Cousin Caterpillar

Another Internet treasure hunt and a real treasure at the end. This morning, Ed was looking at one of those photo collections that somebody is always sending to somebody via the email and I looked up at the screen just as a funny picture of a dog and a hedgehog slid into place. Looking at the hedgehog (and thinking of hedgehog/groundhog/badger day having just passed), I remembered the wonderful, bouncy, funny song of the Incredible String Band, a U.K. band of the 60’s, and called ‘The Hedgehog Song.’ I once had a much-played LP of the album that included that song, but it went away 20+ years ago when I let go of all my vinyls and 33’s and LP’s and committed to CD’s. Lots of albums got replaced, but The Incredible String Band didn’t because, at least at the time, it wasn’t there in that format so that I could replace it.

Ed doesn’t remember the song; I try to sing it, but I can barely croak anymore, let alone get out a complex tune like that one (whose refrain begins ‘Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes, but you never quite learned the song she sung’). On a flyer, I Googled ‘The Hedgehog Song’, and up came a YouTube with a static visual and the original album cut. What a treat! And there’s more like this if you can just remember song titles or lyrics. (How can we have lost sight of the ‘Minotaur Song’ over the past eight years???? Or ‘First Girl I Loved? ) I also found “My Cousin Caterpillar’ (also by The String Band), which begins with the immortal line (given the title), ‘My cousin has great changes coming one day…’ And ends, ‘Come on, Do Your Thing!’ That may perfectly capture how we felt in the 60’s, those of us who were doing a lot of feeling in the 60’s, anyway.

Inspiration for our times, maybe. We are certainly hoping for great changes and we could surely use them. It’s just not clear that we any longer have ‘a thing’ to do. But at least the String Band is on YouTube; there’s a comfort. Here and here. Just poke around and you’ll find the other titles too there on ‘related video’s’ at the YouTube site.