Hi All

For those of you who have been asking, my trip a few weeks ago down my slightly foggy memory lane to Club Passim, was lots of fun and almost a little spooky.

The very charming manager Betsy, had tracked me down through Shadow of Innocence and had asked me and alter ego Mick McCarthy to stop by for their Holiday bash. It was really fun and met some old friends and made lots of new ones. And, the folk music is still just as good as I remembered!

The spooky part actually came when I parked a few blocks away from Palmer Street to see if I could remember the way after a long absence. At first things looked sort of familiar but with new buildings and parks where I remembered smoky basement cafe's and music clubs. Then I stopped and decided to let Mick take over. I looked at the Square through his eyes as he would have seen it in 1968 in Shadow of Innocence and it turned out, he knew the way just fine. Mick led me across the Square to Church Street, a quick right down the narrow cobblestones of Palmer and into Passim's. Steam on the inside of the windows from the espresso maker inside. The smell of wine and beer. Laughter and lots and lots of great music.

Yep, I was home.

Ric Wasley

Author

Shadow of Innocence

Kunati - April 2007

You can pre-order a copy of Shadow of Innocence from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640064/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp/102-9493123-7988954

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ric_Wasley

http://www.kunati.com/shadow-of-innocence-hip-myster/

Ric Wasley has spent almost forty years wandering through corporate board rooms and honky-tonk bars. He now divides his time between writing mystery novels – Shadow or Innocence – A McCarthy Family Mystery – Published by Kunati, http://www.kunati.com , and observing the really ‘juicy parts’ of the human condition

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New from Kunati Publishing: SHADOW OF INNOCENCE - The Newport Folk Festival provides a groovy backdrop for this fun and exciting mystery set in the music and drug soaked sixties. The Baby Boomers and everyone else are sure to enjoy this appealing mystery featuring a pair of musician partners in love and danger. Don't miss Shadow of Innocence! From Kunati Publishing. Available now for pre-order at; http://www.amazon.com/gp/product

And don't forget to check out my fellow Kunati author Cheryl Kaye Tardif and her tragic yet uplifting novel Whale Song, the story of a young woman haunted by the assisted suicide of her mother and the mystery that surrounds her death. Read more about Whale Song at http://www.kunati.com/catalog_whale_song and check out Cheryl's site at http://www.cherylktardif.com

It was the Saturday before Christmas and my wife and I were hosting an annual neighborhood get-together. Old friends and new acquaintances were dropping by with cookies and fruitcakes to share a bit of holiday cheer with us.

The table in the hall was filling up with these small mementos of red and green confections and liquid yuletide remembrances.

But my wife and I had already gotten the best gift any parent could have. All three kids were home. They’d come back for Christmas from all across America and the globe. From Australia (now happily Boston), Ohio and California.

I looked around at these three young adults; ages, 20, 24 and 27, conversing with some of their friends as well as our old friends and neighbors. Two generations in the same room; chatting, nibbling and laughing. And… all listening quite happily to the same music.

As an old rock & roller and musician, this intrigued me, so I began to listen a little more carefully.

I noticed that quite unconsciously both generations were tapping their feet or humming or even subconsciously murmuring a word or two of the lyrics here and there. 

All of these songs were familiar; the words, the music, the lyrics – to a room full of people ranging in age from about 10 years old to late 60’s. I stepped into the family room to catch the stations call letters to identify the format. It was what we used to call when I was working in the radio industry, an MOR station (middle of the road).

These are stations that specialize in playing music that will be familiar and enjoyed by the widest range of audience possible. So then what was this music that had spanned a half a century and is now familiar and loved by kids, parents and even grandparents alike?

As Bob Seegar sang, it’s that ‘old time rock & roll’.  It’s groups like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Eric Clapton … even Sonny & Cher!

And mind you, this was not an ‘oldies’ station. This was ‘middle of the road’.  Music for everyone.

I started to think. How did the music that typified the feelings of rebellion and unfettered love, evolve from the music that separated my generation from my parents’, and become the music that my kids still love today?

To be brutally honest, as my 20 year old son Chris tells me, “Dad everything your generation did becomes the standard like it or not – because there’s so damn many of you.”

True enough. Remember that funny chart they showed us as kids? The one that they described as an ‘elephant moving through a python’ because every new phase that we, the Boomer children entered, would explode out of proportion in population and influence to all previous generations - or to any generation since!

Is that good or bad?

Well probably both. We certainly raised the collective consciousness about things such as racial injustice, war and poverty. But ironically enough, probably one of the most far reaching consequents the ‘Baby Boomer’ (my/our) generation will have on the social fabric for generations to come, will be the twin revolution/evolution that we had on the two items that make the world of youth go ‘round. Music and sex.

Yeah, I know I left out the third part of the 1960’s triumverant of ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll’. But quite frankly I think if you asked anyone who lived through the liberated 60’s to choose the most important two out of that three, it would be no contest. It would be Rock & Roll and sex every time. And to any of my fellow ‘Boomers’ who are clucking thier tounge (hummm is that a Freudian slip?) and/or shaking their head, I have but one question. What were you doing during the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967?

I thought so.

So anyway…  as I listened to the music and thought about the early Beatles or Stones or hey, the Loving Spoonful… it struck me that in addition to changing the ways we looked at the world during the time of JFK, LBJ, John, Paul, George & Ringo. Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin; the central theme running through the music was not necessarily the revolution and protest banners of social change that everyone has come to associate with that period. Uh-uh, the real message delivered in almost every song was … LOVE.

How many songs of the 60’s had the word Love in the title? Even more telling, how many songs didn’t at least have the word Love in the lyrics?!

All you need is love, Love me do, She loves you, Good Lovin’, You’ve lost that Lovin’ feeling, and so on. And that’s just a tiny sample of titles with the word love. Like I said, I challenge you to find a hit song from the ‘Love Generation’ where the word ‘Love’ doesn’t appear at least once in the title or lyrics. Try it – you’ll be surprised.

Quite different wasn’t it than many of today’s groups like Jet who sing about a ‘cold, hard bitch’. Great tune but not, well… terribly romantic. I mean could you picture that as  a sentiment to snuggle to like, ‘all we need is love’?

Ah yes, come here and ‘put your head on my shoulder’ my sweet little… ‘cold, hard bitch’?  Ummm – nope, I just don’t think that makes it.

Has the sexual part of love that 40 years ago was portrayed as running through a field of flowers bursting with psychedelic colors, faded and gone dull around the edges? Or has the wonderful world of sexual liberation that we pioneered, now become as mundane as a casual handshake?

And yes, before you say it, I won’t deny that we were the generation that championed ‘Free Love’.  Although to paraphrase Janis Joplin, “nothin’ honey it ain’t free.”

But while we shattered every taboo against sex before marriage, there was still a feeling – or for the more cynical among us – at least the pretense - that the person with whom you shared that lumpy mattress or hard apartment floor, was someone who you loved. Even if it was just for that one night. Or as Stephan Stills so adroitly summed it up; “ if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with.” And we did.

So I guess that brings me down to my final point. Will the ‘groovy kind of silly, sappy, intense love that the Love Generation created in books and films but especially in the music that came out of the ‘psychedelic 60’s’, fade away with those idealistic, wide-eyed innocent flower children that grew up with all of that spiritual, metaphysical and physical love?

Will the naive but sweet trust of the  ‘Love Generation’ fade away ‘ like the Rolling Stone’s ‘dead flowers’?  Or will a generation of the ‘cold, hard bitch’ view sex as just as a casual handshake or just another competitive game - an extension of soccer or lacrosse?

Or will they eventually want something more, and perhaps come back around to that incense and flower strewn ‘groovy kind of love’?

Stay tuned.

Ric Wasley

Author

Shadow of Innocence

Kunati - April 2007

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ric_Wasley

http://www.kunati.com

http://www.kunati.com/shadow-of-innocence-hip-myster/

Ric Wasley has spent almost forty years wandering through corporate board rooms and honky-tonk bars. He now divides his time between writing mystery novels – Shadow or Innocence – A McCarthy Family Mystery – Published by Kunati, http://www.kunati.com , and observing the really ‘juicy parts’ of the human condition.  

Hey fellow Baby Boomers, have we become the people we said never to trust?

Anyone who has spent all or part of their teen or growing-up years in the sixties will surely remember the famous slogan delivered from under protest banners flying high or tacked up in seedy apartments and dorm rooms decorated with day-glow posters of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.

Remember what it was?  Come-on, sure you do. Here's a hint - it was one of the catch phrases of the hippies - the 'Love' generation. It went right along with, "Make Love Not War". And it was usually drawn with magic markers on rumpled 'used-to- be white', dorm room sheets.

Still nothing? Hey man you're not trying.

OK, last clue. What could the most ironic thing that millions of settled, responsible movers and shakers of today’s society (us) could have said all those years ago to make us squirm now in our CEO chairs or heated leather Lexus seats?

No guesses? Really?

OK, well everyone who thinks they know the answer, jot it down on an old 'zigzag' joint paper and stuff it into the back pocket of your jeans, (despite the fact that they're three sizes larger than they were in 1968, and now fit a whole lot tighter). And even worse, you're not wearing them tight in the butt any more to be sexy!  Then send it off to me in your old college laundry bag. Winners will be chosen completely at random by the judge (me) whose thoughts are likewise completely random (me again) and.... Oh forget it. You give up?

All right - well if everyone has guessed or is so stumped that they're about to give up and turn on the 24/7 'Bad-60's-Sitcoms-All-Night' cable channel's Beverly Hillbilly's re-run marathon, here is the answer. It was;

"Never trust anyone over Thirty."

Let me explain.

The whole irony thing slid insidiously into my consciousness the other day when I happen to hear a song that was pretty silly and pretentious forty years ago (and it hadn't improved with age) spilling out from the German built speakers of my Japanese car.

It was a rather banal little ditty called 'Signs' or some such title. To be honest I don't really recall who did the thing back then nor would I recognize the singer nasally droning it out today, even if you picked him up by the scruff of the neck and bodily wumped me over the head with him.

But it was the words to song - silly and naive as they were back then, that really started me thinking. The song, as I began to remember, was about how the middle class, up-tight, grown-ups (definitely not us back then!), had made up way too many rules in order to force their stodgy, middle class values on the free and uninhibited sprits (us - the 'cool' Baby Boomer kids).  And even more insidious, the song reminded us Boomer kids back in the 60's, that the adults had put up all kinds of 'Signs' to infringe on the rights all of us mellow, young Boomers, who asked for nothing more than to, 'let-it -all-hang-out.

As the still unknown pop vocalist of today sang about how the sign and the rules were encroaching on our freedoms and individualism, I started to get this unpleasant little nagging feeling at the back of my mind.

And then it hit me.

We were the ones who were now putting up the signs and making everyone conform.  The signs that tell everyone what they can and can’t do and what they better do if they know what’s good for them.

For instance, the environmental movement which had started out as a quasi-religion of 'love mother earth' by free-spirited hippies in communes, has now been taken over by grim humorless bureaucrats who watch over things like 'Big Brother' and use a bewildering array of sometimes contradictory government laws to enforce their will.

For heaven sakes I heard only last week about someplace across out fruited plains where not only were you ordered to recycle, but you had to put your garbage in clear plastic bags so that the enviro police could make sure you that were!

Whoa... Hey ‘Bro’ was this what the free spirits in the commune had in mind?  Weren't we protesting the heavy hand of government telling us what to do?

It sort of reminds me of that great old movie from the 60's by Woody Allen. It was called Bananas and was about how a Latin/American freedom fighter (who looked suspiciously like Castro) changed when the 'outsiders' became the 'insiders' and could make all the rules. As the farce, broadened into the ridiculous, I recall one scene where the dictator makes a law that everyone will have to wear clean underwear every day and they have to wear them on the outside of their clothes so that the 'Underwear Police' can check them daily.

Want another one we would have protested as infringement of free expression?  How about a planned community that recently told a resident that they would have to take down their colored Christmas lights or risk a fine. Why? Because someone had passed 'rule' that all Christmas lights had to be white! (I wonder if they not only require underwear to be worn on the outside, but mandate that it must be white as well !!  Hummm. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Or take the government itself. Now I know that I wasn't so stoned that I don't remember those protests. The ones where all we wanted was to get the government out of our lives and off of our back - right?

Now it seem like we've not just invited them to tell us what to do, but are demanding it !  You know the drill. "Why doesn't the government do something about this or "we need a law that says...."  Ah uh. There are underwear laws and white light rules in our futures folks.

Now don't get me wrong - I know that a lot of these laws and regulations have been put in place "for our own good". But wasn't that what an older generation told us forty years ago?

Ah well, maybe we should just shrug our collective shoulders, light some sandalwood incense, pass around the old bong pipe and just chock it up to just another 'sign' of the times.

Peace dude.

Ric Wasley

Author

Shadow of Innocence

Kunati - April 2007

http://www.kunati.com

http://www.kunati.com/shadow-of-innocence-hip-myster/

Ric Wasley has spent almost forty years wandering through corporate board rooms and honky-tonk bars. He now divides his time between writing mystery novels – Shadow or Innocence – A McCarthy Family Mystery – Published by Kunati, http://www.kunati.com , and observing the really ‘juicy parts’ of the human condition.