@lewolf tagged me to name my favorite or whatever song. I have a lot to say about it so bear with me. It's Sunday Morning by Velvet Underground (see below). The album itself with the Banana on the cover: it came with a little sticker that said "peel slowly and see" and if you did peel the banana which was a sticker on the original album, there was a flesh colored (ish) banana underneath it. Now what y'all probably don't know is that back in the 1950s and 60s you couldn't sell magazines showing nippls much less vaginas or penises. All the mags had these little stickers over the nipples and vaginas and cocks that said "peel slowly and see" thus skirting the censorship laws. Warhol was doing the same thing here on so many levels. The Velvet Underground was indeed underground. They were one of the many bands (Mothers of Inventions, the Fugs, the Holy Modal Rounders, even the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane) which were only played on radio stations well into the wee hours of the night from massive broadcasting stations in Mexico to beat FCC rules. I would stay up and listen to those sounds - it quickly became my true home, my elixir of life - through this song and these groups i discovered that there was another stream besides the main- stream and that I very much belonged in those other waters. I dove in and came up next to Timothy Leary and Che Guevara in a very literal way - but that's a different story and might still not be entirely safe to put out there... anyway... the opening sounds of the Velvet Underground's first album, to be followed by so much more, is still a touchstone for me... many a night or day i am locked in to who i have to be to my employees, family, students, and clients... then at last around 2 or 3 am i pull out the newest sounds or sounds from the recent or bygone times or even before i was born sounds (Billie Holiday) and am at last home. I truly hope that each of you has such a home, a place of peace, inspiration, freedom, and simple self identity. Here they are:
