15. Winged Ear
Winged ear, winged ear, fly,
plant seeds that we may persevere.
Sprouting infinity, sprouting like wishes,
sprouting like the seeds of our dreams,
the seeds of the winged ear.
Plant seeds that we may persevere.
One of the things about growing up amidst agriculture is that you spend a lot of time in the car with nothing to do but look out at the window, trying to make sense of all the big emptinesses out there. In this case, the titular winged ear is, of course, the DeKalb logo, the sprouting infinity the Pioneer logo. I saw those logos thousands, millions of times and had no idea what they meant until much later, but in the meantime, these excellent logos imprinted themselves on my young mind, these mysterious icons at the end of every row.
This song should not be taken as some sort of paean to these companies by any means, but I do appreciate my thrifted or hand-me-downed green jackets with these logos.
I love this version and its strident Language Masterisms, upright bass, twinned guitars taking up every eighth-inch of space on the cassette 8-track. There's also a great version of this song floating around from the Super Duplicator sessions in Ross B's living room, featuring me playing my most psychedelic guitar possible, Chris and Steve in psychic tandem on bass and drums, and Alison on fire keyboard. I'll try to dig it up and post a link.
