Letters to the Editor
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black artists
There were many great black jazz musicians in the 50s and in the late 50s this white preteen were listening to Chubby Checker, Fats Domino. Let's not forget one of my favorite from 60s... Aretha!
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Frank Zappa had it all figured out in 1968
Yes, ol' FZ, who was struggling in the LA (as opposed to the SF music scene) in the 60's did not suffer fools nor hippies gladly. His work of that period roundly skewers the oh-so-fashionable hippy poseurs in his inimitable style. My favorite example appears below:
(Much of the text below is spoken over the music in a satirical "far-out, man!" hippy stoner voice)
"Who Needs the Peace Corps"
from We're Only in it for the Money
Released Sept, 1968
What's there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I'll just DROP OUT
I'll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley's floor
Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I'm completely stoned
I'm hippy & I'm trippy
I'm a gypsy on my own
I'll stay a week & get the crabs &
Take a bus back home
I'm really just a phony
But forgive me
'Cause I'm stoned
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back!
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
Hotcha!
First I'll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lore
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Haight Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope
I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
I will sleep . . .
I will, I will go to a house
That's, that's what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there's a rock & roll band
'Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won't care
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For Best Performance by a Decade of the 20th Century.... the winner is... The Sixties!
All other decades may leave the room. Nice effort from some of you.
I wish I had more time to read more letters, but everything that I've read so far is the absolute truth. That's what makes the sixties so fascinating. Everything you can say about them is true. It was that big of a decade, and that hard working. A LOT happened. A lot more than most other decades put together. The Vietnam War. The Kennedy Assassination. The Moon Landing. The Beatles. The Hippies. Woodstock, Civil Rights, Sexual Revolution, Feminism, Gay Rights, (Watergate), all that and more and all on TV. What more can you ask from a decade? Hands down, the prize goes to The Sixties.
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Silenced
Hendrix and Santana ended up determining the mainstream of rock
Nope. The British Invasion did that. Sorry. You'd be more correct to perceive rock of the 1960's and 1970's as a British adaptation of da blooz, the old music of blacks up and down the Mississippi, recycled back and forth over the pond.
Many of the old rockers, British and American, will tell you that rock 'n roll was invented by Chuck Berry.
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I'm not tired of the 60s
I'm Gen X, more or less, and I'm not tired of hearing about the Sixties. It was a fascinating time - a watershed, as someone pointed out: you can never fully appreciate the change from 1963 to 1968 unless you were there. I can only imagine, having been born in '67. Students of history should be glad to have access to these first-person accounts.
I want to echo Silenced, who pointed out that in the 60s a lot of young people were reacting to being raised by parents who were traumatized by the Depression and WWII -- and rampant child abuse, domestic violence, and alcoholism. That was certainly true for my parents (whom I just wish had done psychedelics! It sure would have done them some good).
Also, the person who said that those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s benefited from the civil rights and women's movements -- that person was right on, and it just gets better. I think about that now when I see women's college basketball on TV all the time -- Title IX did so much for us! Girls just assume they can play sports now, and they do. It's awesome.
Finally, I want to agree with Valkyrie607, who pointed out that it's still happening. I spent most of the 90s travelling the US and Central America, working at organic farms and food co-ops and small presses... wouldn't trade that for anything.
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Many people remember the hippie era fondly in Afghanistan too
Before the 1973 Nixon-supported Marxist coup, before the civil war, before the mujahedin in Kandahar started growing opium to resist the Marxists in Kabul, before the Soviet Union felt compelled to intervene to save the Marxists in Kabul from the mujahedin in Kandahar, before the United States felt compelled to intervene to help the mujahedin beat the Soviet Union, before the Bhutto government in Paksistan felt compelled to organize madrassa students into the Taliban to resolve the power struggle between the remaining mujahedin factions in Kabul, before Osama bin Laden hooked with the Taliban and used Afghanistan as his headquarters to plan his attack on us...
before that, there were hippies and hashish.
During the hippie era, Afghans had honor killings and drought and famine and inequality and religious extremism and political extremism and demonstrations and acts of public cruelty and government abuse of power.
But the land wasn't all ripped apart by heavy artillery, the people weren't maimed by land mines, there were no suicide bombers, there were no Arabs preaching Wahhabi Islam, and attacking our country was not even in their wildest dreams.