The good news – the program featured great performances by the singers and musicians and, for those of us who were of a certain age in 1968, was a very nostalgic evening, complete with covers and quotes from The Chicago Seed, the underground newspaper of the day, which was edited by Abe Peck (who was in attendance), the father of Doug Peck, the musical director of the program. They even added an Aretha Franklin tribute at the end that extended the program well past its scheduled finish time, to the delight of the audience.

The bad news – what the hell were they thinking by including MacArthur Park as the song representing August, 1968?! Miami Herald readers polled by Dave Barry in 1992 voted the 1968 recording as the worst song of all time. The only redeeming thing about it is the instrumental interlude. If not for all the horrible things that happened in 1968, Richard Harris’s singing and the nonsensical lyrics of this song would take the cake, whether or not it was left out in the rain.

A much better choice would have been People Got to be Free by The Rascals, which was a chart topper that August and was a far more representative song of the feeling of the times that this program was trying to convey.

But if MacArthur Park it had to be in some fashion, why not Al Yankovic’s 1983 parody of it, with his far better lyrics, which included, “Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark/All the dinosaurs are running wild/Someone shut the fence off in the rain/I admit it’s kind of eerie/But this proves my chaos theory.”

After all, chaos abounded in 1968.