T.B. Sheets (1967)

This is not entirely a product of its times, but rather a 1974 release that amounts to a subset of the infamous Blowin' Your Mind (the photo of Van Morrison used for that album cover makes a cameo on this cover). But it's the one I discovered as an uncanny kind of revelation in the early '80s. The title song alone, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and pretty much about exactly what the title indicates, will be "blowin' your mind" no matter how you interpret that term. Then there's "Brown Eyed Girl," which does the same thing in an entirely different way, this one brilliant salvation delivered from the radio. This and everything Van Morrison recorded on his strikingly odd trip to New York City in 1967, bizarrely abandoned to the fates when he was just 21 and already a seasoned veteran of rock 'n' roll, manages to touch the sacred in any number of profound, deeply unsettling, and beautiful ways. A lot of people do well to touch the sacred once in one way in the course of entire careers.