Mad Men mess up!

"Lady Lazarus," Season 5, Episode 8 of Mad Men, ends with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) urged by his wife Megan (Jessica Paré) to listen to the final track on the Beatles' brand new LP Revolver, locating the episode sometime in August 1966. Don drops the needle on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and listens with curiosity at first. After a minute or so of tape wizardry with a fierce backbeat, Don turns off the album in apparent disinterest and the episode ends in the ensuing silence. But the track picks up again during the closing credits, a brilliant analogy for how the psychedelic train epitomized by John Lennon's musical acid trip is going to keep on chuggin', passing by Don as it picks up younger, hipper listeners like Megan. 

While Don listens, there is a small stack of albums behind him. Naturally, I was obsessed with the first album in the pile as a potential glimpse into Don's music taste as a lifestyle choice at odds with psychedelia. It turns out the disc in question is Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Lynn Harrell's recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio In A Minor, Op. 50, an album released in 1981 and according to Discogs, Perlman didn't start recording until 1967. I know a music geek like me might be coming off as pedantic here. But the album is quite noticeable in the frame. And while it's possible that Don would dig Tchaikovsky as an accessory to his stereophonic upper-middle-class life, the set dresser or whoever could have found hundreds of LPs to fit that sociological bill and maintain historical accuracy.

One more thing. IMDb claims that in "Christmas Waltz," Season 5, Episode 8, "[w]hen Don and Joan are at the bar, Joan plays Peggy Lee's "Christmas Waltz" on the jukebox. However, this song was never released on a 7" record that would have been in a jukebox at the time." But the version Joan plays is Doris Day's. Compare for yourself. Here's Peggy Lee's version. And here's Doris Day's. And here's the (fabulous) scene in question. Discogs doesn't show a 7" release of Day's version so that goof still holds water.