Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
A generational anthem about finding true values on a path above
and beyond the glitter of gold. The boys say it's a song about
Hope, which apparently springs eternal in a song that will never
die. With shirts flung open symbolically, vocalist Robert Plant
finds that Truth is within the whispering wind that leads you,
your inner voice urging you on into high adventure. And then
dramatically he turns the song into a sea of cosmic sound, above
and beyond language and words, and into the feelingness and
lovingness of the Hippie Generation euphoria. In the end,
however, every value is still being bought and sold everywhere
on the road.
Jackson Browne - Before The Deluge The bright eyes of peace and love
that emerged in the late 60’s were soon inundated by the
coarse realities of an angry and prejudiced establishment. Over
coming decades, we all toil on
for our values with tattered and wet feathers, polarized by
fences and foibles.
Stephen Stills - Crossroads/You Can't
Catch Me
Life,
like Stephen's frantic guitar rifts, is a run against the
devils, the ones without and within.
Sometimes we make pacts with the devil in our lives and we often
run like hell to escape them.
Generations of mankind have slaughtered themselves over wealth
and power, and always
cloak it in Righteousness. Young men have always been caught up
in the maelstrom of the killing
fields, no matter the ideology or pretense, and have always paid
the price.
In life, we often feel separated,
a stranger in the eyes of God because we don't truly know God.
Through it all, in our frailties and our common lives, we pay
homage to The Maker of ALL.
Linda Ronstadt -
Willin' A whole generation was moved by
“weeds, whites, and wine” to traverse a perilous era of war,
assassinations, protests and human rights battles, and survive.
The writer, Lowell George, did not,
but Linda delivers the song full power in her youth.
Maura O’Connell With
Nanci Griffith - Trouble in the Fields While agriculture is said to be
an ennobling work, generations of families have struggled
just to survive on the earth, with money lenders waiting to
strike them down in every era.
It is always love that holds the family farm together, for the
land and for each other.
The Mod Blues messenger tells us
to be okay with each other and be caring, knowing
there are a lot of paths to take in life, and our siblingsare on all of them.
Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson - Pancho & Lefty
The
Townes Van Zandt tune conjures up multiple images of
life's questions about loyalty and deceit,
responsibility and retreat, valor and vanity, standing up to a
hail of bullets or facing down in a
cheap hotel, to consider some of the amorphous, half-understood
signposts of our lives and where and
how we will die. In the end there are only questions, and wonder
at what it was about.
Joe Cocker - With
a Little Help From My Friends A runaway performance of reckless
abandon at
Woodstock turns a gentle Beatles song about friendship
and acceptance into a powerful anthem to a generation. Joe
releases an explosion of energy into a raging testament
to the trusting and loving of one's kindred spirits, opening to
them completely to experience the ecstatic joy of Oneness with
one another. Was it drug-induced hysteria? No. Check Joe going
backstage, cool as a cucumber
and sipping a drink. Total catharsis on-stage; a mesmerizing
performance that ripped to shreds the idea of performance
proprieties and ushered in the headbanger school of rock.
Read The
Lyrics To "With A Little
Help From My Friends"
John Prine - It's
A Big Old Goofy World We all have many occasions in
life to look around us and see the weirdest menagerie of
people one could imagine. Living good is often in having a sense
of humor.
