Sweet Smoke
Just a Poke

My mother said to me: "Hey, where are you going?"

I replied: "I'm going to Europe."

She asked: "Where in Europe, don’t you know that people in Europe still live in filth?"

I objected: "I'm going to England first and anyway people in Europe no longer have dirt floors, mom."

She replied: "And how long do you think you'll be there?"

"Mom, what I know is that I have a one-way ticket and $135 in my pocket and that's enough." (Cit. Sweet Smoke Interview)

Thus began the adventure of the Sweet Smoke, a group of five boys with a passion for music formed in '67 in Brooklyn.

Then they settled and formed a commune in Germany following the wave of other similar experiences like the Gong of Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth.

In 1970, the group managed to secure a contract and release their first LP > Just A Poke.

Two long tracks, one for each side: "Baby Night" including ″In The World Of Glass Teardrops - The Soft Parade″ (Jim Morrison) and "Silly Sally"

"Music was the soundtrack to the cultural upheaval of an entire generation. I think a lot of that has to do with our early explorations into inner spaces."

(The music was the soundtrack to the cultural upheaval of an entire generation. I think a lot of this has to do with our early explorations of the inner spaces.)

The members of the group recall in this way, summarizing the spirit of those years.

The interesting thing is that every generation thinks their music was the most beautiful music, just as the generation of our parents thought theirs was the most beautiful, or as our children think of the current one.

Certainly, there has been and still is great music, only not to the extent of music that profoundly changed or at least tried to change several cultural aspects of its time.

In that moment, in that place, five ordinary boys found themselves riding that wave together and landing in a place that attracted them, so familiar and made of a material so tuned to their destiny that they would decide to give it a name.

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