For a few years in the 1960s, London was the world capital of cool

TO SET THE MOOD MUSIC -THE BRITISH INVASION

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ENGLAND IN THE 60’S ARTICLE 1

Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop.

Piri Halasz writing in Time magazine, April 1966

For a few years in the 1960s, London was the world capital of cool. When Time magazine dedicated its 15 April 1966 issue to London: the Swinging City, it cemented the association between London and all things hip and fashionable that had been growing in the popular imagination throughout the decade.

ENGLAND IN THE 60’S ARTICLE 2

London’s remarkable metamorphosis from a gloomy, grimy post-War capital into a bright, shining epicentre of style was largely down to two factors: youth and money. The baby boom of the 1950s meant that the urban population was younger than it had been since Roman times. By the mid-60s, 40% of the population at large was under 25. With the abolition of National Service for men in 1960, these young people had more freedom and fewer responsibilities than their parents’ generation. They rebelled against the limitations and restrictions of post-War society. In short, they wanted to shake things up…

Added to this, Londoners had more disposable income than ever before – and were looking for ways to spend it. Nationally, weekly earnings in the ‘60s outstripped the cost of living by a staggering 183%: in London, where earnings were generally higher than the national average, the figure was probably even greater.

This heady combination of affluence and youth led to a flourishing of music, fashion, design and anything else that would banish the post-War gloom. Fashion boutiques sprang up willy-nilly. Men flocked to Carnaby St, near Soho, for the latest ‘Mod’ fashions. While women were lured to the King’s Rd, where Mary Quant’s radical mini skirts flew off the rails of her iconic store, Bazaar.

Even the most shocking or downright barmy fashions were popularised by models who, for the first time, became superstars. Jean Shrimpton was considered the symbol of Swinging London, while Twiggy was named The Face of 1966. Mary Quant herself was the undisputed queen of the group known as The Chelsea Set, a hard-partying, socially eclectic mix of largely idle ‘toffs’ and talented working-class movers and shakers.

Music was also a huge part of London’s swing. While Liverpool had the Beatles, the London sound was a mix of bands who went on to worldwide success, including The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones. Their music was the mainstay of pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Radio Swinging England. Creative types of all kinds gravitated to the capital, from artists and writers to magazine publishers, photographers, advertisers, film-makers and product designers.

But not everything in London’s garden was rosy. Immigration was a political hot potato: by 1961, there were over 100,000 West Indians in London, and not everyone welcomed them with open arms. The biggest problem of all was a huge shortage of housing to replace bombed buildings and unfit slums and cope with a booming urban population. The badly-conceived solution – huge estates of tower blocks – and the social problems they created, changed the face of London for ever. By the 1970s, with industry declining and unemployment rising, Swinging London seemed a very dim and distant memory.

 

Introduction by Dominic Sandbrook

In October 1965, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, officially opened London’s new Post Office Tower. A gleaming cylinder of metal and glass, the tower could hardly have been a more fitting symbol of the scientific optimism of a self-consciously ‘go-ahead’ decade. It was a monument not just to the white heat of the technological revolution, but to the sheer self-confidence of a society basking in unprecedented prosperity. From the new tower blocks springing up in cities across the country to the radios in teenagers’ bedrooms, from Beatles hits and Bond films to comprehensive schools and nuclear power stations, Sixties Britain seemed – superficially at least – to be a country reborn in the crucible of affluence.

In some ways, the cliches of the 1960s ring absolutely true. With the economy buoyant, unemployment almost non-existent and wages steadily rising, millions of families bought their first cars, washing machines, fridges and televisions. Millions of teenagers, too, were transfixed by the sound of Radio Caroline and the look of Mary Quant — although, then as now, Carnaby Street catered more for tourists and day-trippers than the tiny handful at the cutting edge of fashion. Television transformed the imaginative landscape of almost every household in the country, not merely through pictures of faraway places, but through satirical programmes such as That Was the Week That Was. Even the nation’s diet was changing, transformed not just by the arrival of foreign imports from chicken tikka masala to spaghetti bolognese, but by the relentless advance of the supermarket.

Beneath the glamorous veneer of swinging London, however, Britain under Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson remained a remarkably conservative, even anxious society. Intellectuals worried that affluence and mass communications were undermining traditional working-class culture; in the Pilkington Report, published in 1962, it was hard to miss the disdain for commercial television. Meanwhile, despite the much-discussed stereotype of the ‘permissive society’, popular attitudes to moral and sexual issues remained strikingly slow to change. For all the excitement surrounding the landmark Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial in 1960, or the liberalisation of the divorce, abortion and homosexuality laws later in the decade, most people held similar attitudes to their parents; in this respect, the generation gap was a media invention.

And although students marched on the US embassy in protest at the Vietnam War, or staged sit-ins at universities such as the London School of Economics, it is easy to forget that only one in ten young people became students. Polls showed that like their elders, most young people still supported the death penalty and were uneasy about large-scale Commonwealth immigration; by the end of the decade, it is probably no exaggeration to say that the Conservative maverick Enoch Powell, who was kicked off his party’s front bench after his notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech, was the most popular politician in the country. Even Mary Whitehouse, a ferocious critic of televised obscenity, especially on the BBC, commanded the instinctive support of tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people.

By the end of the 1960s, the contradictions at the heart of the affluent society were becoming increasingly apparent. Despite Harold Wilson’s promises of endless growth thanks to his National Plan, the economy was running into serious trouble. The Aberfan catastrophe in 1966, the devaluation of the pound a year later and the Ronan Point disaster a year after that all hinted at the political and social traumas that would blight the following decade. Perhaps most ominously, Wilson’s last stab at modernisation, the trade union reforms outlined in the White Paper In Place of Strife, fell apart completely in 1969. A year later, the public punished the Labour government for its perceived under-achievement. A new and much unhappier era was at hand.

Dominic Sandbrook is the author of ‘White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties’.

A brief recollection-

In 1965 My best friend Linda and I were walking barefoot along Tower Bridge when we came face to face with Harold WIlson, he smiled and walked on. We giggled, flabbergasted that he would acknowledge a couple of hippies.

A WALK ACROSS TOWER BRIDGE

 

 

“WHEN IN DOUBT DRINK TEA”   Ana Christy

a bit of personal history about Dave Christy and my involvement in the small press

Dave and Ana Christy

http://www.luver.com

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Doug Holder

This blog consists of reviews, interviews, news, etc…from the world of the Boston area small press/ poetry scene and beyond. Regular contributors are reviewers: Barbara Bialick, Lawrence Kessenich, Lo Galluccio, Zvi Sesling, Irene Koronas, Rene Schwiesow, Dennis Daly, and others. Founder Doug Holder: dougholder@post.harvard.edu. * B A S P P S is listed in the New Pages Index of Alternative Literary Blogs.

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Showing posts with label Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away Doug Holder. Show all posts
Monday, February 08, 2010

Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away…

I received notice that Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press has passed away. The press was very prolific and influential in the little magazine and chapbook scene in the 80’s and 90’s. I had my first chap published by Dave Christy: “Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the Back Bay to the Back Ward” May he rest in peace.

From the website:

Alpha Beat Press has been publishing Beat Generation, post-Beat Independent and other modern writings since 1986. Alpha Beat Press had its beginnings in a Montreal flat with the idea of keeping the aesthetics and sensibilities of the Beat generation alive. Our first magazine, Alpha Beat Soup was unique, being the only small press magazine publishing original and current Beat writings. In our new magazine Bouillabaisse and in our other poetry publications we have continued in that tradition, publishing a wide variety of writers and styles, from Bukowski to the lesser known poets. Alpha Beat Press is certainly the best of the small press!

Past Contributors include: John Clellan Holmes, Charles Bukowski, Beatrice Wood, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Carolyn Cassady, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Ken Kesey, Simon Vinkenoong, Kaviraj George Dowden, John Montgomery, Jack Kerouac, Ken Babbs, Bruce Fearing, Ray Bremser, Al Aronowitz, Ana Christy, Gerald Nicosia, Diane Wakowski, Bob Kaufman, Steve Richmond, Janine Pommy Vega, Antler, Herbert Huncke, Pradip Choudhuri, Jack Micheline, Gregory Corso, Joan Reid, Allen Cohen, Yusuke Keida, Barbara Moraff, A.D.Winans, Tuli Kupferberg, Richard Morris, George Montrgomery, Frank Moore, Erling Friis-Baastad, t.k.splake, ruth weiss, elliott, Ted Berrigan, Neeli Cherkovski, Clayton Eshleman, Gerald Locklin, Joy Walsh, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Kurt Nimmo, Ron Androla, Graham Cournoyer, Bill Costley, Jan Kerouac, Jeanne Conn, Stephan Ronan, Christine Zwingman, Chris Challis, Lyn Lifshin, Ulvis Alberts, Lorrie Jackson, Tony Seldin, Judson Crews, Steve Allen, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady & Ted Joans.

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Labels: Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away Doug Holder

Review: COKEFISH ing IN ALPHA BEAT SOUP
A Beat-Post Beat Independent Poetry Broadsheet
January 2009

“Cokefish” or “Cokefishing” is a pretty unique publication in that it really is a broadsheet, printed on two sides of a giant piece of paper which arrived at my door (at least) folded in quarters, and set in a variety of types, largely because the type that each poem or letter (it features author letters too) was submitted in seems to have been copied directly onto the broadsheet. And this is a choice the editors Dave and Ana Christy are making: “This broadside is dedicated to the small press and the way it used to be,” reads the legend over the top of the first poems, next, in this issue, to a photocopied picture of the late, much lamented Dave Church, whose passing several poems and letters commemorate.

I like their style here. This is the sort of homemade, no-frills publication which sold me on the romance of the small press in the first place, when Bryn Fortey was doing something similar in Wales, though he folded his sheets in half and stapled them. Bryn introduced me, through his “Outlaw” magazine, to some of the best living poets, including (as he was) Church and t.kilgore splake; and Dave and Ana’s roster includes both of those old greybeard heroes, along with Steve Dalachinsky, whose work I found impossible to format for BEATNIK (sorry Steve) and Gundy, whose name I came across a few years ago and haven’t heard from for a while, during my own weird peregrinations around the literary world and in real unreality. It’s good to know that there are still some places where the way a magazine/ publication looks doesn’t matter and the way it reads does. Lately even Beat-influenced sites have gone for fancy production which has nothing to do with the original spirit of the writing.

You can track “Cokefish (ing)” down via Alpha Beat Press and Dave and Ana Christy at 806 E. Ridge Ave. Sellersville PA 18960 USA. And like I said, it’s a buck an issue, so remunerate the Christys accordingly.

Posted by Bruce Hodder at 2:26 AM

Sell on Amazon

Charles Bukowski and Alpha Beat Press 1988-1994 Paperback – January 1, 1994

by Dave and Ana Christy (Editor)

1 Collectible from $125.00

Can Man Says Goodnight on luver.com an internet weekly radio show

Join Dave & Ana for an hour of good talk, a lot of laughs and a lot of vodka! Reminiscent of the old radio show, THE BICKERSONS – The Christy’s add a special guest poet/musician along with a Country Classic tune and Ana’s “Pick Your Nose” of the week.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Can Man Says Goodnight #81

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Can Man Says Goodnight #80

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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Can Man Says Goodnight #79

Download/listen to the show by clicking on the title.

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Can Man Says Goodnight #78

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THE HAUNTED LIFE:THE LOST NOVELLA’ BY JACK KEROUAC

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Review by Peter Aspden

©Corbis

From left, Hal Chase, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in Manhattan, c1944-45

The Haunted Life: The Lost Novella, by Jack Kerouac, Penguin Classics, RRP£20, 208 pages

Jack Kerouac, an author who was barely patient enough to punctuate his sentences, never mind sit still in one place, always claimed that he had lost the manuscript to his early novella The Haunted Life in the back seat of a yellow taxi cab. The truth is less dramatic: he probably forgot it in the closet of a Columbia University dorm room that had belonged to his fellow Beat writer Allen Ginsberg.

Peter Aspden

It resurfaced in a Sotheby’s auction 12 years ago, selling to an unnamed bidder for $95,600. The previous year, Kerouac’s most renowned manuscript, the famous On The Road scroll, had also sold at auction for a whopping $2.4m, which explains the sudden appearance of the earlier work.

Those relative values strike me as well-judged. The Haunted Life, now published for the first time and generously annotated and edited by Kerouac scholar Todd Tietchen, is a minor addition to the author’s corpus but not without interest. Kerouac wrote it at the age of 22, in the turbulent year of 1944, during which he was jailed as an accessory to murder, married his first wife Edie Parker to secure bail, and was then released.

“I should now have material for a fine book . . . love, murder, diabolical conversations, all,” he wrote mischievously, but none of these promising themes finds its way into A Haunted Life. Instead we get a rehearsal for the semi-autobiographical exploration that would form the basis of Kerouac’s first major published work, The Town and the City.

Tietchen, in his introduction to the novella, believes that this early and methodical exposition of the author’s literary intentions is a significant rebuttal of the “public perception of Kerouac as a spontaneous word-slinger whose authorial approach merely complemented his Dionysian approach to life”. He casts the hedonistic writer as an improbable respecter of process, honing his ideas in this brisk workout.

In A Haunted Life, Kerouac’s concerns are refracted through Peter Martin, heading into his sophomore year at Boston College along with his friends Garabed Tourian and Dick Sheffield, based on the author’s real-life buddies Sebastian Sampas and Billy Chandler, both of whom had died in the war by the time Kerouac wrote the novella.

The three young men’s conversations skirt around some of the issues that preoccupied American intellectual life in the 1930s and 1940s: the end of the Great Depression, the US’s entry into the war, the exploitation of the working classes, and the possibility of romantic escape from all of those needling dilemmas.

Garabed and Dick respectively represent the leftist and liberationist ideals that animated those debates. In contrast, Peter’s frosty exchanges with his father Joe – clearly based on Kerouac’s own father Leo – see the young man wrestling with the bigotry of the preceding generation. In the novella’s very first pages, Peter drowns out the beginnings of one of his father’s rants by turning up Benny Goodman on the record player, an early reflection of Kerouac’s belief that jazz music’s freedom of form was the nemesis of sclerotic social views.

This opening feels stagey, as do the opening remarks between Peter and Garabed, clunky in their philosophical intent: “Poor Garabed,” says Peter. “Dostoevsky terrifies you with his Slavic portraits that remind you too much of yourself. You fear ugliness, you chase beauty and embrace it.”

As we focus on Peter’s interior life, touches of the freewheeling Kerouac begin to emerge in passages of existential celebration: “The morning sun, the swift clean smell in the air had called him back to life, called him back for more of the same – which at times held so much wonder that Peter deplored his physical limits. On a morning like this! – to be everywhere, be everyone at the same time, doing everything!”

Kerouac always intended The Haunted Life to become a multi-volume saga on the war, told through the story of the Martin family. “[It] will be a very sad book,” he explains in a note included here. “It can’t be otherwise: youth is shocked by maturity, but war adds to this shock enough to kill youth forever.”

But it is not for this melancholy tone that Kerouac would become best known, and it is clear from his musings that he was already looking ahead at a new America. In an outline for The Town and the City, he emphasises that the book’s ending will treat its characters well. “I write with gravity and gleefulness because I do not feel sceptical and clever about these things, and I believe that this is an American feeling. (No Joyce, no Auden, no Kafka has anything to say to a true American.)”

With that slap at the Old World, Kerouac launched himself to become one of the most exuberant adventurers of a new cultural landscape, whose heroes would include James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, characters who were infused with a sense of the limitless. Here, in this small book, are the tentative beginnings of a journey that was always going to lead to the open road.

Peter Aspden is the FT’s arts writer

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COOL PEOPLE -JOHN PRINE SINGER SONG WRITER, HIS MUSIC, AN ANA CHRISTY POEM

John Prine Biography

 

John Prine  is one of my favorite singers. He was a favorite of Dave’s too.

Saturday night was our party night. We’d sit at our fifties kitchen table with candles lit, incense going and the cd player playing. The scene was set as we settled in for a long night. We shared a bottle of vodka and Dave drank beer  and I drank wine. We would record our weekly internet radio show “The Can Man Says Goodnight show on luver.com. We had a great time getting really blasted and high doing the occasional snort here and there. Yes we were hippies, boozers I suppose and potheads, and good at it. I am not ashamed, we did exactly what we wanted to the fullest extent. It was, we agreed the best time of our lives, and the most productive years.

A short poem of mine

 

WALLS

these walls sometimes scream with frustration

Other times heave with the passion of love

Sometimes these walls become glacier white

With the distortion of drugs

These walls hold our existence-books and

Manuscripts piled into pyramidal corners

Balancing on cardboard boxes and metal shelves

These walls with it’s controversial posters

And flyers with cryptic messages make others

Curious

These walls would embarrass our children

And parents-

They do not understand the expressiveness

Of filled space and open minds.

Ana Christy “Beatnik Blues”

 

John Prine Biography

JOHN PRINE AND IRIS DEMENT-IN SPITE OF OURSELVES

JOHN PRINE-ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY

JOHN PRINE -THAT’S THE WAY THE WORLD GOES ROUND

Singer, Guitarist (1946–)

Quick Facts
Name John Prine Occupation Singer, Guitarist Birth Date October 10, 1946 (age 67) Place of Birth Maywood, Illinois Full Name John Prine Zodiac Sign Libra
Synopsis
Early Years
Recording Career
Cancer Scare
John Prine is an American singer-songwriter who has issued a prodigious number of albums. His work has been covered by Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash and George Strait.

Synopsis

Singer-songwriter John Prine was born on October 10, 1946 in Maywood, Illinois. Born into a music-making family, Prine began playing guitar at age 14. By his early 20s, he was living in Chicago and entrenched in the city’s folk music scene. In 1971, Prine put out his self-titled debut album, which earned critical praise and helped pave the way for a career that has spanned more than four decades.

Early Years

The grandson of a musician, singer-songwriter John Prine was born on October 10, 1946 in Maywood, Illinois. His grandfather was a guitar player for country-western star Merle Travis. His grandfather’s talents were evidently passed down to Prine, who began playing guitar at the age of 14.

Following a two-year stint in the Army, Prine moved to Chicago, where he immersed himself in the city’s folk music scene. His sound and style eventually caught the attention of Kris Kristofferson, who helped his new friend land a record contract.

Recording Career

In 1971, Prine released his self-titled debut album, which features the critically lauded song “Sam Stone,” an account of a drug-infused Vietnam. The album was adored by critics, but never enjoyed much commercial success. The same held true for his follow-up albums, Diamonds in the Rough (1972) and Sweet Revenge (1973).

In 1975, Prine released Common Sense, which offered his fans a heavier sound than they were accustomed to with his music. Backed by the popular song “Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard,” the record cracked the Billboard 100 chart. In the years since, Prine’s career has continued on a similar trajectory. His albums haven’t been overwhelming sellers, but they’ve managed to attract a dedicated following of fans who adore his music and songwriting.

Along the way, Prine has shown an ability to adapt and change. In the early 1980s, after getting dropped from his label, Asylum Records, Prine picked up the pieces and started his own recording company, Oh Boy Records. In 1991, he released the Grammy-winning LP The Missing Years, with guest appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bonnie Raitt, among others. The album went on to sell more than 250,000 copies.

In recent years, Prine has maintained a steady recording career. His 2005 album of new material, Fair and Square, earned Prine a Grammy Award for best contemporary folk album. Prine’s 2007 release, Standard Songs for Average People, recorded with guitarist Mac Wiseman, offers his fans a collection of country and folk classics. In 2010, Prine put out In Person and On Stage, an album of live performances of his songs.

Cancer Scare

In 1998, Prine received a serious health scare—he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a cancer that had formed on the side of his neck. Surgery and radiation treatment soon followed. Prine made a full recovery and was able to complete his 1999 album, In Spite of Ourselves.

John Prine resides in Nashville with his wife, Fiona Whelan.

John Prine. (2014). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 01:39, May 21, 2014, from http://www.biography.com/people/john-prine-20871737.

John Prine. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography.com website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/john-prine-20871737 [Accessed 21 May 2014].

“John Prine.” Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 21 May 2014.

JACK KEROUAC- OCTOBER IN THE RAILWORK EARTH

The counterculture of the 1960s was marked by a growing distrust of government

 

 

The American Counterculture refers to the period between 1964-1972 when the norms of the 1950s were rejected by youth.
Key Points

◾Counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, especially with respect to racial segregation, the Vietnam War, sexual mores, women’s rights, and materialism.

◾Hippies were the largest countercultural classification comprising mostly white members of the middle class.

The counterculture movement divided the country.

◾The movement died in the early 1970s because most of their goals had become mainstream, and because of rising economic troubles.
Terms

◾quash

To defeat forcibly.

◾stagflation

Inflation accompanied by stagnant growth, unemployment or recession.

◾counterculture

Any culture whose values and lifestyles are opposed to those of the established mainstream culture, especially to western culture.

A counterculture developed in the United States in late 1960s. This movement lasted from approximately 1964 to 1972, and it coincided with America’s involvement in Vietnam. A counterculture is the rejection of conventional social norms – in this case the norms of the 1950s . The counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, specifically racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War.

Woodstock Youth

This photo was taken near the Woodstock Music Festival in August, 1969. The counterculture in the 1960s was characterized by young people breaking away from the traditional culture of the 1950s.

As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam , race relations, sexual mores, women’s rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream. White, middle class youth, who made up the bulk of the counterculture, had sufficient leisure time to turn their attention to social issues, thanks to widespread economic prosperity.

Vietnam War Protest

The counterculture of the 1960s was marked by a growing distrust of government
, which included anti-war protests like this.
Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture, most of whose members were white, middle-class young Americans. Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States . The counterculture reached its peak in the 1967 “Summer of Love,” when thousands of young people flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The counterculture lifestyle integrated many of the ideals and indulgences of the time: peace, love, harmony, music, and mysticism. Meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs were embraced as routes to expanding one’s consciousness.

The Peace Sign

The peace sign became a major symbol of the counterculture of the 1960s.

Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop-art, and new explorations in spirituality. Musicians who exemplified this era include The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Pink Floyd.

New forms of musical presentation also played a key role in spreading the counterculture, mainly large outdoor rock festivals. The climactic live statement of this occurred from August 15–18, 1969, with the Woodstock Music Festival held in Bethel, New York. During this festival, 32 of rock and psychedelic rock’s most popular acts performing live outdoors over the course of a weekend to an audience of half a million people.

Countercultural sentiments were expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period, such as “do your own thing,” “turn on, tune in, drop out,” “whatever turns you on,” “eight miles high,” “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” and “light my fire. ” Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology, the term “Age of Aquarius,” and knowing people’s signs.

The counterculture movement divided the country. To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, world peace, and the pursuit of happiness. To others, the counterculture movement reflected a self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on America’s traditional moral order.

In an effort to quash the movement, authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media. In the end, the counterculture collapsed on its own around 1973.

Two main reasons are cited for the collapse. First, the most popular of the movement’s political goals—civil rights, civil liberties, gender equality, environmentalism, and the end of the Vietnam War—were accomplished (to at least a significant degree), and its most popular social attributes, particularly a “live and let live” mentality in personal lifestyles (the “sexual revolution”)—were co-opted by mainstream society. Second, a decline of idealism and hedonism occured as many notable counterculture figures died and the rest settled into mainstream society and started their own families.

The “magic economy” of the 1960s gave way to the stagflation of the 1970s, the latter costing many middle-class Americans the luxury of being able to live outside conventional social institutions. The counterculture, however, continues to influence social movements, art, music, and society in general, and the post-1973 mainstream society has been in many ways a hybrid of the 1960s establishment and counterculture—seen as the best (or the worst) of both worlds.

COOL PEOPLE-JACK KEROUAC MOVIE -KING OF THE BEATS 1986

 

KEROUAC THE MOVIE 1986 KING OF THE BEATS

THE BEAT GENERATION BOB McFADDON

THE BEAT GENERATION BY BOB McFADDON

DAVID AMRAM REMEMBERS JACK KEROUAC

from left to right: Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac,
David Amram, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso (with back to camera)

 

DAVID AMRAM REMEMBERS
(Originally written for Evergreen Review in 1969, published early 1970 at the request of publisher Barney Rossett as an obituary for Kerouac)

I used to see Jack often at the old Five Spot in the beginning of 1957, when I was working there. I knew he was a writer, and all musicians knew that he loved music. You could tell by the way he sat and listened. He never tried to seem hip. He was too interested in life around him to ever think of how he appeared. Musicians understood this and were always glad to see him, because we knew that meant at least one person would be I listening. Jack was on the same wave-length as we were, so it was never necessary to talk.

A few months later, poets Howard Hart and Philip Lamantia came by my place with Jack. They had decided to read their poetry with music, and Jack said he would join in, reading, improvising, rapping with the audience and singing along. Our first performance was in December of 1957 at the Brata Art Gallery on East 10th Street. It was the first jazz-poetry reading in New York. There was no advertising and it was raining, but the place was packed. Jack had become the most important figure of the time. His name was magic. In spite of the carping, whining put-downs by the furious critics, and the jealousy of some of his contemporaries for his overnight success (he had written ten books in addition to On The Road with almost no recognition), Jack hadn’t changed. But people’s reaction to him was sometimes frightening.

He was suddenly being billed as the ‘King of The Beatniks’, and manufactured against his will, as some kind of public Guru for a movement that never existed. Jack was a private person, extremely shy, and dedicated to writing. When he drank, he became much more expansive, and this was the only part of his personality that became publicized. The people who came to the Brata Gallery weren’t taste makers; they were friends.

A few months later, we began some readings at the Circle In The Square. Everyone improvised, including the light man, who had his first chance to wail on the lighting board. The audience joined in, heckling, requesting Jack to read parts of On The Road, and asking him to expound on anything that came into his head. He also would sing while I was playing the horn, sometimes making up verses. He had a phenomenal ear. It was like playing duets with a great musician.

Jack was proud of his knowledge of music and of the musicians of his time. He used to come by and play the piano by ear for hours. He had some wonderful ideas for combining the spoken word with music. A few weeks later, jazz-poetry became ‘Official Entertainment’, and a few months later was discarded as another bit of refuse, added to the huge mound of our junk culture. It was harder to dispose of Jack. The same journalist and radio and TV personalities who had heralded him were now ripping him to shreds. Fortunately, they couldn’t rip up his manuscripts. His work was being published, more widely read, and translated.

In early 1958, all of us went to Brooklyn College, where Jack, Phillip and Howard read. Jack spent most of the time answering the student’s questions with questions of his own. He was the down-home Zen master, and the students finally realized he wasn’t putting them on. He was showing them himself. If they wanted to meet the Author Jack Kerouac, they would have to read his books.

His public appearances were never to promote his books. They were to share a state of mind and a way of being. The only journalist who picked up on this was Al Aronowitz. He saw Jack as an artist.

In the spring of 1959, the film Pull My Daisy was made. Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers and myself – the Third Avenue All-Stars as one wit described us – appeared in it. Alfred Leslie directed it and Robert Frank filmed it. Jack had written the scenario, and after the film had been edited, Jack saw it. Because it was a silent movie, Jack was to narrate it, and I was to write the music afterwards. He, Allen, and Neal Cassady also wrote the lyrics for the title song Pull My Daisy, for which I wrote the music and was sung in the film by Anita Ellis. Jack put on earphones and asked me to play, so that he could improvise the narration to music, the way we had done at our readings. He watched the film, and made up the narration on the spot. He did it two times through spontaneously, and that was it. He refused to do it again. He believed in spontaneity, and the narration turned out to be the very best thing about the film. We recorded it at Jerry Newman’s studio. Jerry was an old friend of Jack’s from the early forties and afterwards we had a party-jam session that lasted all night. Jack played the piano, sang, and improvised for hours.

In the early sixties I used to see Jack when he would come in from Northport to visit town. Once, he called up at one in the morning and told me I had to come over so that he could tell me a story. I brought over some music to copy, and Jack spoke non-stop until 8:30 a.m., describing a trip he had made through North Africa and Europe. It was like hearing a whole book of his being read aloud, and Jack was the best reader of his own work, with the exception of Dylan Thomas, that I ever heard.

“That’s a fantastic story.” I told him. “It sounds just like your books.”

“I try to make my writing sound just the way I talk.” he said. His ideal was not to display his literary skill, but to have a conversation with the reader.

I told Jack about an idea I had for a cantata about the four seasons in America, using the works of American authors. He launched into a travelogue of his voyages around the country, and referred to writers I might look into. I took notes, and ended up reading nearly fifty books, to find the texts. I included a passage from his book Lonesome Traveler. The concert was at Town Hall [in New York City], and Jack wrote that he couldn’t come. It was the Spring of 1965, and he didn’t like being in New York.

Sometimes he would call from different parts of the country just to talk, and we continued to write to each other. In one letter he said “Ug-g-h. Fame is such a drag.” He wanted time to work, but found that success robbed him of his freedom. At the same time, he felt that he was forgotten. I told him that all the young people I met when I toured colleges loved his books. To many, he was their favorite writer. But writer meant something different now. It was what was being said, not how it was said. It was content that counted, not style. Jacks’ message was a whole way of being, and he was becoming more an influence than ever.

Truman Capote dismissed Jack’s work as “typing.” I never heard Jack put down another writer. He went out of his way to encourage young writers. His work reflects this spirit of generosity, kindness and love. This is why his “typing” is so meaningful to young people today. Jack was ahead of his time spiritually. Like Charlie Parker, Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley, his work is constantly being rediscovered.

Through knowing Jack, I wrote some of my best music. Without knowing him, I never would have written my book. More important, young people all over the world are reading and rereading his work. His death only means the beginning of a new life for everyone who shares in the joy of knowing him through his books.

David Amram, October 24th. 1969

“If You’re Going to San Francisco

IF YOU ARE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO
SCOTT MCKENZIE

Counterculture of the 1960′
“If You’re Going to San Fransisco…Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”

The Hippie Lifestyle
The period of the 1960’s was a time of rapid social change and immergence in the United States. A leftist and liberal philosophy within the society, coupled with the powerful anti-Vietnam War movement, made the 1960’s an extremely memorable era. Fueled by the urge to break away from the conservative mindsets of the ideal 1950’s family, the counterculture generation took a stand against such restricting factors. In doing so, the “hippie” culture took root and spread throughout the United States, mainly amongst the young, college students who were attracted to such a free lifestyle. Philosophies such as free love, communal living, and experimentation with various mind-altering drugs were trademark of the hippie lifestyle. Partaking in activities such as these separated the people from the previous churchgoing, family oriented decade and a powerful counterculture developed.

        “If it feels good, do it,” sums the entire attitude of the hippie generation. Each lived a carefree life in which they could express themselves to the fullest and carry on unrestricting customs that were never before seen in society. Constraint of the body as well as the mind was ruled non-cohesive in the beliefs of this new generation. The people wanted to be as free as possible and did so by expressing themselves in unlimited ways. The common characteristics of the hippie were long hair, second-hand, colorful clothing, flowers and beads as well as sandals or bare feet. Sexual experimentation thrived through the culture as free love and casual relations took the place of family values and strict Christian beliefs in a lifetime partnership. 

“The counterculture questioned sexual morality and proposed many different models: extended sexual families, sex orgies, sex-therapy groups, acceptance of homosexuality and, most of all, a positive, joyful celebration of sexuality, as opposed to the uptight morality of the previous generation,” (Miles 13).

The open and free sexuality brought about a huge shift in the culture of the United States. People of the counterculture no longer felt the harsh constrictions of society and they each experienced a strong feeling of liberation because of this. When birth control became readily available to the public, women were given more freedom in their sexuality and this fueled the philosophy of free love. Such freedom among the hippie community sparked questioning of sexual roles and demonstrated how the hippie culture was contributing largely to the change of customs in society.

        As contemporary personal values and beliefs flourished, people of these similar views tended to join together through communal living. Many hippies of the nation migrated to the West coast of the United States after they dropped out of college to express their freedom and beliefs in a nonrestrictive society.

“Searching for a place in which they could feel free to express their political views and creative spirit, many found themselves in California or New York. Most gravitated to a desolate part of San Francisco known as the Haight-Ashbury District. This neighborhood, close to San Francisco, State College, provided homes for many students,” (Hoy 2).

People of the counterculture found communal living beneficial to their personal needs as well as to their essential beliefs. When living with other people who possess the same views and methods of survival, the group generally tends to conflict with one another much less. When people find benefit in easier living, namely in communes, they are able to agree with the people around them, in turn creating a generally peaceful environment. One of the most popular hippie gatherings was in the Haight-Ashbury District in San Francisco, California. Sparked by the opening of a Psychedelic shop that sold books on drugs and oriental philosophy, flutes, beads, and other hippie paraphernalia. The youth of the counterculture were attracted to this and were quickly drawn to the area. The district provided places to live for the growing population of college dropouts and fed the culture that was driving the counterculture of the United States. There are numerous cases, however, in which when not controlled or peaceful, communes can be a negative thing. If not cautious, the commune could turn into a cult. One of the most famous “communes” of the era was under Charles Manson, a crazed murderer and essential madman. He is highly notorious for acts of sodomy, violent murder, rape, and robbery, among numerous other serious felonies (Miles 272). Manson’s cult is prime example of how communal living could be an evil institution. Although there are unfortunate cases such as this, for the most part, communal living was beneficial to the people within the institution and was a peaceful way of sharing the wealth of life.

        Along with free love and revolutionary philosophies, the drug culture was a main and important attribute to the new counterculture of the United States. It was not uncommon for hippies to have marijuana or LSD in their possession. Mind altering drugs were extremely popular amongst the youth culture because they were able to free their minds more effectively.

“While listening to this (psychedelic rock) some hippies smoked marijuana or took LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a powerful drug that includes hallucinations,” (Hoy 2).

Getting high was the ultimate method for a hippie to release their minds and relieve any sort of impurity or stress in their life. Drugs were a lifestyle, providing income for the majority, usually just enough money for personal marijuana purchase and basic living costs. Rising celebrities, mainly on the rock scene front, such as Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles experimented in the drug culture. Hendrix dabbled heavily in LSD while the Beatles experimented with LSD as well and marijuana on occasion. Paul McCartney of the Beatles answers questions,

“’Do you think you have encouraged your fans to take drugs?’

‘I don’t think it will make any difference. You know, I don’t think it will make any difference. You know, I don’t think my fans are going to take drugs just because I did,’” (Miles 237).

The celebrities claim to not want to directly influence the fans into taking on the drug culture, but were rather experimenting with it for their personal curiosity or interest. Even though marijuana was technically illegal, it was only the rich and famous who were caught and penalized with scandal. This was mostly because the conservative remnants of society rejected the hippie lifestyle and its influence on society as a whole. Conservatives took action and turned events into scandals in order to downplay and discredit the hippie movement. Although drugs such as marijuana and LSD have been illegal, except for medicinal uses, before and during the 1960s, they were not uncommon in the slightest. Drugs were readily available to the common hippie of the 1960s and allowed them to free their mind and experience an alternate way of life.

        The hippie lifestyle matched that of any other new and different way of life, revolutionary and for the most part, popular. The 1960’s was a period in which college students “tune in, turn on, and drop out”, like psychedelic drug research advocate, Timothy Leary states. The revolutionists of the era expressed their New Leftist beliefs by expanding their sexual freedoms, living together in communes, and involving themselves in the powerful drug culture which would allow them to ideally live by their free beliefs. The hippie lifestyle was truly a side of society which effectively expressed and practiced their ways of life alongside the disapproving conservative America of the previous decade.