Introduction

For those who have been involved in the LTL search over the years, the greatest area of dispute has been the issue of its dating. The 1960s, 70s, 80s, even 90s have been proposed. Late 70s, early 80s have been the most common guesstimates. However, Lostwave Forum consensus does not equal fact, as I will show following.

This one page is a summary of all the research I have done in all the other pages 2 - 10 which points to definitive dating of Light the Lanterns -- because this is an issue which truly needs to be put to bed.

Firstly, I just can't begin to fathom anyone who says that the LTL recording is later than 1985  because "mid 80s" is when the tape-finder first said he found the LTL Demo tape in LA. Their input can only be explained by a lack of familiarity with the established search timeline, not to mention how cockeyed their musical appreciation of different genres is.

• Secondly, all those who say that Light the Lanterns "is definitely 70s or early 80s" , I believe, are merely advancing a safe yet ignorant bet by dismissing the late 60s genre -- which they clearly did not live through, and could not have studied much in retrospect.
• Thirdly, I can well understand people saying it sounds like (some) 70s or 80s artists, because, in music, a lot of things sound like a lot of other things which they aren't: For example, Mozart and Haydn; R.E.M. and The Byrds; Echo & the Bunnymen and The Doors; Natalie Merchant and Light the Lanterns. Fair enough -- these things do sound somewhat like each other. But when you've been brought up in a particular generation of music, it's not hard to pick discrepancies.

So for those without any preconceived ideas about the song's genre, let me now lead you through the FACTS.

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Musical Experts on Dating

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When it comes to fact-finding, or even making educated guesses in life, unlike so many on social media, I tend to read widely and ask around, rather than publicise my own ignorance by offering unverified conjecture. So for 5 years, other than doing my own digging, I have been asking experts for THEIR educated guesses about the most likely time period (and location) for LTL which can be gleaned from the musical and lyrical EVIDENCE we have. So let's now take heed of some experts, instead of unqualified commentators.

It's The San Francisco Sound

The most credible source I trust for dating Light the Lanterns is Joel Selvin; born 1950; a Berkeley native; retired SF Chronicle music critic 1972 - 2009; sometime rock muso; respected musicologist; author of 22 books; Consulting Producer on the MGM Documentary "The San Francisco Sound; A Place in Time" 

3 years ago, I sent Joel the Janusz LTL Demo recording (same as the Windows to Sky 2019 upload version) and simply asked -- "Ever heard this song? Can you estimate a where and when and who for this song?".

Being a Very Busy Man, Joel's reply was suitably confident and concise.

"Fairly generic, SF 68-69".

That was it. So if ANYONE of a different mind wants to argue with that dating estimation, argue it out with HIM NOT ME.

In addition to Selvin's own experience, there are innumerable other academic papers, audio compilations, and documentary expositions on the famous San Francisco Sound of 1965 - 1972. Explore these following links and I'm sure you'll come away with a better ear for the correct decade of Light the Lanterns.

• Video Playlist: The San Francisco Sound - 46 Tracks of the Times
• Documentary: The Summer of Love - 67
• Documentary: 1967 - The Summer of Love
• Documentary: The 1968 Demise of the Hippie Peace and Love Scene

The Unusual Fretless Bass

The bass guitar track in LTL caught my ear early on. So I put the song up on several bass forums, requesting the bassist's skill-assessment and to get a possible track dating from other bass players. Despite no-one venturing any authorative dating, many said "Ask Bruce Johnson. He'll know". So I looked him up.  

I emailed Bruce no details about the track. I just asked if he could identify what era of fretless playing he thought it was -- believing he'd be unable to provide much specifics due to the low-fidelity audio. But this was his reply -- verbatim:

"I can confirm that track sure sounds like the fretless Ampeg AUB-1. They were made from September 1966 through late 1968. The original AUB-1 has a unique type of pickup that no other bass of that time had. It detects the movement of the whole bridge, rather than the individual strings. The sound has a very percussive attack curve with a noticeable pop and warble. And the mid-range is exceptionally rich with background coloration. But it's not mushy, like a Fender with tape-wounds. It's possible to get close to that sound with a Fender, with some good musician skill and recording technique. But my guess is that this is the real thing, somebody playing their cool new late 60s Ampeg AUB-1, and probably through an Ampeg B-15 amp."

Well, to be honest, I was astounded that someone could identify the exact bass guitar model, year, sound and even the amp from a shitty little 50 year old cassette. And yes, it might well be someone playing that model at a later time. But, his assessment still indicates a late 60s instrument.

Fender later on came along to dominate the industry with its own far cheaper fretless P-Basses from 1970 onwards, when bass players moved to a more rock-sound than the Ampeg -- which was designed to be like an electric standup bass.. Bruce and other bassists have said that there is a distinct difference between the 60s Ampegs and the 70s Fenders. In fact, over the years, many Ampeg owners have got Bruce to put Fender pickups in the Ampegs because they liked the sound better, indicating that's how Bruce could intuitively pick up that the LTL bass had NOT been converted. Hence the Ampeg AUB-1 only survived as the preferred fretless bass for just that particular window of 1966 to say 1972, maximum.

I later spoke with an old bassist friend of mine who owns a vintage 1962 Fender "Pre-L Series" (fretted) bass. I asked him -- " How can someone like Bruce Johnson pick a vintage instrument so specifically?" He answered "You just can".

The Pre-70s Bar Structure

A pop music historian explained this to me:

• Light the Lanterns has an Intro (8 bars), Verse (14), Chorus (14), Bridge (14), Chorus (14), Lead break (8), Chorus (14). This 14-bar phrasing is a structural giveaway. In the late 60s folk-rock transition, songwriters wrote to the natural breath of the lyrics rather than a rigid timing sequence. A 14-bar section (4+4+4+2) creates an asymmetrical, irregular feel, common when folk melody met pop.
• By the mid-70s, the influence of drum machines and high-fidelity production forced songwriting into rigid, "square" 8 or 16-bar boxes. A 70s or 80s producer would have found a 14-bar loop intolerable and forced the drummer to add the "missing" 2 bars to make it radio-friendly.

The Non-Strophic Form

The music historian elaborated:

• LTL lacks the formulaic Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus ABABCA structure of the 1970s singer-songwriter era (e.g., Carole King). Instead, it uses a linear lyrical narrative and melodic structure. She's linearly telling a story in just the words of only the verse > chorus > bridge.  The melody of each is different, not just cookie cutter pop format where the chorus was the "take-home part". This was quite a rule-breaking effort away from the typical 60s pop song.

The Folk-Style Strumming

An elderly folk guitarist pointed out:

• The rhythm guitar uses a constant, open-chord eighth-note strum without the syncopation or "palm-muting" that became standard in 70s rock. This is the rhythmic signature of a 1960s "Hootenanny" taught teenager who had not yet been exposed to things like complex syncopation and jazz influenced chord extensions.

Melodic Naivety

The melody is strictly diatonic (staying within the major scale). This "innocent" style was the hallmark of 1960s folk-pop (like The Seekers or Peter, Paul and Mary, The Mamas & the Papas). However the chordal structure was after this period, but before the 1970s introduced more complex, "moody", jazz-influenced chords.

Guitar and Chordal Structure Indicating the Date

There is a serious conclusion about dating the song to be drawn from the chord writing. For the most solid evidence of late 1960s songwriting, see the Page 12 - RESEARCH ARCHIVE - Timeline Analysis of Guitar Chords.

Vocal Delivery

In the 60s, the performance was king. If the singer went slightly flat or a harmony wavered, it stayed on the tape. By the 80s, even demos used "punch-ins" to mask flaws. LTL’s raw, uncorrected vocal is a distinct pre-1975 telltale. To be honest, the harmonies are pretty dreadful, hence they are set way back in the mix.

Production Indicators of Dating

Studio analysis reveals specific physical limitations in the original recording:

• Dry Drum Production: The drums, consisting solely of snare and bass drum, are strictly "dry." There is a total absence of the digital reverb or gated snare processing that saturated commercial music production following its development in 1980 (famously heard on Phil Collins' subsequent work).
• Minimalist Percussion: The complete omission of a hi-hat and cymbals is highly characteristic of an amateur, home grown, non-commercial pre-1970 session.
• Microphone Bleed: The technical mud and intermittent fluctuation in the tambourine volume prove the track was captured using a limited number of microphones in a single room. This live acoustic bleed represents a recording methodology that was rapidly superseded by the high-fidelity, isolated multi-tracking standards of the mid-1970s.

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Lyrical Indications of Dating
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Within the lyrics, even without knowing the shipwreck or the Atkinsons' story as I detailed on Page 4, there are two very telltale lines:

"I was already on the outside"

• This is what many teenagers feel as they rebel against paternal and social conditioning. Outside of what? Essentially, everything you were born into. It's a badge of honour in a 14 - 20 year old. What cultural milieu was our singer born into? The pieces point to Fort Bragg, Ca, 1942 - 1964.

"I wanted to be what I wanted to be"

I easily recognised this phrase from my older sister's uni days in the late 60s. So I cast around for its true origins. And I found this:

• This isn't just generic hippie vernacular. It is the specific terminology of the Humanistic Psychology Movement and Abraham Maslow’s concept of Abraham Maslow's Self-Actualization, which saturated West Coast counterculture from 1967 onward following his seminal 1962 book Toward a Psychology of Being.
• In California, these ideas migrated rapidly from universities to the Esalen Institute, down into Haight-Ashbury, and up into the rural communes of Mendocino. Between 1967 and 1969, adopting this language was an act of radical, cutting-edge defiance against conservative parental values. By 1972, however, alternative curriculum models across Northern California had fully institutionalized Maslow's hierarchy into standard high school lesson plans, reducing a once-revolutionary statement into a mainstream educational cliché.
• Had the songwriter written this lyric as a high schooler after 1972, she would simply be parroting the everyday youthful Zeitgeist of the era -- there would be no "outsider" friction in it. The primary earnestness of the line, combined with her stated feeling of being "on the outside," proves she captured the phrase at its volatile, countercultural peak between 1967 and 1969, when declaring self-actualization was still a direct rebellion against the conservative environment of mid-60s Fort Bragg.

So we can deduce that, had the songwriter been in (for example, Fort Bragg) high school after 1972, she would NOT have felt much of an outsider to her peers in that era. She felt "outside" to the conservative local environment of Fort Bragg in 1960 - 1965. And she would never have felt an outsider within The Bay after 1965. Mendocino was a sort of halfway alternative scene.

These self-ascribed tags, confirm that the song's lyrics were unlikely to have been written down in 1962/1963, but more likely written later, around the time of the 68-69 recording, after the singer's later SF influences.

Grace left Mendocino around 1965-1966, and Quong's closed up in 1966, further proving that the narrative SITUATION (but not the recording) was sparked before 1966 and these hippie phrases were retrospectively inserted.

Flower Power Earnestness

The lyrics are earnest and romantic without the cynicism or gloss of the mid-70s, or the neon-drenched metaphors of the 80s. It feels like a lyric written by someone influenced by the 1967 "Summer of Love" who hasn't yet seen the darker, more commercial turn the music industry took in the 70s.​

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Dating Conclusion
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From all of the above, it should now be quite clear that Light the Lanterns is a late 60s electric-folk song. I can understand how people who don't really know stuff like to make guesses. That's human nature. But when confronted with evidence, people have to stop saying they "know" that Light the Lanterns is from the 70s or 80s -- because clearly it isn't.