Opposites: Light & Dark #2

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Like Seuras, my thoughts gravitated to the quintessential, original pair of opposites. Unlike him, no car travel this year, so the music has been in home and headphones in the dark closet that has become my office, my classroom and most of my life for the past 17 months.

I had started off with the idea that I would find a "light" from one musician and a "dark" from someone else. Until I took the first step with a visit to jessecolinyoung.com - because I had already decided that I would include the Youngblood's <Darkness Darkness>. It seemed like it had been quite some time since I listened to the song. The songfacts web site notes that part of the inspiration for the song stemmed from Young's terror related to a friend dying in the Vietnam war (the year was 1969). That's just one of the revelations I gleaned. Another is that my man David Lindley plays the opening fiddle. Yet another is that Charlie Daniels produced much of the Elephant Mountain album that the song first appeared on. And then I recall that way back in the dark days of November, we visited Darkness in our <Empty> theme, so up top here we get a different recording of the song:

And yet another crossing of the paths - that I had forgotten in all the passing years - is that Young also wrote <Sunlight>. Doh! Hmm ... I guess we can drop the search for that "someone else" who wrote a song about our opposite of <dark>.

Our own Seuras could have told me, if I had asked, that Young also recorded <Light Shine>. 

And with a little stretch, there seems to be room in all this search for opposites for a way to bring the opposites together, another Jesse Colin Young classic: Get Together. Now, while the Youngbloods appear to have made the song famous, it was written by a Chet Powers (a.k.a. Dino Valenti and as songwriter Jesse Oris Farrow), who was a lead singer for Quicksilver Messenger Service. What a lot of coincidental revelations in one swell foop.

And away back in 2012 our Mt Vernon Mike posted about Get Together, so we need a different recording of that one too

Empty: Darkness, Darkness

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 Emptiness can be cathartic. It can be debilitating. Kind of like the glass half full or half empty issue. Me? I am by nature a loner. I recall a semester break in my Junior year of college when I headed off into NC's Smokey Mountains for a week of "camping" all by myself - just because. (didn't even take a tent/slept under an overhanging rock) 

 This time around, I searched and dug for a song that might fit. But I kept coming up empty-handed: "songs with emptiness in the title", "songs about emptiness" ... nothing inspiring. About to give up and wait for the next theme, I finally happened on one that meant enough to me that I was willing to write a few lines. 

 Wikipedia says the Youngbloods never reached critical aclaim. A search of our own archives produces 3 posts of relevance, including -surprisingly- one from Seuras Og just two weeks ago with a mention of the Youngbloods' founder Jesse Colin Young. 

 The song, Darkness, Darkness dates from their third album (1969). The list of contributing musicians aside from the band members (Jesse Colin Young, Lowell "Banana" Levinger, Joe Bauer) includes one of my "heroes", David Lindley as well as Charlie Daniels. 

Wikipedia, again, has a list of notable covers such as Mott the Hoople, Eric Burdon, Richie Havens and Robert Plant. There's a short but informative review at AllMusic that I'll leave for you to check out on your own if you wish. 

LESSON: NO TEACHER NO METHOD NO GURU

Looking for some of the wit and wisdom of "Here Comes the Knight" Sir George Van the Man Morrison? Sorry to disappoint, he is strictly off my menu for the foreseeable, courtesy the simplistic guff of his recent return to form. By form, I mean of being the contrariest celtic r-soul in rock. Dissatisfied with providing the surliest birthday thank you message in history, following the splendid accolades corralled together and gifted him by the always great Hot Press of Dublin, he has followed this up with an EP of puerile, ill-researched and poorly conceived assaults on those who restrict his freedoms. That is, his freedoms to contract and transmit C19. It's common knowledge, and I am not going to grace him with any links to his music; he'd get 'em taken down anyway, but I can't resist not offering some of the social media ripostes directed his way. So we got Inarticulate Speech of the Fart, we got Moondunce, we got A Sense of Blunder. For sure he is no teacher, has only madness in his method and is is no longer any guru of mine.

But this is a music blog. Not for us to question the man behind the muse. Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly leaves a sizeable hole in my collection to excise him and his influence from history. So it got me thinking. Is there anyone else who can tap that same philosophers stone? Well, praise be, happen there can.

Light Shine/Jesse Colin Young

Jesse Colin Young, erstwhile Youngblood, was cutting a very similar cloth back in the early 70s, this, the title track from the LP of the same name, of a very similar vibe to the Caledonian Soul Orchestrations around about the same time, with heartfelt vocals, sublime brass and as uplifting as anything from the cheerful chappy of Cyprus Avenue. OK, it couldn't last for the whole of the record, fading into the second side, but I still exhort you to search it out.

Call Mother a Lonely Field/Jackie Leven

Of course this man is an obvious and worthy contender, with a body of work nearly as broad, until cruelly cut down getting on for a decade ago. Much less lauded, much less well known, but a much more reliable source of brilliance, at least in my opinion. A much more affable and approachable man, likewise, and one whose live performances certainly trumped the hit and miss of Van with his personality free zones.

Ride On/Mary Coughlan

Proving this is no purely masculine domain, here is the might of Mary Coughlan, who has ignored every classifying as she travails the domains of blues, folk, rock, jazz. Or music, as we call it. This is an early example, a transformation of the otherwise gentle lament penned by Christy Moore. From the Republic of Ireland rather than the North, her history suggests she could chew up Morrison for breakfast and probably would.

Nothing But the Same Old Story/Paul Brady

Let's stick with the Irish, not least one who has famously had spats with Morrison over the years, with likely little love lost. Paul Brady began a folkie, reaching acclaim with the second iteration of Planxty, ahead of relaunching himself as a songwriter and performer of anthemic and emotional music. Similarly sometimes judged a curmudgeon, age has seemingly had a mellowing effect, as this interview discusses. 

Over the Fields/Blue Rose Code

Finally, a much younger man, the wonderful Ross Wilson, from Scotland. Performing as Blue Rose Code he has just put out his 4th full length recording. Widely seen as owing many an influence to Morrison, there is also a distinct hint of John Martyn, but with hefty additional hits of hebridean melody. The featured song is the opener from his penultimate record and is gloriously fleshed out as compared with his live shows, often just he and a single accompanist, sometimes two. Huge in Scotland, recognition elsewhere awaits.

LIGHT: LIGHT SHINE/JESSE COLIN YOUNG

I never knew why this guy wasn't huge. At this point I should point out I had no inkling of any earlier career, nor had even heard of the Youngbloods in 1974, which was when I first heard this song and it's parent LP of the same name. And it was a revelation. Bear in mind this was the time and the year of Van Morrison's seminal live album, "It's Too Late to Stop Now" and this seemed to come from a similar place, at least in instrumentation and timbre. Sure, the vocal couldn't be more different, but it fitted the jazzy tinge of reed-led swing redolent throughout the first side of the record. Sadly, at least for me, he never again found that peak again, with even side 2 being somewhat lack-lustre by comparison. But, o my goodness, for those 20 minutes or so, if that, this was one light that lit up my life. And still does.

Possessor of one of the moustaches in modern music, Young was born the somewhat more prosaic Perry Miller in New York, where he was a school contemporary of Art Garfunkel. Before the Youngbloods, he had already produced his first couple of solo discs, before their brief window, peaking with a top 5 hit, "Get Together" in 1969, with a subsequent return to a solo career, give or take the odd re-union. I mention them for two reasons, one because the song in this piece actually had an earlier incarnation on their 1971 release, "Good 'n' Dusty", barely a shadow of its later self. The second is merely to mention the name of fellow group member, one Lowell "Banana" Levinger, which is, um, certainly a memorable one. I can't seem to find any reference as to why, which may be a relief.

No messing with downloads, this time buy the whole thing, even if you only listen to the first "side".

The Age of Aquarius: Get Together

The Youngbloods: Get Together

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Talk about a period piece. It's hard to imagine "Get Together" making a mark in any era but the groovy 1960s. "Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now." Those lyrics couldn't be sung in earnest by Sinatra in the 1940s or the Black Eyed Peas today.

In fact, the song predates the hippie movement a bit. It was written by Dino Valenti (later of Quicksilver Messenger Service) in 1960. In the mid-60s, various folkies and rockers took a stab at the song, including Judy Collins, Jefferson Airplane and the Kingston Trio. When the Youngbloods -- led by Jesse Colin Young -- first released the song in 1967, it was not an immediate hit. Two years after its initial release, "Get Together" was used as the soundtrack to a public service announcement, produced by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, advocating for peace, love and understanding. (Ah, the '60s!) The Youngbloods' recording was re-released and became a top 5 hit. "From then on," writes Brian Boone in his book I Love Rock and Roll (Except When I Hate It), "it became an iconic flower-child anthem, mostly after the fact, popping up in countless '60s documentaries, '60s-set movies, Boomer-targeted soda commercials and what felt like every other episode of China Beach."