DAMN HIPPIES

Crosby, Stills, & Nash

Here are some damn hippies. When you were out running in the rat race, these lucky bastards were playing guitars, smoking weed, growing their hair long, and stealing your girlfriend. Or trying to, anyway. Sure, they were freaks and weirdos, outsiders and losers, even anti-war protesters...but they made some good tunes.

Hippie Costume

They're easy to poke fun at now (What does a deadhead say when he runs out of pot? This music sucks!) and sure they were naive and utopian, but maybe they deserve a little respect for escaping the lock-step conformity of their time and having some joi d'vivre back when you were still wearing white belts and feathering your hair, back when you thought Tricia Nixon was hot. Own your lameness. For just a moment, transcend...kick off your shoes, light a banana, and groove along with these crazy hippies!

For the grand finale, here's the Grateful Dead--yup, I make fun of them myself on occasion--but listen to the interplay of bass and guitar in this lysergic classic, "China Cat Sunflower," and hear how it evolves into "I Know You Rider." It really doesn't get more hippie than this. Come on, you're practically there. You're nearly groovy. Peaceout.


The Dead

CLASSIC SOUL

Here's some soul music--two classics to get you into the weekend and help tighten up your wig. Watch these fantastic performers and see if they can lift your spirits.

Things have changed since this classic soul came out. These songs about love and happiness and respect made you want to move your feet. Now that we've all attained freedom and affluence, and bigotry is a thing of the past, listening to classic soul is like opening a time capsule from a distant world where people had to struggle to make ends meet, where class and wealth drove a wedge between people, where race limited people's opportunities and affected our politics (even Presidential campaigns!), where unpopular wars dragged on and on for spurious reasons. Not so different, come to think of it.

You can't beat soul.

Fellow blogger Expatbrian, over at World Gone Mad, set up a challenge. I'd pick two old favorites, and he'd do the same, and we'd have an old fashioned battle of the bands. Sounds like fun, eh? Be sure to check out his blog, too.

VANISHING POINT

I thought this movie was pretty cool when I saw it at the drive-in (remember those?). It's the quintessential 1970s movie: a lone, anti-establishment, anti-hero, with plenty of chase scenes. What more can I say?