“Poor Moon”

I think I’d like it even if it weren’t a cover of a Canned Heat tune.


[The Green Child, “Poor Moon” (Alan Wilson).]

For the fanatics among us: Canned Heat released “Poor Moon” on July 15, 1969, one day before the Apollo 11 launch. The song borrows from Garfield Akers’s “Dough Roller Blues” (1930) and Charlie Patton’s “Jesus Is a Dying Bed Maker” (1930). See also Blind Willie Johnson’s “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (1928).

The Green Child (Mikey Young and Raven Mahon) appear to take their name from a 1924 Herbert Read novel. So there’s almost a century’s worth of culture behind this cover.

Here’s the 1969 Canned Heat recording. As you can hear, the trippiness of The Green Child’s version is built into the original.