OK .... I need some help here. How did the permissive '60's spawn the AIDS virus? I know the answer must be obvious, but I am having a helluva time seeing it. Nice to see the same ignorant, racist, idiots still rearing their heads.

Born in 1951, turned 13 in 1964 just in time for the Beatles, JFK's assassination, and became draft age in 1969. I remember the Cuban missile crisis, and standing outside of a Boy Scout meeting with a bunch of other kids all looking at the sky. I remember being very scared that night. I remember the day they shot JFK. I remember the day that they shot Martin Luther King, and I just stood there among my friends with tears running down my face. He represented such hope that we could finally get beyond the ignorance of racism, so they murdered him. I remember Bobby's Presidential run, and how he made me feel like we could recover some of the optimism for the future. Then came that day in Los Angeles. All this, and then came Vietnam.

They were turbulent times, but as I look back on the times 40 years on, it is the music I remember the most. I don't know that we will ever again experience the kind of musical renaissance that we did then. The attitude seemed to be that all that was old was new, and experimentation was the name of the game. The Beatles, heavily influenced by rockabilly and 50's groundbreakers, took us from "I Want To Hold Your Hand" all the way through Sgt. Pepper's. So many bands played with so many styles. The Sixties saw trad music revive, and it saw traditionally trained musicians take the roots music and help it to influence other styles. I think of The Byrd's, Buffalo Springfield, and so many others. But it wasn't limited to just folk. We saw group's like The Left Banke who took baroque music and incorporated it into rock with wonderful results. We saw acid rock bands like Iron Butterfly take very old music and infuse it with a beat and a bass line. We saw "It's A Beautiful Day" take pianoforte's, guitar's, and great harmonies to create songs like "White Bird" and "Girl With No Eyes. We saw John Mayall, Paul Butterfield, and other Bluesmen, electrify the blues and spawn folks like Clapton and Raitt. Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, The Hollies, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Carole King, James Taylor, Mama's and Papa's, and on and on. Rhythm and Blues, and Soul Music probably enjoyed the greatest growth of any musical medium in the bunch. We started out the sixties with white guys like Elvis covering black groups songs. By the end of the decade Motown had come to prominence and we had groups like The Supremes, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and The Temptations. Black performers who had enjoyed some success in The Fifties, became icons and mainstream in The Sixties. I am thinking of folks like BB King, Ray Charles, and Blind Blake.I have only scratched the surface, but it is safe to say that, from a musical perspective, we may never see another decade like this again.

The Sixties, oh what a time! Was it Confucius that said, "May you live in interesting times"? Much of The Sixties, was good. Much of it was bad. In between there was a ton of gray. But it was a helluva time to grow up.

All the best,

Mick