the band, and I was never able to recover that original feeling for the songs.

Something analagous happened when I learned more about the backstories of Mama Cass, John Phillips, etc…

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