by that much..........
born about five years too late to really fully enjoy the sixties, i settled for the lovely otherness that came from the “let’s change the world from the inside out” experience that swelled across the western world and still echoes today - recognizably as a way of knowing and then also as an understanding of what is possible and sometimes even necessary in our lives. my evenings were spent reading the last whole earth catalogue, an amazing compendium of knowledge (edited by stewart brand) widely held now as a precursor to the internet with its far reaching and encyclopaedic stratification of popular culture, support systems, cutting edge thinking, and then also for spawning "the Well".
as a time of change, the sixties was extraordinary and if you step away from the glib characterization of it summed up in the term "hippy" which is now as much a derisive observation of a person as it is a misused term, you will see radical change in the lives of women and minorities, the deeper and more purposeful arrival of spirituality in the mainstream, massive cultural change, and i'll throw in the contentious one - a change in the consciousness of mankind as a whole.
the music of that time carries a charmed innocence in which the earliest touch of world music makes itself felt through the sitar, the percussion, and the arrangements of some of the more adventurous groups. blues also moved very close to the centre as its expressive, streetwise accessibility made it a powerful handmaiden to the folk and rock juggernauts building up steam at the same time.
while all this was unfolding, i was lodged in free jazz, rock jazz, and delta blues. the pop centre was always there for me as well, but rock - mainstream rock - didn’t actually speak to me for a few years. there were a few songs that made their way into my ears and which have managed that kind of lasting power i attribute to a particular connection with a space and time. for example, here are canned heat - one of my favourite groups from the period - singing “up the country”.
here are the boys at woodstock - the 1969 version . . . .
and my fave tune by canned heat “on the road again” . . . .
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