{"id":664,"date":"2007-01-22T13:55:05","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T21:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/01\/22\/the-mamas-the-papas\/"},"modified":"2007-01-22T13:55:05","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T21:55:05","slug":"the-mamas-the-papas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/22\/the-mamas-the-papas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mamas & the Papas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I dig the Mamas and the Papas at ‘The Trip,’ Sunset Strip in L.A.
And they got a good thing goin’ when the words don’t get in the way
And when they’re really wailing, Michelle and Cass are sailin’
Hey, they really nail me to the wall!<\/em><\/p>\n

If I thought really hard, I could remember the name of that girl who sang in the assembly at Andrew Warde.<\/p>\n

You see every Wednesday, we had an assembly, it was built into the schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 One half the high school, then the other.<\/p>\n

But this week, instead of taking place in the auditorium, the assembly was in the gym.\u00c2\u00a0 For what reason, I’ll never remember.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it was a pep rally of some sort.\u00c2\u00a0 But, at one point a group took the stage, two girls and two guys, and they sang "California Dreamin’".\u00c2\u00a0 The star was this lithe junior with long blonde hair whose visage has never left my mind’s eye.<\/p>\n

You never knew whether the debut portended further success.\u00c2\u00a0 Could an act entitled Simon & Garfunkel ever follow up "Sounds Of Silence"?\u00c2\u00a0 Same deal with the Mamas & the Papas and "California Dreamin’".\u00c2\u00a0 Both had the character of novelty hits, who knew there would be more?<\/p>\n

Although "Monday Monday" was the biggest follow-up, and I preferred it to "California Dreamin’", my favorite was "I Saw Her Again", with its swooping Fifth Dimension intro and jangly Donovan sound.\u00c2\u00a0 And the emotive vocal of one Denny Doherty.<\/p>\n

There was one certified genius in the Mamas & the Papas, John Phillips.\u00c2\u00a0 He wrote the songs.\u00c2\u00a0 But it took all four of them to make the group work.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, maybe Michelle could have been replaced, vocally, anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 But if she hadn’t been in the act, how could this song have been written?\u00c2\u00a0 Michelle was the kind of girl we idolized back before we heard everybody talk, back before everybody was perfected by plastic surgery.<\/p>\n

And how could a song with such pain sound so JOYFUL?<\/p>\n

These Mamas & the Papas songs somehow had a way of penetrating you without being saccharine.\u00c2\u00a0 They contained all the emotion of the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 The exploration, the wide-eyed eating up of the world.<\/p>\n

I used to live in New York City
Everything there was dark and dirty
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said 12:30<\/em><\/p>\n

Young girls are coming to the canyon
And in the mornings I can see them walking<\/em><\/p>\n

My fascination with California began\u00c2\u00a0 with TV.\u00c2\u00a0 This was before there was production in Canada, when every show seemed to be shot in Southern California.\u00c2\u00a0 And that was the California of my dreams, not San Francisco.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, I wanted to go where the sun always shined, where it was always warm, where you could always wear a t-shirt.<\/p>\n

But although television hipped me, it was music that sealed the deal.\u00c2\u00a0 And it all started with the Mamas & the Papas.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d moved, and they sang of this fantastic land.\u00c2\u00a0 God, there’s still magic in Laurel Canyon.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that where Rick Rubin set down roots?\u00c2\u00a0 A winding street in the hills, with houses set right next door to each other.\u00c2\u00a0 In a place that would be uninhabitable on the east coast, snow making such residences impossible.\u00c2\u00a0 And, everybody in the rock and roll business LIVED there.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody in the same place.\u00c2\u00a0 And there were all these beautiful lasses at the Country Store.\u00c2\u00a0 Where do I sign up?<\/p>\n

The Mamas & the Papas had many hits.\u00c2\u00a0 But their success has no context today.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, they’re not on the road, they’re not appearing during halftime at the Super Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 And they weren’t the ONLY act with success.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine if Kurt Cobain had compatriots JUST as talented.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the inferior Pearl Jam, but a bunch of acts challenging him to write even better songs.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like the Beatles challenged the Beach Boys, and vice versa.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s why the Mamas & the Papas don’t get their due.\u00c2\u00a0 There were TOO many acts hitting at the time!<\/p>\n

Cass gets whatever attention there is today.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because of the ham sandwich story, maybe because\u00c2\u00a0 she sang some of the hits solo, like "Words Of Love", a circusy number that sounded completely different from the rest of the canon, but hit nonetheless.<\/p>\n

But it was a group.\u00c2\u00a0 Comprised of four volatile egos.\u00c2\u00a0 Which couldn’t stay together as a result.<\/p>\n

Only Michelle Phillips is still walking the planet.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though she’s been neutered by TV, even though she has succumbed to the knife, whenever you see her you get a jolt, because you remember all those years ago, when every girl grew their hair long and straight, to be just like her.<\/p>\n

The memories are not far below the surface.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like that girl singing her song at my high school back in ’66.<\/p>\n

We lost a Papa last week.\u00c2\u00a0 He got a pretty big obituary in the "New York Times".\u00c2\u00a0 Someone still remembers.\u00c2\u00a0 But in a world where those in power are doing their best to eviscerate the memory of the sixties, his death didn’t have that great an impact.\u00c2\u00a0 Gerald Ford gets five days of national mourning, when the songs cut in the sixties and seventies mean more than he, more than any President.\u00c2\u00a0 God was literally dead, MUSIC was our religion!<\/p>\n

We lost someone important.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll just leave you with his message, his group’s message.<\/p>\n

You gotta go where you wanna go
Do what you wanna do
With whoever you wanna do it with<\/em><\/p>\n

Freedom.\u00c2\u00a0 Choice.\u00c2\u00a0 These are two of the main tenets of the sixties philosophy.\u00c2\u00a0 Life is about possibilities.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not telling you to drop out of college, or get a divorce.\u00c2\u00a0 Education and commitment are important.\u00c2\u00a0 But you mustn’t sacrifice your inner spark.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to take chances.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to break the rules.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to listen to your heart, do more of what you WANT to do than what you SHOULD do.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the road to happiness.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you ever become confused, unsure if you’ve taken the right direction, fearful of the future, just put on some Mamas & the Papas music, it will inspire you, it will get you through.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, it helped birth an entire GENERATION of truth and joy seekers.\u00c2\u00a0 And truth and joy are a whole hell of a lot more important to the core of man than the uptight bellicose practices of those in power today.<\/p>\n

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I dig the Mamas and the Papas at ‘The Trip,’ Sunset Strip in L.A.And they got a good thing goin’ when the words don’t get in the wayAnd when they’re really wailing, Michelle and Cass are sailin’Hey, they really nail me to the wall! If I thought really hard, I could remember the name of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-aI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}