In 1969, I had first read Richard Farina's magazine article/essay from the early 1960's, which had been titled something like "Dylan and Baez: A Generation Singing Out," that was contained in an early 1960's paperback anthology about the early 1960's Folk Boom. But it was in the 1970's that I actually read both Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me novel and a second book of his collected writings that had been published after he was killed in a motorcycle accident in California in 1966. And the reading of those books in the 1970's inspired me to write, in the basement apartment in Jamaica, the "Richard Farina Is Gone" eulogistic folk song during that decade, which began with a chorus and first verse that continued to be included in the second version of that folk song that I put together in the 21st century:
(chorus)"Richard Farina is gone
There's not too much to say
Learn from what he saw
And fear not your own grave.
(verse 1)
"A sudden bulletin
On the radio
Told of his accident
On a motorcycle." (chorus)
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