Music: The Cave Dwellers

A Chicago band captures the 1960's SF scene in this outstanding rendition of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." Won't you follow me down the hole?

During my usual pre-dawn scrolling of Youtube, my eyes were drawn to a title.

Now, I know that a not-insignificant cohort of my subscribers are graying like I am, and the two simple words, “white” followed by “rabbit” will have an instant cognition of a dim, distant past.

Jefferson Airplane, a San Francisco based band of hippies in the 1960’s put the track down on their album Surrealistic Pillow, and it became an institution that arose from the Summer of Love and remained in the play list on rock radio for as long as I listened to it.

In 2021, it remained as #455 in Billboard’s top rock songs, not bad for a 54-year-old tune!

Written by JA frontwoman, Grace Slick, it is an adaptation of the story, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, and it is widely believed to be related to an LSD trip.

Today, I do not bring you the outstanding Jefferson Airplane version, but a cover, recorded by The Cave Dwellers, fronted by Alain Quinn, billed as the original Chicago garage band, they deliver a blistering cover of White Rabbit, one to do the original proud.

Of course, this traipse down memory lane is demanding that I also point out a hidden gem on the original Surrealistic Pillow album.

The guitar player for the original line up was Jorma Kaukonen, and on it is an instrumental track that my early influences pointed me at. Written and played solo by Jorma, Embryonic Journey is a solo guitar, folk-sy track that really demonstrates amazing playing. I am giving you a bonus of two minutes of pure joy. Whenever this rolls up on my daily grind playlist (yeah, that is what I call it) I tap my toes to this ditty.

I hope you enjoyed this brief interlude.

If you have memories of White Rabbit, please join in and share.