Monday, February 26th, 2024
Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to the path which nature has marked out for him.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MUS106 Lecture: Both Sides of the 60s
- Jimi Hendrix Experience (cont’d)
- major releases in 1967—forward thinking
- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Grateful Dead
- Big Brother and The HOlding Company
- The Doors
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd; opened PF’s door to progressive rock)
- Days of Future Passed (Moody Blues) — thought to be the first progressive rock album
- Miami Pop: rock’s first multi-day rock festival
- started by Michael Lang
- for-profit festival (different from Monterey Pop)
- Woodstock Music and Art Fair
- another 3-day festival
- August 1969
- rural, diary farm in upstate NY
- even bigger line-up than Miami Pop
- for-profit
- permitted for attendance (legally): 50,000
- expected attendance: 150,000 (absolute chaos)
- actual attendance: 400,000-500,000 (eventually becomes a free festival due to lack of ticketers)
- giant rainstorm + rural farm & dirt = absolutely logistic disaster
- can’t get performers in, had to use helicopters
- security provided by the “Please Force” (not official police)
- led by Wavy Gravy
- actual clown
- political activist
- ”Hog Farm” commune
- give out arm bands (ask people to join)
- freak-out tents, free kitchen
- festival runs out of food
- demonstrated hippie values
- led by Wavy Gravy
- incredible line-up includes: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, The Who, …
- Festival was sued by everyone (incl. neighbors); major miracle that there was only 3 dead
- farmer’s speech: speaks of his surprise that the group size & how peaceful it turned out to be—hippie values demonstrated!
- statistics
- 600 toilets (absolutely crazy)
- sold 180,000 tickets (and later gave up since not enough ticket checkers)
- $3.1M in expense
- sued by everyone—loses $1.5M (net)
- festival was sponsored by Polident (denture company?)
- theatrical release
- Times magazine publishes a story about the Woodstock festival
- hippie subculture becomes more popular
- hippie subculture becomes popular
- hippie culture appropriated by companies trying to market & sell stuff
- The Diggers: artist-activists
- hippies
- San Francisco
- they hated how mainstream appropriated hippie culture
- staged a giant performance art—funeral of Hippies movement
- ”Holy Week Uprising”
- response of MLK Jr assassination
- April 1968
- 100 cities
- 3,600 injured, 43 killed, 27,000 arrested
- preceded by many other racially-caused uprisings
- ”Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vendellas (Motown)
- protest song
- ”Handsome Johnny” (1966) by Richie Havens
- another protest song (Vietnam War)
- explicitly war-related lyrics
- Charles Manson
- mentally ill
- proclivity for eating acid & coming up with racially-motivated songs
- wanted to start a race war
- becomes a cult leader: “Family” cult—dose members with LSD and make them do terrible things
- murdered 8 people (an actress included)
- Gordon Wasson
- retired executive of J.P. Morgan
- interested in magic mushrooms
- went to Southern Mexico to look for mushrooms
- found a Mazatec healer (Maria Sabina) and convinced her to privately share all information about the mushrooms with the condition that he won’t share it
- cheated: published an article about the mushrooms, a company patented active ingredients from mushrooms…
- funded by CIA
- instead of the rosy-tinted glasses (e.g. hippie values), now wear the Altamont glasses—1960s isn’t all great
- Altamont Free Concert
- 4-ft stage
- Rolling Stone performed
- originally planned for San Francisco
- same situation as Woodstock, but a complete disaster
- hundred of thousands
- security provided by Hells Angels
- Biker gang
- was recommended by the Grateful Dead
- paid for in beer
- completely incompetent & ineffective: one 19 y/o fan (Meredith Hunter) was stabbed to death by a Hells Angels member
- documented by Gimme Shelter (documentary)
- Gimme Shelter (1969) by The Rolling Stones
- riff-driven
- simple chords: C# - B - A
- a jam
- small number of lyrics, but really wanted to find a femal vocal, ended finding Merry Clayton (was pregnant), pushed her performance hard (super high-pitched & intense lyrics—“rape, murder, it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away”)
- Merry Clayton was pushed too hard; when she came home, she had a miscarriage
ECS165A Milestone 2 thoughts part 2
- page directory
- A conceptual page is equivalent to a page index.
- Base conceptual page owns a set of tail conceptual pages