It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 8, 2009, at 10:17 PM, Bekah wrote:

> I watched the whole thing - all of them.  Lots of memories there.   
> Thank you,  Robin!   That's my times and I loved that album.  (And I  
> saw Yellow Submarine more than 13 times.)
>
> But I'm not sure how much 1967 has to do with Vineland - it's a kind  
> of background for it, for sure,  but Vineland takes place in 1969  
> and that was a world of difference.

. . . by that logic, anything from 1987 would be a distortion of the  
events of 1967. While there is an overall impression of unity,  
engagement and a single-mindedness in the script and voiceover of "It  
Was Twenty Years Ago Today" what's on display is a divergent non-group  
of anarchists, activists and artists in this video-doc. Understand  
that the march on the Pentagon, or the work of the Diggers or the work  
on legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana on display in IWTYAT—that was  
the counterculture that was quashed both by the powers that be and by  
its own "Inherent Vice." It was a short step from the summer of love  
to the drug nightmare of 1968 in the Haight.

IWTYAT shows the dream of immortality that Zoyd and Mucho speak of,  
the dream that Brock and his minions undermine so diligently. It shows  
us players that turned---like Timothy Leary---it shows us players that  
turned on themselves, like Abby Hoffman, it shows us a scene that many  
are still aspiring to, forty years later.

> The clips from your post are from 1967 for the most part with 1987  
> remembering them - great stuff.   The Summer of Love in 1967 was so  
> free and new and beautiful.   No one was calling anyone else a  
> "hippie bum"  because the term was barely invented (disputes here, I  
> know).

Showing up at junior high school with long hair in 1967 got me a lot  
of "hippie bum" and "are you a boy or a girl?" The shock of the new  
still was capable of un-nerving the straights back then.

> The hippies were pretty much being peaceful in San Francisco at the  
> time although there were anti-war demonstrations.     In 1969  
> (Vineland) the  anti-war people were splitting into the faction  
> demanding more militant activism.   The 1969 break (Country Joe)

. . . did some anti-nuclear activism in 1982/1983. Florence McDonald--- 
Country Joe's Mom---was involved with our group in Claremont California.

> with the flower-power of 1967 ("Are You Going To San Francisco?")     
> is exceptionally well done in Vineland.     The flower-people  of  
> the Haight dissolved into the Weathermen of 1969 or went other  
> ways.    (Maybe y'all don't see the difference now.)

It was the same people, but circumstances changed. The media spin was  
moderately left in '67. Media spin turned hard right in '69. The  
biggest difference between 1967 and 1969 was the reporting.

>  The  Beatles split in 1970.  :-(

. . . and continue to exist as a market entity in 2009:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/08/beatles-back-catalogue-remastered-reissued

> 1969 was these old favorites:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdeCxJmcAo&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tenV9Din7K4&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIvs4j4IniA&feature=related


. . . it was also the year of these millennial hits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzF_MoXOU1E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y5SSilhN-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EegRh8Z4H-o