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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Haight-Ashbury
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
A recent discussion on Host Board flung me tangentially into memories of some amazing 60's music. Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead all lived in the Haight-Ashbury area and it became famous for a special musical genre from the 60s, which produced loads of special music anyway.
I'm an old guy now, but the memory lingers on. Not sure how much of this has got passed down, but I thought I might test the water here. Nostalgia is very rarely what it used to be, but this may spark a few chords.
I thought about which musical link to spark this off but eventually went for this stunning reprise of Morning Dew, by The Grateful Dead.
Any other similarly influenced nuts out there?
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I recently read in Rolling Stone that the Dead are the band that new hot acts are claiming as one of their big influences. So they continue to have some influence.
I was a teenager during a moment in the 90s when 60s nostalgia got hot, which meant that lots of my friends in college had been exposed to the Dead at a formative moment and remained avid fans. That coincided nicely with the discovery and commercial release of a lot of live recordings (the best one I own has the band backing up Bo Diddley). Later on in college, when "O Brother Where Art Thou" created a mini folk and old time Americana craze, we were amazed to discover that many of the songs we knew from the Dead were very old folk songs or blues songs. That's what I still love about the Dead- they are, to my ear, more of a folk and blues band than a rock band.
I still say there is no better feeling in the world than tearing down a mountain road with the Dead on the radio and a dog in the passenger seat.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Effortless Jerry Garcia kind of foreshadows effortless Mark Knophler, maybe the guitar "duel" on "Hotel California" as well. The Dead have probably had a more lasting influence because of Jerry. Ditto to the rolling down the road, Og, but I don't have a dog.
I liked Jefferson Airplane a lot, loved Grace Slick's vocals. Not that this had a massive influence (!) but I thought when we married that my wife looked like a young Grace Slick, with touches of a young Ali MacGraw. I'm a lucky man. I looked absolutely nothing like Jerry Garcia.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I've heard it said that anti-drug abuse education classes could really make an effective point about the long-term damage that can be done by drug abuse by playing the kids a Jefferson Airplane album and then following it up with a Starship album.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
True and sad. Quality suffered as a result. Grace Slick survived somehow, and might not have. Too many contemporaries didn't. Lifestyle got to Jerry Garcia in the end.
Janis Joplin did not last nearly so long. Now there was an amazing talent, burned out before her time. Like Jimi Hendick (they died within a couple of weeks of one another). Creativity was very much at risk during that period; outrageous became normal.
The best legacy was in the best music, some of the very best of the era. The lifestyle, often enough, provided a darker kind of legacy.
Morning Dew had a different kind of apocalyptic prophetic edge to the one intended. That may be why it gets to me still.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
I'm far too young to remember it, but I came across something recently that made me smile. Fairport Convention, that most English of bands, began by being quite West Coast influenced, to the point where their US record company released their third album in a very odd sleeve, whereas the British release is positively tea and cucumber sarnies. Compare and contrast!
Allegedly their bass player, Dave Pegg, once won a drinking contest against his old brummie band mate John Bonham and Janis Joplin, sort of an alcoholic Olympics.
AG
[ 30. January 2014, 21:28: Message edited by: Sandemaniac ]
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Fairpory definitely started as a Brit version of West Coast stuff.
Some people say that Pink Floyd did as well. They wanted to be a psychedelic band. But they had never actually heard any. Only read about it. These were the days before satellite broadcasting and lots of records released on one side of the Atlantic took months to get released on the other, if they ever did. So they made it up as they went along, basing their sound on written descriptions.
And when they got to America, louder, weirder, and just freakier than their inspiration, everyone went "WTF is this loony shit?". And thus was the Empire forged.
Of course that is early, noisy, acid, Floyd. Before they did Dark Side of the Moon and went all pop.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Ah, Sandy Denny! That was a loss indeed.
Listen and marvel at this raw, home demo, recording of "Who knows where the time goes" Think it's my favourite version.
Thanks ken, for the "Floyd" insight. Spin offs from the West Coast all over the place, once you begin to add them up.
Sandemaniac, that Dave Pegg story sure has the ring of truth. Janis Joplin had to wait too long to get onto the stage at Woodstock, by which time she was severely off her face and more than a little hoarse-voiced. Combo of Southern Comfort and somewhat less legal substances apparently. Pete Townshend thought that, even off her face, Janis was awesome! She was awesome, but often nervous, self-critical, took stuff as a kind of bolster. Proved to be a toxic combination. (IIRC, she and Jimi Hendrix died within a couple of weeks of one another.)
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Ah, Janis.
I was listening to a fantastic set of Bessie Smith's music on the local Jazz station the other day, and heard this fantastic story. ApparentlyJopin went about getting Smith's headstone in a very hush-hush way, joining forces with Smith's former housekeeper to pull it off, and refused to attend the installment ceremony, wanting the moment to be strictly about Bessie and not about her crazy rock and roll persona.
I live about 5-10 minutes away from H-A, depending on traffic. Today it is a dire hipster tourist trap. My biological father thrived there, though, apparently. He tried to start a lithograph company somewhere on the east end of Haight, I believe. He claimed he hung out with Robert Crumb. Basically if you hung around City Lights long enough, there was a chance you would run into Crumb, so whatever.
My impressions of that area in the early seventies- I was a preschooler at the time, but I read up a lot later-- are a combination of excitement, wonder and fear. On the one hand you had The Dead and the Airplane, the Summer of Love, the underground comic explosion, and the scathing vitality of Hunter S Thompson, on the other -- well, the original Peoples' Temple is a block off of Haight, Manson hung out in a cheap flat on Divisadero with Brian Wilson, and drugs were freaking everywhere. There was this intense sensation of freedom-- both the kind that liberates and the kind that unleashes.
[ 31. January 2014, 03:46: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Says it all, really.
Contemporary music and musicians from that period often got lumped together as shallow, self-indulgent, spoiled by success, often shockingly badly behaved. Sure, some of that applies. But there was this other side; that immense raw talent and creativity came along with over-sensitivity. The projection of themselves in performance came with a high cost. Janis seems to me to have been extreme example of the mix of those two things.
Don McLean's line comes to mind, about another beautiful but flawed person.
"I could have told you, Vincent, the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you".
It was a crazy time, really; small wonder that a number of its icons went crazy with it. The ones who survived found places of balance. That seems to have happened to Grace Slick, for example. Certainly hope so.
Maybe that's where my abiding affection for many artists from this time gets grounded. The music told me that often they were a hell of a lot better than the way they often behaved.
Nostalgia is heady stuff. Mostly, it doesn't have dangerous side effects! If you're going to San Franciso, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair? Good to remember the flowering and the flowers. I guess we learn better that way about the darker side.
[Maybe I should get a dog for the car, when driving on my own, listening to this stuff? Liked the idea of a dog listening to the Grateful Dead, wondering in its querulous doggy mind just what the hell was going on there..I've wondered that]
[ 31. January 2014, 07:21: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Fairpory definitely started as a Brit version of West Coast stuff.
Some people say that Pink Floyd did as well. They wanted to be a psychedelic band. But they had never actually heard any. Only read about it. These were the days before satellite broadcasting and lots of records released on one side of the Atlantic took months to get released on the other, if they ever did. So they made it up as they went along, basing their sound on written descriptions.
And when they got to America, louder, weirder, and just freakier than their inspiration, everyone went "WTF is this loony shit?". And thus was the Empire forged.
Of course that is early, noisy, acid, Floyd. Before they did Dark Side of the Moon and went all pop.
By the time I got to junior high, the kids who were into Pink Floyd were less interested in appreciating anglicized psychedelia, and more in ramming other kids into the lockers while yelling "fagg*t!"
Some of them identified with the anti-school ethos of The Wall, but probably because, to the extent that anyone was stopping them from engaging in behaviours like the ones described above, it was the teachers.
Much in the same way that pornography never quite manages to be artistic, rock music never quite manages to be intellectual.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Barnabas wrote:
quote:
If you're going to San Franciso, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair? Good to remember the flowering and the flowers.
That song was actually quite popular in Korea at some point before I came here, and many people of a certain age know it well. Very few of them seem to have any idea about the cultural trends it's referencing. One assumes that during the dictatorships, the government would not want to be promoting anything like Haight-Ashbury.
Kelly Alves wrote:
quote:
I live about 5-10 minutes away from H-A, depending on traffic. Today it is a dire hipster tourist trap. My biological father thrived there, though, apparently. He tried to start a lithograph company somewhere on the east end of Haight, I believe. He claimed he hung out with Robert Crumb. Basically if you hung around City Lights long enough, there was a chance you would run into Crumb, so whatever.
My impressions of that area in the early seventies- I was a preschooler at the time, but I read up a lot later-- are a combination of excitement, wonder and fear. On the one hand you had The Dead and the Airplane, the Summer of Love, the underground comic explosion, and the scathing vitality of Hunter S Thompson, on the other -- well, the original Peoples' Temple is a block off of Haight, Manson hung out in a cheap flat on Divisadero with Brian Wilson, and drugs were freaking everywhere. There was this intense sensation of freedom-- both the kind that liberates and the kind that unleashes.
Kelly, just out of curiosity, have you ever read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion? On the off chance you haven't, you'd likely find it interesting. Recommended for anyone else interested in the Haight-Ashbury scene as well.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Much in the same way that pornography never quite manages to be artistic, rock music never quite manages to be intellectual.
I disagree. There is intellectual content going into some rock music. The problem is this is only part of the experience. The listener creates the rest, Thus one sees military cadet instructors singing "we don't need no education" and pensioners "I hope I die before I get old".
Classical is often dubbed intellectual music, but I would posit the vast majority of listeners engage no more brain cells in listening to or analysing classical than rock.
All Along the Watchtower has likely spawned more intellectual debate than any of Beethoven's works.
And don't get me started on opera. Beautiful music, but more coherent plots could be written by an emotionally stunted, nine-year-old shut-in with ADD.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Much in the same way that pornography never quite manages to be artistic, rock music never quite manages to be intellectual.
Bollocks. The reason porn can't be good art is that if its good porn you get all excited and have to go and lie down on your own for a while. Which gets in the way of appreciating the art. And if its bad porn, well, yuck.
As for kids at school, I think you are extrapolating from one set of shitheads to the rest of the world.
At my school the long-haired (and later bearded) rock fans tended to be the quiet ones who liked poetry and Shakespeare plays. Or else they were what we later learned to call geeks, and got into science and software. The ones you wanted to avoid on a dark night were the clean-shaven short-haired smartly dressed young men who liked disco and later rap and hip-hop and dance music in general, and were into sport.
Even now the most worrying sort of group of people you often have to walk past on a dark street in the inner suburbs of London would be half a dozen or so young white men dressed smart-but-casual with styled hair and without jackets even in the cold. Much more likely to kick off than visible subcultures.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[Maybe I should get a dog for the car, when driving on my own, listening to this stuff? Liked the idea of a dog listening to the Grateful Dead, wondering in its querulous doggy mind just what the hell was going on there..I've wondered that]
Mine mostly sticks her head out the window to take in the smells, but it adds to the carefree feeling of the drive. It made this morning's icy commute much easier (yes, I had the windows open for the dog in sub-freezing temps. So what?)
I never got in to Pink Floyd. I was a fairly strait-laced young boy who was completely unexposed to rebellion of any kind when my older brother hit the beginning of his very long rebellious streak, with Pink Floyd as the soundtrack. It was a little scary for me to hear from the other kids at school about my brother smoking cigarettes and doing other things that I had been assured were going to send you to an early death, and I have never been able to break the connection in my brain between hearing Pink Floyd and being an uncomfortable and upset young boy.
(We did do the Wizard of Oz / Dark Side of the Moon thing in college, and it worked much better that I ever imagined it would.)
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
I knew what this was about by looking at the title, I must be getting old.
Much as I admire Airplane and Dead, no discussion of this era would be complete without mentioning another much poppier band, but definitive of that era, The Mamas and the Papas. In their own way they were just as innovative. "The Papas and the Mamas" has to be one of the great albums of that time.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
The Mamas and the Papas! A remarkable and sometimes sublime songbook produced by a four year tumultuous row on 8 legs!
But definitely a big part of the West Coast scene. My favourite song of theirs was "Creeque Alley" , with the half line "can't go on indefinitely" a pretty good forecast.
Cass Elliott was another great female vocalist who died much too young. She did a fair share of the volcanic rowing! Apparently John Phillips didn't want her in the band. Too low voiced, too large, too temperamental. Large and temperamental she sure was, but Phillips was way wrong about the voice.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Kelly, just out of curiosity, have you ever read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion? On the off chance you haven't, you'd likely find it interesting. Recommended for anyone else interested in the Haight-Ashbury scene as well.
Heard of it...
As for the intellectualism of rock and roll- I think one of the reasons I am the hanky-squeezing, pie-eye liberal you see before you today is I grew up on lyrics like this...
[ 31. January 2014, 21:36: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
I actually met the late Janis Joplin when I was 15: I have her autograph somewhere... She was standing less than a foot away from me when she signed it. She was 28 going on 82, but man, could she sing! She was then whisked away in a big Ford estate car. (This happened at the Rose Bowl and Frank Zappa was their in the Mothers of Invention with two drummers as well as Country Joe and the Fish. )
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
/little tangent and a bit Purgatorial!/
Kelly is onto something. The political content of the lyrics from a lot of 60's songs had a pretty profound effect on me. Apocalyptics songs (Morning Dew, A Hard Rain, What have they done to the rain etc), Protest songs (lots of early Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez) contained serious social commentary and moral challenge.
Not all from the West Coast at all, but all of a piece with that thought, I think the songs which related specifically to the Civil Rights movement softened me up for conversion in the early 70s. Also true that a good deal of the music of that time was critical commentary on "stuffiness", conservative values in general and conservative religious beliefs as well. That certainly lasted!
(Switching gears to the East Coast for a minute, Simon and Garfunkel's song A Church is Burning - more specific than "We shall overcome" - has had a lasting impact on my understanding of what church is and what it is for.)
The personal morality of the composers and singers had another kind of impact, but that did not take away from the genuinely prophetic content of much of the political and social commentary from that time. (I'd throw "Sound of Silence", with its deep observations on materialism and alienation into that mix as well.)
[ 01. February 2014, 08:05: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Meg the Red
Shipmate
# 11838
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Posted
I recently read David Talbot's Season of the Witch, mostly focusing on the 60s and 70s in San Francisco. It's a bit of a an eye-opener to see how rough and depressing life could be in Haight-Ashbury for people who came expecting hippie utopia, but finding something quite different. I can't remember the quote exactly, but the author references an overworked doctor in a free clinic asking with some asperity if, instead of wearing flowers in their hair, 'all those who go to San Francisco" could "be sure" to bring a money and food, and maybe a blanket.
It was also illuminating to see how much political clout the People's Temple had. Jim Jones was nobody's fool when it came to making friends in high places.
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Chocoholic Canuckistani Cyclopath
Posts: 1126 | From: Rat Creek | Registered: Sep 2006
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Another part of the Dark Side, Meg? Idealism, hopes and dreams meet urban realities and move into WTF territory.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Much in the same way that pornography never quite manages to be artistic, rock music never quite manages to be intellectual.
Bollocks. The reason porn can't be good art is that if its good porn you get all excited and have to go and lie down on your own for a while. Which gets in the way of appreciating the art. And if its bad porn, well, yuck.
As for kids at school, I think you are extrapolating from one set of shitheads to the rest of the world.
At my school the long-haired (and later bearded) rock fans tended to be the quiet ones who liked poetry and Shakespeare plays. Or else they were what we later learned to call geeks, and got into science and software. The ones you wanted to avoid on a dark night were the clean-shaven short-haired smartly dressed young men who liked disco and later rap and hip-hop and dance music in general, and were into sport.
I think there might be a slight pond-gap here, one exemplified in an earlier era by Mick Jagger's assumption that the brawling riff-raff who showed up to hear him play at Altamont would be pacified by the mantra "We're all one, man".
In my school days, in western Canada, saying that someone listened to rock music was like saying that they drank Coke, ie. it didn't really signify much about their overall character and cultural interests. Yes, there were sensitive intellectuals(well, at my school, not many) who liked The Who, but also lots of mouth-breathing troglodytes who liked them as well.
One thing I recall is that in junior-high I got into Queen, and was told by the more "serious" rock fans that they were a "bunch of fags". These were guys who would have been into Led Zepplin, Maiden, etc.
And when The Who played the Superbowl a few years back, I doubt it was because the NFL suddenly realized that they had a large contingent of sensitive poetry-geeks among their fan base. More likely, it was simply a case of there being a fairly large Venn overlap between "fans of NFL football" and "fans of classic rock".
I will say that fans of punk did seem to constitute a fairly distinct, and noticably more intellectual, subculture than rock-fans generally.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Meg wrote:
quote:
It was also illuminating to see how much political clout the People's Temple had. Jim Jones was nobody's fool when it came to making friends in high places.
The movie Milk totally omits any mention of Jones, Jonestown, or the massacre, thus rendering incomprehnesible the detail about Harvey Milk's ashes being mixed with grape kool-aid before being tossed into the sea.
The earlier biography The Mayor Of Castro Street(which was not the basis for the film) contains a few breif mentions of Milk's association with the People's Temple, but tries to give the impression that, while Milk was willing to take volunteer assistance from Temple members, he was highly put off by them on a personal level. Not sure what to make of that, since while Gary Shilts was a fairly objective writer, he pretty obviously liked Milk as well, and thus would probably want to make him look good.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
]The movie Milk totally omits any mention of Jones, Jonestown, or the massacre, thus rendering incomprehnesible the detail about Harvey Milk's ashes being mixed with grape kool-aid before being tossed into the sea.
Actually there was the briefest of moments in the film where Milk signed a check and commented "This guy is doing great stuff" or something like that. It was a flicker, just like the way Van Sant summed up Milk's tumultuous relationship with Diane Feinstein with five seconds of Milk pulling a face when she walked by.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Actually there was the briefest of moments in the film where Milk signed a check and commented "This guy is doing great stuff" or something like that.
Hm, interesting, because that would mean that Van Sant(or maybe Dustin Lance Black, the writer) portrayed Milk as more openly pro-Jones than Shilts did.
Assuming, of course, that the audience knew it was Jones being referred to when he signed the cheque. Was that made clear?
Shilts in the book was pretty explicit about the antagonistic relationship between Feinstein and Milk, as well as Fienstein and the gay community in general. Also, Shilts quite cheerfully portrays Moscone as a sleazy womanizer, whereas Van Sant pretty much just lets him bask in Milk's reflected glory.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
My mom worked for The State downtown, and according to her, Feinstein had an antagonistic relationship with the "bearing human DNA community." ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) I think she gets a bad rap, though.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
There's a good film about The Cockettes who were a performance group that was very heavily on the drugs and dissipation part of the recipe. There's a teaser for it on Youtube.
Another snapshot of the zeitgeist is Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the Cities" books which start in San Francisco at that time and continue into the present. The final installment was just published.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Kelly Alves wrote:
quote:
My mom worked for The State downtown, and according to her, Feinstein had an antagonistic relationship with the "bearing human DNA community." I think she gets a bad rap, though.
Well, she has apparently impressed enough of the "bearing human DNA community", or at least that part of said community residing in California, to achieve an elected political career going on 45 years now, including over twenty in the US senate.
My guess is she's one of those politicians everyone claims to dislike, but they just can't help voting for when it comes down to the crunch.
[ 02. February 2014, 08:05: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Getting back to the music. From the other side of the pond I could hear a Californian sound but could not really distinguish between the SF music of Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company and the LA music of the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Even with hindsight looking back I can't say which was the most influential, the Grateful Dead or Frank Zappa. But there was some good and different music coming from California.
The only way to sum it up is "What a long strange trip it's been."
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Last ever sig ...
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
I listened to album rock as a teenager -- filtered through the rather limited playlists of local radio stations -- but was fairly ignorant of the HA contribution to the rock genre. I remember, in college, being pleasantly startled by some extraordinary music on the stereo when I entered my food cooperative one day, a folksy yet almost Beatlesque song that just went on and on in an engagingly hypnotic way...I was so taken with it that I finally asked the volunteer cashier, one of the old hippie coop elders, what I was listening to, and he smiled sadly and explained, "Honey, that's the Grateful Dead."
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
The Mamas and the Papas! A remarkable and sometimes sublime songbook produced by a four year tumultuous row on 8 legs!
I was on an Air Canada flight from, I think Winnipeg to Vancouver with John Phillips across the aisle. He had his daughter Mackenzie and her daughter with him. We spent most of the time playing with his granddaughter; I am automatically drawn to all children. I didn't do the fan thing, except as we were leaving the plane, when I mentioned following his music, my memory was that he said he liked travelling in Canada. I want to say this was in the 1980s, but it could have been earlier or later. The reason no doubt we sat in the same section of the plane is that there was no first class in those.
Like everyone with a guitar learning how to play the intro to Here Comes the Sun and Smoke on the Water, or later Stairway to Heaven, all choirs for a while were doing California Dreaming.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Barefoot Friar
Ship's Shoeless Brother
# 13100
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Posted
I wasn't born until 1981, so this puts me out of having experienced all this first hand. However, I am a huge fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I like bits and pieces of other artists' work from the 60s and 70s, but no artist do I like as much as CCR.
Most of the music (from any artist) that I like was made famous in the 1970s, though, which I think is a bit later than the discussion is currently trending.
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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu
Posts: 1621 | From: Warrior Mountains | Registered: Oct 2007
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barefoot Friar:
I wasn't born until 1981, so this puts me out of having experienced all this first time.
Same, except I was born in 1980 and it's Barclay James Harvest and Fairport for me. I love Sandy Denny with all my heart, but 2-3 songs and I'm in tears. Literally. Sadly.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
The best concert of my life was Bruce Cockburn in a hall which held probably 120 of us in I think 1978 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I remember BTO and the Guess Who in Winnipeg, and Lighthouse as well, but Bruce is still going.
If you've never heard of him, look him up. About whom, Eric Clapton is said to have said when asked about being the world's greatest guitarist "I don't know, ask Bruce Cockburn"*. Bruce has some of the finest instrumental and lyrics.
This post may be hopelessly Canadian of me....
*yes, I know.....
[ 06. February 2014, 20:12: Message edited by: no prophet ]
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barefoot Friar:
I wasn't born until 1981, so this puts me out of having experienced all this first hand. However, I am a huge fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I like bits and pieces of other artists' work from the 60s and 70s, but no artist do I like as much as CCR.
It's not widely known, but CCR, despite their hillbilly stylings, were actually a Bay Area band.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
El Cerrito East Bay Yuppievile. Contra Costa County, which is the Bay Area version of Orange County, so about as far from the bayou as they get. Still rawked.
If we are going to include SoCal in our California Love Jam, can I put in a word fir Steely Dan and War? I really can't imagine the seventies without them.
It was a good day in LA ev'ry body was rockin', havin'a good time...throwing out a peace sign...
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
You know, there is often talk about how drug use affected the music of the time, especially the psychedelia. I think it was the BO and patchouli.* The vapours are emanating from my computer when I read this thread.
*synonyms in my book.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
.... not widely known, but CCR, despite their hillbilly stylings, were actually a Bay Area band.
I'm not sure "hillbilly" is the right word! The target effect seems a bit further south and a lot swampier than hillbillies.
But as far as I kniow, when John Fogerty wrote "Proud Mary" he had never even seen the Mississippi.
But then Ike and Tina Turner, who certainly had, sang it better.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You know, there is often talk about how drug use affected the music of the time, especially the psychedelia. I think it was the BO and patchouli.* The vapours are emanating from my computer when I read this thread.
*synonyms in my book.
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small..
Ken, the word we are groping for is Cajun. Fake Cajun, I should say.
And personally, I like both versions of "Proud Mary." Depends on what mood one is in.
[ 07. February 2014, 01:40: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
I am partial to the Solomon Burke version. He somehow makes a remake seem more authentic than the original. Takes the fake out of it, perhaps.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
.... not widely known, but CCR, despite their hillbilly stylings, were actually a Bay Area band.
I'm not sure "hillbilly" is the right word! The target effect seems a bit further south and a lot swampier than hillbillies.
But as far as I kniow, when John Fogerty wrote "Proud Mary" he had never even seen the Mississippi.
But then Ike and Tina Turner, who certainly had, sang it better.
Hmm. We're gonna have to agree to disagree about who did the better version of Proud Mary. I still think Ike and Tina's version seems a little forced onto the material, whereas CCR's seems to be a perfect fit.
And, on the subject of songwriters who never saw the regions they wrote about(or at least not until after), according to wiki, the band who sang about the dirty water in Boston had never been to Boston, and the guy who wrote the song had just spent a few days there, and overheard someone complaining about the water.
I wonder if people in Boston really did complain alot about the dirty water before that song became iconic.
I also remember, some time in the 80s, a newspaper article about the guy who wrote The White Cliffs Of Dover, visiting them for the first time.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Or Take Me Out to the Ball Game written by two gents that had never been to.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
I liked Jefferson Airplane and Creedence at the time. It took me about 10 years to appreciate the Dead, mainly because in the 60s what I mostly heard from them (apart from "Morning Dew," which I liked, though I preferred Jeff Beck's version) was blues--and the Dead were among the least convincing blues bands ever. Once they left that phase behind I liked them a lot better. Jerry Garcia was always a bluegrass guitarist at heart anyway, and his style worked best in a somewhat countryish setting.
However, the absolute greatest of the San Francisco bands was Moby Grape, who could write and play rings around all the others, the Dead included.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Cajun - that sounds better! Thanks Kelly.
And I do like the CCR version. I have it, and two by John Fogerty, and two by Ike & Tina, on my iplayer. All good. (I have a habit of downloading multiple versions of the same song to get a feel for the history. There are a few I have more than 20 of...)
Confession time. From here in Britland, the Grateful Dead have hardly been part of my life. I don't think there is one of their tracks I'd instantly recognise. They were never that big over here.
But then maybe a North American version of me would have heard a lot less of Gong than we did, or Here and Now/Planet Gong, or the Pink Fairies, or Steeleye Span, or New Model Army, or the Levellers, or Mr Fox, or vast amounts of reggae.
But
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
according to wiki, the band who sang about the dirty water in Boston had never been to Boston, and the guy who wrote the song had just spent a few days there, and overheard someone complaining about the water.
... and yet, that is a badass song. (I now have the guitar riff stuck in my head.)
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
... and yet, that is a badass song. (I now have the guitar riff stuck in my head.)
(di-dum-dum-da, dum-di-dah) Oh yes! We had a great thread about guitar riffs a couple of years ago. Amazing how this stuff brings back the memories.
I liked CCR a lot, particularly "Bad Moon Rising".
(dit-dit dum dum dum!)
I'm really not sure what linked me to the West Coast music; may just have been curiosity. Think I was lucky.
Reminds of a lovely observation by the immortal Pete Seeger about "I had a hammer". He said this once the song had "gone round the world; the song as he wrote it, Peter Paul and Mary's, Trini Lopez's, Johnny Cash's etc.
"You could sing it the way I wrote it, or the way any of them sang it. And they all harmonised together"
60's music tapped into the zeitgeist and became its own zeitgeist. Gave rise to many musical children as well. It abides.
Kelly's "pill" reminiscences from "White Rabbit" reminds me just how mysterious that short song was for me when I first heard it. Was fascinated by the Lewis Carroll references, the haunting tune, and that voice. Didn't have a clue about the drugginess of it until someone told me.
I led a sheltered life so far as that was concerned. Think I may have been lucky about that as well.
This memory riff takes me to the Eagles. "You can check out any time you like but you can never leave". Never checked in to California Gold etc. But I did check into guitar riffs. Listen carefully to your memories, people - you'll hear the Felder/Walsh duet at the end of "Hotel California". That never gets old.
(Eagles are at the London O2 in June this year. Maybe I'll sneak in the back ...)
[ 08. February 2014, 07:31: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Listen carefully to your memories, people - you'll hear the Felder/Walsh duet at the end of "Hotel California". That never gets old.
Good call!
Also listen for the harmonies on "Seven Bridges Road."
OO! Harmonies!
"Amie" by Pure Prairie League
"Carry On" CSNY
And just to scare you-- "Afternoon Delight" by the Starlight Vocal Orchestra-- is anything more 70's than that?
Back to the Eagles-- I had a huge obsession with them when I was a preteen-- while all my friends were into disco, I was digging up old folk rock albums. The song "New Kid in Town" always destroyed my little nine year old heart.
And does anyone remember that spooky-ass Michael Martin Murphey song, "Wildfire," about the dead cowgirl and her horse? Haunted me terribly.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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The Phantom Flan Flinger
Shipmate
# 8891
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
And personally, I like both versions of "Proud Mary." Depends on what mood one is in.
Bit of a tangent, but it was only a few years ago that I found out "Proud Mary" wasn't called "Rolling On The River".
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http://www.faith-hope-and-confusion.com/
Posts: 1020 | From: Leicester, England | Registered: Dec 2004
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
(I have a habit of downloading multiple versions of the same song to get a feel for the history. There are a few I have more than 20 of...)
So you'll have Stairway to Heaven and the original by California band Spirit. Listen from 1:36.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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