Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Member Submitted Links Take me back to the Sixties

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Yes, innocence and naïveté. Also, ernestness and commitment and desire for improvement.

It is true that people were more adventurous than before or after, and this had many consequences, good and bad, both personally and socially. But there were many earnest people with very practical plans for improving society. They were crushed, of course.

After the Second World War, there were segments of the ruling classes which desired a more educated and cultured populace. The 60's taught them not to make that mistake again.

The caricature of the 60's which I cannot avoid seeing in the mass media is unrecognizable to me.

The music to which I was listening was Vivaldi, Bach, Gesualdo, Ravi Shankar and Balinese gamelan. The first popular music which I thought was interesting was the Beatles' Norwegian Wood. When I first heard it in '64 or '65, my immediate reaction was, "Hmm, something new and worthwhile is happening."

In movies, I was much impressed by the 1960 film, Last Year at Marienbad and, of course, the wonderful films of the Canadian National Film Board. Otherwise, I don't remember any movies until Kubrick's 2001.

In the plastic arts, I was studying Optical Art and the researches into color theory by Josef Albers. I remember going to exhibitions of original works by René Magritte, Escher and Remedios Varo.

Of course, in the mid-sixties I was studying at UC Berkeley, so my experience may have been a little different from that of most other Americans.

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Hey, that's me innocence and naïveté.

Thanks... nice... one that I had almost forgotten. My halcyon days were a little earlier... off to college in 1953... Know those years couldn't have been as great as they seem now... but, they were!

Numan... '56 was my liberal arts year for classical music... I can remember long hours in music "lab"... with headphones... and parsing Vivaldi and Bach... thetic 1 and anacrusic two... and I thought it would be a "gut" course. And hitch-hiking 150 miles each way from Maine on Saturday and Sunday to visit future bride at Boston College... Imagine... hitch hiking...

My movie was "Room at the Top", and falling in love with Simone Signoret.

So, in my case, I s'pose it would be "take me back to the '50's.

My-O-My, Bob,

I'm afraid that I was way more interested in latter songs of the Inkspots and like groups that had moved out of the 40's genre to R&B and RnR. Then how could anybody resist greats like Bill Haley and His Comets, Chuck Berry, Big Joe Turner, Carl Perkins, Hank Williams, and of course the emerging Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Little Richard, and up to Buddy Holly?

Vivaldi and Bach and those cats just weren't cool, daddio...

I was slobbering over Grace Kelly, Natalie Wood, Sandra Dee, and Tuesday Weld (just to name a few).

Young upstart !

I was a toddler at the start of the 60's, and a pre-teen at the end of that decade. The only part I miss about the 60's are the Helms Bakery Man, Get Smart and the cars like the Mustang, the Firebird and the Camaro of that decade.

But even as I fully acknowledge the absolute fact that government indeed HAD declared war on CERTAIN SEGMENTS of the American people, most others still had the REASONABLE expectation they had not.
Note that I am emphasizing "reasonable expectation".

Joe Homeowner, for example, did not feel as if Big Business and gumbmit was out to get him.

As of this writing I feel it's safe to say a majority of Americans feel like Uncle Sam and Big Business ARE out to get ALL of them, until all that's left are obedient serfs who do what they're told, and the ultra rich, who come up with the marching orders.

As of this writing, the average "Joe Homeowner" does NOT see Big Business and Uncle Sam as friends, or even assets that make America great.

Can't help you with the first two, but today's Mustangs and Camaros outperform their stock classic ancestors on every level.

They even get better gas mileage WHILE they outperform them!

OMG Natalie Wood...she gave me...well...never mind

In 1963, I was ten, Dylan released "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and became my favorite artist
1965. I was all of twelve, Barry McGuire sang "Eve of Destruction" I believed him then and little has changed. Dylan played with an electric blues band that year at Newport.
In '66 I smoked my first joint and listened to Donovan's "Young Girl Blues" and "Writer in the Sun"
Innocence and naivete but mixed with foreboding. I turned to art and drugs and music.
I was 15 in 1968, the so called summer of love. I was still a virgin and knew nothing of love but I knew a lot about acid.
We tripped and surfed and talked about girls and then we tripped some more.
It was as good a time as any to grow up, I guess, but I don't think I want to go back.