Contemporary American Classics: "Ripple"

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

Long ago and far away, and as happens far too often in my life as a footnote, I found myself dressed in paisley pants, a white embroidered tunic, and boots of Spanish leather dancing in what passed for the audience at Fillmore West when the Dead performed Ripple for the first time in August of 1970. This is not to say I remember it at all from that performance. While I do remember sharp flashes of imagery and distinct crisp moments from those years in the gone world, most evenings at the Fillmore Ballroom and Fillmore West remain a blur.... for obvious reasons.

Today, 43 past gone years on, I discovered that somebody grabbed that evening on tape and tossed it down the decades until it became digital and hence immortal: Grateful Dead Live at Fillmore West on 1970-08-19. where it’s track 6. Did I hear it then? (“I mean like, man, really hear it, really dig Ripple, you know?” --in the argot of the era. ) Was that me applauding and/or whooping in the background. Who can tell? Who can know?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they're better left unsung.
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.

It's haunting to hear an evening from your life decades past. It stirs a lot of ghosts that live in a universe you do not normally disturb. But again it does not mean I remember that song at its first singing. I certainly remembered Ripple after it came out on their album, American Beauty, later that year. That would have been a requirement. As was the habit of the original hippies in the original San Francisco, we’d get a Dead (Dylan) (Beatles) (Stones) album on the first day it was released and play that vinyl until we’d ground down the gooves to powder and inhaled that powder to plant the groove inside us.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Ripple was the perfect anthem for the time because everything at the time and of that place in and around San Francisco was, well, like a Ripple, very liquid.... quite flowing. And, hearing it again now, I have to say that the anthem quality of the song persists.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.

Ripple is, as noted in the video of the surviving members of the Dead placed at the end of this post, a young man’s song; an optimistic song straining for an older wisdom as yet unearned but sensed, foreseen, and in the song foretold.

There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.

Wisdom. Something most claim they want but few will seek. Most people are, as am I, constantly distracted by the detritus of daily living. And so we seek out and find our various songs, poems, or other talismans to remind us, distantly, that there is a road, no simple highway. What is it and where is it? From where I stand it comes and goes, rises and falls, fades in and out; sometimes it is a maze and other times it is a labyrinth. In all states the gate is strait and the way narrow and easily lost in the fog, in the smoke of the world. Does it lead down to the pit, off into the starlight, or up some endless staircase?

If I knew the way, would I take you home?

"Sometimes the light's all shining on me.
Other times I can barely see.
Lately, it occurs to me....."

The Story of "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at July 10, 2013 3:36 PM