Violets Of Dawn– Eric Anderson (from Violets of Dawn)
Someone (I think it was Dylan – and it certainly sounds like the sort of thing Dylan would have said) said this song was a piece of total derivative trash with nonsense phrases meant to evoke deep thoughts, and that it gave the whole genre of folk music a bad name.
And of course, there’s something to that critique. This is the sort of song that you’d write if you were hoping to cash in on the whole raft of Dylan-lovers who had recently been turned off by Dylan’s own turn to the electric.
But you know what, the reason it sounds like that is because it’s just a damn good song. It’s precisely the sort of thing that a folk-lover full of optimism about the birth of the counterculture would love to hear. If you approach it with cynicism, the whole thing falls apart. But there’s something wonderful here waiting for you if can manage to suspend your disbelief through lines like “Oh whirling twirling puppy-warm / Before the flashing cloaks of darkness gone / Come see the no colors fade, blazing / Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.”