Forty Years Ago Today...
My Nation colleague and friend Jon Wiener remembers the release of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album exactly 40 years ago -- June 1, 1967.
So do I. For those of you who know L.A., you can picture me rushing out of my senior class at Fairfax High School and going across the street to Aron's Records, plunking down $3.29 for the LP.
I piled into my car, headed for my friend Jeff's house, and we laid on his floor grooving to each cut as we smoked some very good weed. And then we played it again. And again.
Wiener singles out A Day In The Life as the one song that best survives the last four decades and that most strongly embodies its moment of conception. I'm not sure if I agree with the first half of that equation. Earlier today, quite by circumstance and before I read Jon's piece, I found myself loading the entire Sgt. Pepper album onto my Nano Ipod. And I smiled contentedly as I sampled most of the cuts.
That said, of all the pieces on that LP, A Day In The Life does, indeed, best capture the feel of the times. Writes Wiener:
As the cut begins, "the curtain falls on Pepperland," Tim Riley wrote, "just as another is raised on the sobering stage of the real world." The opening line, "I read the news today, oh boy," is dense with meaning now, especially the way Lennon sings "oh boy," which sounds sad, vulnerable and puzzled...
The singer is reading the newspaper, about a man killed in a car accident, while "a crowd of people stood and stared." One death, in a summer when thousands were dying in Vietnam. In place of the big rich sound of the rest of the album, the instrumentation here is stark and simple: guitar, bass, piano and percussion.
Then we hear a dissonant orchestral cacaphony, and then an alarm clock goes off, and the bewildered and subdued John is replaced by the perky Paul, waking up and heading out, blissfully ignorant of the world's terrors.
Then we're back with Lennon--is this just a nightmare?
...Lennon's last line is "I'd love to turn you on. " But this isn't the happy turn-on of Ringo's "I get high with a little help from my friends"--it's more like turning on to escape a hopeless world, to get away from the nightmare of "a day in the life."
For those who are too young -- or too old-- to have intensely lived those days of 1967 it might be impossible to understand how the issuance of an album constituted in itself a real-time political cutural landmark. But back then it seemed that almost every day brimmed with significance -- enough so that their memories still burn brighter and clearer and seem much nearer than events of only 10 or 15 years ago.
Shortly before Sgt Pepper ( or was it shortly after?) The Doors first album stunned us all. Sometime later that year Disraeli Gears ripped across the cultural landscape. So did Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant. In mid-April -- six weeks before A Day In The Life-- I stood on my feet with thousands other at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and cheered, and hollered and cried as well as Judy Collins rendered a heart-breaking version of In My Life as her encore song. The next morning, we drove up to San Francisco -- on the eve of the Summer of Love-- and marched in what was then the largest to date of anti-Vietnam protests.
I had tickets for what became the legendary Monterey Pop Festival scheduled for June 16-18 but couldn't make it because I got my license suspended for speeding down Laurel Canyon at midnight in my buddy's Ford Cobra.
A week later, June 23, I stood with 50,000 others in Century City to protest an appearance by LBJ and -- stupid enough to be standing in the first few rows-- caught the full brunt of the frontal baton charge staged by LAPD. We scattered onto Olympic Blvd and -- wearing our blood soaked shirts-- danced circles around the motorcyle cops and then celebrated later with a pizza and Coke dinner at Shakey's. Earlier in the day we heard an anti-war speech by Muhammad Ali and Phil Ochs sang I Ain't Marchin' Anymore.
A month later, Newark went up in flames. Troops were sent in to put out the fires in Detroit. The war in Vietnam escalated and so did the anti-draft protests.
Bonnie and Clyde and The Battle of Algiers opened in the cinemas. And A Day In The Life played constantly in the background. Every day seemed a lifetime.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Was it really this exciting? Or is 2007 just boring?
It is kind of sad. No anti-war movement. Horrible American Idol contentents are at the top of pop music these days. The hyped movie is Knocked Up. Jesus christ.
I would hate to suffer from 60’s nostalgia. I am also glad I will never be nostalgic about the 90’s.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Lovely series of memories, Marc. And cool column of Jon’s. Brought back many memories of my own.
I can at least clarify one thing, which is that The Doors came out a year earlier than Sgt. Pepper—give or take a month or two. I only know because I can fix hearing each—when, where, and with whom—so vividly in time.
When, I first heard Sgt. Pepper, two guy friends who had gotten the album before I had, brought it to my house and insisted that I sit down listen to it twice, from start to finish, before we could discuss it, or do anything else, for that matter.
Upon reflection, it was the right thing to do.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:18 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 3,457 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
CORREA, Richard V., 25, Sgt., Army; Honolulu; 10th Mountain Division.
LIGGETT, Robert A., 23, Pfc., Army; Urbana, Ill.; Third Infantry Division.
WEIGLEIN, Joseph M., 31, Staff Sgt., Army; Audubon, N.J.; 10th Mountain Division.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:21 pm
2007 is boring. I didn’t live through the sixties, came in ten years too late, but I did live through years of great music and culture and how each one reflected the otehr, politics, art, film, organic zeitgeist. In the IPOD era in which corporate record labels don’t nurture career artists, and a homogenized cultural taste in general – when mediocre badns like my old pals Arcade Fire are actualyl considered important…
I will confess to not so much an era’s nostalgia, but nostalgia for when music actually was something vital. Yes, its a consumer item, of course of course Legere….But there was a time – it hasn’t been for about ten years, when hearing this or that album by this or that artist for the firfst time was a transcendent thing.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Celeste… looks like The Doors album official release was Jan 67 though some sites say that there were some copies circulating in 66. I guess my memory isnt that sharp!
Josh: You’re right on both counts. It really was that exciting and these years really are that boring… unless you believe that Nancy Pelosi is Taking Back America!
June 1st, 2007 at 4:59 am
“I would hate to suffer from 60’s nostalgia.”–Josh
The number one issue 40 years ago was the war in Vietnam (number two: civil rights.) Most of the names of the dead I have been posting these past months, including the ones above, would have been draftees. The powers that be learned their lesson and created a “volunteer” army to fight their wars for them. That is not the only explanation, but one big one, for why the 60s were what they were and the current era is what it is.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:42 am
It may be that there are no Sergeant Pepper’s being created. But I’m not that downbeat.
Lovely write.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:36 am
“Every day seemed a lifetime.”
And then we got — 1968.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:13 am
Of course we were young then and I remember Wordsworth writing something to the effect that it heaven then to be alive. Now that I’m an old fart who has become my father (I CANNOT STAND HIP HOP!) I try my best not to wallow in that other country – the past.
But where are the snows of yesterday?
June 1st, 2007 at 9:14 am
And does anyone else here realize that Sir Paul McCartney is 64!
June 1st, 2007 at 9:18 am
Nice piece. My most intense music kicks are connected to 1965 – the release of Bringing It All Back Home early in the year, Highway 61 Revisited later, the best Beatles album IMHO – Rubber Soul (from which “In My Life” referenced in Marc’s piece is the best song – one of the most beautiful songs ever written), the Stones’ Out of Our Heads (and Now and December’s Children) and the thrill of hearing those first guitar lines of Satisfaction over the radio – which even made it to WVON (Chicago’s “Voice of the Negro”) where the Tempts’ held forth with Don’t Look Back and Jame’s Brown’s Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag was the rage. Otis Redding’s Otis Blue album (with his versions of Satisfaction, A Change Is Gonna Come and Respect, and the killer I’ve Been Loving You Too Long), BB King’s Live At The Regal, Coltrane’s astonishing Love Supreme, The Who blasting My Generation – even the Byrds covering Dylan. Also the seminal Butterfield Blues Band album (local boys made good) which was analog to Britain’s Bluesbreakers in opening doors to Chicago blues for a wider crossover audience.
You left Jimi Hendrix out of the 1967 mix – except obliquely in reference to missing Monterey Pop. My analagous sad story also hooks into ‘65 – a buddy and myself had tickets to the Newport Folk Festival where Dylan first went “electric” with the Butterfield Band and, according to legend, got booed. I happened to love his move into rock and roll. We were hitchiking to the east coast from Chicago and – “dirty hippies” that we were – had trouble getting rides and didn’t make it to Newport in time to see Dylan (the folly of youth – who would even try that now ? I, circa ‘07, wouldn’t consider picking me up, circa ‘65. Hell, I wouldn’t even pick myself up now. Of course, ironically our own biggest scare was a ride was into New York City with a middle-aged, drunken woman who kept putting her hand on my buddy’s knee. Even scarier than the construction workers who let us ride in the back of their truck but started pointing to our hair among themselves and brandishing industrial strength wire clippers. )
As for Sgt. Pepper, it’s a great album but I find it hard to listen to these days and with a couple of exceptional songs, think it’s one of the most over-rated albums ever. It demands the context that Marc supplies so well to hold up its end. I’ll read the Weiner piece for deeper meditation on the state of Sgt. Pepper when Paul McCartney really is 64. I’m not really dumping on it, because it was a great album. But concept albums tend to age less well than most other great albums and Pepper is no exception. There are songs on it I just don’t care much to hear anymore.
As for whether any Sergeant Pepper’s are still being recorded: a “better” concept album IMHO (as all these things are) – although they’re not comparable in any societal or pop music history context – was recorded not too long ago by the brilliant Tom Russell. “The Man From God Knows Where.” It’s a saga of Irish immigration to America, of migration West and finally an elegy for his own father. It includes Iris Dement, Dave Van Ronk, Ireland’s great Dolores Keane along with Tom, among others- even the voice of Walt Whitman from an old Edison cylinder. Absolutely brilliant album. I would recommend this album to anyone who loves America in all of its ragged, wretched, paradoxical and often tragic “glory” – and who cherishes the “old, weird” strains in its unparalleled array of vernacular music.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:50 am
I have to add, on a general note, I don’t like invocations of unhinged nostalgia but I wouldn’t trade that time and place of being young and crazy for anything. That said, the question of who got sent to Vietnam (or Federal prison) and who managed to wrangle their way out – like me and Dick Cheney – determined an awful lot about how one experienced the ’60s. I look back on the “movement” of the early and mid-60s with pride, the later stuff not so much. There were stateside “casualties” as well – some self-inflicted. A hell of a time – but better not to bore the kids with too much talk about it.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:57 am
“Are You Experienced?” holds up better than any of the other “big” albums of ‘67. So does “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” which had virtually no impact at the time but had an ever-increasing influence on (non-mainstream) rock bands over the next 20 years.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:07 am
Also Aretha Arrives and Never Loved A Man. And John Wesley Harding, which came at the tail end of ‘67.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:10 am
Also not as “big” an album as some but Van Morrison’s “Blowin’ Your Mind”, despite the unfortunate title and an unfortunate ugly album cover also holds up very well.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:23 am
Another thing that happened in the next year was that my wife and I (newly married) attended a free concert, put on by the Grateful Dead, in a park in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There were girls with long hair and granny dresses and guys with a good bit of hair. Mine never got too long, but I was in art school at Michigan. The Dead played an acoustic concert, which was great. The Doors had tried to play an abortive concert in Ann Arbor, but Jim Morrison was putting his hands into his pants, and they got booed out of the venue. Michigan was more conservative then than now (although not much more).
June 1st, 2007 at 10:32 am
The recordings of the Basement tapes stretched into 67, and Music from Big Pink was recorded in fall 67. The Dead’s first album was lousy, but they became a tremendous live band. I prefer Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack to Sgt. Peppers.
The Doors were the most overrated band of all time, with not a small amount of fascist aesthetics.
I agree about Van and VU, though I was not around, I think VU had a huge impact on specific pockets of Bohemia. People also have a binary thing about the VU and Grateful Dead, opposite coasts, opposite aesthetics, right? No. Actually played a nuch of shows together.
Love Forever Changes is dark horse though.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:33 am
This is what one gets when one inherits a huge vinyl collection.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:33 am
Just read Weiner and he pretty much speaks for my own attitude to Sgt. Pepper +40. Joe Cocker immortalized “A Little Help From My Friends”, which is why I give the song a pass I don’t give some of the others on the album and, believe it or not, Fats Domino did a version of “Lovely Rita” that I remember more fondly than the album cut. Personally I liked the Beatles better under the influence of Doris Troy, Arthur Alexander and Little Richard better than I liked them under the influence of acid and the Maharishi.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:36 am
Big Pink was a ‘68 album though. The Band kicked the ass of most of the hippy bands, as Clapton fully acknowledges. He was embarrassed by much of the self-indulgent crap Cream was doing compared to the economy and soul of The Band’s music.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:37 am
That was spurred by cummings’ ruminations…
June 1st, 2007 at 11:00 am
“… I wouldn’t trade that time and place of being young and crazy for anything.”
Agreed – but it did create some ridiculous expectations.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am
Well, admittedly I’m not in a position to voice an opinion (It was 1970 before I was alive…), but I think that the whole “Sgt. Pepper” album is best summed up in the title of Frank Zappa’s album lampooning the Beatles much overrated album; “We’re Only In It For the Album.” (Or, maybe even better, by Elvis Costello in his “The Other Side of Summer”: “Wasn’t it a millionaire/who said ‘Imagine no Possessions’/)
A rock and roll junkie, I felt that if I had been alive in 1967, the albums that would have had the most meaning for me would have been the debut records that year by the MC5 and The Velvet Underground (then again, the mainstream revealed some other goodies in 67: Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” album, or the Who smashing their equipment on national television).
June 1st, 2007 at 11:02 am
Uh, in the first paragraph, I meant to say “We’re Only In it for the Money” was the name of Zappa’s album. Darn typos.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:07 am
Kick Out the Jams – the first MC 5 album didn’t come out until ‘69 – recorded, I think mostly live, in ‘68. Great album – sort of like VU in it’s being influential beyond its “chart achievements”.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:10 am
Plus, how could I have forgotten the inaugural self titled album by the Stooges…maybe that was 1968…better check my CD collection.
P.S. Always thought that the Doors were dreadfully phoney, and their saturation of the movie Apocolypse Now was one of the reasons why I’ve never been able to watch that entire thing (add to that the whole macho posturing/Charlie Don’t Surf crapola and other stuff that makes me want to puke) past the thirty or forty minute mark.
P.P.S. However, their keyboardist impressed the socks off of me several years later when he produced the first three albums by the punk rock band X (the first of which, Los Angeles, ranks on my list of my top ten favorite records of all time).
June 1st, 2007 at 11:15 am
“sort of like VU in it’s being influential beyond its “chart achievementsâ€
Yup, much like Iggy and the Stooges (who have reunited and recently released a killer comeback album with Mike Watts on bass), Ramones, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, and so on. None of these bands ever had sales amounting to much at all, but their influence was huge.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:17 am
Went to my 1st rock concert in ‘68 — Jimi Hendrix at the Boston Garden. Bit of an eye-opener.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am
Plus, in 1967, the Kinks would have been hugely important…at least to me..
June 1st, 2007 at 11:21 am
Went to my first real concert in 1983; I saw the Ramones play a forty minute set opening for Motorhead; it was loud, brief, reeked of cigarette smoke, and it was about the best time I have had in my life.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:37 am
Apropos of Marc’s comment on albums being real-time cultural landmarks, the last such event I can recall – and maybe somebody can come up with something more recent – was about ten years after Sgt. Pepper. Without commenting on the evolution – or devolution of the times – I remember when Saturday Night Fever soundtrack came out and you could walk through the Mission District and hear the album played for blocks and blocks – an almost surreal experience as odd snippets of the album would dissolve into others as you passed houses with open windows or kids sitting on stoops. In its own way it signaled the then-current culture as definitively as Sgt. Pepper did in its day. Since than music has become more and more segmented, charts and markets sliced and diced, less cross-over appeal between genres and less shared experience. Marc cops to loading Sgt. Pepper on his iPod to listen, not forcing the bemused wife and daughter to share (endure?) his old fart moment as he dropped a disc into the changer or – god forbid – put needle to vinyl and let the Beatles rip.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:38 am
It’s amazing how many “seminal” albums from the sixties that I have never been able to like. Sometimes I like to refer to that decade’s mainstream music output – the titles that adorn Rolling Stone’s “best of” lists – as The Big Chill Soundtrack, Volumes 1 to 100.
For instance, all of my other critic friends herald to this day the Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album… from I think 1965 or 1966…and much like Sgt. Pepper I find it to be unlistenable.
I agree with some of the critical favorites from that decade…Dylan’s Highway 61 revisited, the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers, etc. etc….but too much of the output from that decade has been far too overrated.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:47 am
The first album that I remember with that kind of success that shook everyone around me was obviously Michael Jackson’s Thriller, typical manufactured eighties dance fluff that received the seal of approval from Jackson pal Ronald Reagan, who as governor of California had publicly railed against the Beatles and other “smelly” hippies from that decade…guess Jackson and Lionel Richie didn’t pose much of the kind of threat to the status quo that John Lennon had.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:49 am
Stooges self-titled debut was in 1969.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I was 9 in 1967 so I don’t have a strong memory of the Sgt. Pepper album. But I do remember the Newark riots, having grown up in New Jersey.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Just look at everything that was created between 1960 – 1970. All of the changes, ideas, events, etc… Certainly a creative period.
These are BORING times indeed. It seems that they are cynical times. I used to think Russell Jacoby’s “End of Utopia” was clownish. But I have recently reconsidered his argument.
Even though many 60’s radicals turned into yuppies (a horrible species), they did, even for a brief period try and explore human possibilities.
It is noble to dream. Even if the communes and what not were a bunch of bullshit, it is still better than TV and the internet.
The 60’s was a participatory period in America. We live in the exact opposite times today; we are a country of observers. Especially young people.
In regards to 60’s nostalgia… I would really hate to have lived through that period and then gone on to live through the fucking next 3 decades. The “new millennium†is icing on the cake. It would be hard not to talk about “the good old days.†I have grunge and the 90’s. The 60’s spawned a generation of intellectuals, artists, journalists. The 90’s spawned the likes of Joel Stein, South Park, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Lordy.
These are bleak times in many ways but especially in regards to our imaginations.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
“I would really hate to have lived through that period and then gone on to live through the fucking next 3 decades.”
Considering the alternative…I’m even relieved I’ve made it through most of Dubya.
Also, one could go on and raise a family, have relationships, loves, careers, etc. without becoming “yuppie scum”. I think you’re a bit too extreme in assuming everything sucks. Personally, I’m as amazed and optimistic in seeing the ascension of a candidate like Obama – regardless of whether he makes it to the White House in ‘09 – as I’ve been alternatively somewhat disappointed by Clinton (although my hopes weren’t unrealistically high) and totally nauseated by Bush. (Although frankly one of the reasons I’m supporting Obama is because he’s from the generation after the Boomers, who I’m pretty much sick of as a sociological/political phenomenon at this late date, even though I’m a classic example. Spare me any more Clintons or even a slightly less re-treaded John Edwards.) Also, for my money the information flow now is better than ever, thanks to the internet. Josh Marshall has far more immediacy and impact than I.F. Stone did. Believe me, the alternative press of the ’60s was pretty fucking awful in retrospect. There was, to my knowledge, no mainstream journalists writing on Vietnam early on – including David Halberstam – who did as good a job as the guys at McClatchey did in questioning the war from it’s inception. Ramparts was a very mixed bag – a lot of it was romanticized crap. There was “new journalism” – Mailer wrote some great stuff, but it’s prime luminary, Tom Wolfe, was…Tom Wolfe. Look where he ended up.
Culturally, I’d defend a lot of the sixties. Dylan and a few others were artists of the first order who had enduring impact. The biggest difference was that there were real social movements. And I’ll defend them to the death – at least in intent. But, frankly, the activist political leadership – particularly in the wake of serial assassinations – was pretty fucking nuts by the end of the decade, the black movement included. That doesn’t delegitimatize their key issues – but the estrangement and alienation that characterized too much of it set progressive politics back dramatically during the ensuing era and clearly helped prime the rightwing backlash which triumphed with Reagan.
Complex stuff…I can’t do it justice shooting from the hip.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
“as good a job as the guys at McClatchey did” regarding Iraq.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I just thought that they were good songs. You mean that there’s supposed to be some kind of deep meaning to them?
In 1967, Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” and Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” were up there. What about the Young Rascals, the Turtles, the Association, the Lovin Spoonful, and the Buckinghams? You could dance better to their music.
And, what do you do if you gave peace a chance and it didn’t work?
June 1st, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I think that there are more people politically energized now than there were in the 1960’s; the difference is that unlike in the 60’s, our leaders and media have been able to more effectively deal with it (anyone notice that Bush, the everloving baseball fan, has not been at a baseball game this year; in fact he didn’t even throw out the ceremonial first pitch this year? Even baseball fans represent “enemy territory” now).
When you have hundreds of thousands of people protesting (as they did in 2003 in Washington and New York, against the war) nowadays, the media gives equal time on its front pages to a few dozen or so “counter protesters” waving American flags. Or, as was the case with many mainstream media outlets, the protestors were just not mentioned.
Say what you want about the current state of activism, but compare 2003 to 1963. Even before Washington invaded Iraq in March of 2003, there were protests involving hundreds of thousands of people. In 1963, we had been in Vietnam for a good two years, and no one here state side raised a peep at that time about the fact that the US was setting up concentration camps, killing innocent civilians, etc.). We have evolved as a nation to the point that our leaders cannot even contemplate military action without considering civilian disobedience as a consequence. In my opinion – and many others – it is what keeps Washington from even daring to breathe a word about invading Iran. We are holding our leaders back from causing more mass bloodshed.
That’s good. That’s real progress.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
This stuff is way before my time. I’m with David in saying that my first experienced mega-album was “Thriller” and I would guess that the last of this extinct breed was probably Nirvana’s “Nevermind” or Pearl Jam’s “Ten”. None of which I particularly liked all that much, but the kids all seemed to dig it anyway.
I just saw the Stooges in concert with Mike Watt on bass and I was blown away. Sir Paul McCartney, meet the High Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rolla, Iggy Pop. His heroine addled body is pushing 60 and the man can still bring the ROCK. What a force of nature (and Watt was awesome too).
Also, I heard that at convention week in Chicago back in ‘68, MC5 was the only band that had the balls to show up to play at the big weekend protest/fest where major pig problems were expected. To me these bands are much more interesting than the Beatles for the new punk era of music (but also now defunct era.. Blink 182? *shudder*..) they ushered in. Someone needed to get rid of all that smelly hippy funk in the air.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:24 pm
In fact, I cannot think of a better time, really, to be alive. There is so much information that is available to me just at my fingertips alone that its mind boggling. Culturally….we can construct our own culture, and forget about pop cultural icons like American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Rush Limbaugh, Katie Couric, and so on. We may not have a Janis Joplin, but we have Ani Defranco and Kathleen Hannah, on independent labels that are easily accessible now. We don’t have John Lennon, but we have Ian MaKaye and even Bruce Springsteen (who has been more and more impressive to me in recent years). We don’t have the Smothers Brothers, but we have the far better equivalent, that being The Simpsons. We don’t have Richard Pryor but we have Dave Chapelle…we don’t live in bad times.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:33 pm
“Also, I heard that at convention week in Chicago back in ‘68, MC5 was the only band that had the balls to show up to play at the big weekend protest/fest”
EXCELLENT point, Mc, and I wish that I had remembered that…Fred “Sonic” Smith and company really sacrificed their good standing with the music establishment when they did that…if I remember correctly that was one of the things that got them dropped from their major label deal.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Josh -
The Chilis started in the early 80s and were a great band in the early years.
David makes some good points.
The Stooges were culturally important but stunk
June 1st, 2007 at 1:52 pm
reg – I don’t touch CDs except in rare occurences. Most new music is put out on vinyl, but only to vinyl shops. I think cassettes even sound bette than CDs, the worst archival medium in the world. Ipods are theoretically good but MP3 compressed sound sucks unless you are on headphones.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:53 pm
The last mega-album was OK Computer. You heard that everywhere.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
“Sir Paul McCartney, meet the High Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rolla, Iggy Pop. His heroine addled body is pushing 60 and the man can still bring the ROCK.”
Yup, James Osterburg…a force of nature. Haven’t ever seen the Stooges (new or old), but I saw the newly formed New York Dolls, and although I was somewhat disappointed (you just can’t replace a Johnny Thunders….or an Arthur Kane), David Johanson, like Iggy, can still rock.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
The last mega album I heard everywhere – and it might be unique to the part of the country that I live in – is Green Day’s American Idiot. What is interesting about their mega-success (success that dates back to the mid-1990’s) is that they were a part of what I would call my own personal social and political turning point: Berkeley’s local scene which featured Operation Ivy, J Church, and the then-unsigned Green Day, all of whom played at an all ages venue club (Gilman Street). I was never into Green Day, but their Gilman colleagues were huge heroes of mine.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Reg go out to a used bookstore and see if you can find a copy of “Smiling through the apocalypse” which is a collection of articles from ESQUIRE in the sixties. Then we’ll talk about the “New Journalism.”
June 1st, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Esquire had some great stuff in the sixties – odd as that may seem given their current incarnation. Also some of the greatest magazine covers ever…
But like most innovations, New Journalism led to caricatures of itself – or in the case of Tom Wolfe, became a caricature of itself. And overall I’ll take my current access to news and criticism/”deconstruction” of mainstream news over what existed in the sixties. There’s no comparison. As bad as journalism is today, I think it’s better overall than it was then – mainstream broadcast journalism – which I don’t consume – being the apparent exception (Cronkite vs. Couric). But even in that case, I’d argue that the obvious demise of network news has been concurrent with – and probably a function of – a much wider array of news sources on television. The downside is FOX and the hyper-active 24/7 news cycles of cable, along with shout shows and crap merchants like O’Reilly. But an intelligent viewer can learn more keeping abreast just of the Newshour, Frontline documentaries and whatever Moyers is serving up than one could ever have gotten from all of television even in Murrow’s day. The problem with television journalism isn’t that there isn’t as much good – or at least decently reliable if consumed critically – stuff. It’s the staggering ratio of total, unadulterated crap to anything recognizable as serious journalistic endeavor. O’Reilly totally sucks, but Eric Severied’s op-eds on CBS News weren’t so great either – maybe worse because a viewer might be more inclined to take Severied seriously.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I probably shouldn’t make the blanket claim that mainstream journalism is better today, so much as overall access to widely varied international news sources and to easily accessible critiques of the mainstream in almost-real-time.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:05 pm
rlc – thanks for that. I read a lot of the great Esquire pieces when they first came out, but I found a copy of “Smiling” on Amazon used for a rather remarkable $1.71 and look forward to revisiting or catching up on stuff I missed.
Give Willie Morris of the old Harpers credit too…
June 1st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
And Frances Fitzgerald of the Atlantic Monthly…especially beginning in the mid 60’s and on….other than Hersh from the New Yorker, it is difficult to find a writer who stands up.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
…a writer of TODAY who stands up, I meant.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
…in the mainstream press, that is, and particularly in Atlantic’s own pages today. That magazine really became pathetic after Mort Zuckerman bought it.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Actually, I am more or less thinking of her series that appeared in Atlantic beginning sometime before Tet…mid sixties-ish
June 1st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
That became “Fire in the Lake” still one of the better histories of Vietnam. I’ll never forget reading Michael Herr’s articles on Tet in ESQUIRE (in Saigon of all places!) that became the nucleus of “Dispatches”.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I mention it at another place but the transition from 1967 to 1968 may be crucial to understanding how we got here today. Certainly 1968 was. So in the spirit of suggesting some books (And see what an old fart I am. I tell Reg to go to an old bookstore and he finds it at Amazon. I’m an obsolite child as Dr Suess put it):
“The year of the Young Radicals” – Stephen Spender
“The Battle for Morningside Heights” – Roger Kahn
Obsolete Communism: The Left Wing Alternative” – Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Those are more or less contemporary accounts of what happened in 1968. The Columbia U. Revolt, The Prague Spring and the May uprising in Paris.
There’s plenty on the US political scene but I don’t think people here will have any trouble finding that.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:06 pm
That’s right Ric…Fire in the Lake. I had forgotten the name of it, but I read the series in college for a class on the history of reporting during time of war.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Also read the books:
The Best and The Brightest
A Bright and Shining Lie
June 1st, 2007 at 4:36 pm
richard – what’s this “other place” you keep alluding to ? Is it anything like Dick Cheney’s “undisclosed location” ?
June 1st, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I must speak up for those who experienced The Beatles in CHILDHOOD, talk about playing with your expectations. Got just a taste of this in person, seeing Phil Oches at a McCarthy rally and catching The Band on their last tour. And a twist of fate that got me Ringo’s autograph….
Patti Smith just did a nice cover of “Within Without You”, a strange tune to redo, but She does it well.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Michael Herr and John Sack, with his amazing 33,000 word article on M company, still the longest that Esquire has ever published.
I’m going to go on Amazon and order the thing too. Great tip, RLC.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I must say that Sgt. Pepper was about a decade too early for me, but I relate to it, and have nicknamed a friend “Lovely Rita,” complete with actual singing.
But “Hotel California” was really more my time.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Speaking of the mega-albums which everyone and just everyone played at once, it’s important to note, as none have yet, that it was once IMPOSSIBLE to go anywhere without hearing “Frampton Comes Alive.”
June 1st, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I am proud to report that I have never (wittingly) heard Frampton Comes Alive.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:24 pm
(laughing quietly to self.)
June 1st, 2007 at 8:25 pm
(re: reg’s comment, that is.)
June 1st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Marc,
I like the nostalgia but I also feel like the boomer generation has romanticized the whole 1960’s era. It is that generation that is leading us down the path of consumerism and individualism that seems to discount everything that they thought they stood for in the 1960’s. It seems like it is a legacy of self-indulgence in idealism, something different than the generation before and the generations after. And the generation produced even more self-indulgent kids.
I was listening to N PR report that spoke of my generation’s habits in work life and that each on of us seem to need constant recognition. So I have to say at least your generations tried it seems my generation has not even tried.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:17 pm
“the boomer generation has romanticized the whole 1960’s era”
Naaaah…we wouldn’t do anything like that. Why would one feel a need to romanticize the greatest, most amazing, earth-shaking and transformative decade ever in recorded human history ?
June 1st, 2007 at 11:01 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 3,468 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
ALEXEEV, Alexandre A., 23, Specialist, Army; Wilmington, Calif.; First Cavalry Division.
BAKER, Zachary D., 24, Cpl., Army; Vilonia, Ark.; First Cavalry Division.
BAYLIS, Matthew E., 20, Pfc., Army; Oakdale, N.Y.; Second Infantry Division.
BEAN, Matthew A., 22, Pfc., Army; Pembroke, Mass.; 10th Mountain Division.
CUELLAR, Bacilio E., 24, Sgt., Army; Odessa, Tex.; First Infantry Division.
EWING, Anthony D., 22, Sgt., Army; Phoenix; First Cavalry Division.
LUNDIN, James E., 20, Specialist, Army; Bellport, N.Y.; First Infantry Division.
MARKHAM, Jonathan A., 22, Cpl., Army; Bedford, Tex.; First Cavalry Division.
MOORE, Joshua M., 20, Pfc., Army; Russellville, Ky.; First Infantry Division.
SUMMERS, James E. III, 21, Cpl., Army; Bourbon, Mo.; First Cavalry Division.
WEST, Kile G., 23, First Lt., Army; Pasadena, Tex.; First Cavalry Division.
More Articles in National »
June 1st, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I have just posted 11 more names of the dead, awaiting moderation. I’m sorry if I have not been able to enter into the nostalgic spirit of this discussion, even though I personally have a lot of nostalgia for the 60s as well. I believe that reg’s characterization of that decade–”the greatest, most amazing, earth-shaking and transformative decade ever in recorded human history”–is pretty much on the mark. But one of the things it was amazing for was that our generation was driven nearly to the edge of madness in outrage over the Vietnam war, and not just those who were draft bait, although as I said earlier the draft put a pretty sharp edge on things. I see little outrage here or elsewhere at this incredible waste of young lives for a losing cause, day after day, nor at the fact that May was one of most deadly months for US troops since the beginning of the war. In fact the only reaction to the names of the dead I have ever had here is Turner’s nonsense that it deflects from concern about Iraqi deaths, something that neither he nor very many others here have shown much concern about either. And that is why it keeps going on and on.
During the 60s we had an antiwar movement. Nothing is stopping us from having one now, which we don’t, except that unlike during that decade very few people are being driven half-mad with outrage. They are either blogging or simply going about their business. Maybe we need to get the death toll up a bit higher before that 60s style outrage finally kicks in–or maybe it will kick in among the troops themselves, who are showing serious signs of disillusionment as a recent NYT article reported, or amongst their families. But the well educated, middle class folks who made up the backbone of 60s activism are sitting out the fight this time around, for the most part at least.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:43 am
Well, not counting the Renaissance, of course …
>reg Says:
June 1st, 2007 at 9:17 pm
“the boomer generation has romanticized the whole 1960’s eraâ€
Naaaah…we wouldn’t do anything like that. Why would one feel a need to romanticize the greatest, most amazing, earth-shaking and transformative decade ever in recorded human history ?
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:45 am
Unless you were not in America — AT ALL, during a couple of years in the late 1970s — that is simply not possible.
At Berkeley, cradle of revolution, I can assure you that the album was simply ubiquitous.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:46 am
I’m referring to the “seminal” album known as “Frampton Comes Alive” …
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:49 am
Michael Balter, my observation is that the echo chamber phenomenon of ideological blogging has come to substitute for actual political activism.
Which shrewd pols recognize isn’t really activism at all.
Hence the absence of an actual, as distinguished from virtual, anti-war movement.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:13 am
If you can get through the sturm und drang Trotskyyism this is a perfect sum up of whats wrong with the (so called) Antiwar movement:
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/shee-j02.shtml
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
If the article jcummings posts is accurate, then this is indeed very important information. As many here know, I think that support for the Democratic Party should ALWAYS be contingent on that party taking a principled stand on issues such as Iraq, and that the only way to exert any influence on its positions is to be willing to break with it or not vote for it. The current situation shows the absolute failure of the “work within the party” strategy.
Bill Bradley: Blogging and activism are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I agree that it is very easy to delude oneself that one is doing the latter when one is doing the former. I will be in the USA from Jan-May 2008 and will actively be looking for some antiwar activism to be part of, will I find it?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
Don’t you folks appreciate the political importance of Lynyrd Skynyrd? Last season, I was at a football game, where “Sweet Home Alabama” was played and band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd came out on the field. That beats a marching band playing “Taste of Honey” while they form a letter.
Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
a southern man don’t need him around anyhow.
Many of you are now probably shouting “Free Bird!”
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:40 am
Skynyrd were great, and Sweet Home Alabama was decidedly tongue-in-cheek. Neil Young and them became friends, indeed Neil Young has performed Sweet Home and he also wrote songs for them (which were never recorded because of a plane crash) – Powderfinger was written for Skynyrd.
They also have a clasic ant-gun song.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:29 am
Reg if I told you I’d have to kill you.
Celeste, you’ll love the book. Mailer, Wolfe Sack, Talese – they’re all there!
MB I don’t know if we were driven to madness then but that reminds of another time that I would have loved to see – was only eight then so I doubt if they’d let me in. But back in the summer of 1955 it would have been a gas to be at Cafe 6 on Hayes St, in San Francisco to see Keruoac, Ferlenghetti, Snyder, and McClure perform and listen to Ginsberg recite his new poem “Howl”
“I saw the best minds of my generation driven mad . . .”
Bill, Sorry to hear your unfortunate experience with Franmpton but I’ve got you beat. In the Summer of ‘69 I was at Fort Devens and forced to share a barracks with a guy who played “In A Gadda Da Vida” over and over again! The long version! I think he’s working at Gitmo now!
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I’ve often thought that the really cool time to have lived in San Francisco would have been the Fifties, not the Sixties. I’d take a night at Jimbo’s Bob City – the waffle shop and afterhours joint where Bird, Miles, Dinah Washington, Ben Webster, Billy Holiday, Lenny Bruce and the rest went when the regular clubs closed – over the Dead jamming in the Panhandle any day.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Frampton Comes Alive. Now that was a waste of a few million tons of wax, that’s for sure. The same for that awful Supertramp album that sold a gazillion copies around the same time.
Only super-album released in my lifetime that I ever really “got” was Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Good choice, Reg. Speaking of that choice list -sobering to realize how many of them would be gone by the end of the fifties (Parker, Holiday), or soon after.
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
The “Hungry i” Mort Sahl and Bob Newhart.
Hanging out at the “San Remo” in the village in the fifties with the likes of Mailer and Williams and Vidal and all those beats and their muses like Hunke.
Birdland
“Down those stairs, lose your cares
Where, down in Birdland.
Total Swing, Bop was king.
There, down in birdland.
Bird would cook, Max would
look, there, down in Birdland.
Miles came thru, Trane came too
There, down in Birdland
Basie flew, Blakey too,
There, down in Birdland
Cannonball played that hall
. . . Down in Birdland!”
Anyway those were the days
“I don’t know if you would have like it but I do know this, those were the greatest days of them all!”
Bert and Kurt (”Bilbao Song”)
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
And a sad note. Steve Gilliard of the NEWSBLOG passed away last night. He was 41.
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
RLC, that was a nice counterpoint. Another in a similar vein (earlier times, opposite direction, same idea) is Take the A Train.
jcummings may be referring to this take on the Dead and the Velvets:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n06/grei01_.html
It’s a great essay. BTW JC — do you have a reference to Sweet Home Alabama being tongue in cheek? I always assumed it was just a classic “Yankee go home” f-u from the south. (More memorable than Young’s original song though.) There’s an alternative interpretation on Wikipedia, which I find doubtful, but even that does not say it was meant as a joke.
About the Beatles, there are only a few songs I can enjoy from their whole catalog. It’s all been played so, so much. I prefer the Rutles.
Punk and its DIY methods have been enormously influential, across a large swath of culture including fine art.
What’s the problem with having fewer iconic cultural artifacts that appeal to a certain generational slice? It’s much more mature, IMHO, to have a fragmented landscape in the 18-25 range. It’s fragmented at older ages too. The whole phenomenon of 60s cultural icons might mainly have been an accidental by-product of the fact that the dominant media at the time were broadcast.
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:18 pm
FYI, RLoC (or, anyone else). RIP Steve Gilliard.
http://tinyurl.com/22e34f
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Sorry, for the double notice. Had checked in earlier and missed RLoC’s comment.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:30 pm
No, it was tongue in cheek – read the link that Woody (!) supplied, from a Neil fan site. I read that LRB piece when it was published….
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:05 am
Balter writes: “I see little outrage here or elsewhere at this incredible waste of young lives for a losing cause, day after day, nor at the fact that May was one of most deadly months for US troops since the beginning of the war.”
If there’s little outrage, it’s because it’s hardly an “incredible waste of young lives” to have weekly US casualty lists that seldom reach into the double digits. Check the stats on Vietnam casualties. Then look at the risk to a man 18-35 of being killed, in a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia or Miami. In terms of risk of violent death, Iraq’s hardly worse than urban life in America in some places, if you’re an American soldier.
“In fact the only reaction to the names of the dead I have ever had here is Turner’s nonsense that it deflects from concern about Iraqi deaths, ….”
Great at putting words in my mouth, as usual. I never said it “deflects concern”. I just question the emphasis. I read in the news the other day that three Iraqi children were killed during a firefight between insurgents and U.S. troops. Why aren’t you posting *that*, Balter?
“…. something that neither he nor very many others here have shown much concern about either.”
If I’m so unconcerned about it, why do I raise it in every other post here? Why do I take the most recent Lancet report seriously when others (with precious little statistical acumen) deride it, ignore it, forget it?
“And that is why it keeps going on and on.”
Oh, right, it couldn’t be simply that most people have a sense of proportion, and a sense of what’s at stake, that’s better than yours.
“During the 60s we had an antiwar movement. Nothing is stopping us from having one now, which we don’t, except that unlike during that decade very few people are being driven half-mad with outrage.”
My hometown of Berkeley exploded after the news of the Cambodian Incursion. It was quite a few people being “driven half-mad with outrage”. However, it wasn’t because that particular action was killing a lot of U.S. soldiers — most of the violence was American bombing, which was killing untold thousands of *Cambodians*. That’s a true outrage. (Estimates of the eventual death toll from that bombing run from 200,000 to 500,000. The total explosive tonnage, if measured in nuclear terms, might have been 20 Hiroshimas.)
And what does today’s news from Iraq bring? An insurgent group called the Islamic Army rooting Al Qaeda in Iraq from a section of Baghdad. With US forces supporting the attack. Tribal leaders in Anbar Province working hand in glove with the US military. If you look at Iraq and see Vietnam, it must be from some vantage point in Oz, or perhaps the perspective is more rectal (your own, to be specific). Aside from the fact that it’s war, in a foreign land, and largely against insurgents of one kind or another, I just don’t see the parallels. Is it “winnable” in ANY sense? I don’t know, and I don’t think you know either. Is outrage going to make a positive difference? Yeah, if it’s selective and intelligent. Otherwise, it’s probably just going to make things worse.
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
it made me grin a little reading about mr. cooper smokin weed. music and marijuana are the two most amazing things ever..period.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Then, I have experienced one of the most amazing things ever.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Perhaps many opponents of the Iraq war feel their time is better spent on the Internet gathering and disseminating information, than marching in the streets.
Forty years ago, there were few if any outlets for anti-war sentiment and “the establishment” was far more ubiquitous and monolithic.
Street marches were the only viable option and provided rare opportunities for networking among peace activists and even rare edification for a point of view portrayed by the establishment media as “fringe.”
Hooking up with the most-informed, best-positioned peace activists is now a click away. It should be no surprise that street marches are increasingly the province of the more desperate identity-seekers and their manipulators and thus unattractive to more mainstream anti-war people.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Perhaps many opponents of the Iraq war feel their time is better spent on the Internet gathering and disseminating information, than marching in the streets.
Which is why they have no influence. The Vietnam movement helped end the war, as Giap and Nixon agreed.
June 4th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
jcummings in Nov 2006 those opponents of the war who surf the next took back Congress. I’d call that influence. By the way, as one who marched in some of the biggest “Mobes” of the sixties I’d note that the war went on and on and on . . .
Marching makes you feel good anf that’s about all it does.
“I ain’t marching anymore . . .”
Phil Ochs
January 18th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
lionel train alarm clock…
If this event happens, your alarm clock can’t help you. The Zen Alarm Clock comes in both analog (normal clock style) and digital…