8 - 9 - A Hippie Nation (846)

8/9/2019 8 - 9 - A Hippie Nation (846)

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8/9/2019 8 - 9 - A Hippie Nation (846)


Festival of the summer of 1969.But maybe the most famous open airfestival of of the rock era, put togetherprimarily by a guy by the name of MichaelLang.it had many of the same groups that wereat Monterey but you can add to thatSantana, Crosby, Stills and Nash in theirfirst public performance, Joe Cocker andSly and the Family Stone.Famously that event had very few, and theMonterrey festival, had very fewproblems.I mean, when you think about putting allthese people together into one of thesethings.think of all the things that couldpossibly go wrong, and it's a testamentto, this and many of the festivals that

went on that there, that there wasn'tmore trouble.There were some OD's, there were somefights, this kind of thing, but you canexpect that at a hockey game, maybe notthe OD's just drunkenness, maybeBut nevertheless, it wasn't so out of theordinary.However, things took a really dark turnat the end of 1969, and maybe put a kindof not so happy ending on the hippie era.And I talk about the Altamont SpeedwayFree Festival of December of 1969.

This was something the Rolling Stonesreally wanted to do, a free open airconcert.But they had a tough time finding avenue.They eventually settled in on theAltamont Speedway, not too far outside ofSan Francisco.Michael Lang who had organized Woodstockhelped them out with the organizing.The Rolling Stones were going toheadline.They were going to be filming a, moviethat later came out in 1970 as GimmeShelter.and so they waited until the sun wentdown so they could get good footage of,of the lighting.But unfortunately they decided that theywere going to use the Hell's Angels toprovide security for this event.And the Hell's Angels were.Maybe not the right organization to, atleast those particular Hells Angels,maybe not the right ones for that.

And a guy ended up getting killed rightin front of the stage.really on camera for all intensive

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purposes, right in front of Mick Jaggerand it was a real tragedy and a realblack mark on this sort of, on hippiemovement there.There'd so many successful festivals thatended with Altamont.But I think the importance when we talkabout these festivals is to think that,as, as these festivals sprung up invarious cities around the country, youbegan to have this kind of bringingtogether of young people around hippieculture.Now it was very mainstream.This was happening all around the, allaround the country, not just in London,not San, not just in San Francisco.There, there were also these in the UK,Isle of White is, is an important one for

us to think about.Also, at the same time this washappening, the music was spreading via FMradio.Starting very innocently with Tom Donahueat least one of the guys who started it,Tom Donahue in San Francisco during the1967 period.It starts to spread this format allacross the country to where every majorcity has got at least one sometimes twoFM rock radio stations.People gotta make sure they got a FM

receiver.They gotta make sure they got FM in thecar.And all of a sudden this music is reallyeverywhere that radio can go in thiscountry and that's a considerable amountof exposure for the music.It's also a time when we can starttalking about an AM FM split.AM radio which had been the, the youknow, where all the Beach Boys andBeatles and Byrds' hits had appeared nowstarts to become the music of reallypoppy kind of stuff, almost sort of teenybopperish kinds of music.FM starts to become the music, thestations that are really interested inalbum oriented rock and the rocktradition.So when we think about AM and FM duringthis period between 67, 68 and 69.Rock, or at least the rock we talk aboutin most of these kinds of courses.Really follows the FM band and AM reallybecomes something that's more sort of

marketing pop.And again we're talking about theAmerican perspective on this.

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So for those of you who are, are takingthis course from other.countries, may not sort of appreciate theAM, FM distinction that many of us whogrew up in this country were aware of ona daily basis.what this all leads to is the idea of thebreak though of the hippie subcultureinto the mainstream.In middle America or something I call,you know, can I buy tie dye at the mall?It's something that started out as kindof a rebellious movement in thesesub-cultures in San Francisco and London.Which then because of national exposureand the spread of the music and all thatwas going on became kind of commodifiedto the point where a kid in Indianapoliscould go into a mall in 1969 and 1970.

And buy a tie-dye shirt that, for allintensive purposes, looked like one ofthe hippies in San Francisco might bewearing.but had really had no experience of thatsubculture really had become and come outof that thing.Well that's what happens with a lot ofthings when they come from subculture tomainstream pop.But that's really What happened.We start to get into the end of 1969 intobeginning of the 1970, we usually see a

break point.for us, certainly it's a break pointbecause we're at the very end of, of thiscourse.And let me just say a minute about wherewe'll go in part two of the history ofrock if you should care to stay with us,as we continue to tell the story.A lot of the styles that are blended,musical styles that are blended togetherin 60's rock are then, as we go into the70's, separated out into specialty kindsof styles.If you can think of Pink Floyd's, thealbum cover from Pink Floyd's Dark Sideof the Moon, where the white light comesin one side of the prism and comes outall these different colors.It's like the white light is psychedeliaand what comes out of it?Are all these different kinds of styles,progressive rock, country rock,singer-songwriter, blues based rock, allthose things come out of psychedelia.And that's where the story will take us

as we head into part two of the historyof rock.So as we look back on the psychedelic

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era, we talk about these ideas ofsubcultures, mainstream culture, the useof drugs, the importance of drugs, andthe idea of the trip, the idea of howmusic can be psychedelic.And how all this lends lends force to theidea of music be, musicians becomingincreasingly ambitious.Caring about doing music that they thinkwill last, as opposed to thinking ofthinking of it is just the kind oftemporary musical thing to sell recordsfor a while.And this ambitiousness, this, this sortof conceptual nature of what happens inthe psychedelic era, is really whatbegins to define music, popular musicinto the 70's and beyond.I hope you join us for part two of the

History of Rock.

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8 - 9 - A Hippie Nation (846)