Peter Fonda was looking right at me behind those Easy Rider sunglasses. He was wearing the cool leather jacket. Only it wasn’t the movie. Momentarily confused, I was forced to focus on what he was saying, my finger resting uneasily on the remote. It was 2:30 a.m. and I was channel surfing. Ever have one of those nights when you wake up at two in the morning and just know you won’t be drifting off soon? I had one of those nights recently. It was either toss and turn for a couple of hours or get up and face the wee small hours of the morning. That’s how I found Mr. Fonda, who probably has his share of sleepless nights wondering about self parody.
My first thought was, “Is Peter Fonda doing a financial planning commercial? Dennis Hopper does them, why not Fonda? Could Nicholson be far behind?” I soon saw how wrong I was. This was no 30 second spot. I was watching an infomercial. He was hawking Time-Life’s Flower Power CD set, 175 hits from the late sixties and early seventies available with easy installment payments.
As I watched a succession of clips from acts that performed forty years ago I couldn’t help but smile. As infomercials go, Time Life has some of the most entertaining. For people of a certain age, looking at black and white images of the Temptations, Linda Ronstadt and The Rascals, is pure joy. Well it is if you can’t sleep. I’ll bet they sell lots of CDs that way, even if only insomniacs ever see their pitch. I got a kick out of watching baby boomers cavorting freely in a time now recalled as one long festival. The Viet Nam War and the struggle for civil rights must have separate sound tracks. Naturally, they showed us scenes from Woodstock and Haight Ashbury during the summer of love. We were young and beautiful then. And at 68, I’ll admit Peter Fonda still looks great. His female partner was a young woman who probably wasn’t even born when these songs hit the airwaves. Why didn’t Time Life pair up Fonda with Grace Slick?
Time Life also solicits endorsements from people that claim to have been there when it was a happening. Big mistake! These Boomers, now in their fifties and sixties, reminisced the way my aunts and uncles did about the 1940s. I’ll tell you it shattered my reveries. Who were these people? It’s weird to look at men and women “your age” describing how deliriously happy those songs made them. I stared at them and thought of my parents, not me. Suddenly, the infomercial seemed sad. Not for me personally of course. I still look a lot younger than I actually am. Don’t you? But what about the millions of baby boomers that look their age? Watching a bunch of AARP members talk about meeting their true love while the Turtles sing Happy Together hardly put me in the mood to reach for my credit card.
Then there was this: With Steppenwolf singing Born to Be Wild a woman in her late fifties was saying that she always felt she was born to be wild and still felt that way. Now most of us who heard that song back then probably had a secret desire to be wild, especially when the song was playing on the car radio. Most of us however, were born to be mild. Our idea of wild is spending six days instead of three at Disney World so we can hop on Space Mountain again with its top speed of 28 miles per hour. The prim dress the wild child was wearing belied the nice middle-aged woman’s claim that she is still “born to be wild.”
Once I got over mourning my lost youth, I began to pay more attention to the catalogue of songs in the 10 CD set, two of which are free. It didn’t take long for me to see the folly in paying for all those hits when I could simply download the songs I really wanted for about a buck a piece. Believe me, if I never hear Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock again, not to mention In the Year 2525, I think I Will Survive.
Of course I will have to forgo the Flower Power collector’s box with the groovy VW bus and its psychedelic images. Where would I put it anyway? Wait! Maybe there’s a spot between the love beads and the strobe light.
Copyright 2009 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sixties Music: Did I get it Backwards?
“I’ll be the roundabout the words will make you out n out.” Recognize the line? It’s the opening lyrics to Roundabout, a song by the early seventies rock group Yes.
I have it on my i-Pod nano. After we gave iPods to our granddaughters for Christmas last year I got curious enough to buy one for myself and began the process of downloading my favorite music from iTunes. As I remember a song I really like I add it to my playlist. Most of what I have on my nano is sixties and seventies vintage stuff. (Note that “vintage” is in the eye of the beholder.) The obvious picks, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Four Seasons and a cornucopia of sentimental jukebox favorites make up the vast majority of the works I’ve complied. There are a few surprises in my iPod too like Sunday Morning by Maroon 5. I am happy to report that there is nothing in my iPod by the 1910 Fruit Gum Company or the Archies. On the other hand Harper Valley PTA and Okie from Muskogee are on my play list.
Merle Haggard’s number is there because it reminds me of being old enough to order a beer in a tavern. The New Warren Lounge was a typical corner bar near the campus. Okie From Muskogee was on the jukebox and we played it often, singing along and laughing, our tone, mocking. That was a long time ago.
It’s still a weird feeling to have the ability to listen to the songs I most want to hear when I feel like it, no matter where I am. When these songs were actually hit records, not CDs -records, we had to wait until they came on the radio. If we bought the album we had to be sitting next to a record player if we wanted to skip a song or two. In the late sixties eight track tapes were introduced, giving us the option to listen while we drove around. The smart thing to do was to install the tape player in the glove compartment. It reduced the chances that you would wake up one morning only to find one of your car windows broken and the tape player gone. By the way if you’re reading this and you took my friend Frank’s tape player and the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed album out of his ’62 Buick Electra, he still wants it back.
With an iPod or any MP3 player we have the luxury of listening to our favorites anywhere, anytime and in any order. If I want to listen to the same song twenty times in a row it’s easy to do. So where do I use it? Most of my listening is confined to early morning workouts. Sometimes I take my iPod along when I travel. I can easily kill a few hours listening to golden oldies on a long flight.
I hate to admit it but there is something comical about listening to the lyrics of some of the old songs. In my early twenties I often listened for messages with deep philosophical meaning, something that might point me in the right direction. Listening to the same songs almost forty years later it’s now plain to see that other guys in their early twenties, just as confused as we were, wrote this stuff. Here’s a case in point: More lines from Roundabout.
“I will remember you
Your silhouette will charge the view
Of distance atmosphere
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
Even in the valley”
With the guitars and near falsetto voice of Jon Anderson it all sounded profound at the time. Interestingly enough, Anderson himself acknowledged that they were just words he happened to think of while driving to the recording studio. If I still had my old record player I could play the song backwards. The hidden meaning is in there somewhere.
I made fun of Merle Haggard back then. Looking back, did I have it backwards? Read a few lines from Okie From Muskogee.
“I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all”
The words are neither eloquent nor clever. Yet, it’s hard to recall these words without thinking about how sweet life was back then. Recent polls say that 84% of Americans think we’re on the wrong track. Maybe things will improve if being a square makes a comeback.
Copyright 2008 Len Serafino. All rights reserved
I have it on my i-Pod nano. After we gave iPods to our granddaughters for Christmas last year I got curious enough to buy one for myself and began the process of downloading my favorite music from iTunes. As I remember a song I really like I add it to my playlist. Most of what I have on my nano is sixties and seventies vintage stuff. (Note that “vintage” is in the eye of the beholder.) The obvious picks, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Four Seasons and a cornucopia of sentimental jukebox favorites make up the vast majority of the works I’ve complied. There are a few surprises in my iPod too like Sunday Morning by Maroon 5. I am happy to report that there is nothing in my iPod by the 1910 Fruit Gum Company or the Archies. On the other hand Harper Valley PTA and Okie from Muskogee are on my play list.
Merle Haggard’s number is there because it reminds me of being old enough to order a beer in a tavern. The New Warren Lounge was a typical corner bar near the campus. Okie From Muskogee was on the jukebox and we played it often, singing along and laughing, our tone, mocking. That was a long time ago.
It’s still a weird feeling to have the ability to listen to the songs I most want to hear when I feel like it, no matter where I am. When these songs were actually hit records, not CDs -records, we had to wait until they came on the radio. If we bought the album we had to be sitting next to a record player if we wanted to skip a song or two. In the late sixties eight track tapes were introduced, giving us the option to listen while we drove around. The smart thing to do was to install the tape player in the glove compartment. It reduced the chances that you would wake up one morning only to find one of your car windows broken and the tape player gone. By the way if you’re reading this and you took my friend Frank’s tape player and the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed album out of his ’62 Buick Electra, he still wants it back.
With an iPod or any MP3 player we have the luxury of listening to our favorites anywhere, anytime and in any order. If I want to listen to the same song twenty times in a row it’s easy to do. So where do I use it? Most of my listening is confined to early morning workouts. Sometimes I take my iPod along when I travel. I can easily kill a few hours listening to golden oldies on a long flight.
I hate to admit it but there is something comical about listening to the lyrics of some of the old songs. In my early twenties I often listened for messages with deep philosophical meaning, something that might point me in the right direction. Listening to the same songs almost forty years later it’s now plain to see that other guys in their early twenties, just as confused as we were, wrote this stuff. Here’s a case in point: More lines from Roundabout.
“I will remember you
Your silhouette will charge the view
Of distance atmosphere
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
Even in the valley”
With the guitars and near falsetto voice of Jon Anderson it all sounded profound at the time. Interestingly enough, Anderson himself acknowledged that they were just words he happened to think of while driving to the recording studio. If I still had my old record player I could play the song backwards. The hidden meaning is in there somewhere.
I made fun of Merle Haggard back then. Looking back, did I have it backwards? Read a few lines from Okie From Muskogee.
“I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all”
The words are neither eloquent nor clever. Yet, it’s hard to recall these words without thinking about how sweet life was back then. Recent polls say that 84% of Americans think we’re on the wrong track. Maybe things will improve if being a square makes a comeback.
Copyright 2008 Len Serafino. All rights reserved
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