"Get Together" (The Youngbloods)

Mid/late 60s folk-rock has always been a hot or cold proposition for me.  For every profound and bold statement like "The Sound of Silence" or "Maggie's Farm," there's a bit of vapid fluff like "Sunshine Superman" that serves as a reminder of how dippy, pale, and stoned the purveyors of the genre could sound.

The Youngbloods' rendition of the song "Get Together" by singer/songwriter Chet Powers (a.k.a. Dino Valenti) falls into the former category for me.  The song is a poetic plea for humanity to choose love instead of fear, and it has some truly deep lyrics:

Love is but the song we sing,

And fear's the way we die

You can make the mountains ring

Or make the angels cry

To me, that single stanza is as powerful as a hundred protest songs put together, because it's not really "anti" anything; it's pro-compassion.
The sincerity of the message keeps the song from being just some hippie curio, even though the sound of the track—the close vocal harmonies, the Roger McGuinn-esque guitar, and the steady/poppy rhythm section—sets it squarely in the 60s.  (If I had to pick a favorite part of the song, it would be lead singer/bassist Jesse Colin Young's simple-yet-grooving bassline on the break, just after the guitar solo.)

A few bar trivia facts: The Youngbloods weren't the first ones to cover the song.  The Kingston Trio actually did the first version in 1964, titled "Let's Get Together."  Jefferson Airplane also did a version on their first album in 1966.  

The Youngbloods' version was first issued as a single from their eponymous debut album in 1967, but it was ignored upon release.  It wasn't until February 1969, when the National Conference of Christians and Jews (now known as the National Conference for Community and Justice) used "Get Together" in a commercial to promote its annual National Brotherhood Week, that the music-buying public began to pay attention.  By August of that year, "Get Together" had become a Top 5 hit—nearly two years after its original release.