VISION QUEST/the best song of all

Little Wheel Spin & Spin

The Crazy Horse West | Myspace Video

I know I have been posting a lot of videos lately- which I know I skip on other people's blogs. But, if you watch one video all long internetting day, watch this one of Buffy Sainte Marie singing "Little Wheel Spin and Spin" on that show RAINBOW QUEST (see below). I first heard this song when Dan Higgs covered it in a living room in Berkeley. It is so fantastically haunting in tone and in lyric.

Buffy Sainte Marie is just the best. She is a Canadian Cree who has spent most of her later years in Hawaii. She likes surfing and was married to Jack Nietzsche, who wrote fucking "Needles and Pins." Her son is named "Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild." She breastfed him on Sesame Street, see? Sainte Marie appeared frequently on Sesame Street after being "blacklisted" by Lyndon Johnson for her participation and support of Native uprising in the US. You can read all about it on her website  www.creativenative.com.

Here are some clips from her appearance on Sesame Street. It is hard to imagine some of the stuff was on TV. Or, to put it more precisely, it is striking how little there is of quiet and communicative television for children or anyone.

Here she introduces the MOUTHBOW, which is so impressive that she can sing and play at the same time. 

This is a scary song about the moon that also features on of my favorite editing overlay techniques.


The chant at the beginning of this is so cool. I also like the aesthetics of the street itself.


Sainte Marie has been making digital art from the early 80's on. Most of her work is this hyper-color digital psychedelic manipulation of photos. I get that it's overdone and really cheesy but I like it so much.

"Elder Brothers"

"Wesakechak"

This is Wesakechak, the Cree mythological trickster. 

Sainte Marie is still making music. She won a Juno in 2009 for her latest record "Running for the Drum."