My selection today is "Beware of Darkness" by George Harrison. I can't even be mad that I don't get to own my #3 song, because I'm happy that Dr. O saw fit to put this under-appreciated track on his list. Please take a listen to this on today's playlist even if you caught Dr. O's before, as I specifically chose a different, "naked" version of the song, which I prefer to the Spector-ized one, though both are outstanding.
I dedicate my selection to Dale/wikkid. I remember being floored that in the midst of my post-Beatles Beatles thread, I not only got him to re-listen to
All Things Must Pass, but that he found a new appreciation of it and wrote what I consider one of his most lovely and haunting posts (which as you know is huge praise). Here's what I said in the RIP wikkid thread:
"Today I'll do a Dale music post again, in honor of my Beatles class. This one is kind of a downer, but I thought at the time (about three years ago) that it was one of the most sublimely deep and deeply stunning things I'd read from him. I had alleged that Side 3 of George Harrison's
All Things Must Pass might be the best side of an album in history. So Dale re-listened to it, and what he wrote is what I think of every time I hear it now.
"
And this was wikkid's post:
"I've heard ATMP a thousand times but have listened to it maybe thrice. As someone who always hated bliss, i usually gave it short shrift. During my runaway years, i encountered dozens of alternative communities filled w Blissies and all this city boy could think of was "we've spent 200 years fighting our way out of the yolks of altar & throne........for THIS?! Just trade it all in for yet another myth?!" And, unfortunately, Harrison was the unofficial captain of the "oh....yeah.....cool......peace" movement, so i gave his music much less attention & respect than it deserved. My loss.
I check out that side one more time and i hear everything i want to hear from a side - invention, melody, humor, wisdom and, most important, the ability to hold my sway for a while. That's one thing artists seldom understand any longer, the responsibility of being better than other people being to make other people better. The power to make them offer to put themselves in the palm of your hand that they may be comforted, enlightened, inspired, relieved of life's awful burdens for a short time and given a view from above it all.
He warned us. George Harrison was a product of what he saw, not what he knew, as most great artists are in their approach to their work. And, relieved of the onus of great inner fire, he was able to say, quite early on in counterculture terms, "It's all bull####, don't you know. Find peace in your heart and you will see that it's so. I don't have to be complicated and neither do you. Here are some songs about complicated people and how silly is all they do."
Beware of Maya. Beware of illusions which become delusions. Open your heart before you open your mind and it will go oh so much more easily. And now, almost 50 years on, almost everything is Maya. My gen did indeed cast the bliss aside and what for? Identity & individuality, liberty & license, consumption & concupiscence. Now all we look for is peace, take pills for peace, be mindful for peace. ####ed out, tensed up, pissed off, shut down are we. Oh....yeah.....cool......peace. Sounds pretty good all of a sudden. All things must pass."
