The Year the Music Died: Bowie and Prince Forever, Kantner Lost in the Frey…
If there’s anything sadder than the deaths of our pop music heroes, it’s our attachment to them in the first place. If we are truly such a brilliant species to have created such popular paeans to ordinary pleasures, then we are truly pathetic to imagine that this is the be-all and end-all of our short little existences. But we are MTV kids, back from when MTV actually meant something, not just our own absurd realities exposed ad nauseam on TV.
Funny, I don’t remember all the bobby-soxers mourning Frank Sinatra for months on end, or even Elvis or Lennon, for that matter, all hugely popular, so maybe all this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is cause and/or effect of our modern Warholian ‘social’ (anti-social?) media culture, in which everyone is famous for fifteen minutes—in their own minds, at least, and those of anybody willing to ‘like’, ‘follow’ or ‘share’ them. Modern progress: now we are all teeny-boppers, slaves to fashion and followers of fallen idols. (More …)
kc are discussing. 
Thank God. I didn’t know there could be life without riots. I didn’t know there could be life without political assassinations. I didn’t know there could be life without scenes of war on TV. ‘Back to nature’ sounded really good, as if I’d been on the verge of a nervous breakdown or something the whole time at the ripe old age of twenty-two. We were the late 20th century cabin-dwellers. We were the FoxFire generation, looking for our roots in root cellars, attics, and storage sheds. We wanted the past not the future, evolution not revolution. We wanted little to do with cities, wars, hard rock, or hard drugs. We wanted real folk, bluegrass, and cosmic cowboys. We wanted our ganja as much as ever, maybe more, but no excess acid for a weak stomach, thank you, and for God’s sake, heroes and not heroin.
The 60’s took ‘it’ to the streets. We were young; we were hip. We knew more than ‘they’ did. ‘They’ were over-30, therefore suspect of collusion with ‘the man’, ‘pigs’, ‘whitey’, Nixon. That’s the name that came to be associated with the forces of repression more than any other. He just looked the part. The ‘movement’ had its anti-Christ. It all started innocently enough in the early 60’s with racial integration and affluence. Here was the strongest country in the world, lecturing the rest of the world on the evils of repressive Communism and Socialism, maintaining a system of apartheid that contradicted its own stated goals and ideals. This was a country once the symbol of freedom in the world, bathed in the fire of revolution, playing FTSE with some of the most repressive regimes the world has ever seen, i.e. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, etc. The symbolism was not to be lost on everyone, certainly not on New York ‘beatniks’ and intellectuals inspired by folk music and high on the ideal of equality. The US was affluent now; there was money to spare, and therefore money to share.
streaming consciousness... 
janetberridge 3:56 pm on April 29, 2016 Permalink |
Great post! Very similar to what I just posted about Prince. I attended his last concert in Atlanta and recounted my MTV experience. Cheers!
hardie karges 3:58 pm on April 29, 2016 Permalink |
THX!
davekingsbury 6:26 am on April 30, 2016 Permalink |
Thoughtful post about a tough area to analyse … the culture we swim in. You’d need a crystal ball to work out where it’s all going.
hardie karges 6:35 am on April 30, 2016 Permalink |
Yep