Purple Berries

[Sam]

haha, I am agreeing with you! Lyme disease can ruin your joints. I know a guy in a wheel chair becuase he never got treated for it. It is much worse on dogs though. My dog had it a few months ago and he couldn't walk or really move at all. Nothing a few antibiotics couldn't fix though.

[Chasin'Destiny]

Enough about these creeps...
Let's talk about....what ?....

Hey, do you like some music ?...
You know maybe Jefferson Airplane ?...
Great music, the best forum there is...
And the people there......

[The Other Side]

Don Rico had "Wooden Ships" about nailed. Problem is, it's an accurate reflection of where the Airplane's heads were at the time. It actually started back in CROWN OF CREATION. And it colored Kantner's songwriting beyond.

No longer the guy who penned "Martha", "Wild Tyme", and "Watch Her Ride". Listen to the last line of "In Time",

"...soon be in another country."

Instead of engaging and discussing, he was totally ready to CHECK OUT! However beautiful his musical vision, as exemplified on BATE, this dude had his groovy little community of musician buds and wasn't interested in "silver people".

Silver People? The establishment? Only as part of the bigger picture. He wasn't interested any longer in the community from which he arose. Nor were any of the others-Crosby, Garcia, Slick, etc. Instead of writing about their community and reflecting what they saw from the stage, they were now the

VANGUARDS OF THE REVOLUTION and, as such, held a special and higher place in the realm. Cars, blow, groovy houses hidden away. ROCK STARS. Screaming at the establishment who were making them RICH.

Most of you'll not like this, but there it is. We were also the "silver people". Problem was, it wasn't ALL their fault. WE put them on the catbird seat and idolized every word, forgetting that their words were only uncopyrighted images of ourselves.

The stage was no longer where musicians played as part of a bigger scene. It was a dividing line, a border.

Life, events and, most of all, time has (pardon me) humbled most of them. They do their own quiet simple things once more. Kids scream for GREENDAY instead. We've instead granted them the mantle, and now Paul can do his thing again, as can the others.

But not Jerry, Janis, Brian, Jimi, Lowell George, and others. They were the casualties of our unbridled love.

So be it.

[DonRico1967]

Wow, are you sure that this is the appropriate location for your kooky JEFFERSON AIRPLANE talk?
I mean good grief, for hours now we've had people tackling ticks and grasshoppers and discussing diseases in detail!
Where the hell do YOU get off re-hijacking this thread back to this Forum's designated subject matter?

[DonRico1967]

Oh yeah...
And also...
That stuff you said...
That was the most true, concise, and incisively intelligently thing I have yet read posted on here.
Brilliant.

[willie]

I've always seen Wooden Ships as a CS(N) song. But the more I learn about Paul Kantner the more I can see it's got his 'soul' all over it. It's fast becoming one of my favorites of all time.
And I don't like ticks.

[Chasin'Destiny]

....And I don't like ticks.

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn't seem to move at all
Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He's embedded in the ground

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

[DonRico1967]

[willie]

So authorative was Other side's take on Wooden Ships, I've had it on my mind the last couple of days. Here's the way I see it (apologies otherside if I mis-read what you said)
I reckon this song began as a group of muso pals just jamming and passing time. Written on a wooden ship, apparently with music Crosby already had with others chipping in with the words, Some lines going way back well before rock star status coloured their views. I think on Crosby's yatch the 'Woodstock (yet to happen) dream' was still alive. And stayed alive for sometime. Rather than a sign of Kantner Checking out, I think the silver people etc. were just a continuation of Kantners Sci-fi thing. Nothing more.

[The Other Side]

Hey Willie, Don Rico's very gracious comment aside, I've no lock on Kantner and Crosby's perspectives. That's for sure.

Still, I see the song in it's Airplane incarnation as highly political, particularly in the context of Vietnam, and more largely, the cold war-with it's nuclear implications. Squeezed between the early 60s "Ban the Bomb" movement and the late 70s "No Nukes", this was meant to convey more than just sci-fi musings with a Robert Heinlein bent.

Anyway, my thoughts, which may well be totally off the mark.

[willie]

From Got a Revolution by Jeff Tamarkin

Wooden ships had its genesis during a weekend of paradise off the coast of Florida in 1968.

There Crosby had anchored his boat, the Mayan, while Stills, Grace and Paul, and two or three of Crosby's girlfriends, cavorted aboard, diving, getting high in the sun, playing music and dreaming.

I reckon I could write a classic in those circumstances. Well at least, I'd love to give it a go.

[Rüdi]

WOW!!!
"Wooden Ships",
What a great song !!
I knew it from CSN, but the Airplane-Version on Volunteers is the top of the top.
I love it an I heard it the whole weekend. Can not get enough.
When Paul sings on for the second vers its an ultra cool atmosphere.
And the guitar works from Jorma on the right speeker, I´m still dreaming !

[TakeMeOnYourFlight]

I view the song is belonging to both groups equally. Paul Kantner wrote the Sail Away section back in 1962.

[babson]

I thought JA picked it to play at woodstock because of the New England location. I grew up back there and we had wild blueberries that grew by the pond and lake water.

Thus the "purple berries" part.

The horror as we watch you die, etc. - I always thought it was about the guys both physically dying in VietNam and emotionally dying from the experience of it.

take yer sister by the hand, lead her far from this barren land. - the USA as it was during the peak of VietNam '69. Or AKA, Turn on Tune in, Drop out.

The silver people - the "straight folks, still eating the bullshit from the politicians and were all Gung Ho for VietNam. And the American women, those mothers and girls ones that wanted you to go war, like country Joe's Sweet Lorraine.

Go ride the music - What we all did when confronted with this...

[Susan Butcher]

I'd like to point out that quite a few cheesed-off Californians "checked out" around this time and ended up in Australia. As one of them put it, it was about as far as you could go from America without learning a new language.