It's Easy - Nothin' to It

Synchronicity has been running rampant this week-end here at the Casa Nada.  I was looking through some boxes & crates of old items I had packed away in the past & over time had come to disregard.  I thought I'd get rid of some junk I definitely didn't need & make some much needed space around here.

In one box I spotted an ancient cassette tape. On futher examination I realized it was labeled Graduation Upheaval dated June 6, 1970.  50 years to the day. What's the chances of that. I had just been watching some TV news about Virtual Graduations upcoming in these days of Covid-19.

Then it kinda hit me...50 years since my own graduation, which by my own choice was more or less virtual.  I wasn't planning on attending my alma mater's stupid ass affair. I was deep in the anti-Tricky Dicky / anti-Vietnam war headspace. Just one month earlier, the day after my 18th birthday, 13 Kent State students were shot by National Guard troops on the Kent State campus, 4 killed & 9 wounded.  The eerie parallel to what was going on right now across the nation only piled on more similarities.

I remember making the cassette tape in order to prank the after-graduation festivities. My friend Mole's band, the First Mole Underground, was playing the after dinner party. Mole had been given the duties of spinning the tunes during the meal & for the after-meal dance preceeding his band's gig.  The school administration had given him a strict whitewashed list of  "appropriate"  music for the dance, but had left the dinner background Muzak to his whims.  That's where my cassette came in to play.  Mole had been persuaded (read: blackmailed by yours truly) to play the cassette during the feasting.

"They told you in school about freedom,

But when you try to be free they never let ya...

They say "It's easy...Nothin' to it"

& now the Army's out to get you

69 American terminal stasis

The air's so thick it's like drowning in molasses

I'm sick & tired of paying these dues

I'm finally getting hip to the American Ruse."

I remember I started with "American Ruse" by MC5.  The rest is part of infamy.  I chose only the newest musick from 1970 with a firm eye on chaos.  Although the C90 cassette I found in the discarded junk Saturday was beyond practical use, I have faithfully resurrected it for your listening pleasure.  I have divided the tracks into two downloads, 43 minutes each, duplicating the original tape side.

Various - Virtual Graduation 1970 Style, NØ Comps., 2020

cum side -
American Ruse - MC5
No Man's Land - Syd Barrett
Mean Mistreater - Grand Funk Railroad
Sweet Jane (live) - Velvet Underground
Pachuco Cadaver - Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
Music for My Mother - Funkadelic
Nature's Way (live) - Spirit
Mr. & Misdemeanor - Alice Cooper
Eastwood Rides Again - The Upsetters
Crumbling Land - Pink Floyd
1970 (live) - Iggy & the Stooges

laude side -
No Time - The Guess Who
Cat Food - King Crimson
Mr. Skin / Animal Zoo (live) - Spirit
Theme from Burnt Weeny Sandwich - The Mothers
Heart Beat, Pig Meat - Pink Floyd
T.V. Eye (live) - Iggy & the Stooges
Child in Time - Deep Purple

notes:

MC5 - After spending Xmas vacation '69 in County lock-up, I was released just in time Jan. '70 to violate my probation to make a road trip out of state to Gilligan's in Buffalo, NY.  Had been wanting to see the Motor City Five since they first kicked out the jams. Had a big bag of Matanuska Valley Thunderfuck my friend Whalebait had brought back from Scottsbluff.  I smoked out with the band & washed away the straight eyes. I snuck behind the stage & stuffed my Algonquin Peace pipe full of MVT into "Machine Gun" Thompson's pie hole. He puffed & drummed & drummed & puffed until the song ended, then passed it around to the other.  That experience alone, coupled with their new album Back in the USA, garned them the coveted number one spot.

Syd - Floyd didn't want him no more, but the madcap laughed.

GFR - They're an Amerikkan band.

Velvet Underground - It wouldn't be until Nov. '70 that Loaded would appear & give us the studio "Sweet Jane", but this version is a live track from a show at the Matrix in S.F on Nov. 26 & 27, 1969. From my friend Fred (more later).

Beefheart - Trout mask was released in the fall of '69 but I never got it until the Straigh STS 1053 early 1970 RE.

Funkadelic - My first introduction to the Haze, Clinton & crew...you know, the "real" funk. Now I got a thing.

Spirit - Another jewel on the event horizon of 1970. 12 Dreams was still a wet dream, but my friend Bedhead Fred from San Johaze, CA recorded these songs at the Fillmore in May '70.

The Upsetters - Another first, my first "real" Jamaican music that I was to take to heart & imbrace as my favorite pleasure all these fifty years. Before that it was only the Israelites.

Floyd - Atom Heart Mother would be another late '70 release. They started work on that opus after recording the songs for Michaelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriske Point, from which these tracks were taken.

Iggy - Funhouse had already been recorded in May '70 but wouldn't be released until a couple more weeks, July '70.  I somehow got these live tracks from someone (fifty year memory drain) who had recorded them at the Cincinnati Pop Festival June 13.  Our actual graduation ceremony wasn't until June 21st so this barely slid on to the final cassette mix.

Crimson - Court of the Crimson King led to the Wake of Poseidon. How that leads to "cat food", I'll never know.

The Mothers - The Captain's bongo fury buddy burning Hebrew National Weenies with a bunch o' Muthas shortly after their fall.

Deep Purple - Never really loved metal, but heavy rock...Grand Funk, Mountain, James Gang, Steppenwolf...loved it. Now Deep Purple 2.0 was in rock. "Child in Time" is one of my favorite
heavy songs of all times. Definite shoe-in for set end.

Enjoy,
NØ