Remember Jefferson Airplane? (If you don't, don't tell me!)
I was listening to an interview with Gracie Slick and Paul Kantner and he said something that has me thinking. It's something I've thought of before and it crystalized what the Sixties and all they entailed, with the music, clothes, dropping acid and smoking pot, did to America.
Paul Kantner was speaking about when The Doors opened for the Airplane on tour. I'm paraphrasing here, but you'll get the idea:
"One summer we were playing in Kansas and the college kids came in prom clothes...dresses and neckties....the next summer we came and they were dropping acid, having sex in the seats and wearing tie dye."
What happened? I liked the Jefferson Airplane and The Doors as much as the next person.....But, did groups like them do THAT much damage? Was it the musician lifestyle of drugs and free sex preaching to teens or was the music reflecting the behavior of teens? If kids changed in a YEAR, HOW DID IT HAPPEN? And WHY?
How'd we go from:
I said Hello Mary Lou
Goodbye heart,
Sweet Mary Lou
I'm so in love with you.....
I knew Mary Lou
We'd never part....
So Hello Mary Lou
Goodbye heart.....
to:
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all.
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.
z
39 comments:
I think the sixties were a perfect storm moment. The country was ripe for a political upheaval and it happened in spades. The spoiled kids of the greatest generation took the opportunity to rebel against their parents and the values that were instilled in them. The unfortunate byproduct of that rebellion was the trashing of the foundation of America and the mores leading to a near collapse in 1968. The assassinations of RFK and MLK and the war at the 1968 Dem Convention in Chicago stand as stark reminders of the turmoil of that decade. The shameful manner in which the veterans of the Vietnam War were reviled by their countrymen upon their return shamed us all.
That ungrateful generation succeeded in causing a degeneration of American values that we haven't recovered from yet today. The legacy of the sixties generation is being lived today through our children who are without a doubt the most ill-informed, least educated generation in American history.
The spawn of our generation politically is BO, who is arrogant, self-centered and messianic. Our citizens are unable to differentiate between intellectual depth and American Idol flash. Our MSM and institutions of higher learning are dominated by people who think that the sixties were a great time in our history and changed the country for the better. Most are still living in the past and feel they were part of something great. How shameful that someone would think that the carnage wreaked upon our country in the sixties was a good thing. It is even more frightening that these people are in positions of power and they used that power to foist a president upon us who is a perfect product of the sixties generation.
Even more shameful, this generation has churned out a generation of illiterate children who are certainly ill-equipped to take their place in the world and are being outperformed academically by most countries for the first time in our history.
We have reaped what we have sown. Hopefully, we don't witness the destruction of America as a result of the wreckage of the sixties.
If there is an upside we did have very good music. The Beatles, The Band, etc. were excellent. I guess even the worst of times has some merit. Quite a legacy right? If our generation condemned the country to mediocrity, at least we could sing well.
These are just some thoughts off the top of my head, however it grows late. I will give it some thought as I'm not done yet with the sixties and the harm it has caused our country. I don't want to fall asleep in church. My mother would be very upset. Good Sunday to all. God bless.
Great comment, L&O..thanks So much for coming by...
WHY were the Sixties THE PERFECT STORM? WHY?? That's what I'd like to know.
Something HAPPENED...I believe it started in our schools....With Dewey and all he stood for and snuck in..with the Frankfurt School, etc...
Nice people living nice, decent lives....from neckties to tiedyes (hey, I'd like the poetry of that if I didn't hate the sentiment)..WHY?
Because the parents started leaving the moral teaching to the schools and the churches, we became so tolerant that we lost our national soul.
The males(I won't call them young men)were afraid to go to war and MAYBE be killed or maimed, all decency and morality were deliberately tossed(along with G*D) out the door, so there were no spiritual underpinnings to the country or the people.
As L&O said, they were a generation of spoiled brats, who didn't have to do much of anything to get what they wanted.
Dr. Spock discouraged discipline and the nea discouraged truth...
And this is what we have as a result!
tmw
I think you can best understand what happened to America in the sixties through the controversy surrounding Bob Dylan going "electric". That was a day when America's red diaper babies joined their pampered and spoiled suburban Barry Goldwater girl Republican counterparts in a rebellion against reality in pursuit of the "pleasure principle".
The "counter-culture" then began to do what counter-cultures do, break down societal standards; and so we all began to "revel" in the "authenticity" of a decadent regression towards living by the rules established by the reptilian Id. We immediately went half way there (leaning towards Eros) in the sixties, and we're on track towards devolving the rest of the way (leaning towards Thanatos) as soon as what's left of the religious right is seduced out of their traditional institution of marriage and their concept of the traditional nuclear family.
June 25th, 1962 prayer was taken out of public school. That was the beginning as the country made a decisive choice to turn away from our roots.
The intellectuals got us into this mess, forcing us to rely upon them to get us out. It makes them feel "important".
FJ..intellectuals won't 'get us out' until THEY see there's a problem..
I don't know either, but I'm sure the seeds were sown earlier. I can't remember the title of a book I found, an analysis of the intellectual climate of the fifties that purported to show that it set the scene for the 60s. It all came from radical professors on the campuses. I know that when I was at UCLA in '60 and '61 girls wore skirts to class, and when I went to Berkeley in '62 I dressed up with heels and the works for the trip, but within weeks my style had completely changed. Strictly a superficial change of course, but now I was dressing like a folk singer in sandals and wearing my hair long and straight, with a Beatnik theme of black turtlenecks and tights and no lipstick. The Beatnik era was just fading out and very soon after that it was all hippies and psychedelica and we've all worn jeans ever since.
I wasn't part of the political and cultural changes except superficially as well. The politics mostly depressed me but it took me years to understand why. I smoked pot when it was passed at gatherings, dropped acid three times in a controlled way with friends -- the third time was so scary I wouldn't touch the stuff again.
I liked the music but never went to a concert, although the Jefferson Airplane was in San Francisco in those days.
Problem? What problem? If you've got a problem, more money for education is the obvious solution!
I like the music line in "Go Ask Alice."
I think that the age of the listener matters. I was immune to all the drug crap -- too old to get that messed up, I think.
Great question, but too complicated to analyze properly in a brief comment, but if I had to boil it down to just a few words it would be spoiled brat kids who weren't taught proper morals.
Z- Could it be that the"perfect storm" was brewing long before the Sixties? Darwin published the "Origin of Species" in 1859 - and by 1925, the ACLU was already looking for teachers to challenge Divine Creation! Enter Scope's Monkey Trial. Ironically, Scopes published a book in the Sixties entitled, "Center of the Storm." An admission of blame for perfecting the conditions of that perfect storm, perhaps ;)
My children are being taught (in school) about the origin of religions such as Hindu, Muslim and Buddhism - but they are not permitted to learn about Christianity (because teaching Christian values is unconstitutional).
Sure, 'the Sixties' was a transitional decade of sex, drugs and rock and roll - but these things might not have become such a threat or a temptation if God was not first banished from the classroom. In my mind - music has always been a reflection of changing times - not the catalyst ;)
This stuff keeps psychologists and sociologists off the unemployment list. The 60’s generation followed those who suffered so tremendously during World War II . . . and the point is that it wasn’t merely a tough time for the GIs in the trenches; it was a time of uncertainty all across the social spectrum. Remember those ladies who worked in the defense factories? A lot of them were mothers. They left their children in parked cars in the factory parking lots, and in some cases, they just left them at home with pertinent instructions. During this time, available records reflect a substantial increase in juvenile delinquency. It is why movie theaters provided matinee films; it gave kids a place to go while Dad was overseas fighting and dying, and Mom was working in the airplane factory.
And painfully, Mom wasn’t always the devoted wife and parent, either. None of this was new in 1941. We’ve all seen the Bowery Boys films. The gangs were nativist, anti-Catholic, and largely anti-Irish in New York. Judging from these films, juvenile delinquency didn’t suddenly pop-up, but it did expand tremendously for reasons described above.
Don’t forget too that these “Hippy” kids were spoiled rotten by parents who wanted them to have a better life than they had as kids (Great Depression); in the post-war period, from a relative point of view, people were making serious money. Tommy’s Dad was quick to buy him his first car that he never appreciated or even respected. Both Tommy and Tammy could hardly wait to get to college so they could release their raging libido out of sight of their parents, and once they arrived on campus, they realized there was a lot more “out there” than philosophy or business administration.
I think L&O did a good job summarizing the events, but it is also interesting to note that this wasn’t only an American aberration. European children also rebelled, only about ten years later.
I was married and had two little children in the 60's. We were married in 1957, right out of HS, and had our first child a year later.
I've always thought of myself and my peers of that time, as "tweeners". Between the greatest generation and the baby boomers. A small group, compared to the "boomers", and we melded into society rather quietly.
The mere size of the baby boom generation, had to have a big impact on society. Their penchant for rebellion on a large scale overwhelmed the landscape, so to speak. No melding for them. I think a "perfect storm" analogy is accurate.
This was a time also of Dr. Spock and a more permissive method of child rearing. Couple that with a thriving economy, parents indulged their children more than any that had come before.
I will say, my parents didn't buy into that, (Dr. Spock or indulgence) and for that matter neither did we with our children. My sister who is six years younger than I maintained our traditional values.
Many then, like Mr. Pris and I married young and began families young.
Looking back,the fifties were pretty innocent and calm. There were no drugs all over the place. I never knew anyone as a teen that used drugs. Drag racing and drive-ins were in fashion, and all of us had curfews.
However, contrary to popular belief, we discussed contemporary issues like segregation, and I know I was excited when I became 21and could vote.
What upsets me more than anything are the folks today, still stuck in the sixties, as if time has stood still.
Dr. Spock, not long before he died, disowned his own child rearing theories. Gee thanks Doc, a little late!
Pris
No one would like to hear what I think about this, because it might insult cultural phenomena most Americans of a certain age are fond of simply because it evokes the aura of their youth --- and which one of us would not like to recapture the energy, optimism, enthusiasm and confidence we had forty or fifty years ago?
I made this up a very long time ago, but I still think it summarizes what went wrong and who was responsible for it pretty well:
CAPSULE HISTORY
Plato and Socrates ---
Also Hippocrates ---
Really gave Civilization
A boost.
Then the cruel Romans
False Christians, some Germans,
Marx, Freud and Split Atoms
It's prospects reduced.
~ FT (c. 1968)
The intellectual aggression of Marx, Freud, Hollywood and the Rock 'n Roll Industry spawned the cultural degeneracy that overtook us in the Sick-sties.
If you really look carefully at some of your favorite old movies and pop music you would see that much of it was a Siren Song urging you and everyone else to kick over the traces, reject Christ, reject Tradition and ALL forms of Authority and just go WILD.
And so we did! The price for that is extremely high, as most of us recognize today.
~ FreeThinke
The more I think about this the less I think it is about any particular characteristic of the youth of the day than about the ideas that were generated in academe, where the movers and shakers of that generation were formed. The politicos as we called them were predominantly Jewish kids who had been "red diaper babies," that is, raised by the first generation of American Communists. If you've read David Horowitz's "Radical Son" you know the story. The universities were teaching radical agendas of all sorts. In fact even in high school we were getting some liberal-to-radical teachers from time to time. The stupidity of religion was a big theme. McCarthy was ridiculed, the Scopes Trial was lionized. The Beatniks already had a romanticized image that only got elaborated on by the hippies and the likes of Tim Leary who went to teach in Berkeley from Harvard in the late 50s.
So I'm agreeing with Miradena basically.
The book I was trying to remember was "Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist," by Alston Chase (I just looked it up at Amazon). It was probably a review of it I read that intrigued me so much as I have not read the book. The idea I got somehow in connection with that book is that fifties academia had already subjected society to every kind of intellectual attack and the students that came along in the 60s merely put it into action. This particular analysis may leave something to be desired, but I think that's the direction to go for an explanation.
Seems to me to be a combination of the kids and the music.
I'll never believe kids changed THIS quickly from prom dresses to tie dye (as Kantner describes) without a lot of help from the musicians who'd already gone screwy. We all know it's the artists who are at the forefront of a lot of so-called progressive things. Not always good things.
Like today; I don't believe art follows life anymore...I know NOBODY who lives like a Desperate Housewife, I know very few people with gays in their neighborhoods though almost every sitcom apparently has a gay in it, I know no one who still swings (I did know people in the seventies) but there's a very popular show about the advantages of swinging to a couple!..etc etc. NO WAY.
So..we had Dewey and all he brought to our school system, we had Dr. Spock and the horrors he inflicted on child rearing, we had kids whose parents felt they needed to give them better than their folks had been able to give to them,thereby spoiling them to the point where, today, we have kids giving the finger to their parents........All of this was a recipe for disaster.
Could it have been avoided? Some of you say it happens in Europe, too, but not as big time as here. TRUST me. They like what WE have here, and they copied, mostly....it didn't last long. They have VERY weirded out Green party NUTS there, big time hippies, trust me, but they mostly are still pretty decent, family-oriented people. Obviously, we still have plenty of that, too...but, the Sixties as Kantner described, and you're all doing so well, too, were special to HERE, to America.
Germany still has crosses on the walls in their S. German(Bavarian) public schools...THey tell us here the French are Godless but their churches are quite full (I was there, I know)...
How much of the getting rid of School prayer, like Papa Franks suggests, had an influence our society?
Yes, I KNOW...some will say "Better to have free love and hippies than that hellfire and brimstone crap you Christians favor!"
First of all..who the heck favors that (I'm tired of hearing that kind of implication)..and secondly...in the best of faith (and I'd include Jews here...are YOU not impressed to see young Jewish boys walking to temple on Saturday with their families, Yamulkas, nice suits...I love to see that), isn't that BETTER? Don't we ASPIRE to doing better WITH GOD IN OUR LIVES? And, No, I AM NOT suggesting atheists are promiscious heathens, trust me..so please, don't even bother..!!
Does Faith make things better? Could we have avoided some of the Sixties extremism if we hadn't begun to besmirch faith ?? I'm not sure..just asking.. sort of Virginia Wolfe stream of consciousness happening here.obviously!!
I also agree with FT about the influence of HOllywood and pop culture.
FT's post: a lot to be said for it.
CJ: I went to elementary school, etc., in the late fifties..never saw indoctrination in high school or college..never.. I was taught to LOVE this country. While I blame professors of TODAY and the last twenty years a LOT for the mess we have today, I'm just not still sure why kids so suddenly went bonkers.
I think what everyone has said is basically correct. My point was that the roots of rebellion and degeneration go far back to ancient times.
In a way it could be argued that what we see today is the product of a long series CHAIN REACTIONS.
Complete devotion to God through Christ could --- and has --- stopped that vicious progression in the lives of many individuals, but Christianity has been misused and deliberately misinterpreted by those who seek temporal (political) Power of Life and Death over their "subjects" rather than the Salvation that comes with purification of one's thoughts and aspirations through prayer, introspection and devotion to the Christ Ideal.
Because of this historic perversion, misuse and willful misinterpretation of Christian doctrine, the enemies of Good (God) have been able to gain a lot of ground.
~ FT
PS: I think too that it's possible we tend to ARGUE too much and PRAY too little.
Let's not forget the huge amount of government money that was poured into the Manhattan Project, and subsequent university research budgets and expanding university enrollments after the "Sputnik" surprise and the start of the space race. The universities couldn't hire degreed professors fast enough... and couldn't find enough smart kids to fill classroom seats, either.
I love where this conversation has gone. Well, Z, you got your wish. I have continued my thoughts by thinking about my youth and talking to my mother about my childhood.
I consider myself to be a child of the 60s, chronilogically but not culturally. Why did I miss the hippie thing? My best friend in high school once told me that his greatest ambition was to be a hippie. This was in high school.
The Vietnam War was hot and heavy and we were confronted with the draft. Our choice was go to college or risk the draft. My mother told me that going to college on their dime was out of the question; we didn't have money. So I enlisted and went onto the war. I followed in my grandfather's, and father's footsteps. My mother was worried but she understood. My point with this march down memory lane is that historically (sorry, I'm a history teacher) revolutionaries have come not from the lower classes among society, but from the middle classes.
Our revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, were all hatched in the middle, educated classes. They may have been fought by the lower classes, but they were conceived in the educated, middle classes. Hence, my point about the spoiled, ungrateful sixties "revolutionaries."
The sixties were particularly galling because the ramifications have trickled down to this day. We are feeling the pain now and will for at least the next generation. I hope my children will do a better job of raising their children than our generation did.
I tried to instill in my children the same values my parents instilled in me. They have done well so far. Let's see how their children do.
Who knows when the subversion started.
Even the cartoon Popeye the Sailor Man is a caricature of the 1930s port jazz scene, stuffing spinach (jazz slang for marijuana) into a pipe and becoming superhumanly strong [marijuana was obviously more potent back then, heh]
I asked my dad if he was a hippie in the 1960s and he say "No, my parents were poor." I suppose it's about the same these days. Most people have absolutely nothing to do with the prevailing cultural trappings that define our times by the top 40 music charts.
But then you have to explain how the Beatles generation gave us New Kids on the Block.
From what I got from Shelby Steele's White Guilt, many of the racial injustices of America's past were widely recognized during the 60s. The younger generation of the time considered this an indictment of their parents' moral authority, and more or less, flouted the morals of their parents. Essentially, the children of the 60s used the sins of their ancestors as an excuse to get rid of their moral code--kind of a getting rid of the baby with the bath water type of thing. And that, my friends, is the best I can do at reducing an extremely complex issue to a single paragraph.
--Tio Bowser
Papa Frank beat me to my answer. For what it's worth we had guest at our Thanksgiving dinner that served in Vietnam and others that protested the war. They agree that Obama is not the solution to our country's problems.
"Remember Jefferson Airplane? (If you don't, don't tell me!)" I saw Jefferson Airplane in Kansas City in the winter of 68/69. Great concert.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
I didn't call it "indoctrination" Z, and that's not what it was. It was merely "cutting edge" education that tends to be critical of the status quo by nature, because people want to be "cool" and "hip." Communism was "avant garde," excitingly "progressive" and so on. Biology is taught with evolutionist ideas, undermining theism, Anthropology is taught as if all cultures are equal and criticizing "ethnocentrism" that puts western civilization above others, undermining western civilization, Sociology questions every idea promoted by the culture, Psychology makes traditional morality and child raising seem abusive, and so on and so forth. Alston Chase's book apparently shows that the Unabomber learned at Harvard the ecological ideology that rejects technology as a great evil, more evil than murdering people who don't agree. Etc.
But I did personally as a matter of fact experience anti-McCarthyism and anti religion in high school, in fact in Santa Monica High School.
Cultural Marxism (Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Bela Kuhn, et al) actively sowed the seeds of the deeply regrettable things that have happened. Their idea was to SUBVERT and DESTROY the traditional Christian culture that had made and dominated the West. I believe their motive was sheer spite, because what they advocated was as harmful to themselves as it was to the society they wised to ruin.
They used the power of SEDUCTION to unleash and legitimize the basest instincts that are part of human nature.
Because of the so-called Critical Theory these people propounded (basically a loud, defiant rejection, incessant lament and constant complaint about all the cultural and religious norms that once held us together) our ideas of Right and Wrong eventually were turned upside down, inside out and backwards.
I see Rock 'n Roll as a very strong SYMPTOM of the disease with which the Cultural Marxists infected us --- subtly at first by taking full, free and perverse advantage of "academic freedom" and the "first amendment."
Later they came to dominate the law schools and permeate the courts.
Once the youth and the unthinking, sensation-hungry masses became infected, the disease grew to epidemic proportions.
One of the most demonic characteristics of the disease is that most of those afflicted vainly imagine they've been "LIBERATED," and a bizarre sense of self-righteous EUPHORIA overcomes modesty, prudence, decency and restraint while becoming a demented substitute for CONSCIENCE.
The Marxists were fiendishly clever in linking their evil intent to RIGHTEOUS causes --- i.e. the plight of miners, migrant workers and factory workers, women's suffrage, civil rights for Negroes, the degraded coindition of "Native Americans," the fight for non-discrimination against homosexuals in jobs and housing, and the grievances --- some real, some imagined --- of every other unpopular minority you can think of.
By cloaking Rebellion and Disrespect for Parents, Religion, Tradition, Self-Discipline and all forms of Authority in the garb of RIGHTEOUSNESS, the fiends eventually got a lock on the prevailing mentality, and thus undermined the foundations of the rather wonderful world our ancestors built for us.
Most will not recognize it, because it is a FAMILIAR part of their background, and therefore acceptable, but in my view the sound of Rock and all its derivatives is the Voice of Doom for Western Civilization.
What a neat trick to be able to seduce several generations of White Western Youth into embracing the destruction of their society as if it were a good and necessary thing --- and FUN to boot!
The Devil is, indeed, an incredibly clever fellow.
If this sounds too, extreme, please remember the extraordinary degree of coarseness, vulgarity, immorality and degeneracy that has overtaken us in a few short decades. It didn't happen by ACCIDENT, of that I'm sure.
~ FreeThinke
Well, a lot of you talk about our schools....one or another kind of influence from 'them'.
I guess "they" are the socialists, Marxists, Frankfurt School, etc., like FT and some of you others have mentioned.
Any hope we can rid ourselves of this?
Seems like our kids were SO ripe for the 'new thinking'...doesn't it? It really did happen very suddenly as far as I can tell, as Paul Kantner said in my blog post....
Tio...Shelby's good; very interesting point for him to make; that the injustices to Blacks in America gave kids an excuse to indict their parents..but WHY did they WANT TO? I adore my folks...I never sought to downplay their importance, disrespect them, make them look like blithering fools. I mean, we had our differences, we're human!, but to jump on the chance to insult and degrade all that they hold dear? WHY?
WHY?
I just got this email from a friend:
"Get the package just right and uninformed people will buy just about anything. They won't realize what they bought until it's too late...
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US,
Norman Thomas , said this in a 1944 speech:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party.....the Democrat Party has adopted our platform." And this was in 1944!"
Maybe, the kids in the Sixties, wouldn't have knowingly adopted anarchy or a weakening of American dignity and traditional values, but like FT here said, it's beguiling ,it's seductive, to be hear new terms for old tenets, like CJ said, and adapt them as truth.
Bums who don't work and are even criminals were suddenly called HOMELESS
an abortion became A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO HER OWN BODY
People who illegally broke into our country and take from us in many ways are not ILLEGALS, they're IMMIGRANTS, UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS!
etc., etc........I can't think of others, but there are plenty of ways of saying things which takes away the truth, let's face it...
Anyway, we're getting away from the original topic, sort of.....
I guess the next question is:
CAN WE FIX IT?
Why?
1067 (1885)
And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my "beyond good and evil," without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself--do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?-- This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!
The music? I remember when Coltrane went modal. I remember hearing Eliot Carter and John Cage for the first time.
Got tuned into black music for the first time.
Vanguard released that trilogy "Chicago: The Blues Today". Junior Wells, James Cotton wailing on "Rocket 88". Muddy Waters and cats like that started going on tour.
Lot of country groups got into the mainstream. The Beatles brought in Indian classical music and the world music scene started.
We lived near Cambridge and the first "art house" opened in the Brattle theater. Godard, Kurasowa, Bergman, Antonioni ... I got the idea(correctly) the American film industry was producing junk.
Art exploded. Abstract expressionism, pop, minimalism.
Civil rights movement, women's movement, Stonewall riots.
Whole world looked ready to go up in '68. Damn my world got big but I have to say American pop music wasn't a big part of it.
Life got large.
"My world got large."
A perfect example of all many of us have said.
A perfect example of someone who was successfully condition to see tragedy as triumph. Perversion and nihilism as virtue.
Someone whose name, unfortunately, has become LEGION.
~ FT
Perversion and nihilism? Where, FT?
Listening to Coltrane on "A Love Supreme" trying to find God? Wasn't anything perverted about that. Wasn't anything perverted about the changes I saw in the 60's but then I didn't do drugs much (I did do weed like three times or maybe it was five).
I'd say the conservative Christian America that expects all things to bend to their dogma is a good deal more close minded and unaware ... and ultimately dangerous.
How did the big change in music come along at that time? Pop music with some exceptions was pretty sappy up until Elvis. I believe Elvis got his musical ideas from black musical culture, and once his style was accepted rock n roll took off practically overnight. His success is probably partly responsible for bringing black music and jazz more mainstream. About that time folk music was getting big too -- a Beatnik influence there? And some of that came out of the Communist movement -- Pete Seeger's for instance. Peter Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez etc. came in on that wave. Drugs were part of that scene and the black music scene, so, along with coded sex themes became subject matter for the rock music that followed? All these new themes coming into the mainstream about the same time generated an emphasis on originality and breaking with musical traditions. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones did their own variations on the American themes and so it went. Something like that?
Something that developed in such an organic way can't be turned back. That's probably true of the ideological shift too. What can be done? All I ever think of is the need for bringing conservative ideas and American history more into public knowledge. Avoiding as much as possible the tendency to euphemize and whitewash which does easily creep into that effort (the cherry tree etc).
But as some seem to be hinting too, the churches let the culture down big time. Many joined in the liberal causes, and others just allowed themselves to be marginalized. A strong Christian voice is needed.
I listen to Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler on the weekends on Christian radio, which is a compilation of his daily talk shows during the week, and this weekend he spent time on two themes that are related to what we are talking about here. One was how Christianity has lost all the big universities that were originally founded to educate ministers -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and most of the others except the state universities. There are still icons of their previous status such as statues and streets, one named Divinity, on the campuses, but ideologically they are now all secular with a vengeance. Some of them were going liberal within a generation of their founding, Mohler said. Yale was founded because it was feared that Harvard was already going liberal -- this was before the American Revolution. How does this happen? he was asking. He pointed out that Emerson made one pivotal speech that undermined trinitarian Christian thought all by itself, but there were more influences than that. Once a liberal mindset, even Unitarianism and "transcendentalism", gets a foothold, the liberal trend simply goes on taking over. It's worth thinking about.
His other theme was how Christians should respond to the aggressive attacks against the success of Proposition 8 in California. He raised some important questions. It won't be long before Christians will be further marginalized by such aggressive attacks. What can we compromise about and where must conscience stand solid? All it takes is a few dedicated gay marriage supporters determined to disrupt and demonize the churches to put us on the defensive. How can we possibly recover enough to have any influence at all on this ideological shift in the culture if we're under attack?
So many things going on, the music, the culture, the politics, civil rights, Vietnam. Most of it was discussed and ideologized in the universities but it's hard to pin down one defining theme, isn't it? I am sure, though, that the analysis that emphasizes spoiled-brat youth misses the point. The engine was ideas, not character, not that they aren't intertwined in various ways.
Sorry to write so much, but this is a big important theme and lots of ideas are coming out here.
I don't think you're writing too much, CJ. I think this has been an excellent thread, and I'm very glad Z gave all of us the opportunity to expand on these issues.
I think I may have hurt Ducky's feelings with my last post. I'm sorry about that. If he really was "searching for God," he shouldn't be faulted, even if I happen to think he may been searching all the wrong places.
As you know, I don't share the view that ALL liberalism is perforce opposed to God and thus inherently evil. God is immortal, immutable and invisible, but I believe He is also many-faceted and full of mystery and wonder we cannot hope to fathom in this life.
I do believe that the MALIGNANCY came into "liberalism" with the advent of Marx, whose influence has been wholly destructive for all the reasons we've discussed so often and know so well.
As far as the Rock and Protest Folk Music phenomenon is concerned, I believe it took hold and took off because those who control the flow of News and Information via our modern means of mass communication ---Books, Newspapers, Journals, Movies, Records, Radio --- and especially TV --- WANTED it to in order to serve their then-covert political agenda.
The American Public has no taste and few thoughts that have not been FED to it by these all-powerful engines of Mass Communication.
All this is to say that poor old ham-fisted Joe McCarthy was fundamentally correct in what he observed about the insidious influence of pop culture even as far back as 1953.
~ FreeThinke
FT..you're probably right..all the ENLIGHTENED COLLEGE GRADUATES IN JOURNALISM (cough, cough) probably gave a free pass to the immorality and debauchery that was the Sixties.....Never criticizing, never showing the other side....
good point
I think I may have hurt Ducky's feelings with my last post. I'm sorry about that. If he really was "searching for God," he shouldn't be faulted, even if I happen to think he may been searching all the wrong places.
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Ducky has made his bones. It's pretty tough to hurt his feelings.
I'm still not sure what passes for "pop culture" here. Even during the 60's rock wasn't all that big a seller on the music scene. Dylan didn't sell a lot of records.
I preferred the New Lost City Ramblers and I know for certain they didn't sell many but I don't know if they were "pop culture". They were part of my scene.
Want to hear "protest folk"? Check out Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers doing a thorough lampoon on Teddy Roosevelt on "White House Blues". Never mind Doc Boggs, he's too hard core for today's audience brought up on comparatively refined heavy metal.
Nothing new under the sun except the culture today is boring as a result of being marketed to bored stiff twenty something mall rats.
The American Public has no taste and few thoughts that have not been FED to it by these all-powerful engines of Mass Communication.
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Yup, how do you like your precious capitalist "free market"?
You assign culture to the market and you get one heck of a watered down least common denominator hunk of boredom, don't you?
To whom would "assign" culture, Ducky?
Did you see the Wellstone Funeral?
Did you see some of the DNC Fund-Raising parties and other D'Rat "Social Events" broadcast on C-Span during the Clinton Era?
And then did you see the Funeral of Ronald Reagan?
The public (and probably the private) behavior of the Clintonistas and other DNC enthusiasts comprised a virtual APOTHEOSIS of BAD TASTE RUN AMOK.
~ FreeThinke (an arch-conservative who worships Beethoven and most of the other composers of serious music, and who eschews modernism and post-modernism as wayward, aberrant and deleterious to the development of Civilization. Like Oscar Wilde, I take the position that "Whatever is popular is wrong.")
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