Posted on Aug 9, 2018
The Youngbloods - Get Together (1967, 1969) HQ, a tribute to Sharon Tate
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Published on Jun 20, 2018
Written by Chet Powers in 1963, the song was originally entitled "Let's Get Together." Powers also went by the name Jesse Oris Farrow and as Quicksilver's lead vocalist Dino Valenti. Until now I never knew all three were the same person. Both the Kingston Trio and David Crosby were the first to record the song at about the same time in 1964, only a few weeks apart. The song would next be covered by We Five and Jefferson Airplane before The Youngbloods recorded it in 1967. The original Youngbloods release did not fare well, peaking at only #62 on Billboard that year. After the song was used in a radio public service announcement as a call for brotherhood by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, "Get Together" was re-released in June 1969, just in time for summer, and this time reached #5 on Billboard and #4 on Cash Box on September 13, 1969 (CB date).
Yes, this lovely, haunting song is a cry, a plea, an anthem for peace and brotherhood ... but it is much more than that. It is also about our inevitable mortality and what we do with the time we have. It is about the choices we make, and the power given us to move in the way of love or the way of fear. It was a warning as well, not only to our generation, but all generations to come.
On August 9, 1969, as this song was entering the Top 20, a small group of young people from what at that time was an obscure desert hippie community chose the way of fear, breaking into the home of actress Sharon Tate, slaughtering her and her close friends. It wasn't marijuana or free love that killed the dream of an entire generation ... instead it was a horrific, cowardly act of cold-blooded murder masterminded by an evil malcontent posing as a man of peace and love. Now that he is dead, and the media circus that chose to turn him and his followers into celebrities now a distant memory, perhaps at last Sharon and the other victims can be properly mourned and the warning of this song heeded before it is too late ... again.
Category
Music
Song
Get Together
Artist
The Youngbloods
Album
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Music from the Motion Picture
Written by Chet Powers in 1963, the song was originally entitled "Let's Get Together." Powers also went by the name Jesse Oris Farrow and as Quicksilver's lead vocalist Dino Valenti. Until now I never knew all three were the same person. Both the Kingston Trio and David Crosby were the first to record the song at about the same time in 1964, only a few weeks apart. The song would next be covered by We Five and Jefferson Airplane before The Youngbloods recorded it in 1967. The original Youngbloods release did not fare well, peaking at only #62 on Billboard that year. After the song was used in a radio public service announcement as a call for brotherhood by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, "Get Together" was re-released in June 1969, just in time for summer, and this time reached #5 on Billboard and #4 on Cash Box on September 13, 1969 (CB date).
Yes, this lovely, haunting song is a cry, a plea, an anthem for peace and brotherhood ... but it is much more than that. It is also about our inevitable mortality and what we do with the time we have. It is about the choices we make, and the power given us to move in the way of love or the way of fear. It was a warning as well, not only to our generation, but all generations to come.
On August 9, 1969, as this song was entering the Top 20, a small group of young people from what at that time was an obscure desert hippie community chose the way of fear, breaking into the home of actress Sharon Tate, slaughtering her and her close friends. It wasn't marijuana or free love that killed the dream of an entire generation ... instead it was a horrific, cowardly act of cold-blooded murder masterminded by an evil malcontent posing as a man of peace and love. Now that he is dead, and the media circus that chose to turn him and his followers into celebrities now a distant memory, perhaps at last Sharon and the other victims can be properly mourned and the warning of this song heeded before it is too late ... again.
Category
Music
Song
Get Together
Artist
The Youngbloods
Album
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Music from the Motion Picture
Music
Classic Rock
Rock Music
Actor/Actress
Hollywood
Posted >1 y ago
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