THIS IS THE REVOLUTION
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> The "Boom" ( a sudden large jump in
the birth rate, 1946-1960), was supposedly created by soldiers
returning to wives & sweethearts after World War II. It occurred
in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (Countries not
directly attacked). I believe that our purpose was to implement,
enjoy, proliferate and secure the hard-won freedoms that our
parents handed us. |
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> Unlike the
baby boom, the "hippy" phenomenon of the 1960's occured
in just about every industrialized nation in the world. We were
connected by pro-love, anti-war, anti materialistic ideology,
and above all, music (especially The Beatles). Not all boomers
were hippies (and vice-versa), but no one was untouched by the
culture |
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> TV : TV is
the modern campfire. It is a prosthesis, allowing us to see &
hear around corners & through walls. I don't think its influence
on the boomers & beyond can be overestimated. It has become
a "separate reality" in our lives, almost indistinguishabe
from the really real reality. It has spawned mass-movements |
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> Chidhood was a world unto itself, with its own rules, characters and values. I look at it now, with nostalgic fascination, as a finished story that I, an outsider , am privileged to have read > The Dirtbombs was my first musical group. We ran from 1958 (when I was 11), to 1964. We were best friends and did everything together. Originally called Danny & the Dirtbombs, we eventually dropped the "Danny" part of the name, since there was no one by that name in the group Me - ukelele & guitar > We only had one gig - a cub scout banquet - and devoted the rest of our 6-year run to recording. I had a big German reel-to-reel tape recorder with belts that kept breaking, and we had a few shoebox sized recorders . No multi tracks, not even stereo. To overdub, we bounced tracks between machines. It was full of noise & hiss but it sounded great to us. > Our songs invariably began with angelic 4-part falsetto A Capella, (the prelude), then exploded into a cacophony of shrieks, pots, and bugle calls (the fanfare), then settled into a long, frenetic, incessant interchange of two totally unrelated chords (the development). They would end when we all started laughing, the tape ran out, or a belt broke. They had names like "Swahilli Riverboat" or "Pentron", usually thought up immediately after the tape recorder was turned on > Dave & I were the composers. We wrote about everything we did or saw, and were fiercely competetive. When he came in with the darkly Fruedian "Do Not Enter", I countered with the whimsical "Left Turn Only". Sometimes he would learn a popular tune and tell me that he wrote it. For almost a year, I thought he wrote "Willow Weep for Me", until I heard the Dave Clark Five doing it on the radio.Our favorite group was the Beach Boys until the Beatles arrived, which was really near the end of our existence as a group. It's kind of funny, I felt we paralleled the Beatles early (ie adolescent) years in many ways, so that , when we saw them, we were blown away by the familiar sense of fun & irreverent sarcasm > Once, we tried to crash a huge debutante party. The Turtles were playing there. We queued up at the grand portico in our beat-up Corvair wearing our signature berets & carrying our instruments. The tuxedoed valet opened the car door, stared blankly at us (we stared back in slack-jawed wonder), then calmly closed the door without a word, and we drove off . On the way home, while yelling to some girls, we crashed into a tree. > We recorded all our adventures on portable
tape recorders : eg; Prank phone calls (which always ended with
a blast from Billy's bugle) / Riding in the trunk of Ray's car
and yelling "help" when stopped at busy intersections
/ dropping a dummy off the roof of my house |
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