Davey the Fat Boy wrote:But wasn’t the truth more that the hard stuff and the softer stuff all existed together on concurrent tracks?
That's the way I remember it, and it didn't start in the late Sixties either, went back to at least the Fifties, and rock and roll*. There was always a frantic fringe and the more moderate, wide-appeal crowd, for every Esquireta a Boone.
And even in this period there were bands that straddled the two. The Association were a case in point. Cherish, Never My Love and Windy, and the way they dressed and presented themselves, were pitched at the heart of the mainstream, but the druggy message of Along Comes Mary, the anti- war Requiem for the Masses and whatever the fuck Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies was about (I never really tried with that one, it was the sound of it that grabbed me and suggested outer terrritories) suggested a whole other thing going on. And didn't the Mamas and Papas slip out some nasty sex and drug songs along with the harmonies (although they never really pretended to be straight, tbh)?
Anyway, in case you never heard it, PGHJ – the perverse Follow-Up to their number one with Cherish - barely scraped the top 40
*Hell, back to Romantics vs Classicists in the 18th century if you squint a bit
In timeless moments we live forever
You can't play a tune on an absolute
Negative Capability...when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”