It is a crisp Fall day in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Long-haired
shirtless guys are playing frisbee on the lawn, women in long homespun dresses
sit under the oak tree. I am 18 years old, just stepping through the door into
an emerging adulthood. It’s a time to try out different identities and each one
is accompanied by a soundtrack. And such a rich musical tapestry in that year
1969 to walk down the aisle with me— The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and
Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Brown, Smokey
Robinson, Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane. Rolling Stones, not to
mention Beethoven and Brubeck. Each a world unto themselves— some for joyful
dancing, some for quiet romance, some for political inspiration, some for
poetic flight. A remarkable time filled with change, hope, visions of a better
world and a growing and glowing determination to turn the world upside down,
give it a good shake and settle down to the peaceful co-existence we deserve.
Just as a smell transports me instantly to Grandma’s kitchen
or the house at the seashore, so does the music of the time lift me out of my
screen-glowing Walmarted Romney-infested world into that time of innocence and
bright eyes and a world sung into being with poetry riding on song. All that
music has that time-machine power to bring me back, but none so deeply and so
meaningful as the music of The Incredible String Band. I listened to them this
morning, remembering each note and word and the feeling in the air when I first
heard them weaving an entire mythology that gave meaning and magic to my day.
Do they hold up? Well, musically speaking—and here with some
43 more years of musical experience, I can claim a sophisticated palette— they
were…well, incredible. Sometimes the singing seems out of tune or the melodies too
hippy-meandering, but in terms of instrumentation, form, structure, tempo,
meters, rhythms, harmonies, subject matter, poetic imagery, they reveal a
prodigious imagination. They used instruments like the sitar, the gimbri, the
tinwhistle and assorted percussion from Morocco, India, Ireland and beyond long
before any were popular, borrowed influences from folk music of the British
Isles, rock, blues, spirituals, parlor music, the Near East and beyond. The
pieces ranged from 16 seconds to 16 minutes, the forms consistently original
and unpredictable, the lyrics profound, metaphorical and filled with inspired
imagery. They wove an elaborate mythical universe, peopled with spiritual
inspiration without religious dogma, a celebration of the natural world and
forces, the power of fellow journeyers, a childlike playfulness and humor, and
of course, love.
They recorded five extraordinary albums, each one a separate
universe—The Incredible String Band, The 5,000 Spirits, Wee
Tam, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, The Big Huge. Then
came the prophetic Changing Horses, where (from my point of view) they
lost the thread of inspiration and took off in another direction and never
quite came back to the home territory they populated so beautifully. (Some
attribute this to their encounter with Scientology.) So is the life of the
artist, responding to particular times and places and social energies and
spiritual energies and then the outside forces change or they change from the
inside and the moment is gone. Happens all the time.
I wonder if I played them for you now whether you would be
intrigued. Would they seem too weird, too hippy-dippy, too hard to place in any
familiar musical style? Would the words seem poetic or just obscure and obtuse?
Was this a “you just had to be there” musical taste belonging to a particular
era? I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I was there and I am there again
listening to them now and it was/is beautiful, remarkable, and yes, incredible.
Thank you, Robin Williams and Mike Heron, Licorice and Rose for your company,
then and now. You gave me a world and I cherish it.
They wove an elaborate mythical universe, peopled with spiritual inspiration without religious dogma,
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