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1960s |
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Abbey Road, The Beatles
Astral Weeks, Van Morrison
Axis: Bold As Love, Jimi Hendrix
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young
The Doors, The Doors
Getz/Gilberto, Stan Getz and João Gilberto
The Gilded Palace of Sin, The Flying Burrito Brothers
Jackson C. Frank, Jackson C. Frank
John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan
Music from Big Pink, The Band
Oar, Skip Spence
Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline
Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
Sounds of Silence, Simon & Garfunkel
Strange Days, The Doors
The Stooges, The Stooges
Sunshine Superman, Donovan
Surrealistic Pillow, Jefferson Airplane
Sweetheart of the Rodeo, The Byrds
The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico |
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Surrealistic Pillow, Jefferson Airplane
RCA Victor, February, 1967
Track Listing: 1. She Has Funny Cars 2. Somebody to Love, 3. My Best Friend, 4. Today, 5. Comin’ Back to Me, 6. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds, 7. D.C.B.A.-25, 8. How Do You Feel, 9. Embryonic Journey, 10. White Rabbit, 11. Plastic Fantastic Lover
“When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joys within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you want somebody to love”
-from “Somebody to Love”
Roll down the window. Stick out your head. Feel the sun. It’s warm. Fuzzy. Mushy. Simply drastic and inevitable. You drive onto Haight. Merrily, merrily, merrily. You’re a dancer. A prankster. A tambourine vixen. Check out the boots. The hair. Push it all back. Way back. So long and luscious! Pick the flowers. Pull the daisies. You know what to do with them, sweetheart. You’re nineteen. Shining. Spotless. Free. You’ve been to India. Big Sur. The Oakland bus station. You do TM. ESP. Darjeeling & green tea. You’ve got Kool-Aid stains on your teeth. Bong breath. Zippo eyes. The park is golden. The Victorian houses big and dandy. The fog rolls over the bay like little cat shit. No. It’s a friggin DayGlo electric plastic acid aoxomoxoa!
Stop it. You’re over 45. Fat and balding. Stop it right now.
“Her neon mouth with the blinkers-off smile
Nothing but an electric sign
You could say she has an individual style
She’s part of a colorful time’’
-from “Plastic Fantastic Lover”
Follow the dancing bear. Tell a friend. Go to the Fillmore. The Avalon. The Matrix. The Longshoremen's Hall. Make a dream machine. Dance naked. Write blank poetry. Follow the dog. The Family Dog. The Diggers. The colors. All of them! Orange. Purple. Yellow. Pink. Blue. Zap! Crumb. Comix. The Oracle. Go to the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City. Catch The Charlatans. Get on the plane, man. Split a single match and pull the sides in two and use it as a roach. A Jefferson Airplane, get it? Country Joe and the Fish. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, The Flaming Groovies. Life is groovy. You’re high. You’re beautiful, baby. You’ve got the seed in you. There in your lovin’ hand. Now listen. The grass is sweet. The grass smells green. You’re green. Your girlfriend and boyfriend are green. They love you. I love you. We all love you.
No, honey, you’re old and don’t even know what the word means.
“Do away with people blowing my mind
Do away with people wasting my precious time
Take me to a simple place
Where I can easily see my face”
-from “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds”
Roll in the park. Roll in the hay. Roll me over in the clover, Timothy Leary. Allen Ginsberg. Marty Balin. Grace Slick. Ken Kesey. Skip Spence. A thousand summers. A thousand blazing suns. What’s wrong with that? A little peace. A little love. A little understanding. We were just kids lost and alone, lost with our books and our beads and our bags and our bracelets. Walking, wandering, wading the city sidewalks trying to find something new. Something different. We never wanted to hurt anybody. Never wanted to cause pain. We had no mission. No message. No revolution. Just wanted to love and be loved. Is that so bad? Is that such a crime? Nobody knows how to love anymore. No one. No, not now. Not then.
Not today. The park is empty. The tribes have gone north. The fog rolls in. All the beautiful golden bridges lead out and away. Out past the streets to the vacant lands, the dust fields, the empty plains that lead us endlessly to the sad question. Why?
Why does there only have to be one Summer of Love?
“Today you’ll look into my eyes,
I’m just not the same
To be anymore than all I am would be a lie
I’m so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry
Today everything you want,
I swear it all will come true
Today I realize how much I’m in love with you
With you standing here I could tell the world what it means to love
To go on from here I can’t use words, they don’t say enough
Please, please listen to me
It’s taken so long to come true
And it’s all for you
All for you. . . .”
-from “Today”
-TD
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