Artist	Song
The Band	In A Station [Music From Big Pink, 1968] 3:34
The Beatles	Yer Blues [White Album, 1968] 4:01
Terry Jacks	Seasons In The Sun [Seasons In The Sun, 1974] 3:30
Joan Baez	The Wild Mountain Thyme [Farewell Angelina, 1965] 4:37
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band	Yellow Brick Road [Safe As Milk, 1967] 2:28
Steve Goodman	City Of New Orleans [Gathering at the Earl of Old Town, 1970] 3:52
Simon & Garfunkel	Bleecker Street [Wednesday Morning 3 AM, 1964] 2:44
Van Morrison	The Way Young Lovers Do [Astral Weeks, 1968] 3:18
The Doors	Wintertime Love [Waiting For The Sun, 1968] 1:54
Crosby, Stills & Nash	Long Time Gone [Crosby, Stills & Nash, 1969] 4:17
Jefferson Airplane	Fat Angel (live) [Bless Its Pointed Little Head, 1969] 7:30
The Byrds	Set You Free This Time [Turn! Turn! Turn!, 1965] 2:50
The Who	Sally Simpson [Tommy, 1969] 4:12
Jimi Hendrix	The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp [Electric Ladyland, 1968] 3:38
Janis Joplin with Big Brother And The Holding Company	Piece Of My Heart [Cheap Thrills, 1968] 4:15
Bob Dylan	To Ramona [Another Side Of Bob Dylan, 1964] 3:52
Three Dog Night	Heavy Church [Naturally, 1970] 3:41
The Mamas And The Papas	Pacific Coast Highway [People Like Us, 1971]
Buffalo Springfield	Broken Arrow [Buffalo Springfield Again, 1967] 6:14
Fairport Convention	Farewell, Farewell [Liege & Lief, 1969] 2:39
The Velvet Underground	After Hours [The Velvet Underground, 1969] 2:10

Comment:

It's really a pretty small field. it's not all consumed in the general overarching category of Folk-Rock, but Folk-Rock (and Blues-Rock, which, since Blues is really a kind of folk music, is really a type of Folk-Rock) is what it keeps coming back to. the folk ancestors here are the Gnostic God Dylan's "To Ramona", Simon & Garfunkel's tender city-as-country folksong "Bleecker Street", and, especially, Joan Baez's beautiful, languid version of the universally covered "Wild Mountain Thyme", aka "Purple Heather", aka "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go"; these songs function as the bottomless well. i don't mean to exorcise the 60's by creating a mix cd whose subject is their rise and fall; maybe just a lesson that bears being repeated until maybe next time, with a great strength of will, the conclusion will differ; our beautiful utopia will not end in denial and darkness. though it goes as far back as 1964 and as far ahead as 1974, we're really focused here on 1968 and 1969, the years that the single kind of music most associated with the 60's, what i'm putting under the large loving umbrella of Folk-Rock, burst into the mainstream and, as a result, corrupted itself. In "Sally Simpson", our heroine visits the Messiah and comes off literally scarred; in "After Hours", VU drummer Maureen "Mo" Tucker finally declares her beautiful absolution from the sensual world; the doomed Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, who died by falling down a flight of stairs, leaves for parts unknown, despite swimming against fate's current all the way. Only a year or two ago, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were putting to tape their wails of depression at the very heart of psychedelia. A sweet love song has never sounded so threatening as Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do"; why can't we be as young lovers should? Confusion reigns supreme: Neil Young's "Broken Arrow" is a lament in sound collage, and Richard Manuel hearbreaks the wistful hippies in us with "In A Station" (can't we have something to FEEL??); bad boys The Doors and Captain Beefheart get goofily romantic with "Wintertime Love" and "Yellow Brick Road" respectively, and the effect is simply surreal, while one of the greatest teen idols the world's ever known, John Lennon, has begun to shout "I'm lonely... wanna DIE!!" as if DIE were his new codeword for Sweet Little Sixteen; on the other hand, songs such as the Byrds' "Set You Free This Time" have always hinted at a Black Iron Prison. The trademark jams and flowery utopias of the 60's here, too -- the Jefferson Airplane cover of Donovan's Airplane-tribute song "Fat Angel", 1970's Eastern-mystic era-summing-up "Heavy Church" -- but they tend to be a tad too late, also: "Pacific Coast Highway", from 1971, tries to recapture the very forming moments of The Mamas And The Papas after the band had been split up for three years; David Crosby's anti-war "Long Time Gone" ends up sounding somewhat militant itself. And then we have the pop songs constructed in the aftermath: Steve Goodman's "City Of New Orleans" is still folk-rock, but "explorations" always were about more than traveling about the country in a railroad... weren't they? And "Seasons In The Sun"... my my my, my my, my "Seasons In The Sun". A one-hit wonder if there ever was one: this one song let performer Terry Jacks live in comfort the rest of his life, and it's no wonder. Perhaps no song captures the sixties' utopianism, the heartbreak, and the everpresent, just-below-the-surface obsession with death as this song from 1974. At the start of the song the singer, we realize, is already dead; but his praises of worldly pleasures are as flower-filled as the garden of a Buddha. it's not even so much an analysis of the times as, say, "Broken Arrow" was way back in 1967; it's just the entire era, collapsed into one single enlightened sufferer. may this mix be as enlightening.

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