Hello.
I am of the 70’s.
To understand the tragedy of the 70's
you must compare it to the Sixties.
For me, that is easy-
I have an older 60’s sister-
She was part of the ‘Peace, Love, Dope’ era-
first a teenybopper coming of age with the Beatles,
with those little phonograph players and the vinyl records.
(I can still smell the tubes overheating and the warm vinyl as 'Twist and Shout'
scratchily played through the air!)
she would come home and say ‘Yardbirds’.
I would say, ‘What?’
She would say ‘Bob Dylan’.
He already sounded like a legend to me, and this was only 1966!
So 1970 came along. I turned 15.
I already had a good dose of the 60’s- blacklight posters, basement summer parties,
something positive about it all.
Well, younger siblings will ‘oft rebel-
even against their older siblings!
So as the 70’s were ushered in
‘Peace, Love, Dope’ degenerated into ‘Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll!’,
The Beatles were replaced by Black Sabbath,
'Groovy' was misinterpreted as 'Party On, Dude'!,
and AM radio was laid to rest by FM.
The cute phonograph players of the 60's?
They transformed into $1000+ wall-smashing stereo systems!
So Jimi, Jim, and Janice* departed,
perhaps done-in by the 70’s,
or perhaps victims of the lyrics-cum-Mantra-of-the-Generation:
"the things they do look awful c-c-c-c-cold
…I hope I die before I get old!"
So there I was, in the ‘70’s,
a ‘60’s wannabe.
So I had my face pressed against the rear window,
looking back, being driven away.
As soon as I called myself a ‘hippie’,
‘they’ became ‘freaks’.
As soon as I began flashing the peace sign,
‘they’ stopped.
As soon as I grew my hair out,
‘they’ cut theirs off!
“Ahhh”, I deduced.
“I see now that this is all just a fashion show
that I am not going to win!”
So I joined the military!
Someone's got to pay for all this wild abandon!
Adding your comment:
The background just now popped up...I saw Zep on their last tour, 1977...amazing stuff...
I always said the 60's didn't hit my hometown until the 70's...great timing, too...I was 14 in 1973...Yeah, Janis, Jimi & Jim...the triad of Truth...well done, Wayne...
9 old applause
