If You Were There...The Sixties

Subject: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 12:20 PM

This site offers pictures from the Sixties -- excellent pictures covering resistance, Woodstock, and all sorts of images that you probably don't remember, especially if you were there.

Enjoy!!


A

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 01:03 PM

Hours of enjoyment for us wrinklies.
Thanks
Giok

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Fliss
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 01:58 PM

Wrinklies indeed, speak for yourself. Im growing old disgracefully and am definitely not wrinkly and my mirror doesnt lie... it still shows me as being plump!
fliss :)

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 02:13 PM

I was at Woodstock, and I remember it. Sorry, but I wasn't drugged out (and very few of my friends were either.)

Jerry

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 02:15 PM

I went out with a girl known as Fliss short for Felicity in the 60s, a lovely reddish haired girl, unfortunately it wasn't meant to be!
Giok

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Midchuck
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 02:23 PM

Here's another good site for sixties folkies.

Peter.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 05:03 PM

Who was it that wrote "...if you remember the 60s you weren't there"?

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 05:33 PM

There was a great very long PBS series called Making Sense Of The Sixties. The title was designed (I think) to show those who were not there that, if they watched these nights of TV, they would understand what folks were talking about a bit better.

I thought it was a good and valuable look back, and I'm glad someone sent it to me on a video.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 06:40 PM

So I follow your link ... the VERY FIRST picture has a typo in its caption! Oh well, the collection is interesting ...
cheers
dennis

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: freda underhill
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 07:17 PM

In australia, we had a similar festival in 1973 at nimbin . although it was a much smaller festival, it had a huge impact on people all over australia. a bunch of architrceture students from sydney uni went there and built teepees, yurts, whatever, before the festival for people to stay in (i was an 18 yr old art student and stayed in a teepee there) - it accelerated australia's organic farming industry, and a whole range of alternative villages, farms, communities sprang up in the area and nearby areas.

it is a magical landscape there, i revisited it 6 years ago, it was like walking into the past
.

Two years ago they had a 30th anniversary , which i regret not getting to.

there are some more photos of the area now, http://www.echonews.com/919/art_news.html

freda

("..may the longtime sunshine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you, guide your way on..")

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: freda underhill
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 07:19 PM

sorry, here 's that last link!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 07:31 PM

Freda, I read the last line of your post and was instantly transported back to my freshman dorm room in Princeton. Thanks for that little blast from the past!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: freda underhill
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 07:57 PM

those were the days, Mark!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 09:54 PM

what you guys did miss out on
was that the 60's was an amazing decade
to be a child..

i was 1 in 1960
and 11 in 1970..

just at the right point in history to enjoy
the positive benefits of the past
before they were discarded;
and all the wonders of the modern space age
before it started to turn sour..

i had a fantastic childhood

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: LadyJean
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 11:17 PM

My last roommate at O.U, Michelle the Acid Freak, was at Woodstock. She never told me anything about it. She dropped acid in Deth Valley once. You have to wonder about that. I didn't know why they called it tripping, until I saw her on LSD. She fell over the desk. The desk was big! But she didn't notice it. I don't know what she did notice. I presume it wasn't there, whatever it was.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: goodbar
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 11:41 PM

if i were there i'd be a dope-smokin' hippy. yyyyeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhh....

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 11:47 PM

I was runnin' the Center for the Performing Arts down Richmond, Va. when Woodstock came our way.... I couldn't book any band within 50 miles 'cause som many folks were going to Woodstock. So I asked my bandmates to stick around and we played both Friday and Saturday nights to crowds (ha) of like 50 'er 60 people...

Bobert

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Claymore
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 12:08 AM

A couple of comments:

Yes, I was there in the sixties especially at the '69 Inauguration of Nixon as a 21 year old Lieutenant of Marines. My Platoon was assigned road guard duty near the Washington Monument. The Yippies were conducting an "In-HOG-eration" with a pig called Pigasus, in a tent in the Monument parking lot. It was cold as hell, and several young ladies in the tent were trying to entice some of my men into the tent by waving at them topless from the tent. All was good natured until one of the young men came out of the tent and spit on my sergeant, who promptly butt-stroked him with an M-14 (Marines had not been issued the M-16 yet). The cops moved in and hustled the young man away, bleeding from the mouth. I don't know if he was arrested, but he learned a lesson about spitting on Marines (one I was destined to reinforce against two hippies in Berkeley a year later upon my return from Vietnam).

Last year, my Job Corps students built the stage for a the local annual Country Roads Folk Fest, in which the headliner was Richie Havens (see photo #366). My students acted as stage crew and when Richie asked what one of the young men was going to do after the Job Corps, he told Richie was going into the Army. Richie then told a tale about Woodstock that I had never heard before.

Richie, who turned out to be the opening act, was not scheduled to get on the stage until much later in the day. Due to several malfunctions with the stage and the fact that Richie was a solo act with only a guitar, the promoters wanted him to get on stage immediately to calm the crowd, which was getting restless over the delay of the start of the Festival. However, the crowds were too thick for Richie to get to the stage from the dressing tents about a mile away. Then a pilot of a National Guard helicopter offered to fly Richie to the stage if only to prevent a riot. So as Richie Havens tells it, the Army National Guard was the reason that he started the Woodstock festival off, and the rest was history…

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Haruo
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 12:44 AM

I missed all that; the '67-'68 school year I was in Japan, turning fourteen and transmogrifying from a gray-hatted syôgakkô rokunensei to a military-uniformed tyûgakkô itinensei. I do remember the day MLK was killed, and a headline about bombing Hanoi, but my involvement in the antiwar movement had to await my return to the States.

Haruo
Habemus gubernatricem!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 04:26 AM

Thanks Amos and all -

Did you notice the pic called 'navels'? Looks just like the girls today!

Loved the pictures of Taj Mahal! Also thought the pixelated photos of Jimi actually captured his essence.

The protest pictures show what we were willing to risk in those days. Up to a point, I guess. For me, the point was that I became a mother and could not risk jail. I no longer have that excuse. Whats your excuse?

To be fair, I think that none of us want to be out there without numbers to support us. In those days, we were all out there and we had strength. Today, nobody trusts anybody else and nobody has the courage to go it alone. How did we get so strong at such a young age? I'm amazed at how brazen we were. Bold and brazen and born to be free.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 04:35 AM

I was born in 1964 in a small village in the depths of Dorset, UK.... it was not exactly known for its modern lifestyle (my granfer had only stopped using horses on his farm 10 years previously) and the closest thing to a festival was the pub piano.

All I remember of the '60's: starting school on my 5th birthday; being allowed to watch TV in the morning (no such thing as 'Breakfast TV then and TV wasn't put on until I'd been home from school for 30 mins) when some man stepped out onto the moon, but I missed it because my mum was ironing and put the iron in front of the TV at the crucial moment; my big brother boring us rigid with his new record by some unknown group called 'The Beatles'; being fed medicine on a sugar lump, and biting my first dentist.

As far as we were concerned, the 60's happened to everyone else, and Woodstock was a village near Oxford!

LTS

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: hilda fish
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 05:25 AM

I remember the festival "Sunbury" in Melbourne which was probably very similar to Woodstock? Lots of people took off their clothes and rolled in the mud, swam in the creek, lots of people benignly outta their tree, calls for 'watch the blue acid' and other calls 'freaking out brothers and sisters go to the red tent' and the music screamed and hammered and rolled all day and all night for the whole weekend. 'Juice freaks' were not admired and love, peace, and overwhelming kindness and tolerance was the order of the day, a new experience for very many of us very youngies. "Thorpie, Thorpie, Thorpie", (of the Aztecs) we yelled in absolute adulation and perhaps more because we needed to feel the unity of 'one voice' (screaming the one word all together was like some sort of amazing mantra). Anyway, Nimbin happened a year or two after that and certainly continues to impact on generations. Freda, there was a book released last year "Belonging in the Rainbow Region - Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast about Nimbin and the Rainbow Region's impact.
"Our ancient tribal people
Have sat down and sang the spirits into this land
Giving it its physical form.
White men called our dreamtime a myth.
Our people know it as a fact.
It was before creation time
They sang the valleys, mountains, rivers and streams
All round, all round, all round.
They sang life in all its vastness into this brown land.
Ånd the spirit lives still
Never has it been silenced
By white man or his destructive ways.
And the young people came
And heard the song
Ånd the song had a beginning
And there will never be an ending
Until justice is returned
And all love requited
To all singers of the songs,
And ancient tribal people.
Åll round, all round, all round.
goes the song that my tribal mother wrote and which starts this book. I've got it if you want to have a look at it.
I always liked the "Woodstock" song in the same way "by the time we got to Woodstock we were (however many?) strong" - it's almost an anthem to a generation isn't it? and I have rejected many times the 'old hippie' nonsense in the same way I reject 'old commo' nonsense as stereotyping people as though it is all insignificant. The '60's had a profound impact on our (whoever) generation as it did on continuing generations and for all the flakey and self-indulgent behaviour that went on (we were young, we were young and stupid) the goodwill continues and is a reminder that it is possible. (Why do I always sound like a sermon? Someone hit me!)

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 08:02 AM

you've probably done too much teaching!!

The most significant thing I remember from the 60's - the lady down the street sent a sympathy card to Mrs Kennedy & eventually received a Returned Thanks card signed by her!! I don't remember JFK's death, the card was a far more important event in the life of an 11 year old.

I sent most of the decade was spent in High School (64-69) & the nearest we got to the swinging 60s was one of the boys tried to smuggle a (single) bottle of beer in to the end of high school dance, unfortunately he dropped it & probably got what-for from the teachers!!

sandra

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: number 6
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 09:25 AM

Thanks for the pics Amos.

Now I remember !!

sIx

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: MBSLynne
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 09:57 AM

One of the things I give thanks about in my life, is that I was the age I was during the 60s. I was 8 ath the beginning of 1960, so my adolescence took place then. I spent 7 1/2 years of the decade in Australia...in fact Western Australia, where the big bad world only filtered through gradually and not completely, so I remember the BIG things, like Kennedy's death, Martin Luther King's etc. Our 60s was slightly different from both the American and the English, but I loved it. I was (and am) a hippy, a protestor a 'make love not war' and fix the world's problems person, though I never took drugs more than an experimental puff here and there.

In Australia, boys were conscripted and sent to fight in Vietnam on a sort of lottery system. I was VERY anti-Vietnam...especially since an awful lot of Aussies who were killed there were actualyl killed by the Americans not by the Vietnamese.

My abiding images of the 60s are the little Vietnamese girl running screaming along a road, and the 'flowers in the barrels of the guns' which still brings tears to my eyes and makes me want to go and march and protest about something.....mostly war.

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Peter T.
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 12:17 PM

The most important thing about the sixties was that we assumed that anything was possible, and that whatever we were doing was only the beginning.   That it turned out to be the peak and that we would be saturated in 60's nostalgia ever since would have astounded (and sickened) us.

It is impossible to recapture that atmosphere, dopey as it was in parts, I am afraid. But I am grateful that I was around.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 03:13 PM

You know, nobody's gonna belive me...

For a very short time, Richie Havens and I hung around together in the Village, NY City. This was a time before Woodstock. Things were just starting. I was a beatnic, not a hippy. Though, actually I was a more a hippy than a beatnic. I was too positive.

Well, anyway, this was before Richie had teeth and he used to read poetry in the Cafe Wha? He told me he was going over to some friends pad "PAD" and would I like to come with him. I had nothing to do, so, off I went.

We went down to the East Side into what I would now call a slimey nieghborhood, but then was really cool. I think we walked up about 5 flights and knocked on a police-locked door and a man with a big white beard let us in. It wasn't Santa. Richie introduced me to his friends Allen and Larry. They seemed like nice guys, but their apartment was a mess, and there were books everywhere! On the walls, on the tables, on the chairs.

Richie, Allan and Larry had a very deep discussion on communism and freedom. I was very bored and wanted to get out into the real world.

I was 18 at the time.

So there you are. I was a small part of history and didn't even know it or appreciate it. If you haven't guessed I was in the home of Allen Ginsburg and Lawernce Ferlinghetti. Amazing!


Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 03:16 PM

Holy Moly, Anna!! That's like slipping in through the kitchen at the Last Supper or somep'n!!! Thanks for the story!!!


A

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Once Famous
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 03:20 PM

I was there and I remember it well.

There was some good that came out of it and other things that have been detrimental to society and to this country today.

I do not celebrate it, really miss it, care to dwell much on it, and prefer to live for today with an eye on the future.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 04:07 PM

I just wish I had played more of a part of this story. I was just on the outside looking in. I often wonder if Richie would remember me. There were many stories like this for me back then. Like the one where everyone laughed at the silly guy playing the big fat Martin with a harmonica in his mouth at all the coffee houses. He was just terrible and had a lotta guts.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: allanwill
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 09:00 PM

Before Nimbin, before Sunbury (where Thorpie blew Deep Purple off the stage), there was Launching Place.

I was 17 at the time, living in a boarding house with about 20 other people of similar age. One of the other residents was a magician (in fact his parents ran the place) by the name of Jeff Crozier. Jeff performed with a rock band backing him and he was scheduled to appear on stage on the Sunday morning of the festival.

Unfortunatley, it was persisting down rain that morning so they cancelled the stage acts. Didn't stop Jeff though - he just gathered us all together and, to the strains of Donovan's "Barabajagal" album, which was being played through the PA system, and with Jeff leading the way, we went frolicking and dancing through the entire festival site trying to brighten up all the wet and bedraggled patrons.

I think it worked. After a while we had a big crowd of followers, including some of the police that were on duty.

Just thinking about those days, one of the other people in our little troupe that day was Wendy Saddington who was a fairly well known Melbourne performer of those days.

Allan

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: MBSLynne
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 02:47 AM

Damn Annamill, I don't even know who you are talking about!

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: hilda fish
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 03:18 AM

And thanks for mentioning Jeff Crozier, that crazy boy. We lived near Seymour in victoria, australia, and he was the first real boyfriend I kissed! We went out to the big bad world together and remained friends until his very untimely death. Still miss that boy and so good to see him remembered. The Launching Place thing was an example of what Jeff would/could do. It's wonderful to hear all the things that were going on then in other parts of the world culturally, as we are given Woodstock (which I think is also great) as the definitive event whereas it was one of many. It seems to me the sixties (and early seventies) were perhaps ultimately about which side one polarized on in relation to involvement in Vietnam - am I right? The music, art, alternative society, although having a history that goes back centuries really, was a reflection of a discomfort and/or opposition to the might war machine which was exampled so clearly with western engagement in vietnam following the french.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 10:52 AM

yep...I remember the 60s, though we didn't get the full effect of them in Kansas....the early 60s were discovering folk music and having real Hootenannies, the mid to late 60s were returning to college and getting up to my neck in the civil rights movement, including 2 trips to Mississippi...and, like annamil, meeting Alan Ginsberg, who spent a week or so in Kansas while crossing the country(fall of 68, I think)...(he spoke to our philosophy class, gave a talk in the student union, came to a couple of parties, and 'enlivened' a little coffee house downtown. I have detailed this before..a super-search on "Ginsberg" would get you stories)

My personal life was busy enough that I never even came close to immersion in the hippie culture, but boy, what interesting waves of it lapped around my knees at times!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 06:33 PM

Check Landy's photo #446. I'm 78th from the left in the 264th row.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 12:31 AM

He ruins his own photos by putting his name across each one of them ...

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 12:48 AM

Those watermarks go away when you buy the photo.


A

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 12:57 AM

He does that to protect his copyright, I would assume. Anyone can copy those pictures and use them...but there is his name on the copy.

I agree though, it's annoying.

Thanks, Amos! My, it was a strange and wonderful time wasn't it? Extraordinary idealism, combined with the usual foolishness, naivete, and spectacular energy of youth. Like Peter said...it was the peak...but we would never have believed that at the time...we thought it was just the beginning. That is sad.

There's nothing I have forgotten. I lived the 60's through the politics and the singers (Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Dylan especially) and the songs. I didn't live it through drugs. Not even slightly. Accordingly, my memory of the time is very good.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 01:21 AM

Good for you, Little Hawk. Most people say if you remember it, you weren't really there... If it wasn't for the music of the Sixties, I wouldn't be a musician.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 02:22 AM

I'm sorry Lynne. What was it you didn't understand? My last post. I can be quite cryptic at times without realizing it, I guess.

I meant I was too young to understand what was going on around me. I was just too busy enjoying life. Traveling, learning to play chess, a lot of other things. I was really sheltered when I was young and broke out and went crazy at 18.

The really bad player with the big Martin and stupid harmonica and sounded terrible was Bob Dylan.

I don't know what else to say.

For 2 years I lived with the owner of The Night Owl, Joey Marra, mentioned in a Mammas & Papas song. He had Fred Neil, John Sebastian, Mammas & Papas, and tons of others in his restaurant(coffee house).

I worked in the Bitter End and was chased aroung the tables by Woody Allen. I thought he was obnoxious. I guess he liked young girls even then.

There is so much more. Gee, I could write a book.

I was a freelance waitress, so, I worked, where and when I wanted to.

Stories keep coming back.. I had a really good friend named Tork who was very serious and a wonderful guitarist. He used to play for me while I was cleaning tables in the coffee houses. I saw him years later on a show called "The Monkeys". I couldn't believe it and told my first husband "Hey, that's my friend Tork". Sure enough, Peter Tork. Only, he wasn't so serious on TV. They made him look like a dope and believe me he wasn't.

Oh well, good night. Maybe sometime I'll tell you about some of the bad things that happened around me. Like friends dying from bad drugs.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: MBSLynne
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 02:42 AM

Yeah, I got the reference to Dylan, but I hadn't heard of any of the other people you mentioned. Interesting...the 60s was a defintiive period for so many people and things, but it was so different in America, England and Australia....

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Kaleea
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 02:46 AM

Ahhhh. The sixties! We had it all, seemingly. Really big cars with groovy long fins & lotsa cheap gas to fill 'em up with. Dippity Doo for our hair. Transistor radios. A far out space program which filled our minds with adventures, especially after watching Scotty beam up the landing party each week on Star Trek. Rock & Roll which most parents hated. Dick Clark who was only a little bit younger looking then. My brother had a band with lots of amplifiers & my father could sleep right through band practice. We learned about religion from the other side of the world Then there was the war which the hawks liked cause it "boosted" the economy, but the doves hated & we told 'em "all you need is love." We had great leaders who were mowed down much too young, but managed to influence generations to come. King, Gandhi, Kennedy . . .   Who taught us to stand together arm in arm & help each other walk through life together--enjoying our differences. Our world was much smaller after the moonshot-the shot watched literally around the world.
   We had hope for our future. I pray we still have that hope.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 05:03 AM

Ghandi? wasn't he shot in the forties?

It was nice being young in a lot of ways. You felt there was some point to life. Not sure there is these days. Maybe cos you were young and dumb.

When we practised guitar we most of us wanted to sound like Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, The Beatles or the Stones or Steve cropper. These days they all seem to sound like Eddy Van Halen. I think I'd put him down as the most influential American (musically), a real unacknowledged legislator.

I still write endlessly about the 60's in my songs. Its a bit like that line from Wordsworth which I will probably misquote - Bliss was it to be alive in that dawn, but to be young was very heaven. I think he was talking about the French revolution, when he sowed a few wild oats.

when I see the diverse courses available for kids at university nowadays I am green with envy at the opportunities. But I feel sorry we didn't sort things out a bit better for them.

I don't mean about war and peace and all the great imponderables. rather I wish we had seen how messed up we all were about sex and family life - how the societal institutions don't really work out for everybody, and your wisest hope is for personal happiness.

also I'm sorry the USA went back to using capital punishment. I guess they would say its their own business, but whether they want to be or not, they are the moral leaders of most of the world.

People look to them for an example of how it should work out when a society is prosperous and free.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,marks
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 07:57 PM

Did't make Woodstock because I couldn't get away for the weekend. Something about being in Vietnam at the time.

But I do have one 60's claim to fame. As far as I know I am the only guy who ever played "The Big Muddy" while on a firebase out by the Cambodian border.

If Pete Seeger only knew!

Mark

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 08:21 PM

You know who Dylan learned that "stupid harmonica" from Annamill? Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and a whole raft of great black blues musicians of the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's. You know how he played it? Like a hurricane, that's how. Guthrie thought Dylan was "a real good singer" when Dylan played at his bedside on many occasions. Ramblin' Jack covered Dylan's songs, cos they were the best damn thing around then. Joan Baez did the same. She considered him to be a songwriting genius. So did just about all the top musicians in folk music at the time. Joni Mitchell has quoted Dylan as her greatest rival in the songwriting department. Judy Collins has called him a "national treasure". Maybe they knew somepn' you didn't about that gutsy little guy with the big Martin.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 08:28 PM

Oddly, the '60s (during which my age went from 23 to 33) were the most conventionally respectable of my life (aside from flunking out of graduate school). I spent most of the decade receiving regular paychecks. From 1965 to 1971 I actually owned a car & commuted to work. (Since then I have been successively a commune member & a freelancer.) Musically, it was an undistinguished period for me, tho there was a small folksinging group at Brookhaven National Lab, and I used to listen to a DJ on WBAI who had a wonderful accent (I eventually discovered it was educated black Brooklyn). It was, however, the time when I acquired my first (LP) turntable. A friend of mine, one of those I-can-get-it-for-you-wholesale types (educated Jewish Brooklyn), kept urging me to let him get me one. I was dubious (for me, music was mostly what you got from yourself and your friends & relations), but then it occurred to me that if I had a turntable I could listen to Bob Dylan any time I wanted, and I succumbed. I was enamored of him at the time (a human voice coming out of a loudspeaker!), tho I soured on him when the machine swallowed him up.

So, I had an abnormal '60s. I didn't smoke dope (to speak of), and I didn't listen to any more rock and roll than I had to. I did, however, get laid from time to time, and that was some consolation.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Jon R Hagadorn
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 09:49 PM

Great thread! I remember the sixties very well-I turned 20 on the day we walked on the moon for the first time. It was a decade when anything was possible.
I wasn't a part of the protest movement-I had friends in Viet Nam-those who came back said they weren't getting what they needed to fight-too much dissention in DC.
I was at Atlantic City for the Jazz festival in summer '68 (I think) and it was wild. 80,000 kids. I came Friday night and stayed right through. They had BB King, Jefferson Airplane, Cliff Nobles, I can't remember but they were great groups. On Sunday night it started to rain and somehow i got right near the stage, down on the track. We were all under a large tarp-smoke coming out everywhere-I was 10 feet away from the stage and Janis Joplin was singing- she was taking heavy swigs from the whiskey bottle that her lead guitar player was handing her between and during songs. She was electric-she might have had a short life but she lived it.
I had a '65 Mustang and its still the best design that ever came out of Detroit-I liked the Beach Boys, Four Tops, Temptations, and Supremes. Yes, and Peter Paul & Mary. Some Dylan but I didn't understand his contribution until later.
My first "45 was Dion's The Wandererin '61. The sixties had the best music.I went to Keystone Junior College in PA, played soccer , went to Va wesleyan-am now an Ad Executive with an Ad firm in Norfolk. Great memories-

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 11:26 PM

I wasn't drawn that much to people like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison or Hendrix, cos their obvious self-destructive streak didn't attract me. I notice that the people I was drawn to...Baez, Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Al Stewart, Jackson Browne, Neil Young...have all turned out to be consummate survivors...despite Neil's saying "better to burn out than to fade away" in that song "My, My, Hey, Hey".

I basically like hanging out with thinkers, not partiers, so I guess that pretty well explains it.

But I do appreciate, in retrospect, the groundbreaking, revolutionary music that Joplin, Morrison, and Hendrix made. They'd sort of be in the 2nd echelon of musicians that interested me back then.

The thinking musician who died young was Lennon, but he did not pull the trigger. That's the difference. Really self-destructive people give me the creeps.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 11:31 PM

So you can guess that I really could not stand Nirvana...or any grundge for that matter.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 12:52 AM

By the time Woodstock happened I had been a Kerouac and Beat-influenced folkie since the last half of the 1950s. (Graduated high school in '59.) I never knew what Woodstock was about----until years later (sort of) when my Carol, who is 7 years my junior, hauled me to a Loving Spoonful concert. I accepted it as o.k. because Sebastian was playing an autoharp and a harmonica. Still, the Beats were my mentors----and coffeehouses and caffeine (often laced with brandy) was my drug of choice. I tried downing 300 Heavenly Blue/Pearly Gates Morning Glory seeds once---ground up in a pepper mill and infused into orange juice. One of the places I went that trip was back to the womb. I remember it like it happened today. And the room I was in seemed like a sort of padded cell---but the floor-to-ceiling cushioning material was all female mammaries. (I came out of that singing "Thanks For The Mamaries".) Yep, I can see/feel/taste/fondle 'em now---even as we speak. I decided I preferred reality though---and that was the only "trip" I ever took.

Us Beats were literary. Hippies were numb. I think you could actually pass a test on the differences between those two groups if you gave that answer.

Unlike Martin, who says he looks to the future, we looked to the past for values and inspiration. Doing that set my historical preferences and my attitudes toward the study of American folklore and song---and those persist to this day.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 04:31 AM

One of the worst things about the 60's was that the battle lines were drawn between the generations. All of society's institutions seemed somehow cast in rock and yet the times were so obviously and so profoundly changing. the schools I attended were like 1930's theme parks.

College was a different story. There, your lecturers were making a wild grab for the new freedoms - much to the dismay of your parents.
It was a very confused time.

if we seemed like a dumb generation, it was because we didn't have any answers, and society wasn't supplying any. The dope didn't do us any favours, and neither did the hysterical reaction to it. that debate was played out every night as first the Stones, then Donovan, then the Beatles got involved with controversies that made the national news.

I bet they were the source of arguments between the generations in half the houses of England.

How different from todays kids. Most of them seem to be still at home with their parents into their twenties, and relatively happy to be there.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 10:23 AM

The biggest, most collossal mistake made in the 60's was the diversion of the youth movement into drug use. It was almost entirely self-defeating. I say "almost", because there actually were a few people who expanded their consciousness through drugs...but only a very few...most numbed themselves and lessened their effective awareness (as happens with most people with alcohol as well).

Drug use gave the government and police a perfect way to attack and discredit the political initiatives of the youth movement. For this reason, I suspect the government secretly assisted in popularizing illegal drugs...in various ways. If so, very clever move! Nothing compromised the peace movement so badly as associating its supporters with drug use.

The "generation gap" was another useless diversion and waste of energy, and I bet the government helped foment that too from behind the scenes. What better way to divide and conquer? What better way to marginalize the young revolutionaries than to alienate them from the older people who might have been their allies and advisors?

One must indeed look to the past...the strengths of the past...while envisioning a better future. That requires an alliance of old and young progressives, not a generation gap. I remember how prejudiced young and old were against one another. It was shameful and ridiculous, in retrospect. We missed a grand opportunity there.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:25 AM

There were, however, a few instances where the youth and the police came together...
One can't forget the Montery POp Festival! That was a crowning achievement!
Beautifully organized, beautifully executed! The U.S. will never see the likes of it again.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:25 AM

Good posts. And a good discussion all around. So very many brilliant lights went out from the drugs. Some of us did actually say no to them after quite limited sampling for a few years. Bloomfield, Butterfield, so many others --all gone early---and that was just Chicago where I was.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 02:41 PM

Little Hawk, I wasn't putting down Dylan's playing or harmonica. I was expressing the feeling of the people who heard Dylan for the first time who didn't even know who those others were. I love Dylan's playing even if he was obnoxious to me when I was waiting on him in the Expresso in Woodstock, NY. I'm still a fan.

The feeling when he first started playing was that he had a lotta guts because he had a terrible voice and his style of playing was unheard of by the locals in the Village.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 03:17 PM

Bob seemed to have rubbed some people the wrong way in his Village days. I heard some became life-long friends though (Havens included).
His voice irritated me when I first heard it, like it did to a lot of people, but then I listened... and I heard. He had 'IT'! He also felt it, which most people DON'T do today.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 03:44 PM

Art, I did those Heavenly Blue/Pearly Gates Morning Glory seeds too!!
All I did was throw up!

I remember sitting in Washington Square Park one afternoon and someone came up and said some guy had just come from California and brought these seeds with them and they gave you a great high. Yeah, right. That wasn't you was it?

You're so silly when you're 18. Well, at least I was.

L., A.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 05:20 PM

I understand, Annamill. I absolutely couldn't stand the way Bob sounded the first time I heard him (at a friend's place, around '65 or '66). I promptly forgot about it, and didn't actually consciously listen to him again till '69. Then I LOVED him! Amazing what a difference 3 years can make, eh?

I simply didn't listen to commercial radio back then, so I missed a lot of contemporary stuff when it was happening...just listened to my own records at home, that's all. That's how I managed not to hear Bob between 1966 and 1969.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Haruo
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:00 PM

My complaint was the way Dylan botched perfectly good PP&M songs. At the time (since my dad was a major Peter Paul & Mary fanatic and I was about eleven) I didn't realize Dylan had actually written some of the best ones I thought he was murdering. In the early '70s I recognized my error.

Haruo

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 05:09 AM

I don't think drugs were the problem, though Little Hawk makes some important points about what they interfered with, but I think they were a symptom of the inability of the movement to figure out a decent politics to move us from personal exploration to social change in an organized fashion -- this was in large part because of the sheer hardness of the situation being faced: the American anti-socialist tradition, the war in Vietnam, the assassination of the really first rate figures just when they were evolving into masters (King, Kennedy), and so on. The exploration, for many people, found itself played out in drugs, weird clothes, and the music -- because there was no real political framework in which to turn that energy into action. There were shards of it, but it never really quite came together, which was why at the end of the 60's things began to shatter and go grim. The real tragedy was that there was a momentary opening in the fabric of things, and it closed faster than anyone dreamed, One bitter fact was that our so-called wise elders were unable to give any advice that was worth anything -- young people were desperate for a vision, and what did they get? Marcuse and other second rate thinkers, anarchists, Carlos Castenada, and crap like that. The intellectual bankruptcy of the thinking class was never more obvious than then: that was the betrayal of the young, and mt own belief is that we somehow sensed that, and that was what angered us about our elders, not the stuff about not trusting anyone over 30.

The vehicle that did hold everything together, that really made people feel that anything was possible, was the music. What people who did not live through that period cannot quite connect with was the way in which we were carried along by the extraordinary creative development of the Beatles, Dylan, and some others.   Their creative development was broadcast almost immediately -- we kept getting new messages from the front every few months or so from these people who were transforming themselves.   That is the real story of the time (and why I am here, anyway). The idea that artists, by their creative exploration, could influence and change the society immediately, was a long standing dream -- and it came true! In crappy and creative ways, but it did.

Happily, some of the energy was channelled into good areas: the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and so on. People forget how dreadfully stifling the society was in which the 60's grew up.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Amos
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 10:35 AM

Well said, PT, as always. That stiflingness, which I associate in my own view with the post-war reaction, was highly involved -- much as our current government-led culture is -- with telling others what they ought to see, feel, think and do. It was bland, desperate for averages, adverse to intensity, and given to scuttling into safe corners at the drop of a hat. It is persnified by songs like Tammy, Que Sera, and Love Forever True.

Against that background, on the wave of post-war economic growth, it was easy to stand out, rebel, wear something wild and colorful, and try on a new world-view. But the fatal error, as you put it so well, was never transcending the self-indulgence and self-exploration and building a better bridge from it. If not for the magic recurring self-reinvention of our leaders, who spoke from vinyl, it would have fizzled out even sooner and harder.

A

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 04:29 AM

Saw chris Smither last night and he played Desolation Row. It was a song I'd not listened to for a while. he left out the verse about TS Eliot and Ezra Pound - not sure why. Perhaps he likes old toilets or uncle ezra, or perhaps its calypso singers, who knows.

Anyway it really tore me up - reminded me of how unhappy I was at 19.
And how personally I took the lyrics - quite without the use of mind enhancing chemicals.

far from keeping us together . I think the music polarised us. It was us against them . My generation, right or wrong, and we were bloody sure we were right. Us against the straights and blue meanies.

actually we were probably right.

all the best

Big Al Whittle

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 08:19 AM

I was there in the Sixties but I can't remeber them . Does that count?

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 08:45 AM

I was a Police Officer in the late 60's in the U.K and what a time it was.Before joining the Constabulary in Devon, I was a bit of a lad!
I loved every minute of my life, making sure I enjoyed almost all that was on offer then...if you get my drift. Some great music (and some rubbish)....The advent of groups with guitars, drums etc was fantastic...The Beatles were brilliant and their early influence was good. Cars were just about affordable and I discovered a love for them which I still have. Music Festivals at Kenilworth, Bardney, Reading etc etc. Wouldn't have missed it for the world!
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 09:50 AM

The Silly Sixties were a relief from the Stuffy Fifties, which were a relief from the Bloody Forties, which were a relief from the Dreary Thirties, which (I gather) were not a relief from anything.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 10:40 AM

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ...

I was born on 1951, so I remember it pretty well, even though I was a bit too young to appreciate much of it. The Sixties (capital T, S) were the years from 1962 to 1968; The Fifties went on too long, and The Seventies started early by default when The Sixties ended with a whimper.

I was at Weoley -- I can remember that, even if I've forgotten who was playing there. it was Mick Jagger who said it, BTW. And I'm not wrinkly either -- at least, not where it shows.

Years later I realised that "free over" really meant "compulsory sex for females", but I'd read the Blessed Germaine by then.

Love, Peace and Caldmore,
Steve

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 10:43 AM

Years later I realised that "free love" really meant "compulsory sex for females" ... my typing hasn't improved much since then!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:22 AM

compulsory sex in walsall , Steve....who's kidding who. There wasn't even compulsory sex in Brierly Heath and as for Erdington, it was it was as sterile a f---less desert as you could hope traverse in a frigid lifetime.

whereas in Grantham where I was, we'd heard about sex on Play for Today, but it was pretty much for disgraced cabinet ministers and the fiery communists

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 12:44 PM

69

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: PoppaGator
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 12:58 PM

Funny -- for Steve Parkes, The Sixties lasted from 1962 to 1968. I usually say the real "Sixties" ran from about '65 to '72.

Is this a UK-vs-US thing, or was I just a bit behind the times?

My rationale for the dates I cite: "Summer-of-Love" through abolition of the military draft ~ with 1968 right in the middle as the peak year of several types of insanity.

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 04:10 AM

I meant the British Sixties, Pop: the Americans were late, as usual!!

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: annamill
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 01:59 PM

I'm Yank, and I think my sixties started when Kennedy was shot til Reagan was elected.

I'm out here in San Diego and I think they might be starting again.

Free sex. The pill just came out, a shot for any VD you might pick up, no AIDS then. At least we didn't know about it yet. No reason not to have sex. It was the pure act of togetherness. At least that was what all the guys were saying... ;-)

LSD 25 had just came out and was legal, though I would never try it. Everybody kept saying I'd see my REAL self. No way. I liked my fake self just fine.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: If You Were There...The Sixties
From: Auggie
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:48 PM

PoppaGator
My 60's also ran differently from what the calender years said. Born as annamill recalled, in pain with the trauma of the Kennedy assassination, growing quickly with the first civil rights and antiwar movements, hitting stride with the escalation of the war abroad and drug use at home until reaching full flourish in the 12 month period after the summer of love that included the King and 2nd Kennedy assassinations and the Chicago Democratic Convention, and all the while, fueled by the one essential but constantly changing, unindicted co-conspirator-the Music.

For me, they ended when Nixon left office, the War wound down,I found my 1st gray hair and much of the music began to, well,...suck.