Music - the seduction

I thought I was pretty much normal when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I listened to top forty music on the radio. That was 61/62 the music was Chubby Checker, Del Shannon, Everly Brothers,.
 
Runaway  was a favorite,

as was Locomotion (Little Eva)  - strong backbeat I-IV-V stuff. I learned the Twist.

Green Onions  and  

 
Telstar  the next year. Typical.1963 was more of same for seventh grade.

Louie, Louie ,

Surf City 

and Surfing USA     I didn't think so but it was all music made by a formula. It's purpose was to make money. Content didn't matter as long as the censors didn't flip-out. Fun stuff but it's hard to be passionate about.

Eighth grade was a little better starting with  

I Want to Hold Your Hand  and  

Twist and Shout , familiar songs but the performance was better. Then at the end of the year

it started with the Kinks, You Really Got Me   This was a raw performance, harmonically interesting, if predictable in content. (love sick boy)

Next year much better.

 
The Beatles were good, but the Stones played real music. Here's a sample there was real depth that year  . So far, I found out commercial rock wasn't rock and roll at all.

66-67 (14-16)








Started hearing something really different at at church dances (we had live music every other month in those days, mostly high school kids in a band). Got to know some of them. They were talking about other bands performing in the area but getting no radio time. I started buying vinyl.

Great Society

Great Society  (you get a star if you knew the song title without looking before the halfway break)

Steve Miller

 








Jefferson Airplane

Country Joe & The Fish

I snuck out to a few performances that summer

Sons of Champlin 

Frumious Bandersnatch

The Golliwogs

Santana Blues Band First seen in a store parking lot on a semi-trailer! (this recording is 2 years later)

That was it I was hooked

Yeah, and all that

• It's true, I'm a hippie. Have been since a particularly good day in 1965.
•  I like diversity and mixing of cultures.
• The natural and the free always seemed better. 
• I like flowers and trees. 
• I can spend long moments looking at a bug, a leaf, a flower and be perfectly content.
• Music always makes me feel like dancing, it just feels better when I move with what I hear.
• My 60s are not what most peoples 60s were. It saddens me for their loss.
• I love to share, have little sense of property. Money seems like a terrible burden, useful but not worth the bargain.
• I love to cook food that tastes different. Herbs and spices which bring a whole new experience to eating. My preferred foods are still rice, beans and crunchy greens. I love cooking, it's a gift I can give without buying into the consumerism.
• People like to play with a little hip-ness, a bright top here, some Birkenstocks, a quirky diversity in decorating or dressing. But, I was there down Folsom St, two blocks from the center of it all in 67 through 72. I know how hard it can be to live the principles that got sloganized as love, peace and happiness. I remember the failures, the misfits and the users that thought it was an easier way to hide from themselves. We had the power of our ideals then. Reality hasn't crushed them so much as trained us in a determination to persist.
• I have gone from loving everyone I see, to saying "its alright, you'll be alright". And who is to say that's bad?