This song started out with Bonnie Dobson who wrote it and recorded it some years later... but the person I first heard doing it *back in the day* was Fred Neil:
but that quickly got picked up by Jeff Beck:
and like ten minutes later this happened:
please play at least one of these... I heard the first and third live.
The thought I'm having tonight is the amazing sharing of those years. Fred Neil had a few proteges who acknowledged his help in getting started on the folk and folk-rock and rock scene: Bob Dylan, John Sebastian, Tim Buckley, Paul Katner and David Crosby to name a few. My alll time favorite group The Jefferson Airplane (well they're in the top ten of a steadily rotating number of current and past musicians) made two songs about him: The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (his nickname was Pooh) and of course the House at Pooneil Corners. He played with the Dead, Quicksilver, Lovin' Spoonful, and whatnot... then he disappeared, which was his own story.
but this story is about sharing, collaboration, creativity... and drugs. I myself haven't touched anything stronger than coffee in 40 years and that's fine, but when i was young I explored the hallucinogens, and they certainly loosened up my mind and helped me see things in undiscovered ways--and ways I wanted to share immediately--and still--with others. I think the current blend of alcohol and iphones is pathetic. both have their place. in a cupboard more often than not. filling our minds with the images and emotions of other people, people whose lives are soulless and petty--this is hardly a good use of our extraordinary freedoms...
i have no idea how to rekindle the kind of hope, freedom, creativity, sharing, inventiveness that swirled around back in those days, but I will keep trying various things and talking about it -- mind you, I have no desire (mostly) to 'go back to then' because that would be pointless and impossible -- I'm talking about getting in touch with that same energy TODAY and seeking TODAY'S expressions of these things in art, music, and of course, politics. here's hoping someone finds that river again, and soon, or this country may well be lost to the centuries as yet another self-destructed democracy...
