SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Fuck the hippies. Now that everyone is gushing with nostalgia about Woodstock during this 40th anniversary of the festival, it's good to remember that most people didn't "get it" at the time, and the vast majority didn't like it. The crowd may have seemed large at the festival (and indeed it was the largest public gathering up until that time) but it was barely a sliver of an overwhelmingly square, divided, and culturally reactionary country. Flush from conquering the moon less than a month before, and from fighting the commies in Vietnam, there was little room for scraggly peaceniks openly smoking grass, getting naked, and playing loud acid rock music.


Now that everyone is retroactively cool and ironic, it's good to remember the actual longhaired freaks who braved the mud and scorn may not want to share their nostalgic Woodstock glory. Back then, remember, it was "Are you a boy or a girl?" shouted from passing trucks, or maybe "Get a haircut!"

Even the so-called objective news had a laugh.

Here's the New York Times editorial the day after the festival:

Nightmare in the Catskills

The dreams of marijuana and rock music that drew 300,000 fans and hippies to the Catskills had little more sanity than the impulses that drive the lemmings to march to their deaths in the sea. They ended in a nightmare of mud and stagnation that paralyzed Sullivan County for a whole week-end. --NYT, 1969


Santana rocks Woodstock with some crazy Mexican acid rock

Forty years ago, we landed a man on the moon and some people landed in a muddy field called Woodstock. Now the press is rewriting Woodstock history like soviet revisionists airbrushing Trotsky out of the family photo albums, and everyone smiles at the naivete of this stoned Utopian force with the funny hair, but we should look back at the so-called "neutrals," the control group, the American straights of 1969, and there's a laugh, too. Love those white belts. Nice sideburns.

Black hippie hero Hendrix reinterprets the Star Spangled Banner

Back then, the majority of America was pro-Nixon, pro-war, anti-commie conformists who made "nigger" jokes and got haircuts once a week. Anti-drug? Hell, no! America was into drugs big time, alcohol and cigarettes and gallons of coffee, and some tranquilizers to keep things in a nice Miltown daze. Mother's little helper, they called it. Betty Crocker on sedatives. Of course, that wasn't really a drug--none of that was--and people feared reefer madness with a Dragnet mentality. The Joe Friday squares saw the country falling apart in a marijuana haze to uppity minorities and subcultures: blacks, Indians, hippies, protesters, and even women, who were forgetting their place. It could drive you to drink.

Steve and Eydie missed Woodstock...completely

The Beatles may have replaced Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in college dorms and teenage radio stations, but most of the older folks were still listening to the old stuff and living out the fifties suburban dream. They had earned it fighting in a war, by God, and nobody was going to rain on their goddamn parade. Barbecue some steaks, drink some cocktails, water the lawn, and keep up with the Joneses. No wonder the Jones' kids ran off to join the hippie circus. We heard the girl next door got "knocked up," had an abortion and got disowned by her good Christian parents, and is now "shacking up" with undesirables in San Francisco. The boy next door who read Mad Magazines and listened to the Beatles got killed in Da Nang, or Khe Sahn (or maybe Kent State) but there is a picture of him in full dress uniform on the mantle and a folded flag in the cedar chest.

Vapid models pretend to be hippies in fashion magazine spread

So don't believe all the hype. The message is lost in these commercial news outlets and it's not surprising in a culture where everything has a price tag. Is there a lasting legacy of the Woodstock Nation? I doubt it, when I see kids with Hendrix T-shirts who support the war like hawks. If anything was revolutionary about Woodstock it was the message of peace and love, and that's the hardest thing to fake. Styles change, and anybody can grow long hair--or wave a flag, for that matter--but trying to live your ideals--especially unpopular ones--remains a challenge. In a cynical age, it sounds naive and ludicrous. Ideals? Get with the program. Shut up and do as you're told. That's why it's heartening to occasionally look up from our lock-step conformity and see a few bold spirits bucking the mainstream mindset and living original lives, and at least trying to transcend the bullshit.

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS

Walter Cronkite, legendary broadcast journalist and news anchor, died today at the age of 92. He was a trusted voice in turbulent times, and brought us the daily news and the historic events, the moon landings and political conventions, the assassinations and wars. His broadcast after the Tet Offensive is often credited with turning the American public against the Vietnam war. Long before television news deteriorated to around-the-clock infotainment, Cronkite earned our trust without super graphics or computer generated flash, without ranting or teasing or pandering to popular taste.

They don't make 'em like Walter anymore. Nowadays, news anchors are better looking and less informed, pretty faces without a trace of understanding in their eyes, mere teleprompter readers with studio tans and perfect smiles. These days, the job seems closer to modeling than reportage. We're going to miss Cronkite.


Cronkite reports the assassination of President John F Kennedy.


Cronkite's reports from Vietnam challenged the hawks and swayed public opinion.

Update: a good note from Salon's Glenn Greenwald, "Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did." Click here for the story.

DIGGING THE DIGGERS

You probably know Peter Coyote as an actor, a writer, and a narrator--his warm grainy voice is instantly recognizable in over a hundred documentaries.

What you probably didn't know is that Coyote was one of the founders of the Diggers, an anarchist collective back in the Haight-Ashbury days. The Diggers may have looked like non-conformist freaks (and they were) but under all that hair and get-up they were brilliant community organizers (look it up, Sarah Palin) who provided meals, shelter, health care, and counseling to the throngs of kids who showed up in San Fransisco with flowers in their hair.

The Diggers took their name from the English Diggers (1649–50), a group that opposed private property, and all forms of buying and selling.

"DIGGER, any of a group of agrarian communists who flourished in England in 1649-50 and were led by Gerrard Winstanley (q.v.) and William Everard. In April 1649 about 20 poor men assembled at St. George's Hill, Surrey, and began to cultivate the common land. These Diggers held that the English Civil Wars had been fought against the king and the great landowners; now that Charles I had been executed, land should be made available for the very poor to cultivate. (Food prices had reached record heights in the late 1640s.)"
-- (c) 1994, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Diggers: Coyote and JP Pickens

The Diggers kept the tradition of those outlaw agrarians alive. Not your typical do-gooder activists, working from the outside in, the Diggers were members of the scene themselves who practiced what they preached. When they set up the Free Store or gave out sandwiches to hungry kids in the park they offered more than just a handout; they were trying to raise consciousness about the possibilities of a society where money didn't matter. Utopian, sure. Dreams were big back then. Mainstreamers may scoff at their naivete or see their work as a failed experiment, but they might point to our rampant materialism and tailspinning economy and say we're closer to a post-capitalist society than we think.

The Diggers were also artists (both "con" and "fine") and they organized free concerts and political art. They created "Happenings," including the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free. Coyote himself was an early member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a group that performed satirical, political comedy, original music, and street theater.


Coyote tells the whole story in his autobiography, "Sleeping Where I Fall" (Counterpoint Press, 1998; buy a copy here). Read some excerpts here. In the interview above, Coyote talks about Emmet Grogan and the Diggers.

Give him a listen. The man has something to say.

The Diggers Archive Home Page.

Peter Coyote's website.

GO ASK ELLIS

Not long ago, major league baseball player Dock Ellis passed away. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. Ellis is probably best known for pitching a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD in 1970.

He didn't plan it that way. Ellis had been hanging out with friends in LA and was under the impression he had the day off when he ingested the powerful psychedelic.

"I was in Los Angeles, and the team was playing in San Diego, but I didn't know it. I had taken LSD..... I thought it was an off-day, that's how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at noon." At 1pm, his girlfriend and trip partner looked at the paper and said, "Dock, you're pitching today!"

Ellis boarded a shuttle flight to the ballpark and threw a no-hitter despite not being able to feel the ball or clearly see the batter or catcher.

"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game," Ellis recalled. "I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

autographed ball: Dock Ellis, No Hitter 6-12-70

The dubious achievement inspired several songs, including "Dock Ellis" by Barbara Manning (performed by SF Seals), "Dock Ellis No-No" by Chuck Brodsky, and "America's Favorite Pastime" by folk singer by Todd Snider.

Listen to "America's Favorite Pastime" by Todd Snider, click the button below:

Listen to "Dock Ellis" by SF Seals, by clicking here:


Dock Ellis, American Hero

GREATEST, GRATEFUL & STILL DEAD

What a long strange trip, indeed. The New York Times published an article a couple days ago settling things forever and silencing all debate by announcing, once and for all, that the greatest Grateful Dead concert--according to Ben Ratlif, anyway, and others he claims to have spoken with--took place on May 8th, 1978. End of story. The journal of record has spoken. The story barely made a beep, and the world of news quickly returned to its tales of war and collapsing economies, mothers killing children, fathers killing mothers, pirates kidnapping sea captains, and seemingly normal people killing huge numbers of random strangers or loved ones before turning their guns upon themselves. Stories about the ungrateful dead, you might say.

1966: at the old place on Ashbury, just before the party spilled into the streets

Of course, all musical lists are suspect; the value of music is felt in the heart of every listener and should not be left to New York Times, the trainspotting music geeks, or even the Nicks--Hornby and Harcourt. And don't leave it to the Deadheads. They're a funny bunch, whichever vintage, and they've been trading thousands of recordings for decades and are simply too close to the thing to see it clearly. (Like the old joke: what do Deadheads say when the dope runs out? "This music sucks!" Well, it doesn't suck, not all of it, but you get my point) It would be like asking an Eskimo (Inuit, sorry) about snowflakes. No, you don't want to commit your life to the damn thing. You, with your short attention span, want an overview.

Anyway, here are some unusual Grateful Dead clips. The opening segment comes from Playboy After Dark, and listening to the skeezy pajama king Hugh Hefner "rap" with Jerry Garcia brings to mind the writer from the Times dissecting Dead shows for relative merit. You don't need to ingest psychedelic drugs to catch a glimpse of Hef as a lizard of the lounge variety, but I'm sure the bandmembers popped their pills anyway and the entire affair has a surreal quality that Thorazine and orange juice might not bring you down from. In fact, you might not be able to shake this hallucination until you escape the Playboy rabbit hole entirely and get a breath of fresh air.

Further on down the line, truckin' in the 1970s

My point (and yes, I had one...) is that you can't really say which concert is best because it's a matter of taste, but even beyond that the band itself changed so much over the years it would be like comparing apples to orange sunshine. The Playboy mansion clip is from 1969--and by that time the Dead had already evolved from being the house band at the Acid Tests hosted by Kesey and the Pranksters. The band that played the Trips Festival at the Longshoreman's Hall in 1966 had already grown less experimental, more polished and professional. By 1972, they were an altogether different group, and the recordings from that tour were released on "Europe 72" remain favorites. Some would argue this was the "best" Dead period. By 1978, they'd mutated again--the show rocked harder, etc, and if you liked that sort of thing you might like that. To all the kids who staggered after them in the 1980s and 1990s the experience was altogether different. The band played the old favorites for adoring kids who weren't even alive when they put out their first album. (a far cry from my first Dead concert in '70 or so. When someone yelled out "St. Stephen!" Garcia barked back, "That was three X*&$* years ago, man!")

The last clip is from April 17th, 1972, at the Tivoli Theatre in Copenhagen. Their hi-jinx are in high gear as you can see from the clown masks. 1972 was a good year. What do you think?



Grateful Dead Update: According the the Washington Post (April 14th, 2009): "The surviving (and formerly feuding) members of the Grateful Dead had a secret impromptu meeting Monday evening with the man they credit with reuniting them: President Obama."

"The president welcomed all the members of The Dead, who are performing tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington, to the Oval Office just before dinner last night. They didn't talk music as much as they did history - history about the Oval Office, and the president's desk."

To read the rest of the story in the Washington Post, click here.

Still Dead: Phil Lesh and Bob Weir lead the latest incarnation of the Dead shown performing here in NYC, March 30th, 2009

Read annotated Grateful Dead lyrics here.

IT WAS 45 YEARS AGO TODAY

Today marks 45 years since the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. The Fab Four appeared three consecutive Sundays in February of 1964. According to Beatles News, this first performance was "considered a milestone in American pop culture and the beginning of the British Invasion in music. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for an American television program."

Back in those days, there weren't so many channels--and Sunday night in America virtually EVERYONE watched the Ed Sullivan Show, where pop singers vied for your attention with plate spinners and borscht belt comics. The impact of these four longhaired kids from England cannot be overstated, especially to young people who "got it" immediately. Parents were puzzled. "They look like girls," they said. "Every song sounds the same," said others. "Turn that racket off!"

They were wrong, of course. The Beatles were the vanguard of a revolution in pop culture that would change the world. Their music, their hair, their joyous exuberance and wisecracking humor influenced everything and there was no turning back.


Here comes the British Invasion!

"Tell Me Why" by the Beatles. Just click button to listen:

BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD

Buffalo Springfield showcased the prodigious talents of Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. With the possible exception of The Byrds, no other band had such an impact on the burgeoning folk rock scene and the California Sound of the 1960s.


"For What It's Worth (excerpt)" and "Mr. Soul" (1967)

In 1966, after witnessing the police riot on the Sunset Strip, Stephen Stills composed "For What It's Worth," and scored a top ten hit for Buffalo Springfield in 1967. The band broke up two years later, and Stills joined former Byrd David Crosby and Graham Nash of the Hollies to form Crosby, Stills, and Nash--soon to be joined by Neil Young.


"Rock and Roll Woman"(1967)

Cute outfits and pop folksiness gave way to heavier sounds in 1969, the year Buffalo Springfield broke up and Crosby, Stills, and Nash released their first album.


"Down by the River." Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at Big Sur (1969). The country folk pop was gone, and now an electric super group soared for the Northern California hippies.


"You Don't Have to Cry," Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on the Tom Jones Show (1970). They could still do wind chimes and beautiful harmonies.

ALONG COMES MARY

The Association were never the hippest band around, more like a clean-cut glee club that happened to find a lid under the couch cushions, and, well...wrote this tune about it. The song was so joyously poppy nobody noticed what they were getting at. As my cousin Duane would say, you probably had to be stoned to understand it. All I can say, for sure, is that some overzealous fed analyzed the lyrics and discovered "possible drug content" and put the song on a kill list that was sent to radio stations to discourage disc jockeys from playing it on the air.

Come on, guys. What's was so bad about Mary?

The Association: their hair is getting good now

If you listen closely, you'll notice the words are silly, ornate hophead juvenelia, something you might find scribbled in an adolescent's PeeChee, but the music is good bouncy fun. It's a nice, well-crafted pop song. Dig the metronomic intro, a premonition of DEVO still a good decade to come. This clip is from the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the night Otis Redding sang his soul out, the Who destroyed their instruments, and Jimi Hendrix made his monumental American debut--and lit his guitar on fire. They were completely overshadowed by the heavies. Even so, their empty cup tasted sweet as the punch.

TOKING UP WITH LAWRENCE WELK

Technically, Lawrence Welk was never part of the 1960s counter-culture. In fact, culturally-speaking, he was probably as close to a perfect square as was geometrically possible. He loved his polkas and played them tirelessly for his adoring fans in a galaxy of champagne bubbles.

Sometimes the champagne music wasn't enough. Those times Welk went searching the mean streets for something stronger, something wilder. For Kicks. We may never know what was actually going on behind that smile, the friendly demeanor, and the insistence that everything was "Wunnerful, Wunnerful!" All we have are these clues.


In this clip, the Lawrence Welk singers describe the disorienting effects of smoking too much marijuana in a train station. As the singers weave their haunting spell, the music builds in intensity, approximating the drug user's "high." Was Welk a closet hipster sending secret messages to fellow druggies? Or was this a desperate cry for help?

In the clip below, Welk has clearly turned into a hippie. Must have been all that grass. His friends hardly recognize him, and his aggressive behavior seems "out of character." Fortunately, an impromptu intervention sets him on the right path.

MEMO FROM TURNER

Here is a clip from "Performance" (1970), a strange film by Nicholas Roeg starring Mick Jagger and James Fox. Fox is a thug on the lam hiding out with a dissolute rock star named Turner, played by Mick in extremis. Identities shift in this X-shaped plot, and a drug-addled Fox loses his mind and starts to believe he's Turner, while Turner tries out the thug life. Here, a gangster of wealth and taste gives Fox the news. A memo from Turner.

A head trip in classic sixties style, with slide guitar played by Ry Cooder. Rent the movie.

JAMES BROWN, APRIL 5TH, 1968

The day after Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, James Brown gave a concert to keep the peace in Boston. The show is a highpoint of his career, and JB give a brilliant soulful performance. He turned despair and anger into something inspirational, and tried to keep folks from rioting and burning down the city and getting shot by the police. Originally broadcast live on the local PBS affiliate, here is the concert in its entirety.



"Nothing, however, captures the full measure of Brown's talent like the opening moments of the Boston show, when he plants himself center stage in front of a crowd still reeling from King's death, and launches into a version of "That's Life" that substitutes defiance for resignation without changing a word."
--The A.V. Club (9/20/08)

FYI, James Brown comes on about 7 minutes in, if you want to skip the intro. "That's Life" is at 1:08.

WILD IN THE STREETS!

This election year, it's worth taking a look at campaigns of the past. In 1968, Max Frost and the Troopers led a revolution of young people who challenged the status quo and eventually took over the country. LSD was put in the water supply, hip kids wore crushed velvet bell-bottoms, and people over thirty (!) were taken off to camps.

Talk about California Uber Alles! (Somebody call Jello).

Yup, it was a cautionary tale, and a "youth-sploitation" movie, but we kids thought it was pretty cool, and the song was great. Years later, The Ramones covered it, but here you have Max Frost himself performing the original, the rallying cry, "The Shape of Things to Come."

SUMMERTIME TRIP

It's summertime! Sorry to be so "boomercentric", but I came across these short clips about the "The Summer of Love," and had to post them. One is a "straight" documentary for TV news about the "hippie temptation." The grim expose style of the piece belies it's objectivity as square news media tries to make sense of the counter-culture.

We'll get to that, but first is a clip from a documentary on the same scene, but from the inside. This is an entirely different planet. Joy and celebration -- and sex and dope -- replaces fear and guilt. Afghan vests and love beads replace the gray flannel straight-jacket. True, it's not objective, and it doesn't claim to be.


Something's happening, and you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

A famous educator once said: the person who has the hardest time learning something new is the person who has all the answers -- or thinks he does. That fits Mr. Newsman to a tee.


The Hippie Temptation: straight news on the subculture

Finally, you have to play the music. Here is a sweet soulful sixties gal, and a big part of the Haight Ashbury scene, infiltrating plastic mainstream America; Janis Joplin on "Hollywood Palace." In spite of the cheesy setting, she sings her heart out on "Summertime" and "I Need a Man to Love." She represents. Afterward, host Don Adams tries to make fun of her-- typical for this era when you've caught a real live hippie. Don't worry, Janis can handle that little twerp. She zaps him with love.

KID CHARLEMAGNE

A strange band, without an obvious niche, named after a sex toy in a William Burroughs novel -- who would think they'd make it big? At first glance jazzy, with decidedly weird lyrics, backed by a crack team of studio musicians, that's Steely Dan. Here they tell the tale of a certain infamous outlaw chemist of the 1960s, loosely based on reality (as were many things back then), one Augustus Owsley Stanley, III, otherwise known simply as Owsley.


For a 2007 interview with Owsley, click here.

UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOUR HELP AGAIN

Show some guts! This is war!!! Country Joe McDonald takes on the politicians, generals, war profiteers, and "patriotic" parents in this anti-war classic. Yes, it was written for another war. Then again, so were most of the pro-war "talking points" being recycled these days.

Back then people weren't so civil. Nowadays, we're much more sophisticated. Most of us are fighting to claim the ideological middle, on the assumption that there are two sides to every question, and a cool rational middle-of-the-road position is the sensible thing. We've been well trained. But are there really two sides to every question? What's the sensible middle position on cannibalism, say, or the Earth being flat? How about slavery, or child abuse? Highly rational people can be extremely agile intellectually. They can tell you straight-faced that there are good reasons to incinerate people, or to "stay the course" and continue incinerating people once the incineration has begun.

They have plenty of good reasons, and they always have.

HALLOWEEN WEEK: the scariest movie

Yes, we're celebrating Halloween Week here at the Hammer. Last night I was talking to some Friends of the Nib, planning our upcoming art show/party for Saturday night (details below) and we were really getting into the Halloween mood. The subject came up: What is the scariest movie you've ever seen?
I've seen plenty, but if I had to pick the movie that freaked me out the most, I'd have to go with Repulsion. This is a cool little film from 1965 that follows the lovely Catherine Deneuve's harrowing descent into madness. It may look cheesy and retro ironic, but I'm serious. This is the real deal, from director Roman Polanski. If you're bored with rubber-head monsters and dumb slasher movies, rent this one for Halloween. But be warned!

SUMMER'S ALMOST GONE

Summer's almost gone, and thankfully so is the anniversary of the "Summer of Love." Enough with the candy-coated reminiscences of people who weren't even there (the cub reporters normally sent to cover birthdays at the zoo), the uncritical misty-eyed memories of boomers now deep in the corporate rat race, even those rare respectful nods from officialdom (only two more weeks to catch the "Summer of Love" show at the Whitney!). Like the great Jimmy Durante would say, "Everybody wants to get into the act!"

Talk about False Memory Syndrome! I'm sick of all this revisionism, the sanitizing Austin Powers time machine that strips all the grit from the equation and turns history into just another Disneyland theme park, all Dayglo daisies, cutesy flower power, peace-and-love. All style and no content.

They got it all wrong. From the 1966 riots on Sunset Strip to the Kesey acid tests, from Vietnam to Watts to the moon landing to Hendrix burning his Fender Stratocaster at Monterey, a cultural hurricane ripping through the land. It tore through dinner tables and classrooms and draft boards. The music, the hair, the dope -- the attitude -- wasn't created in a vacuum. It wasn't even the best part. There may have been strawberry incense and cannabis on the winds of change, but it came with the unmistakable stench of teargas. Worldwide. Students and auto workers threw paving stones in Paris 1968, and hundreds of students were gunned down in Mexico City, where the Olympics were being held. The Tlatelolco Massacre didn't make the Wide World of Sports broadcast, but you might remember those Olympics for one stunning image; that of two African-American Olympic athletes, medal-winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raising black gloved fists in a Black Power salute. People were shocked, and the International Olympic Committee promptly banned them from the Olympic Games for life!

Summer of Love? Buy the T-shirt. Better yet, love your neighbor, expand your mind, stand up for peace. But don't trust your memory, it's been tampered with.

Here's a great article from the SF Gate.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/DDG0MPU2OS1.DTL