Just as I find the contention that hippie musicians suffered from excess idealism to be a joke?

I suppose there are many veterans of the 60s drug culture who would now claim that their drug abuse was rooted in spiritual yearning, but I think it's a bullshit means of covering up bad decisions by a very vocal, exhibitionist group of adolescents coming of age in a very embarrassing and pathetic way.

Lest we forget, during that time we were first generation to have easy access to photography, film, and audio recording equipment. In other words, we not only recorded, but immortalized (in our own minds), and worshipped our own narcissistic excesses. And when that didn't get us enough attention, like les enfants terrible we were, we shoved our faces in front of the world's cameras on the nightly news to make sure we were "the stars" of our own delusional fantasies, and the terrors of our parents' dreams for us.

Compare that narcissistic adolescent music scene among the world's most privleged and pampered generation ever (whether in NY, San Francisco, or London) if you will, to Victor and Violetta in Chile, or the adolescents involved in Prague Spring, or Bloody Sunday, who were living through something much more "meaningful" in real life terms, than any American or British hippies of the 60s ever experienced in their lifestyle protests.

But hey, we were the empire then, and we're the empire now. So of course, we are the ones most deserving of all the worship, right?

I'm sorry, I just resent the hell out of someone trying to project their fantasies upon my own lived experience.

So you insist your acid fantasies were "spiritual" awakenings? Good for you. Yawn. Mine and my crowd's weren't anything more than weekend party time. Acid and mushrooms and pot to take the edge off. Sure, we remember the lot of you--claiming that your drugs were superior to ours because you didn't drink alcohol, except a little wine now and then, and champagne...and then it was the late 60s and speed kills and downers and beer and then the 70s champagne and cocaine...

Sure, it was all about our spirituality, and those spiritual Dead, those spiritual Beatles, that spiritual Dylan. It was all so spiritual. Nothing to do with sex and "free love" as we called it either, right?

Odd isn't it, that in this 60s music & spirituality thread how many posts long, no mention has even been made of that little thing we used to call "the sexual revolution"?

What happened to all that idealism about free love anyway?

It wasn't really about sex, drugs, rock and roll. It was all about idealism and spirituality and god fuck music and doing good things to change the world...

Sure.