"Help!' + "Helpless"

Priming the pump for Friday evening's rumination on Hippies vs. Punks, I heard two gems from the Age of Aquarius tonight. First, from their debut album, Shades of Deep Purple (1968), a Deep Purple cover of the Lennon-McCartney classic "Help!" A perfect match for how I was feeling prior to my run -- a dispiriting day of untermensching at work followed by a walk home where I contemplated three-plus years of flying solo. Yes, three-plus years of zero intimacy. Fortunately, I can run, and I can listen music (which Schopenhauer called pure spirit). So by the time "Help!" appeared on the playlist I was headed for the backstretch and rushing with endorphins. Check out the Hammond organ sound of the great Jon Lord (who died last summer); that's the sound of Fred, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne and Scooby-Doo -- the Mystery Gang; the sound of many a Saturday night at the suburban community center in Nixonian America:

Then, when the run was done and the rain was pouring down and steam was rising off my corpus and I was stretching my legs on the steps at the entrance to my apartment building, "Helpless" off the Hippie Holy Grail album, Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. If one could distill the essence of the Hippie it would be nostalgia -- an insatiable appetite for childhood's return, for a Rousseauian state of nature: