The Boys of Summer Just Seem a Little Weird

So the other day I'm channel surfing and I chanced across some ESPN kind of thingie and they were talking about an upcoming Yankees/Boston contest.

And I suddenly flashed on a song I hadn't thought about for several decades.

From their self-titled 1968 debut album, please enjoy Beantown band Earth Opera and their obviously conflicted plaint about how "The Red Sox Are Winning."

When you are gone I keep track of the time
In my diary line by line
And the past is behind
It was so long ago
When believing and beauty
Celebrated the birth
It was green, lovely green
We could fly like milkweed

But nowadays no one seems to care
They laugh at me when I ride my bike
Turn away in shame when I fly my kite

I spend my Saturdays
Alone in the mirror
Arranging my hair
In the end, what is there?
To talk of passing time
Should I turn off the TV?
Or go to the race track
And bet on the dogs
And the weather is strange
No summer this year
In the days of the war
But the Red Sox are winning

As you can tell from all of the above, these guys were very echt-late Sixties in their melding of folk-rock, psychedelia and general mishegass. I actually owned the album (and its successor, the even wiggier American Eagle Tragedy -- don't worry, I didn't buy them, but rather stole them from my college radio station). But the baseball song was the only one I played a lot; for some reason its sledgehammer irony really spoke to me at the time (Vietnam, and all that).

In any event, two members of the group -- David Grisman and Peter Rowan (who wrote the song) -- went on to much better things as members of Old and in the Way with Jerry Garcia and Vassar Clements; their self-titled LP became the best-selling bluegrass album of all time.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear more of the Opera guys, the full album can be listened to -- for free -- over at YouTube HERE.

You're welcome very much.