1967 - The Summer of Love

[Stinky The Clown]

A lot was going on in various places around the world, but the epicenter of cultural change and hope for the future was in San Francisco. That same year, in that same city, one of today's leading political magazines was first published as a local music and culture newspaper.

Most of the people who were there in person or in spirit are today in their 60s and 70s.

Personal beliefs have morphed and shifted and evolved over the intervening 44 years.

Some are still on that trail. Others are living their golden years after being consuming consumers.

Most are getting pretty tired.

And a lot of things for which they had hope for change . . . . . .

[Amerigo Vespucci]

1. It was a Roman Candle Moment followed by a mass sell-out

It was a picture of what could have been, maybe what should have been, and the minute it kicked into high gear, the Abbie Hoffmans and Jerry Rubins of the world scrambled around to see how to make the biggest buck for their bang. Woodstock morphed from acid-laced mud fucking to Altamont, with Marty Balin getting knocked out cold by a Hell's Angel and some guy getting stabbed near the front of the stage.

We should always approach "movements" with caution, whether it's the Summer of Love or a guy running on a platform of hope and change that ends up doing the job in a manner that's remarkably similar to his predecessor.

And I was there, but I'm not 60 or 70.

:patriot:

[Stinky The Clown]

3. You couldn't have been old enough to drink, or maybe even drive.

Yup, lots of selling out since then.

Lots of profiteering

Lots of noise.

Lots of dashed hopes, these many years later.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

9. Old enough to know what was going on, not young enough to do those things

My parents pretty much raised me as an adult coming straight out of the womb. I had a "childhood," if you want to call it that, but I have no real memories of being a child...I also have a photographic memory that stuns most of the people who know me. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me "How the hell did you remember THAT," I'd be sipping exotic rum drinks out of a pineapple on some God-forsaken island in the South Pacific. My ability to remember things from decades ago, down to the smallest possible detail, truly seems to stun people.

The "Summer of Love" made such a profound impact on me that I have a "Summer of Love" mix CD I keep in the car, and the playlist on iTunes, and I listen to one or the other at least once a week. I cheated with a couple that are 1968 "wobblers," but otherwise, it's my vision of the perfect soundtrack:

01. Love / Alone Again Or
02. The Grateful Dead / Cold Rain And Snow
03. Quicksilver Messenger Service / The Fool
04. The Yardbirds / Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
05. The Byrds / My Back Pages
06. Buffalo Springfield / Hung Upside Down
07. Jefferson Airplane / She Has Funny Cars
08. The Rolling Stones / Ruby Tuesday
09. Butterfield Blues Band / East-West
10. The Doors / Light My Fire
11. The Beatles / Magical Mystery Tour
12. The Who / I Can See For Miles
13. The Jimi Hendrix Experience / Are You Experienced?
14. Big Brother & The Holding Company / Ball And Chain

:toast:

[Webster Green]

12. Great play list!

Keith Moon's thundering drums on 'I can see for miles' are utterly amazing! I need to go play it right now! :thumbsup:

[Siouxmealso]

24. How could you forget this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bch1_Ep5M1s&feature=related

I graduated from high school in June of 1967. This was my theme song in the summer of my 18th year and I tear up when I think about all that's happened since.

[Webster Green]

5. Hippies are still going strong.

And we were right about everything.

I know lots of 2nd-wave hippies in their 40s and 3rd-wave 20-something dread-locked hippies who have kept the spirit of 1967 very much alive. I love me some hippies! I still eat acid every once in awhile, just to blow out the old synapses. :hippie:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

13. I never stopped being a hippie.

I have short hair now...here I am in December 2010:



...and I don't drop acid now (didn't then, either)...

...but other than that, I wear 1967 like I wear socks, underwear, and a smile. The hippie in me is now that in a 100% sense...IN me, with little evidence on the outside. Except for maybe that goatee, which I shaved off about two weeks after I took that photo.

[texanwitch]

6. I was all excited about starting junior high school in 1967.

Good year.

[shanti]

14. hey

me too! :hi:

[texanwitch]

17. To bad starting junior high meant being a 7th grader.

The ninth graders gave us hell.

So different from being a 6th grader, the biggest kids in school.

[Hardrada]

2. And a lot of us had been enlightened long before.

I thought the VN situation sucked in 1963. I'd seen Martin Luther King in person in 1961. And my family had been progressives for decades. But even so I was glad when the counterculture finally got to Iowa just to push a few more people over to the side of righteousness!

[pipoman]

4. Oh for the good ol'days when there was love everywhere the eye could see....

[WillyT]

7. Somebody Must Have Handed You The Wrong Invitation...

:hippie:

:smoke:

[Art_from_Ark]

21. I didn't get an invitation to either event

In my sheltered small-town enclave, I didn't even hear about the Summer of Love or the Detroit/Newark riots until a couple of years later.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. The OP doesn't deny that.

[pipoman]

18. Yeah...the whole "summer of love" moniker has always

struck me as more ironic than accurate.

[tularetom]

8. I was right across the bay while all the shit was going down

Trying to support my little family by working as a construction supervisor on BART and moonlighting as a reserve Berkeley PD officer (probably the most progressive police organization in the US at the time).

I looked pretty conventional by then, my hair was no longer down to my ass and I dressed conservatively.

In the culture wars of the 60's my WWII vet dad and myself were on opposing sides.

I still believe in the same things I believed in then and even though at times it seems it was all a waste of energy and nothing has been achieved, I wouldn't do anything differently.

[proud patriot]

10. You guys had kids and I am here

to "carry on" CSNY

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. I was in a band that played that at a Stanford kegger...

...we were actually an ersatz 50s band and I'd seen Stills on TV (without C-NY, might have been with Manassas) do a ragged, drunken version of "Carry On" and I said to myself "I gotta do that."

We were set up in one of the big dining halls...a COOL venue, just packed with drunken Stanford-ites on a Saturday night.

I had guys behind me puking into plastic cups while we played. I only sang on that one song (we had a lead singer, I was the guitarist), and I stepped up to the microphone and said "All right, folks, we're gonna do a bastardized version of "Carry On" and I heard all of these war whoops and "YEAHS" which only encouraged me more, and I lit into that sucker and blowtorched it.

Then we went back to playing 50s songs.

:rofl:

:toast:

[proud patriot]

30. My parents were probably there

Mom went to paly

[marginlized]

16. I was at Altamont

Early in the day, I was about 50 feet from the stage, up a rise to one side, saw one of the Airplane being led off stage by some Hell’s Angel goon. Was it Marty Balin?

Knots of Hell’s Angels wandering through the crowd with cue sticks were intimidating. But then what must have been the Angels of Light were another matter altogether.

I was maybe 17 and in High School. An instructor packed his VW van full of students and drove us there. This would never happen today. I didn’t know him, wasn’t in his class. A friend had heard about the ride and got me in. Who was that bearded instructor and where is he now?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

19. Yep...it was Marty

In "Gimme Shelter," Paul Kantner steps up to the mic and says "I'd like to thank the Hell's Angels for pinching our lead singer in the mouth."

[Beam Me Up]

20. my first acid trip: may day, 1967

18 years old. college freshman. illinois institute of technology, chicago.

the revelation was that social reality is a construct and it logically followed that it could, therefore, be reconstructed.

i certainly had no idea how difficult that project was going to be.

in sum: we WAY underestimated the opposition.

but, no, i'm not tired and i never gave up, nor shall i.

[jberryhill]

22. ...and it still took 8 years to get out of Vietnam

So, when you think things aren't moving in the right direction fast enough...

[mwb970]

23. I meet lots of young people who would have "fit in" perfectly back then.

I feel sorry for them having missed it all and living instead in the current, right-wing version of America. Yuck!

[xchrom]

25. i was there. nt

[Blue_Tires]

26. There is a certain poetic irony that The Summer of Love was the same year

as The Impossible Dream

[deutsey]

27. There's a very interesting book called Acid Dreams

that's a "social history" of LSD in America. It's very well researched and informative about the history of LSD. It also raises some unsettling questions about the role of the CIA in the spread of drug during he '60s and '70s.

[Bandit]

28. The summer of '67 I lived four blocks off Haight

The corner of Fell and Divisidero. I spent most of my time at Candlestick Park and the music never seemed to stop..

[deaniac21]

29. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.......