Jay Farrar

Funny a bot resurrected this.

But an update is in order. They are trying to make the mounds a national park...Would be cool.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/fe ... k#stream/0

I am reading Roads to Quoz; An American Mosey by William Least Heat-Moon. The author and his wife are following the course of the Ouachita River. Near Jonesville, Louisiana they come to the Great Mound...or the remnants of it. "It was also the second highest native mound in America; only the huge Monk's Mound at Cahokia, Illinois, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, stood taller, but just by a few feet." There are several chapters describing what became of this site (what a waste).

Cahokian

I will wat for you in the green, green spaces,
Wearing our post-industrial faces.
Side by side sit the trashpile twin,
And the eleventh century center of the Misissippian,
With the calender of the sun,
A people undone.

Ceremonial mounds in the backyards and towns,
That's the way it runed out.
A city built up on the other great mound torn down,
That's the way it happened.
A culture on the run,
They vanished in the sun,
The Mississippian.

Forward and on we go,
Building our mounds out of control,
Full of our finest throw away things.
The new Mississippians,
Under a smog choked sun,
Waiting to be undone.

I grew up in Southern Illinois, living for a time in Belleville, and for a lot longer in nearby O'fallon. I made several trips to the Cahokia Mounds when I was a kid.

In an interview Jay was talking about that song and about the mounds and mentioned that he used to go to the "Grandpa's" store nearby and look a the Harmony guitars. I'm some 13-14 years older than Jay, but back in 1966, I remember going to the mounds with a friend and we spent some time in the Grandpas over there. I still have a strip of pictures we had taken in the photo booth at Grandpas. And I remember the big, red Harmony Rocket they had. Single cutaway, hollow body, double pickup blazingly glorious to me.

Funny.

Also, I played hybrid country-rock in the St. Louis/Belleville area back in 72-73, in some of the same venues Tupelo later played. Country rock wasn't popular then either. It was Pre-Eagles days and we were playing "Truck Drivin Man" and Fightin Side of Me alongside Poco and Neil Young songs... and all people wanted to hear was Prog rock at the time.

thanks, cool read.

but the author or msnbc should've had a link for the clip of 'cahokian' from jay's audio/video page.

it would've been a nice touch. i have a tear streaming down my face like the guy in the old littering ad right now just thinking about it.

interesting....


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5653719/