tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post53320824886647363..comments2023-09-06T01:53:41.634-07:00Comments on doug's Site: Three from the 1960's San Francisco Music Scene (Part One of Two) Doug's Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09219952832674415239noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-63862171172328544352013-07-01T14:24:34.709-07:002013-07-01T14:24:34.709-07:00Thanks AA. Yes I'm glad you enjoyed yourself ...Thanks AA. Yes I'm glad you enjoyed yourself in the restaurants and bars and oft-colorful venues of the Haight District, even in the inauspicious time of a Tuesday afternoon! I think I felt a similar fission of enthusiasm when I strolled one work-day along Oxford Street and discovered what was left of the old "Carnaby Street" scene twenty years on was mainly yuppie clothing shops, trendy wine bars and pubs and stores selling "corporate punk" t-shirts, but fun I had anyway because the vestiges are there if you look hard enough. I had the same feeling when I was around San Fran in the 1980's. The world in effect crowded into San Francisco like a new gold rush of counter-culture. It all crashed down with the like likes of Manson suddenly engulfing what the Beach Boys and the Merry Pranksters represented to the world. The ugly and violent "killer" side of America was not confined to Dylan's "Masters of War", sadly, but hidden in the viscous mind of a madman like Manson and his mesmerized followers. Other things like the Altamont Concert in 1969 fifty miles east of the City by The Bay and the rise of nihilistic violence high-jacked what was a strictly peaceful if grungy movement. <br /> I know the 1967 "Summer of Love" had its high-points, but also a lot of kids who came out looking for utopia and not finding more than the sort of angry cops and uptight business types they had left at home. Those who were a little "ahead of the curve" time -wise had more fun I suspect. Still, I agree what happened in places like "Frisco" changed the world. It still IS changing the world as you might have noticed with the recent cause to make Gay marriage legal in California (as well as ten other states) bearing fruit with a recent decision by the US Supreme Court. This is a direct carry-over i would argue from the work of people involved in the battles against censorship and civil rights for women and blacks and migrant farm workers from Mexico and against the war---all thing for which the West Coast hub is and remains the San Francisco/Berkeley area. <br /><br />Your musical acumen is dead-on with The Sopwith Camels; now that you mention there is a clear link to the Andy Warhol/Velvet Underground sound, albeit it is more friendly. That counter-culture vibe that these somgs created (for which I will explore in another part tomorrow) is quite a legacy for my home region. I'm glad to share this with someone who experienced and helped disseminate the music and those remarkable times. <br /><br />PS--To tell you the truth, I always thought "We Five" was a British Invasion band until I got this album. Cross-cultural pollination can be deceiving, as I once discovered to my shock when the seven-year daughter of my girlfriend told me in total innocence around 1986 how The Beatles were a band that copied their style from the US mellow-rock group The Monkeys! Doug's Bloghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09219952832674415239noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-29977538529336011162013-06-30T13:30:50.640-07:002013-06-30T13:30:50.640-07:00A fine performance of Somebody To Love which as yo...A fine performance of Somebody To Love which as you say Doug is more 'earthy' than the Jefferson Airplane version I know and love, an inspired choice there Doug. I remember well 1967 when all eyes were on San Francisco and particularly Haight Ashbury of course the very epicentre of the psychedelic revolution.<br /><br />In England there was already some recognition of Californian music from the early 1960s because Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys were popular here too and the southern surf sound was the stufff of adolescent dreams of a happy-go- lucky hotrod racing, surf board riding endless rock and roll orgy on the beach...who could fault it? Not me at the time anyway, but i digress.....the San Francisco sound also captured the wider cultural offer of northern California from John Steinbeck to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.<br /><br />To me San Francisco was a sort of opposite pole to New York City and Haight Ashbury was the Greenwich Village of the west hosting the psychedelic café society. The Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey, the Greatful Dead, Tom Wolfe and the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Timothy Leary it was all going on then and if you wanted a peice of the action San Francisco was the place to go. Unfortunately it took me another 35 years to get there so I may have looked a little out of place when I sparked up my chillum in Frankie and Benny's, but hell this is Haight Ashbury I said and it may have been a 1.30 pm on a Tuesday afternoon in December.... but I was out to party and party I did Doug. <br /><br />I'd never heard of The Sopwith Camels which is a very strange name for representatives of the Summer of Love, but I can hear something here that reminds me of the slightly discordant, edgy version of this style I think can be heard in early Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground songs. The latter is of course suffused with a narcotic and somewhat nihilistic focus compared to the rather more wholesome sounding Sopwith Camel lyric, but the tune and style of vocal reminded me of The Velvet Underground's eponymous third album.<br />I vaguely remember We Five, but I know the song well from the hit Crispian St Peters had with a UK cover of You Were On My Mind a single which I played during my short career as a pirate radio DJ in 1967.<br />All good stuff Doug, thanks for giving a short historical account of the capital of psychedelia, before the rot finally set in during the , the Beach Boys tuned in, turned on and dropped out and Brian Wilson recorded his friend Charles Manson and things started to slide in a distinctly wierd direction around 1969. <br /><br />Nevertheless this is I think a fascinating era in American cultural and social history and it was immensely influential upon young people right across the world ....and probably beyond that .... on the astral planes. It is good to recall how it influenced people of my generation and therefore I think you can say that the revolution was a success, it changed not on my world but THE world too I think. <br /><br />AaranAardvarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04289433800028337687noreply@blogger.com