Holiday Rambler Trailer at a rest stop in the Everglades

Happy birthday, you brilliant frightening big-hearted wild teenager of a country. Miss you.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

America – Ventura Highway
from Homecoming. Warner, 1973
“It reminds me of the time I lived in Omaha as a kid and how we’d walk through cornfields and chew on pieces of grass,” said America’s vocalist Dewey Bunnell. “There were cold winters, and I had images of going to California. So I think in the song I’m talking to myself, frankly: ‘How long you gonna stay here, Joe?’” →

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Love – You Set the Scene
from Forever Changes. Elektra, 1967 | buy mp3s
Arthur Lee’s psychedelic American masterpiece may be 42 years old but, as Andrew Hultkrans writes, “its hermetic fusion of the personal and the political feels more relevant than ever. Lee was paranoid before Didion; he was king of the Sunset Strip before Morrison . . . and he headed for the hills and domestic isolation before Dylan.” →

Somewhere in Kansas