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Go Ask Alice —50 Years Later

Fifty years ago this week, the Summer of Love was officially sanctioned. Hippies were out in full force searching for sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Therefore, it’s not surprising that along with this movement came the summer sounds of psychedelia with a few other genres thrown in.

Many people will tell you that it all started with the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album that June. Perhaps. But since I was in San Francisco at the time, I floated down to the Fillmore Ballroom where I experienced Jim Hendrix, who had just caught fire at the Monterey Pop Festival.

“Purple haze, all in my brain lately things they don’t seem the same. Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why… ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

“Purple haze, all around, don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down. Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me. Help me…”

Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane seemed to provide a solution: “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all.

Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall.

And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall, tell ‘em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call and call Alice, when she was just small.”

Jim Morrison and The Doors voiced the anthem of the summer with the long and extended edition of “Light My Fire,” which I don’t think I ever heard straight, if you know what I mean:

“You know that it would be untrue. You know that I would be a liar. If I was to say to you, girl, we couldn’t get much higher. Come on baby light my fire. Come on baby light my fire. Try to set the night on fire.

“The time to hesitate is through. No time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose, and our love become a funeral pyre. Come on baby light my fire. Come on baby light my fire. Try to set the night on fire, yeah.”

As for the definition of a flower child, the Association offered us Windy: “Who’s peekin’ out from under a stairway calling a name that’s lighter than air? Who’s bending down to give me a rainbow? Everyone knows it’s Windy.

“Who’s tripping down the streets of the city, smilin’ at everybody she sees, who’s reachin’ out to capture a moment everyone knows it’s Windy.”

Sounds like a hippie-chick to me, one to groove with — “Groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon. Really, couldn’t get away too soon. I can’t imagine anything that’s better; the world is ours whenever we’re together. There ain’t a place I’d like to be instead of groovin’, down a crowded avenue, doin’ anything we like to do, there’s always lots of things that we can see, we can be anyone we want to be and all those happy people we could meet just groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon, really couldn’t get away too soon.”

That of course is the laid-back classic by the Rascals, whose studio bosses didn’t want to release it. They thought it was a bomb, but it went to No. 1 on the charts. Two soul numbers deserve attention here. Aretha of course: “What you want, baby I got it. What you need, do you know I got it. All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you get home (just a little bit) hey baby…”

And Little Stevie Wonder: “I was born in Lil’ Rock had a childhood sweetheart we were always hand in hand.

“I was hightop shoes and shirt tails, Suzy was in pig tails, I know I loved her even then.

“You know my papa disapproved it, my mama boo-hooed it, but I told them time and time again. Don’t you know I was made to love her?”

The two strangest tunes of the summer involved a sleepy tale from the Delta country and a bizarre song from an English group called, Procal Harem. “We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor. I was feeling kinda seasick but the crowd called out for more. The room was humming harder, as the ceiling flew away. When we called out for another drink the waiter brought a tray.

“And so it was that later, as the miller told his tale that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.” Never could figure that one out.

Another mystery awaited in the mother of all odes sung by Bobby Gentry: “It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.

“I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay. And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat. And mama hollered out the back door, y’all, remember to wipe your feet. And then she said, I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge.

“Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

“Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge and now Billy Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”

The mystery was, what did Billie Joe throw off the bridge before he jumped? Listen to the record which literally and aurally puts you there and you’ll probably figure it out. Unless you’re in a purple haze.

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