"It was [40] years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play."

Stealing a page from Brina's book, today I bring you an entry titled with lyrics to a song. However, these aren't tangentially related to the subject at hand; they are the subject at hand.

Glorious noise takes note of the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Besides the obvious and traditional reasons, Sgt. Pepper's is an album close to my heart, and to which I owe a great debt.

My Beatles phase (and, not coincidentally, my entire musical journey) started with the Beatles Anthology TV documentary, and so the Anthology CDs were the first I bought and the first I knew.

I remember hearing, randomly, on some oldies or classic rock radio station the "Sgt. Pepper's Reprise" and "A Day In The Life" and being blown away. After that I started picking up the Beatles' real studio albums, and Sgt. Pepper's was the first and most influential, regardless of whether it was the best.

"A Day In The Life" is still one of my favorite Beatles tunes. Chock full of stuff yet goes down like greased butter.

Linked to in the GloNo article is a Time magazine article dating from the year of the album's release. It's a brilliant read for a number of reasons which I will append to this post when I have time to mark up my copy of the article and craft a proper response.