About the Books
“The Sixties” was more than just a decade. It was the beginning of something that has only grown and proliferated—an expanded mindset that has become even mainstream. Still today, many approach it as a certain State of Mind, an event, a revolution. A major shift of consciousness–seen as the birth of a vibrant Counter Culture or the brutal destruction of our traditional way of life…
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We will witness the birth of the Youth Planet and the critical role of the automobile.
Afraid of You, Broadway
Do we approach it with too much reverence? Did anything really change? How deeply? How permanently?
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Even with mere sheet music, lyrics and media created a new world.
We speak of the Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties. How would those decades compare to the wild Swingin’ Sixties?
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How much of its gestalt was authentic? How much was programmed by economic interests who wanted to control masses of young people and their pocketbooks? Since we are still engulfed with documentaries and films about the Sixties, how much of its mystique is due to our ongoing backward glance?
How much is due to the dark changes that began then, and now are so deeply entrenched that those years seem like the olden Golden Age in contrast? In any case, the Sixties>Seventies are ever present especially as the tribute bands proliferate each summer, recreating our iconic rock bands.
If you really want to grasp the Sixties experience, you cannot merely analyze, quantify, or record concepts, events, and statistics. The whole point of the Sixties was its all-encompassing gestalt: the visceral engagement of all the senses, all the feeling, the many quests, and the purported embracing of the entire cosmos. This book will attempt to encompass this mass embrace through the magic of its music: the tsunami of new sounds and ideas. We will attempt to reconstitute the experience—the aural, metaphysical, sexual, poetic, and socially conscious aspects—all confected together through the music.
Let’s let the songs and lyrics carry us now as they carried us then, informing and reflecting us. I will impart the critical elements of the Sixties as they were interpenetrated with its original soundtrack. Separate chapters will show longitudinal views from different angles of the same years. We can telescope into the escapism of geographic and ultra-dimensional time travel that was so rampant in the Sixties.
In book ll we will look closer at the women’s experience and how the Sixties impacted the men. Then a chapter to witness the events and effects that surrounded couples interacting together. We will look at the social issues and the role of drugs through the lens of music. And finally ask the question, why did the Sixties both fail and prevail and how did it affect the eternal human condition?
Marilyn & poet Carl Sandburg
Our musical cruise will address:
~~Understanding the preceding decades of the 20th century and how the music always reflected the times.
The Bohemian ethos was alive and well in the teens and twenties…
The rich music that later fed the Sixties’ thirst for authenticity.
~ How the wars wounded succeeding generations. How the cold war nuclear fears helped to created the unique quality of the live-for-today Sixties experience and the explosion of Youth Culture as a new permanent state of mind.
The Fifties’ invention of the Teenager and the new Youth Planet that we still live in today. Looking at the emergence of a new generation.
Living vicariously through cinema. Looking at the preceding war, the demographics, economics, & politics and the music from the blues to R&B to surf to folk to the British Invasion.
Our fascination with outer space, moon shots, UFOS and Major Tom.
The influence of media and music on the tradition of romance and marriage.
BOOK I
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter l: MUSIC AS MIRROR & MENTOR
1 The Music of Our Planet - Lyrics and Issues
2 Music of the First Fifty
3 The Fifties Begets Rock'n'Roll
4 The Birth of the Teen Planet
5 Early Sixties Hit Parade
6 Folk Music Lyrics: Love Ballads, Songs of Woman, Authenticity, Social Conscience
7 The British Invasion
8 1967-1969 The Pivotal Years & The Summer of Love
9 The Power of the Guitar Power
10 Sixties Nostalgia
11 The Seventies Carry On
12 The Previous ‘’New World’’ of Music
13 Retro Vintage
14 Electronic Music
15 The Sixties Coda
Chapter ll: ESCAPING TO THE NEW ANCIENT WORLDS
From Where and Why:
1 The 20th Century Vicarious Filmatic Life
2 The Sixties Market Choreographer? Marshal McLuhan
3 Painful Birth
4 Jazz, Beats, & Nesting in the Nifty Fifties
5 The Last of the Intellectuals
6 Deep Films: The Celluloid World
7 A Sense of a New Paradigm
8 Art Exploration
9 Darkness, Optimism & Delight
10 Living with the Bomb
11 Escape to Childhood
1 Styling Everything
2 Escaping Through Sound
3 The Outlet of Outer Space
4 Mind Altering Substances
5 The Power of Agape
6 Woodstock & Ecstatic Frenzy
7 Dionysian Dance
8 The Spiritual Cosmic World
9 New Forays into Ancient Healing
10 Living in the Humorous Absurd
11 The Roots of Advertising
Chapter III: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BOYS?
1 Fifties Cars, Surf, Song & Girls
2 War Vets’ Trad Roles vs Beat Misfits & Rebels
3 Male Stylin' : Flair, Hair, Flamboyance & Cowboy Grit
Chapter IV: COUPLES –SEEN THROUGH THEIR MUSIC
1 Permanent Youth; Denial of Age
2 Pre-Sixties Courting & Marriage
3 The Romantic Love Paradigm
4 The Programing of Love as a Commodity
5 Self-Actualization or Deeper Commitment
6 Love Reappraised
7 Sexual Advances
Chapter V: SOCIAL ISSUES
1 Violence
2 Civil Rights
4 Anti-War
3 Anti-Nuclear
4 Labor & the Common Man
5 Ecology
6 Music: Concerts for Social Change
7 The Sixties' Impact
Chapter VI: THE MUSIC ROLLS ON
Chapter VII: BOOMER COUNTER-CULTURISTS TODAY
CONCLUSION
Chapter III: ESCAPING TO UTOPIA
1 Communal Sharing & Celebration
2 Back to the Earth--Mexico, India, Suburban Forests
3 The Green World
4 Destination California
5 Back to the Old South
6 America’s Old Frontier
7 Exotic Mystical Settings
8 Evocation of Earlier Times
9 The Celtic Forest Music
10 The Renaissance Faire
11 Tiki Culture and Island Paradises
12 My Own Flights​
CHAPTER V: THE LEGACY OF THE SIXTIES
Chapter II: WOMEN
1 Other Explosive Eras
2 Music, Media, and Mentalities
3 Fusion: Borrowing & Blending
4 Authentic; Raw; Cool
5 A Dubious New Morality
Chapter IV: OTHER DIMENSIONS
Conclusion: Boomers Legacy: Where are we today?
Introduction: THE BIRTH OF YOUTH PLANET
BOOK II
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
HUMANS - THE 20th CENTURY'S SIXTIES
Woman, Men, Couples & Social Change, Wrapped in Music
Introduction
Chapter I: THE SIXTIES CONFLUENCE
1 Fifty Years of Boomers
2 Solutions? The Psyche in Each Cell
1 The Legacy
2 The Nineties
3. The Imprint of our Idols
1 Women’s Empowerment History
2 Pre-Sixties Women's Roles
3 Changing Patterns
4 Goddesses of Folk
5 The Legacy
Social conscience is revived and activated to challenge the inequities of the world. From Biafra in the 60s to Ethiopia in 1985, the power of music changed the world.
What was unique: Baby Boomers born in peacetime, raised in nuclear families with stay-at-home Moms. Situational ethics, the birthing of the New Age ethos of transformation and bliss.
In 1969, we and our friend Bill Prensky led a five-day hunger strike, camped out in tents on the main quadrangle of UCLA.
We were protesting the Vietnam war and the closure of People’s Park in San Francisco. UCLA classes were shut down and the professors joined the protest march. Here I’m tantalizing Steven with food…
~~Escapism to New World[s] and new dimensions–Back to the Earth, Outer Space, California, Mexico, India, the Old West, Hallucinations, Elizabethan times, Eastern Spirituality, Ecstacy, and more.
The Sixties as a Commodity. The buying power of these new teen markets. The accessibility and portability of sound.
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Music as Mentor: Cultural Voice Box
~~Music as mirror and mentor, influencing and reflecting the times. The contrast of the 1950’s music with the waves from Sinatra and mainstream music to Elvis, folk & country music, Afro American rhythm and blues roots, the English invasion, and the endless permutations that followed.
The innocent times serenaded by ageless Folk Music. Ancient times speaking to social issues. Rhythms of bangos and dulcimers with wailing guitars.
~~From the family radio to portable transistors, to heavy speakers/amplifiers. The central role of music infiltrating every niche of society. The first time that music lyrics covered all the issues.
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~~The unusual thing about the music of the Sixties was its application and celebration of a new variety of themes, only sparsely touched upon in the past. Some of those were:
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1) The feeling of living in a new era, participating in a New Utopian Dream
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2) A sense of entitlement and expectation for easy wisdom, perfect relationships, and an instantly new society based on communal sharing. Increased Authenticity/ Honest communication.
3) Rejection of conventional life—mores, materialism, striving, achievement. Alienation. No longer fitting in to society. Back to the Earth movement. Evocation of earlier times, in contrast to today’s materialistic, techno society. Anti-Intellectual: Less cerebral/analytical; More direct communication and perception
4) New ways of relating between the sexes:
~Women’s Liberation Exotic, mysterious independent Women speaking up for themselves and not afraid to express their sexual interest ~A more frank treatment of Sex: Sex for itself; Absolute Freedom/Casual Sex; Deeper more Meaningful Sex
~Men’s exuberance–Car Culture and sexual freedom; the 1930’s outcast/bad boy myth translated into the 1960s; the guitar; Carnaby Street; gender fluidity.
~The effects of the Sixties on relationships and marriage.
~Sex Survey
5) Questioning all kinds of Authority and conventional Religions. Looking for new answers.
6) An existential, humorous sense of being in the moment and perceiving the inherent absurdity of life.
7) Hallucinogens used for mind expansion/consciousness raising —LSD, cannabis, mushrooms, cocaine, ”downers.”
8) Rally cry/Finger pointing protest songs about Civil Rights/ Social Consciousness/ Anti-War sentiment and Nuclear Fears.
9) The personal stories from the author and other participants.
10) 1967 Summer of Love (San Francisco – Flowers in her hair) – society notices – a generation comes of age with its own unique style. Hippies, flower children, hallucinogens, dreamers, big-thinkers—A noisy bunch commandeer feminism and the gender role revolution. A mixture of horror (of the Vietnam war) and optimism–that change was in the air and a New World was being born.
11) The Sixties as a Commodity. The buying power of these new teen markets
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The book will delve into many aspects of the Sixties:
~~Understanding the preceding decades of the 20th century to better appreciate the unique quality of the Sixties experience and the explosion of Youth Culture as a new permanent state of mind.
~~Looking at the emergence of a new generation. What was unique: Baby Boomers born in peacetime, raised in nuclear families with stay-at-home Moms. demographics, economics, politics
~~Continuing the 20th century media-induced current to live vicariously through film and television and music.
~~Situational ethics, the birthing of the New Age ethos
~~Escapism to New World[s] and new dimensions–Back to the Earth, Outer Space, California, Mexico, India, the Old West, Hallucinations, Elizabethan times, Eastern Spirituality and more.