Laura The Horse

Antonia Stampfel (1938–2017); Peter Stampfel (1938–)

Antonia was originally Barbara Ann Goldblatt, a.k.a. Bobo. In her late teens she invented the persona of Antonia, endowing her with virtues to which she aspired. Then, she tried to live the virtues. That took a few years. When she felt she had gotten them down, she changed her name to Antonia.

We lived together for 16 years, from 1962 to 1978, but never married. She took my last name after we broke up, and I had no problem with that. She wrote the words to this song in 1967, I think, and it was the only song during our twelve-year musical collaboration and shared heavy use of methedrine (1965-1977) that we were unable to come up with a melody for. A few friends tried over the years, but we didn’t like the results.

But then, in 1992, TMBG came to the rescue. They had a subscription service, the Hello Recording Club, that featured five-song CDs by various musicians they were fans of and they offered to do one of my music. I wanted to use all previously unrecorded songs, and thought I would give “Laura” another crack. To my surprise, the music took about five minutes to complete. I recorded the song with Mark in the late ‘90s for our Dook Of The Beatniks album. That’s the version here.

Postscript: OH NO! I looked up the years TMBG ran the Hello Club and found I had gotten the year of this release wrong! It’s 1994, not 1992! The club was only extant 1993 to 1996! Oh well, what ya gonna do? Too late to do anything now; water under the bridge; fact-checking ruins good stories, etc.

To pile flaw upon flaw: Sam Shepard, who was the Holy Modal Rounder drummer from 1966 to 1969, pointed out that young female horses are not colts, but foals. Neither Antonia or I knew that. So when you hear “colthood” in the last verse, kindly substitute “foalhood”. Oops, but lordy, Antonia could bang out a lyric, like this chorus: Everybody needs a dream, not many get to live one. Dreams are seldom what they seem, so how much credence should you give one?