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It Was A Crazy Time, I Guess......


Murph

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It seemed normal, at the time.

 

I was telling someone, much younger than myself, over the weekend the story about Gram Parsons. She is a straight laced person who obviously missed the whole late 60's/70's ordeal and thought I embellished the story a bit. Heck I actually forgot a few things and UNDER told it after reading this.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gram_Parsons

 

I think back about some of the things we did back then that would surely seem bizarre to people today. I mean, we smoked in our hospital rooms, in grocery stores, even at NASA.

 

However, in our defense, we always knew which bathroom to use and rarely ate laundry detergent....

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It seemed normal, at the time.....

 

"Kaufman and Martin were accused of grand theft and fined for burning the casket, while they also had to pay for Parsons' funeral. Parsons' remains were later buried in New Orleans."

 

Crazy times is right! I played at a benefit back then to help with Phil Kaufman's legal fees. We used the Burrito Brothers' equipment. I noticed blues singer Ciaran Wells at that party and started a long string of "talent night" spots with her at the Palomino in North Hollywood. Fun, but never went anywhere. Some agent or another noticed our guitarist Brian Ray and hooked him up with Etta James, for whom he ended up as guitarist and musical director for the next 10 years, before hooking up with McCartney. Now, that went somewhere!

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I am convinced the only reason many of us survived was we never had the money nor the well-heeled musician friends to allow us to imbibe in everything we wanted as often as we wanted.

 

For me hitching or hopping on a Triumph 650 to go across the country because you wanted to see what is was like someplace else, being tossed in some jail or a loony bin for 72 hours observation, letters from the Draft Board arriving at your last known address threatening you with prison for not keeping them informed of your whereabouts and status, all seemed perfectly normal.

 

Funny though how the whole thing has become romanticized. But would I have done it any differently. Not on your life.

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A friend of mine is now the Superintendent out at Joshua Tree. Although they get asked constantly, as a policy the NPS will not tell visitors where Gram's body was taken. They want to avoid having to deal with the crowds that would arrive on say the anniversary of his death.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I remember reading about this a couple of years ago, hard to imagine how much drugs affected our culture.Back in the '70s I smoked cigars in my office. Hospital Administration. The Controller next door didn't like it. But we didn't hav OSHA and the ERA yet.No seat belts. Product safety recalls. How did we survive?

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1968 and 1969 were particularly crazy. I recall just hoping to make my way though with as little collateral damage as possible. The use of nuisance laws such as vagrancy and disturbing the peace alone were enough to make you paranoid. By early 1973, however, it was all pretty much over and everything really quieted down. I think we all needed a collective breather and the 1970s gave us that.

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I believe, from what I can recall (😒), that most of us experienced the late 60's - early 70's on a very personal level. Being alive was great, especially if you had the experience of no guarantees for a while prior. Being free of a lot of rules & regs was the liberation of a free fall. For good or ill, it's still my reference point for being honestly happy and feeling like I belonged in the world. All kinds of restrictions "for our own good" started popping up a bit later and came flooding in by the early 80's. The climate changed rather abruptly, and so did the quality of joy in life.

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Well, wife and I were war babies -- you are talking about the international adolescence of the baby boomers. We were a mild small generation that did Elvis, the folk revival, and rock and roll. To us the boomers were like a plague of locus -- a hoard of children that destroyed everything (musical) of value. FOLK ROCK -- REALLYmsp_scared.gif. Electric was for rock and roll -- acoustic was for folk and traditional.

 

We never liked the Beatles -- and we have not changed. We play bluegrass and we never (well almost never) plug in.

 

Truth in advertising requires me to admit that I was a pioneer signal processor whose company in the early 80s put the first DSP chip in a PC -- our tools powered a lot of the early digital musical revolution. But like all arms makers, I can claim I did not actually make war -- I just supplied the weapons.

 

Let's pick,

 

-Tom

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Well, wife and I were war babies -- you are talking about the international adolescence of the baby boomers. We were a mild small generation that did Elvis, the folk revival, and rock and roll. To us the boomers were like a plague of locus -- a hoard of children that destroyed everything (musical) of value. FOLK ROCK -- REALLYmsp_scared.gif. Electric was for rock and roll -- acoustic was for folk and traditional.

 

 

C'mon Tom. When I first heard Fairport Convention it was a personal epiphany.

 

While I am a bit too young to have gotten Elvis (my older cousins were more into the plague of Bobbby's), I did get into the folk music revival. When I was a kid Oscar Brand lived close by and his house became a gathering place for the folkies. I drove anyone I saw with a guitar nuts asking them what they were doing.

 

I never did get into bluegrass though. For me it was like post-War jazz. I surely did appreciate the talent and figured it was something that I should get. I just didn't.

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I believe, from what I can recall (😒), that most of us experienced the late 60's - early 70's on a very personal level. Being alive was great, especially if you had the experience of no guarantees for a while prior. Being free of a lot of rules & regs was the liberation of a free fall. For good or ill, it's still my reference point for being honestly happy and feeling like I belonged in the world. All kinds of restrictions "for our own good" started popping up a bit later and came flooding in by the early 80's. The climate changed rather abruptly, and so did the quality of joy in life.

 

This is the most insightful comment on that time have ever read.

Thank you.

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The thing about the 60's and early 70's is you had to be there to understand it. A history book and/or "first hand" account can't recreate the experience for someone who wasn't there. Certainly, you can't recreate the past for anyone who wasn't there, but the 60's were different, unique, new, raw, a mainstream population "train of thought" that swept much of the world... The music world of that era influenced far more than "the music world." Folks like Janis, Dylan, Cash, The Stones, Hendrix, and many others actually made their indelible marks upon society with their personal flaws and triumphs. Super stars were still accessible and "one of us" with all their personal demons and flaws. Society was relatively innocent at that time and had never before been engulfed by such a movement. Can you imagine Janis Joplin dealing with "political correctness"?

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Well, wife and I were war babies -- you are talking about the international adolescence of the baby boomers. We were a mild small generation that did Elvis, the folk revival, and rock and roll. To us the boomers were like a plague of locus -- a hoard of children that destroyed everything (musical) of value. FOLK ROCK -- REALLYmsp_scared.gif. Electric was for rock and roll -- acoustic was for folk and traditional.

 

We never liked the Beatles -- and we have not changed. We play bluegrass and we never (well almost never) plug in.

 

Truth in advertising requires me to admit that I was a pioneer signal processor whose company in the early 80s put the first DSP chip in a PC -- our tools powered a lot of the early digital musical revolution. But like all arms makers, I can claim I did not actually make war -- I just supplied the weapons.

 

Let's pick,

 

-Tom

I find your perspective rather interesting, in that it's so contradictory to my musical beginnings in terms of folk, traditional blues, and bluegrass. Now 71, I was among the early boomers and, thus, my background might contain a bit more influence from your crop than affected some of my peers who arrived later. As a kid, I struggled to learn guitar from listening old recordings of Woody Guthrie, sought out old time string band musicians, idolized Pete Seeger, considered Elvis to be worthwhile for two reasons only: he played a flat-top guitar marginally (like me) and attracted lots of women (like I didn't), the greaser image of Elvis and various asociates was a major turnoff - those types beat us up at every opportunity in real life - and rock 'n roll was what you heard on AM radio because that's what got played whether you liked it or not. I had enough concern about keeping my own hormones organized without listening to people singing about theirs while background singers wailed and bayed in sympathy😂 I didn't have no damn backup singers😰 The Beatles were a step up, if only because they didn't draw so heavily on teenage angst. Never wanted to be a Beatle, though. By the time folk rock became an item, I'd decided that it was OK to plug-in, but that was by virtue of Lightnin' Hopkins. Knew a few of my folk icons, mostly by coincidence (Van Ronk and such - rest their souls), eventually, and some later arrivals as well, but never could generate much enthusiasm for the electric crowd. Singer-songwriters have always drawn me. Was told by a close friend and fine "urban revival" musician who met Elvis backstage in Detroit that his true musical talent was old-timey banjo. Don't have any proof of such, but hope it was☺

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Super stars were still accessible and "one of us" with all their personal demons and flaws.

 

It was like "we" took over the music business for a decade or so until "they" were able to wrestle it back.

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I find your perspective rather interesting, in that it's so contradictory to my musical beginnings in terms of folk, traditional blues, and bluegrass. Now 71, I was among the early boomers and, thus, my background might contain a bit more influence from your crop than affected some of my peers who arrived later.

 

Same age here, and similar experience. Elvis didn't do much for me, but the Beatles (and early blues-influenced Stones) were a bolt out of the blue. I started my guitar playing (already sang in choirs, etc) in my teens as part of a PP&M type of pseudo-folk revival group, before discovering the Scots/Irish ballads (particularly as collected by John Jacob Niles).

 

Bluegrass was just an interesting side track, even though it should have been embedded in my genome as a direct descendant of early 18th century Scots/English border region immigrants who came down the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia to North Carolina in the 1730's. Maybe keeping bluegrass at arm's length was a self-conscious denial of my hillbilly roots, while Tom B embraced his.

 

We all come down a long path, and we all end up in the same place, whether we like it or not.

 

Tom is lucky in that he found a single genre that has occupied his adult life. That sort of fits his profile as an institutional scientist. I flit around like a butterfly, and became an expert in nothing, but with an interest in almost anything. But that's a path in itself.

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71 later this month. And also 'a jack of all trades and a master of none'.

Never occurred to me I wasn't 'talented'. I just thought I was still 'learning' the guitar. (and 5 sting)

Until recently.

Old Age does bestow certain gifts on those fortunate and lucky enough to earn it.

In my case, I guess I'd call it 'perspective' not 'wisdom'.

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Nothing to do with much.....You jogged my memory, Nick - I was trying to think of the name of the stuff the lady that gave me a guitar was doing.....folky PP&M and Judy Collins? They had their own crazy times, maybe musos always do? Anyway, I got it backwards - given an acoustic guitar at 8 years old when she got a new one and I was in the right place at the right time!

 

That was ‘64, the year the Beatles came here. Plenty said about all that, but my view was why is my guitar different than theirs? It will never sound like theirs, the internet would tell us now. But that took many years with no help to find out..... I went to group lessons when I was about 12 or 13 and the sky opened.

 

The same could be said for getting my house built. I mean there are 450 reno and build shows on all week now but back then...zip. Just everybody saying:’Don’t do it!’ After we signed up for the build, then we picked the house. We had an appointment at their office of one hour to pick everything in this house...bricks, windows, roof, floors, bathrooms, paint, kitchen, doors....et all. I mean if I did thst NOW, I would study up on the iPad and would want to take my bloody time to pick all the things you live with for the next 30 years. It was pretty ridiculous.

 

And music was the same. I mean, I was lucky enough to see Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee on the same bill as Freddie King...all under the heading of...’Blues Concert’. That has taken a lifetime to sort out - there is a huge difference between every single note Brownie and Freddie play..sound, tech, everything! Now you have Youtoob to have a look, but then we had memory of the concert and a record we bought that was not one single thing like the concert material. Huh?

 

And on crazy times... The Stones rolled in to my boyhood town just as the hippies and magazines told everyone all concerts should be free! Worldwide! So the whole town turned up out the front, had a riot and the fences of the arena went down and I ran in with a mad mob. How were all the bands going to make a living and afford to come here if there was no money? What was THAT all about.

 

And last but not least, Because I had long hair I was called a communist! What dat? And another teacher said I was something or other of the Proletariat. Huh? And then when I finally saw communists on TV, they all appeared to have short back and sides ala extreme! Huh? [smile]

 

 

 

BluesKing777.

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