I can still remember the first time I ever heard the George Harrison recording of “My Sweet Lord”. I was hanging out in Amsterdam for a couple of months. As memory serves me, it was in a kracked house (squatters taking over an abandoned building). Going out from the Dam Square it was after crossing the first canal and then a left and about half way down the block.
Somebody had visited London and came back with a copy before it hit the local stores and we sat in a room and listened to it and it hit me like a wall of ecstatic bricks.
Later at the end of the block and take a right the devotees opened up the first temple in Amsterdam. Before that they had been having Sunday programs in a school building out in the suburbs somewhere. I had first met them at the Cosmos about which enough said and been invited to the program at the school which I had attended.
Decades later I heard a remix version by Nina Hagen and it was almost like hearing it for the first time again.
Here is a laid back cool version of My Sweet Lord:
There are a lot of versions out there. Here is one from the 1950s:
And from the serendipity side of My Sweet Lord:
January 28, 2011 at 10:34 pm
You had me going there fer a moment !!
George Harrison authored and wrote MSL .
The Dion/BM version is a COVER ; from the 70′s , not the 50′s !!
January 29, 2011 at 3:23 am
Ditto! You reeled me in and then ‘smack’!!! But I do have to ask, is there fact along with the fiction (the Amsterdam portion)? Please enlighten me enlightened one.
January 29, 2011 at 10:50 am
>The Dion/BM version is a COVER ; from the 70′s , not the 50′s !!
Yes, they are all covers except the last one. I was being a little poetic — it is from the 1050s stylistically, not chronologically.
>But I do have to ask, is there fact along with the fiction (the Amsterdam portion)?
Everything, including the Amsterdam portion, is all fact.
Further fact, I still remember the first prasadam I ever had. The devotees were distributing prasadam at the Cosmos. The devotee said, verbatim, “Here is some spiritual food, you can make spiritual advancement just by eating.” That sounded easy enough so I took some, it was sliced apples and popcorn with powdered sugar. The popcorn blew my mind because I was expecting it to be salted like I had grown up with, salted buttered popcorn made fresh every Saturday night at home with my family.
February 4, 2011 at 2:41 am
Just now getting back to reading this thread. Amsterdam? Worldly traveler, I am truly humbled to have your acquaintance. Never have met anyone who made the journey ’til now. I remember my first prasadam too, although I am foggy on the time frame…I would guess it to have been around ’74~’75. It was my first encounter with the odor of the spice cumin (now a staple spice in my diet). It was offered and taken in the old farmhouse (Lord Sri Jagannath Temple)…Bhaktapada gave me a copy of Sri Isopanisad and my first Bhagavad Gita…a thick, hardback copy, both of which I treasure to this day.
February 4, 2011 at 8:44 pm
It is more politically correct to refer to him as Kirtanananda now, but back then he was also known affectionately to Srila Prabhupada as Kitchenananda and we used to have some really great cooks here who were trained by him in the style of cooking that SP himself had taught him.