One Night in the Netherlands: Melanie Safka, 1970, and a Performance of a Lifetime
History has never felt past to me. When I discover something that happened yesterday, it feels as though it’s happening today. I don’t know if there’s a word for this. I just know that it is.
When I read about or see something that happened ten, a hundred, a thousand years ago, it feels, if anything, more real than the present. I know that’s irrational, but, again, I also know that it simply is.
So, when I stumbled upon Melanie Safka’s miraculous performance of “Lay Down” from a 1970 Netherlands talk show, it felt every bit as though it was happening today.
I don’t just mean the music or the show. I mean the whole zeitgeist of the era. I didn’t hear the song with 2018 ears. I heard it with 1970 ears. I heard it from the brainspace of someone living in those heady times.
“Lay Down” tells a story about Woodstock, the high-water mark of the Hippie counterculture revolution, but by 1970 it was sung from the shadows of the Manson Family murders, the tragedy at Altamont, and the dissolution of the Hippie dream in general.
My 2018 mind takes a balanced and sober perspective of the 1960s. So many great things, such as the civil rights movement, came out of it. But, so too did many misguided ideas and babies…
