0 Edwin Starr, "War" (1970)

July 25, 1970, #1 (3 wks.)
(listen)

Easy enough to make fun of this now as a type of buffoonery, the Motown label making its way in an era of mandatory relevance. My own favorite joke comes from Seinfeld, when Jerry tricked Elaine into thinking that Leo Tolstoy originally wanted War, What Is it Good For? to be the title for War and Peace. Setting aside the peacenik impulses of the time, and the times themselves for that matter, full of Vietnam, injustice, and frustration—there's no good in going there at this point, except to remind people that's the way it was. But I have to say I have often been impressed all over again by the titanic force of this little decaying time capsule. The song was written by Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield, and the production is full-on Whitfield Motown psychedelia. I have loved it in its time, later on oldies radio (to which I know I listened too much), and finally most recently for this little exercise. If "War" and Edwin Starr's too-close veering toward a cartoon Scooby Doo persona in the vocal can quickly stale, it never quite stops sounding fresh either. The attack positively clobbers, opening on the chorus big after the feint of a prolonged drum roll. And I mean BIG. It is immediately all over it. ALL. OVER. IT. Yes, arguably it settles too soon into the chug-a-chug of the main body of the song, and yes, the glories of the chorus wear thin from prolonged exposure. But this song always retains its power to please again. If you don't like it now, try it again in another six months. It's going to get you one of these times. Play loud.

Detail: Edwin Starr, "War" (1970)

0 Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit in the Sky" (1970)

March 7, 1970, #3
(listen)

If it's possible, I love this song now more than I did in 1970. Actually, it's quite possible, because I took it so much for granted back then. Notwithstanding, it was always mysterious. Who was Norman Greenbaum and why was he saying these things? I explained the religious bent to myself by assuming he was a Jesus freak, as we said, for which I forgave him (my more generous years). But it never stopped seeming strange sitting there in the middle of the radio, the impeccable rock 'n' roll instincts marshalled up against words about dying and a friend in Jesus and such, with handclaps, and all with no evident hint of worry about anything (and no irony either). Always, always irresistible and best played loud. With Wikipedia to help, we find out that songwriter and performer Norman Greenbaum, with connections to the Lovin' Spoonful and Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band (not to be confused with Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show), saw Porter Wagoner on TV and decided he wanted to write a gospel song, a thought experiment on his part about what went into one. Obviously he took liberties because you don't usually hear that kind of raw fuzz on a gospel recording, but that's exactly what makes it. It sounds so blasted powerful, vibrating and wrapping itself around your head and his voice with a sound as big as outer space. No wonder I took it for granted he'd had a vision. In a way, he did. We need more visions of that kind too, the kind which result in raw fuzz tone guitars. Also: needle drop in the YouTube video.

Detail: Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit in the Sky" (1970)

0 Fun House (1970)

(Previous "Complete Sessions" review here, sufficient preamble.)

I was vaguely aware of the Stooges in high school, but my general understanding at the time, from hippie contemporaries, was that they were very bad and scary music that only demented people would be interested in. Already the legends of Iggy suffering injuries in performance were circulating. Naturally I accepted the solemn word of mouth. So I did not actually catch up to the Stooges proper until many years later, in the late '70s, backtracking from an infatuation with Iggy Pop caught in the reflection of David Bowie. At first I thought The Stooges was the better album of the two (with Raw Power crowding both hard) because the sound seemed simpler and more direct and because the year song ("1969" vs. "1970") was so much stronger and anthemic. Come to find out how wrong I was about this assessment during a crucial period in the early '80s.



To be clear, and to get right to the point, Fun House was an album—ultimately the album—for drinking. Try it yourself—or not. All disclaimers apply. It starts with "Down on the Street," which wastes no time in pounding with authority. How did I ever think the first album was the more direct? Indeed, the song is locked in ferociously, and immediately, over which the squalling vocals and squalling guitar of Iggy Stooge and Ron Asheton in tandem and alone get right to work, roaming like creatures at play. The guitar (filtered, fuzzed-up, wah-wah'd) is notably unearthly in its blend of feedback squeal, pealing notes, and noisy chords. It's a stone ball.

No time to waste, on to "Loose," and by now you should be. In other words, word to the wise, start your drinking early. You need to get a sense of the timing for this, and you will. Because you want to be right for "Loose," which occupies a territory that few other rock songs can. It surges and churns and drives, but Iggy is riding it on the vocal like the famous photo of him foot-stepping across the hands of adoring fans. Fun house, amusement park ride, spinning, whirling, diving, looping, sawing, burring. Fuck, yeah. What a vocal. The art of head-bobbing is also easily picked up here—the very word "loose," as called out and used repeatedly, provides a good place to grab on and hold tight. It's a big ride.

"T.V. Eye"—the single, haha. No, it should have been ("Down on the Street" and "1970" actually were). It's the blessed Stooges din we've been living in for two songs now, but with a brooding paranoia like a TV show and an overriding concept too. Something about ... we are the dupes of TV, and furthermore, the TV is looking back. Basic lunatic lines, of course, but shouldn't matter because the intensity is just so all of a piece. Now Iggy Stooge capers and leaps about the microphone like a mad imp, until the band transforms into a juggernaut that hunts down his screaming ass. This is told both directly and in terms of the way the song is written and recorded, going into an absolute fugue state, which then devolves back to the guitar, solo, literally solo, riffing, and so eventually back into the Stooges amusement park we have now stayed with for three songs, and huzzah.

The last song on the side, "Dirt," is also the longest, and here is where the deepest drunken trances occurred, with the spooky way the vocal unspools, and the punishing guitar and drum trap bash and moody nagging bass line. You sort of fly into this one from the rush of the three before it, and here is actually a good place even for "the whirlies" to hit, if you can get down with that and have the stomach for it. (I no longer do, by the way, so all reports here are from memory, and furthermore, this is not exactly recommended.) The listener at this point may go free-floating off into a place of great space and no gravity, whirling, slowly, in almost a state of pre-birth—a profound experience. "Do you feel it? / Do you feel it when you touch me? / Said do you feel it when you touch me?" What's that he says? I could swear it's "cut."

Well, you get the picture I hope. The other side is good too, with "1970" and a title song and finally a free jazz exercise called "L.A. Blues" (complete with tenor saxophone, also heard on the rest of the side). But Fun House for me was always mainly a one-sided album: "Down on the Street" (3:42), "Loose" (3:33), "T.V. Eye" (4:17), and "Dirt" (7:00). Repeat as needed.

As for the "Complete Sessions," I still haven't been able to judge. I liked the idea of it a lot, but never detected a great deal of difference between the takes. But then, I was listening to things at that time mostly in shuffle mode, so the different Fun House takes just flashed up now and then with no rhyme or reason. I'm not in a position to say. More than anything, I loved the idea of this great album suddenly swelling sevenfold. It is the equivalent of any number of groups of seven albums you'd care to name, I'd say. It is a thrill ride and a mighty crusher.

Detail: Fun House (1970)

0 Gimme Shelter (1970)

USA, 91 minutes, documentary
Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
Photography: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Gary Weis
Music: Rolling Stones
Editors: Joanne Burke, Robert Farren, Ellen Giffard, Kent McKinney
With: Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Tina Turner, Hell's Angels, Melvin Belli, Meredith Hunter

In late 1969, the Maysles brothers (Albert and David), with Charlotte Zwerin, had already made their reputation as iconoclastic documentary filmmakers on the strength of their extraordinary Salesman from 1968 and other projects. The Rolling Stones, just then about to assume the mantle of greatest rock 'n' roll band in all history, had returned to touring after an interruption of a few years that was due to drug busts, turmoil inside the band, and other breakdowns. Also, Woodstock had just happened. Thus, the elements were in place for a first-rate and very interesting concert film. Then events stepped in to help make sure it couldn't be anything else. The more you look at Gimme Shelter now, the more eerie and weird and unfortunate it all seems, which the movie exploits almost perfectly with its dense atmosphere of dread.

The two sides were remarkably in synch from the start. The Maysles team only knew they wanted to make something "more than" a concert film. Mick Jagger, speaking for the band, kept laying down terms the Maysles were already abiding by or happy to comply with: no acting, no recreations of scenes, no voiceover narration, and none of "that Pennebaker shit." So far so good,  except the Maysles knew the last one might be a problem, depending on what Jagger meant by it. They kept nodding their heads and saying no problem, and they kept shooting.



Gimme Shelter more or less starts as a typical enough concert film, with arrivals at airports, press conferences, recording sessions on the road, hotels and buses, and concert footage shot at the Stones' '69 Madison Square Garden show. In performance, Jagger carries on in iconic fashion, wearing a long scarf, cape, and star-spangled top hat. The sound is not very good but the images compensate. Mostly what makes the scenes work as well as they do are the audience reaction shots, which really bring the adulation and the fervor, a sense of what an event it was.

But the movie has already started to subtly enlarge its scope. Zwerin, who was largely responsible for shaping and structuring all the hours that the Maysles and their crews gathered on their travels with the Stones, already knew of course that this story ended in Altamont. It couldn't be ignored, so she worked with the Maysles to establish a thread early in which the Stones are brought in to look at portions of the film. Their reactions to it are in turn filmed. By this time they had already worked with Jean-Luc Godard on the 1968 documentary Sympathy for the Devil so they were evidently comfortable both with cameras and with strange experiments.

Going "meta" like this—"see the Stones, seeing themselves!"—is somewhat arch but it's also a nice way of foreshadowing what the filmmakers have got. As an event, Altamont was well known by the time the project went into postproduction, or at least the general shape of its disaster was. Altamont remains an epic cluster-fuck, the poster child for how to do an outdoor festival wrong on practically every level, capped off by the murder of a concertgoer at the hands of the Hell's Angels, who had informally been put in charge of security, which they provided—no surprise—the Hell's Angels way.

What the filmmakers got, of course, is the kind of thing now called "documentary gold"—a scene so raw, unfiltered, and real that it practically makes the picture essential viewing all by itself. In this case, it was the murder of Meredith Hunter. The army of camera operators the Maysles sent into that strange sea of 300,000 on that December day (trivia fans may enjoy knowing that one of them was George Lucas) somehow happened to catch the murder itself on film, which was subsequently discovered during the editing.

It's a pretty neat way to solve the problem of using an event without exploiting it, though it operates in a gray area. The murder happens swiftly, inside of a thick crush of people just 20 or 30 feet away from the stage. To clarify it for the viewer, it is dwelt on and looked at more than once, including in slow motion and with freeze frames. It has to be shown, arguably, because the context is everything—and because it is the single event that defines Altamont. But it's no simple case of peace-loving hippies assaulted by demented biker gang. Hunter had a gun and was holding it in his hand. He was not merely an innocent bystander but an active player in the violence erupting all around.

That context is crucial, and establishing it may be the single most important part of the film, documenting the turn—as many have pointed out before—from '60s fairy pop dreams of Monterey Pop and Woodstock to something far more grim and depressingly human. The scenes at Altamont are repulsive, taking the images of quaint hippie eccentrics we knew from before and making them impossibly grotesque. Naked people, stoned people, hairy people, with dead eyes and buckskin fringe—it looks like anomie made palpable.

The Stones' performance at Altamont caps it all off perfectly. This is not the riding high of Madison Square Garden. The band is hemmed in on all sides by the mob, which is no more than five or six feet away from them. The stage itself is barely elevated. The band is obviously scared—as they should have been, because the Angels had already assaulted Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane as well as many, many attendees. But they are attempting bravado to get through. It's not the usual scene of concert intimacy, when performers allow the audience close as they perform. This is more like a picture of kidnapping and extortion.

The best description of the Stones and Altamont is in a book by Stanley Booth called The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (released originally as Dance With the Devil). Gimme Shelter is best taken as an adjunct to that book, which is much better able to penetrate and explain the details. They are as complicated as they are unfortunate, and Gimme Shelter does very little to illuminate them if you don't already know them. Still, it remains one of the single most crucial documents of its era. It's not fun to watch but it will never leave you.

Top 10 of 1970
1. Gimme Shelter
2. Performance
3. Catch-22
4. MASH
5. Days and Nights in the Forest
6. Where's Poppa?
7. Goin' Down the Road
8. Woodstock
9. The Conformist
10. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

Detail: Gimme Shelter (1970)

0 Elvis Presley, "Make the World Go Away" (1970)

(listen)

No part of Elvis Presley's career is a gray area (or every part is), but 1970 comes close. Still basking in the glow of his late-1968 comeback, before he had mostly slipped into rote biz again as he'd done a decade before, 1970 was the year Presley recorded one of his most singular albums, Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old), a concept work that attempts to embrace and weave together all country: bluegrass, honky tonk, rockabilly, countrypolitan, etc. No doubt "Make the World Go Away," which closes out the original album (since decked out in reissues with multiple additional tracks), is intended as the countrypolitan statement. A Hank Cochran song, it has been a hit twice—by Timi Yuro in 1963 and by Eddy Arnold in 1965, probably the best known version. It was also recorded by Ray Price (the first to do so, in 1963), the Osmonds, Roger Whittaker, Mickey Gilley, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, and many others. It would have to be the strings mainly that make it countrypolitan, but it's also the Presley vocal style of the period—compare "Suspicious Minds," "Kentucky Rain," "In the Ghetto." He sounds hoarse, tired, and depressed. I don't say that like it's a bad thing. It's not—it's highly effective. The sadness of all these songs is their chief virtue, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Presley, the consummate professional, were so playing deliberately to the dimming fatigue. "Get it off - get it off my shoulders," he whimpers in "Make the World Go Away," speaking for all of us I guess at one point or another. The sentiment is just right, the mood of the song suited exactly to the performance, as Presley simply lays claim to ownership of one more pop song others are known for.

Detail: Elvis Presley, "Make the World Go Away" (1970)

0 John McLaughlin, "Devotion" (1970)

(listen)

The Devotion album does not sound like much of anything else in John McLaughlin's catalog. There are a couple of reasons for that: producer Alan Douglas (of the Douglas label, on which the album was originally released) mixed the sessions when McLaughlin was not around, and McLaughlin did not like the result. Douglas got in trouble again later for his work with various Jimi Hendrix tracks after Hendrix's death. But on that score what I know is that my favorite posthumous Hendrix album, Blues, gives Douglas a production credit. And Devotion is my favorite John McLaughlin album. So I guess Douglas has to be doing a few things right by me. I never cared for the Mahavishnu Orchestra albums; the only other project by McLaughlin I liked much was the collaboration with Carlos Santana. I liked his session work with Miles Davis very much, of course, probably more than any of his other work. This 11-minute lumbering slow-burn title song is as good an exhibit as any of the tilt of Devotion, with a classic rock band outfit playing it loose and dreamy. Drummer Buddy Miles (of Hendrix's Band of Gypsys) and bassist Billy Rich are the rhythm section, Larry Young plays a spooky organ, and McLaughlin is on an electric guitar that swivels between squalling and lyrical, sometimes getting them both at once. This is definitely the heavy stuff, with a bottom massive enough to bear its own gravity, a sluggish tempo, and ample room and atmosphere for strange noises to paint various pictures. All four feel totally involved: Rich's swelling bass patterns are often the most lovely thing here, Young's organ lines float at eye level, jagged, translucent, free floating, and McLaughlin's playing is deliberate yet with that sense of rhythm and texturing and anti-melody that is like few others, and was trail-blazing in its time. Let this one flatten you.

Detail: John McLaughlin, "Devotion" (1970)

0 McCartney (1970)

I loved this one-man studio project when it was new, McCartney's first solo release after the Beatles breakup. I was just getting out of junior high and looking forward to high school, and a little unbelieving that the Beatles had picked that moment to break up. I resented the reviews that slagged it as self-indulgent, lightweight fluff—what has become the usual casual knock on Paul McCartney, a deeply wrong view. I considered the one-man studio project aspect of it a positive rather than a negative myself. I thought it was pretty cool he was doing all this himself (what do you want, I was 15). So I had myself a good old infatuation with McCartney, moved on to other things, and eventually in my mind "Maybe I'm Amazed" stood in as the best of what I recalled. But over the years these potent fragments have surfaced one evocative way or another. A radio station randomly played "Momma Miss America" one morning in the '90s on my way to work and ever since it has been among my favorites, a hearty quirky stew of banging piano and fuzzed guitar, and pure rock 'n' roll (recognizing its uneven qualities, but the high points are worth it). Someone on Facebook name-checked "Junk" a day or two after shuffle had memorably put it in my way (it sounded so good I went to check the title). It all culminates on "Maybe I'm Amazed," which felt and still feels almost like a seamless next step for the Beatles, one anyway, or maybe what I mean is it sounds like it could/should be on Abbey Road. Who wouldn't like another Abbey Road song? Still, coming back in recent days, I was surprised by how unsatisfying the slightness of McCartney can be. Thirteen songs, 35 minutes, goes some way toward explaining. What's interesting is how unfinished most of them feel as songs—some wonderful ideas, some great performances, but they mostly feel like finely sculpted parts. Take "That Would Be Something," whose basic lyrical themes are "meet ya in the fallin' rain, mama" and "that would be something." I like the primitive style but it could stand development. Part of what has always been interesting to me about the McCartney/Lennon collaboration is that they were both good at lots of things and often managed to fill in each other's gaps in songwriting. All different ways, supplying a lyric for the chorus, a bridge, a chord change, etc. I'm not suggesting Paul McCartney missed John Lennon here per se, but rather that he missed a collaborator he could consider a pop music equal. Precious few of them exist in the world at any given time, of course, and it was never going to be Linda, God bless her. So part of what makes this album both deficient and fascinating is seeing McCartney's gaps so plainly left unfilled or rounded off.

Detail: McCartney (1970)

0 Moondance (1970)

(Previous attempts here and here.)

I have belabored the point about the first side of this album. Hearing "Old Old Woodstock" from Tupelo Honey recently, I realized I have surely oversold the whole thing. I mean, sweet God, Tupelo Honey is a masterpiece, and Blowin' Your Mind! and Astral Weeks. And the freakin' second side of Moondance. Nonetheless, it seems my platte hath troth and beachhead made. Oh the water, let it run all over me. This is five songs—"And it Stoned Me," "Moondance," "Crazy Love," "Caravan," and "Into the Mystic"—about birth, life, and the eternal, in totality as perfect as anything could ever hope to be. In them is found everything. Sometimes I wonder why I need anything else at all.



Of course it comes down to the personal. The personal as much as anything is what propels the things we love. I picked up on Moondance nearly 10 years after the fact, part of a record buying binge at the beginning of a school break all full of reading Dave Marsh or Robert Christgau or some such record guide. I liked the album, but it generally seemed lightweight, ethereal, too soft, too hippy-dippy. I kept coming back to the first side then because of the jazzy title song, which frankly I was surprised even just now to find missing from my Billboard book. It feels like a monster hit, always did.

Around then, with Moondance in possession and sating myself daily on "Moondance," I began to notice the imposing way that "And it Stoned Me" stepped into the picture. It's the first song on the side, right in front of "Moondance," the ways of vinyl, easier to start the album from the start and play through then set the needle down by hand. And "And it Stoned Me," it turns out, is a heavy, heavy song, the core of the whole thing in many ways. It is full of matters of the soul, pitching face forward right into it: "Half a mile from the county fair / And the rain came pourin' down." It is reminiscent in its attack of the Band's "The Weight"—equally biblical, and easily the superior in pagan realms, no beseeching of some higher power but rather exulting, glorying, in higher power, opened to the divine, Walt Whitman style. Because what happens in the song is the singer positively, rhythmically revels in the hirsute wild ways of nature, Heathcliff style, pounding home the message until one nearly feels the sluicing of the late summer rainwater and the mud and the open sky of brooding gray clouds, on the way to the county fair. "And it stoned me to my soul," he sings. To my soul.

It made quite an impression the more I heard it. Then of course it was on to the real star of the show, "Well it's a marvelous night" and those piano chords and the swishing hips dancing to it and knowing all the words in time. So that was good. Now I grant you I have finally become a bit tired of it after all this time, but for a long while it was right up there for me with "Brown Eyed Girl" as impossibly sweet blasts of sound, so swellingly great I almost felt embarrassed by them sometimes. Playable constantly. Perfect songs. The rest of the side seemed to have potential too, and the other side as well—this hippie older brother perennial mainstay name-check Van Morrison, yeah I was thinking maybe he had something to offer, after a lifetime hanging back from him. In the mix of that particular school break, however, for perspective, The Pretenders and Armed Forces received the most airtime on my stereo. Also some new old Stones and Beatles, and other things. And so, too soon, back to school.

Then, just to get past it, I met a woman and fell in love, someone I had seen in classes and bumped into around. This was spring quarter, so that too. The glories of a real girlfriend, for the first time, and nature busting out all over. And, naturally (I say "naturally" now), I found myself drawn back to Moondance and "Moondance" and "And it Stoned Me." It sounded like I can't tell you. The sheer power of the one, the utter poise and charm of the other, never sounded better. And then, what's this? "Crazy Love," which had turned me off before, as too much of ... some ... gypsy lover thing ... now sounded ... lagalabalagalab. Words fail. It is pure romance to me, working at brainstem levels. It continually overpowers me. Yes, driven I believe now by being fully in the throes of my first real live relationship, I just went headfirst into this album. It felt like falling into another world. A nice one, where it was spring, and there was a woman waiting at home. "Yeah and it make me righteous, yeah it make me whole." This grunting, whispering, beautiful shuddering thing felt like life, fully engaged. It's uncanny—uncanny to me still. The way Morrison can use the word "soul"—which comes up all the time across these five songs—and sound like he knows what it is, no airs or pretensions. I know I have swallowed the hippie kool-aid now.

I can't imagine I will have to work hard to convince anyone of the merits of the last two songs (if you're with me this far!). They are among the greatest in Van Morrison's catalog. Both songs have made numerous appearances in movies and on TV. Nick Hornby, in one of those exercises we do, named another version of "Caravan" as one of his 31 favorite songs. For all its unusual qualities, "Into the Mystic" has been covered numerous times (Johnny Rivers, the Allman Brothers Band, Ben E. King, many others). This raises questions of cover, demo, alternative, outtake, and/or live versions of songs. We won't be getting into those questions here.

At 5:03, "Caravan" is the longest on the side (which as a whole, by the way, clocks in at 20:20). And at 5:03, it may be a little short by long-song album-capper standards. It is deceptive, the luxurious tempo and arrangements, particularly in the furry horns, which take their time building to their full power. From small acorns, etc., and a powerhouse is what it turns out to be, simply by the immaculately soft way in which it enunciates the rhythm. Even with the title, we are now full into self-conscious gypsy territory, and indeed there is something a bit Seventh Seal Black Plague about its style and textures (thankfully lacking the tambourine). But it is decidedly modern as well, with its invocation of the radio—"turn it up, radio, so you know you got soul." There's that word "soul" again. And suddenly the rhythm and the horns are positively hypnotic. It is nearly impossible to stop moving with this. I'm serious. The last two minutes are a kind of forest fire, with nothing changed but now totally possessed of sweeping, rocking power, led by the horns and even more so by the surge of feeling. Now and then, I'm pretty sure it might have precipitated actual levitation for several minutes at a time, though I never want to jinx it by reaching back and feeling for the floor.

"Into the Mystic" plays like an oceangoing ship setting out for the high seas, finally arriving at harbor (doing all that within four minutes), which is not a coincidence. The entire album side has invoked the word "soul" whenever so moved, but here is where it properly gets its license to do so, necessarily descrying a bracingly candid, open, and unhesitating embrace of The Universe and Its Great Powers, a something we do not really know but think we feel deeply from time to time. But I don't actually feel it from time to time when "Into the Mystic" is playing, but nearly always, dampened only by occasional inability to genuinely open myself to it. The funny intimacy of the strummed guitar, the grounding of the earthy horns, the rhythms and textures of Morrison's breath, the surging, rolling, rising way that it mimics ascension—achieves ascension. "And when that foghorn blows I will be coming home." It is the end, beautiful friend, a place where nothing ever happens, take your children home, I am one, G-L-O-R-I-A, and as transcendent a moment in rock 'n' roll as I believe I know. It ends quickly, almost abruptly, as if nearly on an Icarus note of desperation, flushed by second thoughts, "Too late to stop now." But the reverberations play in one's head for minutes, hours, days, a lifetime. It can feel like stepping off of an amusement park ride, out of a horror movie, away from an auto accident, exhilarated, grateful, and uniquely attuned to the senses. There is before and after.

On Moondance, as nowhere else, Van Morrison seems to me possessed of unearthly wisdom, channeling it intuitively and with spooky accuracy. Yes, I know I have swallowed the hippie kool-aid now.

Detail: Moondance (1970)

0 Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" (1970)

(listen)

Joni Mitchell was not actually at Woodstock, as either performer or attendee. Reports say she had already committed to a Dick Cavett TV appearance that weekend. But like so many she was obviously impressed by the scope of the event and in the aftermath wrote this song—which, in the US, became a #11 hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and then a #23 hit for Matthews' Southern Comfort. Joni Mitchell's version lives on the Ladies of the Canyon album, which took me some time to understand is actually one of her best. For "Woodstock"—which I judge about in the middle of the pack in terms of song quality on that album—she is in Joni at the piano keyboard mode, sounding pensive, resentful, and slightly adenoidal, as if crying recently (the next album Blue would serve up the largest portions of this). She's capable of pealing out with some big notes, but not always where you would expect them. I like how that undercuts the cosmic business and/or the triumphalism in the lyrics—"child of God," "stardust," "half a million strong," etc. The other element that sets this apart, of course, is the studio-bound production featuring multi-tracking of Mitchell on all the background vocals, which produces a weirdly beautiful and cerebral effect that at once personalizes and impersonalizes the song—more undercutting, as if afraid to actually commit to the vision (reflected as well in her increasing hesitation to play festival gigs). The various misgivings were more or less elided by the boys covering it, who happily (or willfully) failed to notice in favor of the rapturous notes. But gads this version by Joni Mitchell is lovely and alien. I think that's the main reason it's by far the most musically interesting of them.

Detail: Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" (1970)

0 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970)

Dee Brown's classic and painstaking account of the catastrophes visited upon Native Americans of the U.S. West in the second half of the 19th century can be painful to read. It's engaging and thoroughly researched, and though it never breaks the fourth wall, filled with copious sources and citations, it's not very hard to read it as dark and angry. It sketches in its context from the beginning, with Christopher Columbus stumbling into the Bahamas and, believing he had reached India, naming the indigenous people he encountered (and kidnapped) "Indians" and putting them to work to win them their salvation. But the real genocide in the West—"real" meaning a systematic implementation of public policies—did not begin until the Civil War or shortly after. The 20-year period between 1871 and 1891 is when most of it happened and that's the story this book tells, simply laying out the facts. It's practically impossible to come away without some anger of one's own. That's as intended, and those not inclined to give the facts their due are likely to feel Brown's work is "manipulative" or even "self-serving." It's possible that the stories here might require some balance, whatever that means, and I think Brown's work here is scholarly and disinterested enough that one could as well turn to his bibliography for places to get what were once considered the more conventional views of the history of the times and places and peoples. If you want to start there, fine, but for what it's worth I recommend getting back here sooner or later. It's a quick, easy read full of fascinating stories—about the Navahos, Cheyennes, Lakota, Nez Perces, Apaches, and many more (including a good deal about perhaps the Native Americans' single greatest figure, Crazy Horse). You won't necessarily come away from any of it much impressed with the behavior of European Americans, but that's a worthwhile perspective too, and depending on one's own orientation, won't necessarily stay with you long—though it well might. Lots of massacres occur here, on both sides. Then it finishes with one of the saddest and most haunting episodes in American history, the pan-tribal embrace of the Ghost Dance. This book is not easy to forget.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970)

0 Doors, "Waiting for the Sun" (1970)

(listen)

Wikipedia covers the main points regarding my initial confusion, on a disambiguation page: "Waiting for the Sun is a 1968 album by The Doors [pictured above].... 'Waiting for the Sun' [is] a song by The Doors from their 1970 album, Morrison Hotel." This oddness did not matter to my brother and his friends, who introduced me to Morrison Hotel, and especially "Waiting for the Sun," which they championed tirelessly. They recommended listening to it with headphones, an exciting new consumer electronic product at the time—and loud, needless to say. It was a bracing reintroduction to the Doors, following the pop hits. There's a context for it, I should mention—Jim Morrison & co. fighting for counterculture integrity after the disgrace of those hits, taking on the blues late, and incidentally in more trouble for alleged self-exposure antics on the part of Morrison in live performance in Miami. Talk about identity crisis. But the various shuttlings about between proto-gothy poets of doom, teen heartthrobs, and drunken white blues boys were surprisingly seamless, partly because they managed it by distending to embody the contradictions. And what a fine example we have here. Taking care of the teens is the easy part, with equal parts California sun worship and the skeevy Lizard King persona already well established. Then they proved surprisingly adept as a blues band, starting with Morrison Hotel particularly. The Doors as musical enterprise remain underestimated at one's peril. As for the poets of doom shtick, well, that's actually what makes this work. "Can't you feel it now that spring has come? / That it's time to live in the scattered sun." Key word here, I think, being "scattered," which torques it just enough in a certain direction that it amplifies the effect of the band coming in so hard, lending it an almost majestic quality. Especially if you are listening to it on headphones very loud.

Detail: Doors, "Waiting for the Sun" (1970)