A photograph of Barbara "Sandi" Robison stares back at me as I listen to her sing. The music is half a century old. I discovered it only a few months ago, but something in her eyes has bothered me ever since.
I'm frustrated, irrationally so, that her voice seems so close, so present, yet in reality she's been gone for a long time already - this tough, delicate-looking woman who once flirted with international stardom, who starred in Hair, who died of toxic shock after collapsing on the stage in some random venue in Butte, Montana.
It's her voice, more than anything, that gets under my skin. It's warm, wise, naive…the voice of someone who has already traveled the country of hopelessness and decided to try a different route. It's one of the prettiest voices I've ever heard. It seems so alive, even decades after the singer has died.
How did it take me so long to find this music?
Everything about the songs is just damn good, and I'm left wondering how it faded into the recesses of music history when other bands, no more talented, had bigger, longer-lasting hits. It all seems so goddamn fickle…success, music, life…maybe that's what's got me so bothered.
Maybe.
It's strange, isn't it? We live our lives, whether we admit it or not, with this sense that there will always be a tomorrow to rectify our wrongs, to say what we need to say, to laugh the laughs we meant to laugh. That's not true, though.
It is, in fact, the most untrue thing in the world. Because we will die. That's a fact.
The psychedelic era of the '60s is one of my favorite times in music. I can safely say I qualify as an historian of the period. Yet, I'd never heard of Robison until less than six months ago, after finding Alan Lee Brackett and his late-'60s band named the Peanut Butter Conspiracy.
Robison sang for the Conspiracy, and the songs I'm listening to as I write this are from a compilation album that Brackett put together in her memory. It's titled, simply, Barbara.
I interviewed Brackett shortly after discovering the Conspiracy's music. He told me a story about Robison, and it's been whispering at the outskirts of my mind ever since.
At some point in their creative partnership/friendship, Robison mentioned to Brackett that her mother hadn't taken good care of herself, and she didn't want to end up like that. Sadly, Robison did end up exactly like that. It's the most common yet unceasingly infuriating trope of all- in trying to escape the parent's fate, the child becomes the parent.
The Conspiracy was active from 1966 to about '69. They had a couple major-label releases that, for whatever reason, didn't sell terribly well. The band dissolved shortly after. I've been listening to their music regularly. I don't understand why they didn't strike the big time, really.
After the Conspiracy, Robison found her way into a starring role in the iconic counterculture musical Hair. One may think that would indicate a bright future, but things just never materialized. Robison struck off with some fellow to perform shows around the country. In 1988 she collapsed onstage from toxic shock and died a few days later.
Those are the facts. What nags at me is the stuff hiding between those facts.
What was going through Robison's mind while all of this happened? She'd had no less than two fleeting encounters with fame and fortune, only to have them fall out from under her feet.
What was she thinking all those years as she traveled around the country playing music? What, exactly, had happened to her mother? Was Robison sad the night she collapsed onstage? Or was she happy? Had she simply partied too hard?
It's so maddeningly ambiguous. But why do I care? I never met Robison. I only just discovered the Conspiracy a few months ago. Things and people die, and it's foolish to mourn figures we've never met. Yet, I do mourn.
It's her voice, I think.
It's so beautiful and rich, so sensual and innocent and alive…it can't be true that she's dead, yet she is.
So, as I sit here listening to this one-in-a-million voice, contemplating my own mortality and the mortality of my own art, I feel compelled to talk about Robison.
Her voice was too good to be forgotten. The whole Conspiracy was too good, simple as that.
It all meant something, damn it. All these artistic impressions we leave like footprints behind us…they fucking mean something. And you know what? Even if they don't, I'll act as if they do, because they mean something to me, and that's enough.
So, whatever the case, here's to you, Barbara Robison. I hope you had some laughs out there on the road. You pushed the creative life farther than most ever will. That's a testament not only to your talent, but also to your courage.
I wish I could have talked to you about your music and about how you saw the world. I guess I'll just have to settle for the songs. That's okay, though.
They're damn good songs, after all.