The Washington Squares

It's a funny thing about nostalgia. Things that evoke nostalgia can, with time, become nostalgia themselves. Case in point: Happy Days. The TV show was created in the 1970s to reflect nostalgia for the innocent times of the 1950s. But as time went on, the '50s part was forgotten about and the show became a piece of '70s nostalgia. Weezer, with their video of Buddy Holly in 1994, used Happy Days as nostalgia. Now Weezer themselves are nostalgia for the '90s.

And that brings me to The Washington Squares, a band that briefly existed in the 1980s and were retro to the coffeehouse folk days, to the point of dressing up in beatnik duds. Of course, now I look back at them with nostalgia.

I first became aware of The Washington Squares when my friend Joe and I went to see comedian Sandra Bernhard in concert, and they were the opening act. We were both taken with them. Later we would go see them headline their own gig at The Bottom Line, the late lamented club in Greenwich Village where I spent many an evening. They put on a terrific show, playing folk standards and a few original compositions. I remember that it was the summer of 1987, as they paid tribute to the twentieth anniversary of the Summer Of Love, playing Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love." That was thirty-two years ago, far longer ago than the Summer Of Love was to that day.

The group put out two albums. I had both, in vinyl. I recently, thanks to Amazon Music, listened to the first one again and was swept up in a Proustian rush. The album had a few standards, such as "He Was A Friend Of Mine," and a rock and roll version of "Samson And Delilah." A few songs that I believe are originals (I don't have the songwriting credits handy) are great, such as "D Train," (a tip of the hat to the Kingston Trio's "The MTA"):

"Each morning I get up at the crack of eight
Riding on the D Train line
To a train in a hole to a job I hate
Riding on the D Train line
Each morning I take my subway train
Riding on the D Train line
To a desk with a phone and a ball and chain
Riding on the D Train line"

The Washington Squares created a persona of the type of person that sleeps during the day, is up all night, shuns work, and never goes above 14th Street. This is reflected in their song "Daylight":

"Daylight
Always comes at the same time, points out
How to use my mind
Daylight says, "You'd better work-a-late
Better get up real early and learn about hate
And use all your energy
Thinking 'bout mistakes that you've made"

The opening track of their first album is "New Generation," and I can't tell you how that song inspired me. It was the age of Reagan, the '60s were dead, and I was a misplaced flower child. The group told me:

"Be on the lookout
For a new generation
Coming on strong
Filled with inspiration"

It was sort of like Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," except Dylan was  right. The new generation of 1987 and onward was no better, even worse, than the one that came before. I was hopelessly naive. The sixties are never coming back.

The Washington Squares broke up after one of the members died, and they remain now only in my memory, but it sure is a pleasant memory.