Have you told your kids about the 60s?

Subject: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Bonnie
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 02:41 AM

I was curious how many people have tried to tell their grown children or grandchildren who are in their late teens & in the 20's about the life and music of the 1960's and how it effected your life?

Maybe you hung out in coffeehouses or depending where you lived about the hippies and flower children and how the world was in your life in the 60's. Maybe you went to love-ins in the parks or demonstrations or just hung out in the many coffeehouses around at that time.

Did your kids have much interest in hearing all about the 60's and the things you did as a teenager in those years? Or did they seem bored hearing you talk about it and not seem interested in hearing about it at all? Did they ask you questions about those years?

I'm not referring to history taught in schools about the 60's like the Vietnam War or the assignation's that happened then but more about the hippies/flower children, coffeehouses, etc. that you yourself hung out in during the 60's. Did your kids show much interest about the life styles of the 60's?

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 03:50 AM

Told them about the 60s? I'm still living the 60s, and my almost-middle-aged kids are damn tired of it. They're eagerly waiting for their father to grow up...

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 04:00 AM

To some extent, the 60s (at least as the media see the period) passed us by. We were raising 2 children and our time was spent in political meetings, on peace demonstrations, camping, singing folk & protest songs. The kids grew up with all this and do the same sorts of things, including singing the same songs.

For us, pop music sort of ceased in the early 70's. Classical, trad jazz, blues and folk were, and are, our main interests. As far as hippies and flower children are concerned, we read about them in the papers. In the 70's I did have a party outfit consisting of flowery shirt, flares, cowboy boots and a green velvet jacket. With very long hair and a healthy beard, I suppose there was some influence.

Our grandson at present thinks music started with rap, although he's been exposed to all the same music. He's just beginning a degree in music production, so I hope his taste will broaden.

Phil

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 05:04 AM

David Lodge, in his novel following a group of fellow students over their next ¼-century, "How Far Can You Go?", says at one point something like "It was really the seventies now, but these people were having their sixties a little late". Like Phil above, it was the early 70s that I had my hair long and went on wearing the floral shirts &c I had bought in Carnaby St in the v late 60s. (Can still just about get into one of them -- you will find it on a couple of trax on my Youtube Channel!). The sixties were a frame of mind and a form of fashion rather than a specific decade, running from about 57-74.

I haven't told my kids for the simple reason that philoprogentitivity has never been a hobby of mine.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 11:41 AM

In fact, most of the 60s were a reactionary fight-back from the 50s, it was only in 67-8 that anything started to shift. And it was all over by 76-7.
The start of it was born in naive hope: the end of it in confusion about where we go from here.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 07 Sep 14 - 12:23 PM

I've got no children, but I've probably still got stuff in my wardrobe... As I say at our local open mike- I've got T-shirts older than most of the audience.

RtS

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Mr Red
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 03:49 AM

as a childless waif No!
But I have a better solution, I tell the world by proxy - or my adopted town at least.

listen to these "Tolds"
StroudVoices.co.uk

(Hint use search and look for "courting" - ooer missus)

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:07 PM

My kids were the ones affected by the 60s. I remember the odd music of the time that they bought on records, never did understand it.

Living in western Canada since the 50s, I remember the impact as small, although we read and saw on TV the weird things happening in the larger cities in the States and in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
Two kids were in University; law and education. I remember they gave a wave at the happenings, but their lives progressed normally.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:14 PM

Ah, but what is normal?

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 02:29 PM

'I never slept with Bridget when she was in her prime
And I never walked with Johnny when Johnny walked the line
I've never been to Woodstock nor shared a joint with Paul
And I must have missed the sixties, man, 'cos I recall them all'

from a song by Ed Pickford

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 02:39 PM

Normal- Productive members of society and firm supporters of the Conservative Party.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: LadyJean
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 12:38 AM

In the late 70s, I had the questionable priveledge of rooming with an acid freak. (The lady in the housing office said, "Do you want a roommate who smokes. I said no. She didn't smoke tobacco.) She had seen and done a lifetime more than I had, and spent most of it high. Which meant she didn't remember what she'd seen an done. I always thought young people should know that.

I was surprised when I heard about the ball player who pitched a no hitter high on LSD. When Michelle dropped acid she used to fall over the desks in our room. She didn't see them. That took some effort.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: meself
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 01:26 AM

Reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon: "I love it when you explain the 'sixties, dear!"

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 02:18 AM

no kids - so thankfully I only have to try and explain what happened to myself. in this I have failed miserably.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:02 AM

Indeed I have, my Son and various extended family. I was in Birmingham in the 60's. Like most people then I felt as if I belonged in the 60's and the oppoite for every decade since. So many new sounds were happening then. The dreadful XFactor types thankfully didn't exist then,bands and singers seemed that much more special maybe because they had to work their way to fame and actually know how to play music. They seemed more enigmatic, you'd never see them crying like babies on TV or peeing themselves in some reality show. Birmingham itself was a very fifferent place, coffee shops was where you'd go to listen to music. Girls were much more feminine and rarely drunk. The Locarno, Odeon, Silver Blades, Cedar Club, the Tow Robe Cafe etc throbbed with the sounds of the day, and most nights we managed to be home by Midnight. Yep them were the days my Friend ;)

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 05:31 PM

Jim Bainbridge: who are Bridget and Paul?

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 06:40 PM

Yeah, why knot?

I do not believe anyone in the 60's had an "idol worship" that we see today. We were just people. We lived in rented apartments. I have name-dropped 20 "big names" with three stories each. We phoned the police on each other.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

font color=pink> Now....the "Wesson Oil" parties after the "Cinder" or "Bear" are topics never mentioned .

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 07:37 PM

Yeah, I told 'em - told 'em they were lucky to have missed the whole goddam mess.

I lived through all of it in the Big Bad City. Maybe that made a difference.

Subject: RE:ave you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:53 PM

Hello Guest- four years later, Bridget should have been Brigitte- comes of 20 years in Ireland- & surely there's only one Paul at the top of the pop world?

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 04:45 PM

I was in Kansas... we didn't have the 60s. We went straight to about Sept. of 69 and just read about those other folk.... ;>)

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 05:00 PM

New Years Eve 1969, I'm in a pub with a group of 20 something mates. One of the group is good looking lad, and is lead guitarist in a very popular local band. He always has a pile of girls trying to catch his attention. Now, if anybody enjoyed the 60s this guy should have BUT as the clock ticks closer to the 1970s he says to the group, "Well here goes the 1960s, the 70s have just got to be better!
I think the 1960s have been "talked up".and, I would guess that every decade has got its special feel...particularly if you are young.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: brashley46
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 05:22 PM

Hiya, Tunesmith ... if you can remember the 60s you weren't really there.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 05:39 PM

The 1960s were the most conventional period of my life. I had a car, drove it to the office every day, went to meetings, etc.

The silly '60s were a relief from the stuffy '50s, which were a relief from the bloody '40s, which were a relief from the dreary '30s,....

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 06:42 PM

My kids are now 41 and 34, and of course I have told them about the 60s! Those years include my later schooldays and 6 years at University - a great time for me indeed, which also saw the emergence of the Beatles and other Merseyside groups, The Rolling Stones, Tom Paxton and many other longstanding musical influences.
My son, the 34-year-old, has perhaps shown more interest, having learned to play/sing most of the Beatles songs, and it was he, rather than me, who attended the recent Rolling Stones concert in Edinburgh!

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 07:33 PM

Funny thing is that I clicked on this just as I was listening to Dvorak's cello concerto, played at the Proms by Slava Rostropovich on August 21 1968 in London, with a Russian orchestra and Russian conductor, on the very day that Russian tanks had rolled into Prague. Dvorák was Czech, of course. There were protests inside and outside the hall and calls for the concert to be scrapped, but it went ahead and Slava played the concerto, and a Bach sarabande as encore, with tears streaming down his face. At the end, he waved Dvorak's score aloft, making it clear that he was on the side of the Czechs. It's a wonderful and passionate performance of one of my very favourite works, and it's all beautifully free on YouTube. So the thing is that not everyone had a spiffin' time in the sixties. The Czech people plus a good few in Vietnam could very likely testify to that.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 07:50 PM

We had three Czech students over at our medical school at the time this all happened. They never went back to Czechoslovakia but stayed and completed their course with us. Vietnam really hit home when I saw an American guy on a beach in Greece with a massive deeply gouged scar on his leg from an injury sustained on active service in Vietnam.
And the 60s also meant discovering loads of beautiful classical music at The Royal Albert Hall and Festival Hall: cheap seats five bob (25p) for Proms or up behind the the orchestra in the Festival Hall.
4 of us in a flat in London's East End: £1 per week each would feed us all evening meals from Monday- Thursday. Put in a few bob more if you were there for the weekend. Weekly rent was £2.6s.8p each!

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 07:58 PM

You hear different people say different stuff.

Martin Carthy once said in an interview - you could liberate yourself in the 1960's - if you didn't liberate yourself, that's your problem.

Jeff Nuttall in his book, Bomb Culture said - our freedom was to give The Beatles their freedom.

In Halloween Story...Agatha Christie has Hercule Poirot say, The Brave New World is always there, but only for special people....and weird it may sound, but I think Hercule got it right.

For Martin Carthy and The Beatles - people like that of spectacular ability, life is full of wonderful possibilities.

But for most of us, we are lucky if we find some interstice in society were we can fit , some service we can perform that they will pay us for and enable us to live with a degree of dignity.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 14 Sep 18 - 07:19 PM

60's? IMHO (DGMW) CWOT. 60's Silly Syllables HTH

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Sep 18 - 03:27 AM

the sixties were a waste of time but we had some fun wasting

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 15 Sep 18 - 05:07 AM

I remember my daughter coming home from school sometime in the late eighties and asking "Dad were you born in the sixties?" "No" I told her "I had my twenty first in the sixties" Apparently they were about to do that decade as a History Lesson!!

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,KarenH
Date: 15 Sep 18 - 05:34 AM

Yes, that pubs would often refuse to serve females pints, unless ordered in two halves in two different glasses. Also about that women had to go in the lounge with the carpets and pay more for their drinks.
Also about needing hubbies signature for HP even if better paid than him and in more secure job. That some trousers were so tight they not only showed the sex but were said to threaten to change it!

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Sol
Date: 15 Sep 18 - 07:33 AM

As a participant in the sixties 'revolution' my take on it is that we broke free from the rules of the past (religion, conscription, etc.). Alas, true freedom comes with responsibility. That's where it all went wrong.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Sep 18 - 08:05 AM

I was so excited when I saw my first real life flower children...

I'd have been about 8 on a day shopping trip to the seaside with my mum...

They were a couple of teen hippies walking out of a gift shop with a newly purchased lava lamp,
when the girl took a few steps out the door and accidently dropped and smashed it on the pavement...

That's all I can remember...

I also saw a skinhead/suedehead riot on an early 70s day out with mum at that same seaside town...

That was even more exciting...

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: GUEST,Ozzie guest
Date: 16 Sep 18 - 01:58 AM

re the post from Sep14

That pitcher who threw a no-hitter on LSD was named Doc Ellis
and his name in the phone book was Ellis, D.
That was the 60s-70s in S.F.
Like, everything was connected, man

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 18 - 02:30 PM

Great decade, I don’t remember much as it was a great decade:-)

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 18 Sep 18 - 10:46 PM

I was substitute teaching a history class a couple years ago and the era was the late 1960's. I was starting high school around then. I told the kids in class that a big concern of ours was the draft and the Viet Nam war. I did sing them a verse of Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation. One kid asked if I was a hippy back then. I said only on weekends. Then mentioned for the summer of love thing I was just 14 years old and a little too straight laced for all that (I made up for lost time in college in the mid 70's). I did mention being at a peace demonstration in Chicago the weekend after Kent State happened, and that I didn't dare tell my parents that I was there.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Allan Conn
Date: 19 Sep 18 - 07:38 AM

I was born in 1960 so don't remember much about the 60s. Like a lot of the music but I also liked the 70s and after too. My wife apart from the obvious (Beatles/Stones) isn't really that much of a fan of 60s music fan. She prefers the 70s and early 80s era.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: JHW
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 05:37 AM

I saw a restored print of film 2001: A Space Odyssey this week. (Originally 1968) They had an Intermission and Ice Cream lady with tray.
Reassuringly good number of this century kids had come to see it. We were shown the projection room. Told them how in the 60s you had to wait months or years for a new film to come round.

Subject: RE: Have you told your kids about the 60s?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 01:35 PM

I was in a pub bout 1970, with a friend lamenting that the 1960's was over. Because we knew at the time the music was special Much of it mystified and terrified your parents. It was a rallying point for a generation that when push came to shove - didn't seem to agree about much.

My mate was saying - well the 60's music great , but I'm looking forward to what comes next....

Them Paul MacCartney's Another Day came on the radio playing background music in the pub.

I sad   - nah! the party's over. You didn't need to be a Beatle to produce that thing!