I was a johnny-come-lately to the tail end of the hippy generation. By the time I became an apostle of Janis Joplin, electrified by her raucous, swooping rendition of Summertime, she had long left Big Brother and was singing with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. I first heard Melanie Safka sing at Woodstock: Beautiful People and Birthday of the Sun. Though the two couldn't have been more different, both set up camp in my subconscious and stayed for life.

Melanie was to prove the deeper influence – but when I heard her at Woodstock I was too drunk on Joplin's gut-thumping sexual immediacy (and the fumes of Southern Comfort) to really notice her. Subjectively, I date my first meeting with her much later: not at a live gig but on a record, playing at a desolate party in the wrong town. By that time, my affair with Joplin was deep and affectionate though Joplin herself was recently dead; Melanie, there all along like the girl next door, appeared with the sudden clarity of fresh air in a stale room.

From then on, many of my key life events are tagged in memory with snatches of Melanie's gawky lyrics. The image and text exhibition from which Melanie Pieces are an extract was an attempt to pin those tagged memories down...

(If you don't know who Melanie Safka is, or were really looking for Melanie's material rather than mine – refer to Pat Swayne's  Tribute to Melanie Safka page which will also take you onward to various relevant sites. If you were directed here by a specific Melanie Safka link, you may be interested in other references scattered throughout parts of the Tesseract shards).