Back to the Woodstock garden
Nope, I wasn’t at Woodstock—one of the only members of my generation who wasn’t, to hear most them tell it.
And I don’t romanticize the 60s and look back on them nostalgically, although many people my age do. I think the 60s were the root of a lot of wrong turnings the aftermath of which we’re dealing with today, although what happened during that era certainly wasn’t all bad and some of it was good (the early civil rights movement, for example).
And the music was pretty great.
Now, I never was a fan of the song “Woodstock,” but it’s certainly familiar to me. I came across “Woodstock” the other day—I forget why, but it had something to do with searching for the Joni Mitchell song “Tin Angel,” which I highly recommend. I love the ability YouTube gives us to compare and contrast, and to track the passage of time and the changes in artists’ interpretations (and their voices) through the passing years.
So here we have the achingly young Joni Mitchell of the high angelic voice, performing her original concept of “Woodstock” (a song she actually wrote, although it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young who popularized it in a very different version). Mitchell wasn’t at Woodstock either; if you want to skip her story about that and just go straight to the song, start after one minute:
Years later Mitchell finally made it to Woodstock, somewhat the worse for wear. Here’s the same song, with Mitchell older and deeper of voice:
And here she is around 70 years of age, with the voice ever deeper:
Now listen to the much more well-known (and very different) version sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. It’s probably the one you already know quite well if you’re Of A Certain Age:
“We” never did get back to that garden, did we? Maybe because a flaming sword bars the way.
[NOTE: Speaking of The Garden, I think this is mighty interesting.]
The sappy religiosity of that song struck me as dumb even at the time, even though I was part of the movement. Now it seems very indicative of everything that was wrong with the revolution.
If the Left wouldn’t have been so good at music in the 60’s, we’d have fewer problems today. Stanley Anne Dunham probably loved Joni Mitchell.
The Left romances the 60s. The Right the 50s. Seems like no one remembers there have been other decades in American history. My theory on why this was is that it happen when television first became wide spread.
Personally, I think we should go back to the good ole days of the 1770s and start wearing powdered wigs.
I knew a few people who were at Woodstock and a lot of people who weren’t. I don’t recall any “false valor” claims in that regard.
I’ve run into the factoid that something like two people said they were at Woodstock for every person who was. I’ve never seen a hard cite for it, so I have my doubts. Even by that standard most people were honest about their attendance or not.
As to what Joni Mitchell meant by the Garden, here she is speaking to Camille Paglia who had included the lyrics to “Woodstock” in Paglia’s collection, ” Break, Blow Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems”:
I’ve seen things written about “Woodstock” in university courses on the ’60s-they really like to nail me for the naive idealism of it, whereas you were able to get the ironic tone. At that time, I felt so desperately that we were placed here to be the custodians of the planet Eden. So for the first 10 or 20 performances of that song, I used to get a lump in my throat. I felt that the primitives who remained on the planet were still living in harmony with nature, versus us-the supreme white guy, with our scientific monstrosities, playing with half a deck! We need to get a grip on our original destiny and learn to love the wild and save what’s left of it and not go paving over farmlands that we may need someday. This is the farmer in me speaking. I’m the first generation of my genealogy off the farm, so it’s in my blood to think in terms of good soil and weather [laughs].
http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1327
The “ironic tone” Mitchell mentions is her slow dirge-like rendition as opposed to the upbeat rock anthem which Crosby, Stills and Nash created.
Too speak purely of the music I have to say that I much prefer the 70s Joni version. IMHO we would not hear as clear and pure a soprano as that until Cyndi Lauper.
Just my two cents.
I was part of the “Back to the Land” movement back then. I lived in a trailer park with several friends, while working some land further down the road plus miscellaneous farm labor and construction work for money.
We were all college students and it was tougher to make that work than we thought. We eventually split up, but one couple was in it for the long haul. They bought some land in Arkansas, got good at building houses, and raised a family.
They still live out there on a rural road which was eventually named “Hippy Hollow Road” in their honor.
I did not want to go to Woodstock because I avoid large crowds and I found the hippies to be naive and preachy. Now the music of the era was often great.Still listen to Mitchell fairly often. She wrote many wonderful and she changed her music over the years; from folk to light rock to jazz influenced songs.
I always considered Joan Baez and Judy Collins as the true queens of the folk song era. Joni Mitchell was ok but not in their league.
Looking back, I think Woodstock’s real significance was it marked the end of the old strait laced America that still existed when I was a boy in the 1950s and early 60s. The other and more sigficant event was the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago that marked the beginning of the deep penetration of the radical left into power in the US.
Andrew Ferguson recently wrote about the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district in the Weekly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/flowers-in-their-hair/article/2009233
Paul in Boston,
Have to disagree. IMO Baez has a great voice, but for me Collins has a weak voice. Neither were great songwriters, although Baez wrote a few good ones. Mitchell was a supreme songwriter IMO and the purist voice. Listen to For the Roses or Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter to find the range of her style. And Blue is an immortal LP. Case of You is a stand out. My fave Mitchell song.
The sixties started us down the road to perdition. Civil rights would have come along sooner or later anyway, but unfortunately tied in with the general disobedience from which we have never recovered, and, as we see from the “Resistance”, never will. Unless bullets start to fly, the roaches bred in the sixties will always be with us, Joni Mitchell’s sweet voice be damned.
Paul in Boston Says:
August 26th, 2017 at 8:52 pm
Looking back, I think Woodstock’s real significance was it marked the end of the old strait laced America that still existed when I was a boy in the 1950s and early 60s. The other and more sigficant event was the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago that marked the beginning of the deep penetration of the radical left into power in the US.
* * *
That demonstration of lawlessness got Richard Nixon elected, and the Left never forgave the country for spurning their enlightened principles.
Parker:
Second your assessment of the three; Mitchell, Collins, and Baez. She is the best of the bunch.
I can take or leave Mitchell, Baez & Collins. But I appreciate the fact that it may have been that I was just a kid then…not my music and the harder-edged stuff tended to attract me later.
BUT…I do appreciate the Biblical reference from our host. Well done. Especially since the way to the Garden has been re-opened…but we still can’t “get ourselves” there.
I actually went to Woodstock. Even stupidly bought tickets that I still have. Since it took me a day to get in and a day to get out I saw only the second day of music, mostly rock-oriented which was fine with me since I’m not that much of a folk music fan. I saw (that I can still remember) Santana, John Sebastian, Creedence, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, the Who and Jefferson Airplane among others.
For me the musical high point was Sly closely followed by the Who. But the most memorable moment of the day and night came just before the Who started playing. Abbie Hoffman grabbed a mic, apparently uninvited, and went into some political rant. The Who’s Pete Townshend wound up with his guitar and belted Hoffman with it like Willie Mays lashing a line-drive double, knocking Hoffman off the 10-foot stage into the mud below. Then Townshend grabbed the mic and said “The next f*cking person who comes on the f*cking stage is going to get f*cking killed”. Or at least I think that is what he said. As they say if you can remember the ’60s you weren’t really there.
Sometime about then, Michigan State U’s pseudo-hippies decreed a “gentle Thursday” in which all would go about doing good deeds for others. I think the example was putting a quarter into a parking meter that was about to expire.
I’m not sure many people were motivated beyond doing one more than they ordinarily would–most people will, if they see a need–but, boy, did it get the ink.
Then there was going to be a kind of gentle campground where everybody was going to be peaceful & stuff. Surprisingly, a number of predators showed up.
It’s as if there was a caricature of hippyness.
The group I hung with went to Mississippi those summers to do civil rights things and, whatever kinship the leftier members felt with Hashbury, they knew the difference.
My idea of SoL was spring in the upper Midwest, which comes pretty late in the school year, when gray, brown, mud, and slush are gone and the madras comes out, and the girls look fabulous. Getting close to summer with jobs or the military, or an ending which makes each day more interesting.
As McCarthy noted, parasites can’t survive without a healthy host and some hosts figured out how to avoid the whole scene.
Didn’t go to Woodstock, didn’t like rock, did plan to enlist, didn’t respect the enormous hypocrisy of the whole thing.
The way in to the higher Gan Eden will be barred until humans learn the true meaning of virtue, which is not synonymous with ‘virtue signaling.’
Also, from reading you for a while now, I suspect the idea of dancing in God’s chorus line appeals to you.
I don’t hear any irony whatsoever in “Woodstock.” Maybe Mitchell was referring to the irony of the most advanced people being the most alienated? But both song and performance seem dead serious to me.
Seems to me that comparing Mitchell to Baez and Collins is fundamentally off base. She’s a different kind of artist altogether. Baez and Collins are excellent interpreters but Mitchell is a major songwriter as well. Like an excellent actress who’s also a major playwright.
I never went there nor am I a fan of Santana. But years later I bought the video of Woodstock and the guy who knocked my socks off was the drummer for Santana. I could watch him and listen to his solo drumming all day long.
Maybe every generation reveres and exult the era of their youth. But for me as a Boomer, I’m continually embarrassed by how many of us can’t seem to let the 60s go. From an objective view of the past, it’s obvious, as others have mentioned, that the 60s were the beginning of the Left’s ascendency. And we Boomers are to blame.
One good thing : a generation of superb musicians. But generally musicians are not to be trusted with running the world.
“But generally musicians are not to be trusted with running the world.”
As a musician I agree totally :^).
Incidentally, though I still live in the Bay Area I had zero interest in taking part in any “SoL” activities in San Francisco. I did not even really know they were going on though I’m not surprised. That is way in the past.
It’s like watching “Easy Rider” now. Other than the music, which is still great, the rest of it ranges from dated to unintentionally amusing.
Let’s say there’s a book full of things you like. And it has a title which includes a word others use for something else, albeit possibly distantly related.
You hear that word and the book comes back to you, not the “something else”.
So, when I hear “summer of love”, I think of my life from about 1963 to about 1969. Then I enlisted and I was looking at things differently, but it was still somewhat related.
I know about the drugs and the rock and roll and the hippies. I roomed with an SDS member who, it turned out, was wholesaling weed from our basement. So I know.
But I suspect many whose lives were just getting going in that time feel something of the same when they hear the term even if they had no more to do with the whole Woodstock thing than I did.
FOAF Says:
August 27th, 2017 at 3:25 pm
“But generally musicians are not to be trusted with running the world.”
As a musician I agree totally :^).
* * *
Kind of like getting political advice from a cartoonist.
Read up on Woodstock at Wiki, and it was so poorly organized that it’s a wonder it came together at all. Turned down by the first couple of prospective sites, and lots of the big name performers. No one expected the massive crowds, and they ended up with no fence and no revenue except for the people who bought tickets ahead of time (you know who you are ;)).
What saved the promoters was the movie, which was funded by a film exec against studio orders.
There’s got to be some kind of message in all that.
I was still in HS, couldn’t have gone even if I had known about it, and am not at all sorry I didn’t.
But I do like Mitchell’s song.
The Sixties, in the sense of the cultural revolution of the last half of the decade, are still a very big deal to me not because of nostalgia but because I jumped in with both feet, was deeply affected, changed my mind, and learned something from it which I think is applicable beyond my own little life. I’m writing a book about it, actually.
“What saved the promoters was the movie”
I wonder if they had figured on that all along. It is an excellent movie not only for the great music; it is exceptionally well-made, no kind of “exploitation” flick.
Woodstock, might as well call it the founding of the church of isis.
What saved the promoters was the movie, which was funded by a film exec against studio orders.
What saved them was all the kind and charitable Americans that gave out free water to those teenagers that didn’t bring any.
If it had went on, they would have become a refugee camp, one without food or water.
This was interesting today.
Collins on Fox.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5442796217001/#sp=show-clips
https://wavewatching.net/lost-papers/plancks-law-and-light-quantum-hypothesis/
For people that like quantum research and math.
How about taking 10 minutes and notice that not only did harvard know waht was to happen, but harvard lampoon with people who would make up the original SNL cast even did a broadway play about it [however once i bring it up, its toxic]
Lemmings (National Lampoon)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(National_Lampoon)
Lorne Michaels has purchased rights to the show and plans a Broadway production with a new cast. The production will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival and be a tribute to the late John Belushi. Christopher Guest will be the director. HBO will broadcast a video production after the Broadway run.
it covered the whole self extermination of feminims, the crazy as normal, and the po mo death worship.
which is funny if you know the symbolism put on them
after all, the peace sign is an inverted german life ruin, meaning DEATH
One of these was the so-called “life rune” (from the German Lebensrune), also known as the Elhaz or Algis rune. Elhaz means “elk” and in early Europe this symbol had meanings related to stags or hunting, as well as honor, nobility, or protection
The Yr rune came to be seen as the “life rune” inverted and interpreted as “death rune” (Todesrune) During the World War II era, these two runes (ᛉ for “born”, ᛦ for “died”)
Funny how a anti military anti war all peace guy tells the story of the peace sign and so on is from a military communiation standard
but all it is is a life rune in a circle inverted… meaning DEATH
and just as hayes tilden leaves out the women voting (19 states) before the amendments and black voting too… and how the dems murdered them in nyc and so on..
similarly, like the gun that staerted kent state, the lefts story leaves out the trtuh in favor of some naturalized concept that should be the realty they want created from the history they faked
Holtom’s design did represent an individual in pursuit of the cause, albeit in an abstract way. The symbol showed the semaphore for the letters N (both flags held down and angled out from the body) and D (one flag pointing up, the other pointing down), standing for Nuclear Disarmament. But some years later in 1973, when Holtom wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News at the time of the formation of the DAC, the designer gave a different explanation of how he had created the symbol.
yeah.. which is why a peacenick who never served in the military would know cemaphore?
and what was the truth? like kim Phuc, its the truth of the maker
war is peace, nuclear weapons are peace keepers, etc
but instantly the forces that be saw the joke in the image just as a liger is a lion and a tiger, and a progressive promotes regression, and communitarian is communist totalitarian.. this inverted ruin symbolizing the idiocy and the death march of the left to their own doom (and eventual replacements!)…
That’s odd in a way. The first version I heard or think that I heard, on AM radio no doubt, was the Matthew’s Southern Comfort version, which was vaguely spacey or Aquarian sounding or whatever you want to call it.
What surprises me is that in looking it up, it appears to be a 1970 release, just as was The Crosby Stills Nash and Young version which my teenaged cousin soon demanded I admire.
I’m sure they were playing still playing both versions on radio half a dozen years later.
But and to echo the comments of many others here, it was in large measure the self-regarding, hell call it what it was, that self-fellating generational egotism of the purveyors of the counter culture that was so bloody off-putting.
These people seemed to think that after finishing 8th grade, they sprang anew from the breast of some hippie Zeus; born with all useful knowledge already in their heads. That insane confidence in a belief system they could not themselves coherently describe, is part of what made them as socially successful as they were, and as morally dangerous as it almost immediately became clear they were to become.
Now they are a bunch of sagging, droopy faced, liver-diseased, scramble brained narcissists, for whom it is impossible to feel much, if any pity or sympathy.
But man, did Grace Slick look way beyond – I mean wow, grrrrr!!!! – on stage that morning if the videos are any indication. Still, I wouldn’t have actually wanted to touch her … given her reputation.
he is one of those villians we repeat over and over and over again in ou rmovies.. but sadly, you dont know him, dont know willi munzenberg, and all the people who set things up to happen…
which very sadly makes a lot of the discussion here mostly fantasy.. because it seeks to fill in spaces of missing history and people with the common story it claims to fight against, and instead, supports thelie through lazy.. sorry, but i keep repeating names i never hear and they are KEY to your life now, and you dont wonder why you dont know them?
as i point out, we have left out hte history that connected engels and marx to hitlers world storm, shoa, holocaust… we scrubbed hiostory of the men and women who set that up..
now, we are repeating things and you have no virgil to show you the way thorugh the hell you forgot or never knew
given historical examples: good luck with that…
Revolt Against the Modern World
The first part of the book deals with the concepts of the Traditional world; its knowledge of the bridge between the earthly and the transcendent worlds. The second part deals with the modern world, contrasting its characteristics with those of traditional societies: from politics and institutions to views on life and death. Evola denounces the regressive aspects of modern civilisation (using Tradition as a normative principle).
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mircea Eliade
Eliade’s articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his Itinerar spiritual (“Spiritual Itinerary”, serialized in Cuvé¢ntul in 1927), center on several political ideals advocated by the far right.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution (perceived as “an abstract apology of Mankind” and “ape-like imitation of [Western] Europe”), as well as for democracy itself (accusing it of “managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance”,[41] and later praising Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, “[in Italy,] he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times”).
here is a bonus..
why did hitler take up the swastika?
a sun sign of peace and so on?
here is why…
and until i hear people mention these people, this history and so on, whnich they can look up, i will assume that they are ignorant and not lying by omission.. (not much squeek room, either you dont know, or you know and stay silent)
In The Doctrine of Awakening, Evola argued that the PÄli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism.
just as the 1968 time set the stage for 30-70 years later
these are the people that set the stage in 1848 that would later be picked up by hitler, and stalin and others..
in fact, i even pointed out to their first love of egyption, followed by their moving to rome, then to china as a model.
duh..
but its like 1849-1930 is erased periods…
and now their anti history post bellum stuff is also doing more
they are erasing the history of the foundation of your beliefs and your ltting them… once complete you will be unmoored from the past, and lost without direction.. (which was what evolva said in the first book!!)
you guys need to know the history you dont know
LOL
There was some movie I saw years ago on late night TV, probably after coming home half-lit after a night out, which had a scene like that in it: (Zabriskie Point, or Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, or maybe none of the above) in which the protagonist encounters a bunch of back to the land commune types just living the dream. One scene I recall has Grizzly Adams (whoever it was that played him) sauntering down an ill prepared field and serenely, joyfully even, broadcasting seeds on what might as well have been pulverized concrete.
But you know, it’s the thought that counts. Or visual sentiment in this case.
i have already said too much to be paid attention to
so here is a list of names one should know
dont get angry or what not at me if you dont
not my circus, not my monkeys
Metaphysics of War, Evola
Why the left thinks conservatives are nazis..
Conservative Revolutionary Ernst Jé¼nger
The Conservative Revolutionary movement (German: Konservative Revolution) was a German national conservative movement, prominent in the years following the First World War. The Conservative Revolutionary school of thought advocated a new conservatism and nationalism that was specifically German, or Prussian in particular. Like other conservative movements in the same period, they sought to put a stop to the rising tide of liberalism and communism.
Outraged by liberalism and egalitarianism, and rejecting the commercial culture of industrial and urban civilization, they advocated the destruction of the liberal order, by revolutionary means if necessary, in order to make way for the establishment of a new order, founded on conservative principles. The movement had a wide influence among many of Germany’s most gifted youth, universities, and middle classes.
The term “Conservative Revolution” predates the First World War
yeah. from that period i keep bringing up and getting yelled at for
the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the political theorist Edgar Julius Jung were instrumental in making this term an established concept of the Weimar period. Thomas Mann used the term to describe Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophy greatly influenced many of the thinkers associated with the movement
the ground work that would become something else!!!
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck was the dominant figure of the conservative revolution in the Weimar republic
[and both communism and fascism was to crush it, then figure out after who owned what… ]
here is the source that conservativism is nazism…
they know this, i know this, and others do
but you wont get thanks for showing the rubes
they rubes care more about ego than knowing…
they are never thankful to hear what they missed
NEVER
well Schmitt got his ideas from engels magyar struggle that detailed this stuff above as they thought they would fulfi8ll these ideas… just as huxley was telling the plots of his brother and communists…
The Conservative Revolutionaries held an ambivalent view of the Nazis
-=-=-=-=-
After 1933 some of the proponents of the conservative revolutionary movement were persecuted by the Nazis, most notably by the SS of Heinrich Himmler, who wanted to prevent reactionaries from opposing or deviating from the Hitler regime in this early time. Jung would lose his life in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and this would for many Conservative Revolutionaries end the alliance between them and the Nazis. Rauschning came “to the bitter conclusion that the Nazi regime represented anything other than the longed-for German revolution” and his position was “generally typically of the majority” of Conservative Revolutionaries.
yes, these were the people from before hitler raised up, had later plotted his end in the wolfs lair… and not one mention in archagel… think on that people..
why dont you know this history? why doesnt it change what youy say
who left it out? why was it left out? why did Zinn not want you to read it?
you saw gangs of ny, why did they scrub it
women could vote in 19 states before the amendment!!
you know about the wolfs lair attack, but not about the revolutionary conservatives who never were with hitler?
tons of stuff like this
and if you know the truth and history
people are often discussing a history that enver happened!!
how can a history that never happened be so well known?
I recently attended a community music and crafts street festival that tagged itself the “summer of love” festival. The final act was Big Brother and the Holding Company. I’m guessing that they had 3 of the original 5 band members, and they announced that it had been 50 years since they performed at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival debuting Janis Joplin.
Two things surprised me a bit about their performance. Their one big hit album was with Joplin and was entitled Cheap Thrills. The first surprise was that they brought a female vocalist that was a Joplin replacement, and the second surprise is that they just performed all of the Cheap Thrills tunes.
In a film bio of David Bowie, he said at one point in his life that he was proud that he had about 35 successful original tunes he could pull from on tour, but he was envious of someone like Dylan who had well over 100. Bowie said that there were about 15 tunes that he either hated or hated to perform, so that there were only about 20 that he enjoyed to perform.
So the Janis Joplin replacement was no Joplin, but the music was decent as they ticked off the Cheap Thrills songs. I got up to leave before they finished their set in order the beat the crowd, and when I was a block away I heard the sultry lead guitar melody that made me run back. It was their rendition of Gershwin’s Summertime from the opera Porgy and Bess.
When I got home I searched Summertime on Vevo and found the audio only track from the Cheap Thrills album plus a live performance by Annie Lennox which I’d guess is close to the original composition. Joplin’s performance is so amazing and it is surprising that parts of the song almost sound like a metal band. It really was a time of great musical creativity. Which is not to say that there weren’t other historical periods of great musical creativity.
After reading the quote above, I started sweating and had to check. Whew. Tank goudness I rote dis below before I red dat above,
There must be something in the air. So ya say ya want a revolution …?
TommyJay Says:
August 28th, 2017 at 1:18 pm
When I got home I searched Summertime on Vevo and found …”
Just for the heck of it, check out – if you have not already – rock guitarist Dave Edmunds and Love Sculpture’s version of Summertime. It’s on Youtube. Only gets going about half way through
He was 19? … I think
“If you ever wonder why the sixties cultural revolution was necessary, listen to a hit album by the Ray Conniff Singers, watch a Bob Hope variety special from NBC, try on a pair of Sansabelt polyester slacks, or choke down a Wonder Bread sandwich made with Welch’s grape jelly and Skippy creamy peanut butter spread. The hippies had a point.” Aug 21, 2017 By Andrew Ferguso
Not if you had more important things on your mind. This is a kind of superior virtue signaling.
You’re a loser if you like Ray Conniff, or Bob Hope. PB&J is for nourishment, not enjoyment. Wonderbread had lots of more substantial companions.
Sansabelt….so don’t buy them.
Sheesh.
Problem was, The Man expected you to show up for work, as scheduled and not stoned. And if something was wrong, in your opinion, it must be fixed or society was evil.
Well, the comment was probably hyperbolic and not entirely serious I think. Though he was also I think trying to point to a certain kind of rigidity and stultification in the mainstream culture of the time.
You make a valid point as well; and I see no reason why some of the ritualistic rigidity could not have been dispensed with, without the accompanying moral anarchy and culturally suicidal trajectory.
As for myself, as a kid I liked seeing Bob Hope on TV.
My guess, stated here before, is that many things such as Vista Vision movie Westerns, the Jazz and Bossa Nova crazes, motorcycles, family camping, and even Country Music, were all attempts by people to broaden out or escape a little from a popular culture that had somehow been kind of corseted too tightly.
Having made something of a project in mining older movies and TV shows for elderly parents, I have noticed that even in films which were not intended to carry any social criticism freight, a parody worthy cultural sensibility was there for all to see.
It is most noticeable in the lower grade of romantic comedies and bedroom farces, wherein the farce was supposed to be found the situation, not the farcical coolness or values of the protagonists.
Think “Sunday in New York” or “Goodbye Charlie” or “I’d Rather be Rich” type stuff … 5 minutes in you want to puke your guts out.
physicsguy
One good thing : a generation of superb musicians. But generally musicians are not to be trusted with running the world.
I cringe when I listen to CSNY’s Chicago. What a bunch of self-righteous fools! Was I THAT bad when I was young?
But John Lennon’s Imagine was about as bad.
Disclaimer: instead of going to Chicago, I hitched to California. I heard about Chicago just after getting back from a wonderful hike in the Sierras.
I wasn’t at Woodstock, as I was 3000 miles away in Berserkeley. I did go to Altamont, though.
A classmate of mine went to Woodstock. She was depressed by the mess, and ended up drawing feet. She ended up as a enough of an artist to have some New York gallery shows.
physicsguy; Gringo:
See this.
Then there’s Thomas Jefferson.
Here’s another list (ignore the political judgements, it’s the list that counts).
Not to mention these.
DNW. I suppose I was being hyperbolic, but the situation demanded it. The point is, if you didn’t like what the writer didn’t like, or wanted us to think he was too cool to like, you did something else and thought about something else. Hence “Sheesh”.
It’s not as if there’s no popular culture today that is annoying. Not as if there’s no snob competition in grocery and restaurant choices.
I never got the “garden” thing because, like most of my age, we knew it was only possible because, like Kindergarten, the grownups were taking care of things including, as our fathers had, holding the perimeter. You had to be a particular kind of naive to think that having good thoughts and righteous music would keep the bad guys away. It was so bad that the guys keeping the bad guys away became the bad guys because they validated the idea that there were really bad guys which invalidated the idea that bad guys could be wished away.