Lather is thirty years old today!

[RadiationTherapy]

Lather was thirty years old today,
And Lather came foam from his tongue.
He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said,
Is it true that I'm no longer young? (mommy)
And the children call him famous,
And the old men call him insane,
And sometimes he's so nameless,
That he hardly knows which game to play...
Which words to say...
And I should have told him, "No, you're not old."
And I should have let him go on...smiling...babywide.

[hobbit709]

1. the first verses

Lather was thirty years old today,
They took away all of his toys.
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,
About his old friends who'd stopped being boys.
There was Howard C. Green, just turned thirty-three,
His leather chair waits at the bank.
And Sergeant Dow Jones, twenty-seven years old,
Commanding his very own tank.
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do,
To lie about nude in the sand,
Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps,
And thrashing the air with his hands.

But wait, oh Lather's productive you know,
He produces the finest of sound,
Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose,
Snorting the best licks in town,
But that's all over...

[RadiationTherapy]

2. Snorting the best licks in town *sniffsniff* *sniffsniif*

BRRRRRRP BRRRRP BRRR BRRR BRR BRRRRRRP

What a creepy song. Jefferson Airplane was so good back then.

[hobbit709]

3. From the same album

If You Feel

If you feel like china breaking,
If you feel like laughing;
Break china laughing.
Break china laughing, laughing, laughing.
If you feel like leaves are falling
If you feel like smiling;
Fall leaves are smiling.
Fall leaves are smiling, smiling, smiling, yeah.
If you feel like love making,
If you feel like flying;
Make love flying, baby.
Make love flying, flying, flying, yeah.
Got down...
Not the first time, you know...
Got down, got up to go.
Got up to go.
If you feel like china breaking,
If you feel like laughing;
Break china laughing.
Break china laughing, laughing,
laughing, laughing, laughing,
laughing, laughing, laughing,
laughing, laughing.

[Westegg]

6. An amazing song that freaked me out when I was a kid...

... but by age 13 (in the late '70s), I'd become a hardcore Airplane fan, and still am. (I wear my "Jefferson Airplane Loves You" button from 1966 proudly and people look at it and shrug and go, "Huh. That's... interesting.")

"Lather" features an amazing vocal by Grace and a unique sound from the band, with an almost Irish folk-song cadence and tune. There's a creepy, other-wordily aspect to the song that's really spell-binding. For starters, there's the truly weird name-- Lather? What? I've not heard why Grace chose to call him that. Anyone know? Took me years to get some of the lyrical references: "Sgt. Dow Jones" as in the stock exchange and "Howard C. Green" the banker-- i.e Howard "sees green," as in money!

Anyway, maybe I'm a little stuck in the past, and maybe that album is too, but I still enjoy the hell out of it. It came out in '68, and for all I know was released on August 1, which would mean Lather turned 40 years old today, I suppose. Wouldn't that be the hippest (as Jerry used ta say)?

Fly Jefferson Airplane. Gets you there on... time.

[Deja Q]

4. You should see it in color...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVstafKZDYY

I liked the song, though the drug snorting reference is kinda sad...

[RadiationTherapy]

5. Snorting drugs is a big part of not growing up.

Lather is about a person who lives with his mom; probably because he burned out young.

[Westegg]

7. "Which games to play (Backgammon? Hara-kiri?)"...

...one of the great throw-away lines in rock. IMO.