Siriusly!

Our new car came with a one year subscription to Sirius XM Satellite Radio. This gives us access to literally hundreds of radio stations that serve a wide variety of musical interests. We spent some time looking over the list and Barry entered pre-sets for the stations that looked interesting so we could listen to them during our drives along I-95 between New York City and Boston. Among these are a few different stations that play music from the 1960s and 1970s.

On our early Friday morning drive from New York to Sharon we had the radio tuned in to a channel that plays music from the 1960s. The disc jockey was looking for people to call in with the answer to the following question: in the song “Woodstock,” written and recorded by Joni Mitchel (also recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), there is a reference to “the garden”: what garden was this?”

Here are the lyrics to the first verse of the song:

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

We looked at each other and thought “what a ridiculously simple question, everyone knows the reference is to the biblical Garden of Eden.” The first few callers gave this answer but they were told it was incorrect. Huh? Finally, the disc jockey said that the reference was to the city of Garden, Michigan.

Really? Joni Mitchell is Canadian. I cannot imagine why she would have included a reference to some obscure town in Michigan (population 221 in the 2010 census). Further, this would have been completely off topic in the song.

I really think this DJ was just pulling the listeners’ legs! We arrived at our destination so stopped listening, but presumably someone set him straight.

This started me thinking about the two versions of this song. Joni Mitchell’s rendition is quintessential Joni Mitchell, haunting and soulful. CSNY sang it more as a rock anthem to the event and the young people who attended. I posted Joni Mitchell’s version on the 45^th anniversary of the festival earlier this summer. Here is a video of Crosby, Stills and Nash performing the song at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 2009. I am nearly 100% certain that Barry and I were at that show! I only wish I would have had the foresight to hang on to all those ticket stubs….

Have a nice Sunday!

Love,

Rebecca