The Summer of Love, 1969 (The Hippie Thread)

Ya know, I'm sorta feelin' I oughtta do somethin' here on a little more serious note -

Whatever somebody decides to do with their own life is pretty much their own decision. Its not like the word ain't out there on the pitfalls of booze, substance abuse, gamblin', and whatnot. Ain't nobody can say they weren't warned. If somebody decides, despite knowin' what its all about, to trash their own life, then by all means get thee to the rubbish heap as may be most agreeable to ya. Its when folks with no sense and no self respect and no regard for others around them screw up other folks lives that I get really upset.

I can't muster much sympathy for the junkie or the fall-down drunk or the hidin'-from-the-bill-collector gambler. In fact, I resent hell outta the jerks, for the anguish and betrayal they heap on the folks around 'em. The jerks knew what the score was, they just didn't give a damn, or they thought they were somehow immune to what they knew happens to everyone else goin' down that path.

I've done my share of dumb things - some I'm lucky to have survived. Everybody does dumb things once in a while. When all a body does is dumb things, the blame likely ain't external.

I've done my share - and then some - of abusin' all sortsa stuff. I've got some memories, and I've got some regrets. For all of that, like a whole buncha other folks like me, I never let the abuse rule my life. Maybe I was lucky. Maybe it was 'cause I saw freinds wind up in jail - or worse ... much, much worse.

If somebody wants to have a toke now and again, or tip back a bottle, or take a chance on a game or the fall of a card, cool - that's recreation. But when ya set your life toward gettin' that next fix - whatever that fix is - you've screwed up bigtime and you've got nobody to blame but yourself. Other than yourself, nobody lied to you and said "This can't hurt ya" ... and if someone did say that to ya, you were a fool for wantin' to believe 'em. Drugs, booze, and gamblin' are dangerous toys ... go ahead and play with 'em, if ya wanna, but respect 'em, and know you ain't ever gonna beat 'em if you're dumb enough to let the game get serious. They play for keeps.

And don't look here for sympathy if you do hurt yourself. Nobody did it to ya.

End of rant.

I had graduated from high school that year and never made it to Woodstock...my mother would have killed me. After I moved away from home, my friends and I did participate in some short lived, drug experimentation.

I grew up in the 'burbs of San Francisco during the 60's, 70's, 80's and still not far from there now. You brought a lot back for me to re-think kicky, just entering my teens in 69. Having an older sister allowed me to get into The City more often than I would have and she and her friends were very cool to let me tag along. And yes, Haight Ashbury and Golden Gate Park were always like a festival any day of the week.

I never saw Hendricks, Joplin or The Doors, but spent many, many a night in the 70's at concerts at The Filmore West and Winterland. No one ever bought weed back then. Somehow we had friends who had friends who lived in Humboldt County (still the 3rd largest marijuana region in the world) and everyone had bags of the stuff. Not sandwich sized bags, I'm talking huge freezer sized bags in seemingly endless supply. Anyone ever smoke 27 J's with 5 friends at Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon Concert? It was the same with acid or heroin for those who wanted it. My biggest eye openers for those two came when I had to start visiting a friend of mine who was 15 at the time in a halfway house for her heroin addiction and aother friend of mine that I ended up visiting for almost a year in a mental institution for her bad acid trips. I never wanted to end up like either of them, so I never put myself in that position.

I also remember attending funerals for the sons that several of my neighbors lost in Viet Nam.

For the most part though it was a party anytime you wanted one. Day or night it didn't matter. Hitchhiking was safe and for those with cars, gas was cheap. When I'd had enough at any given time, I always took off for the beach. My house was only a block from the ocean and that was my refuge, methinks.

hmmm that was like 7th or 8th grade - Wonder Years are me!!

Funny you should mention that Husker! After that sow first came on the air, it was like nostalgia time (with a bit of softening for television, of course!)

Kicky, this is for the soundtrack of your thread.

San Francisco

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there
For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
All across the nation
Such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation
With a new explanation
People in motion
People in motion
For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

Nah, panzade - Scott McKenzie is for wannabees - here's the real deal:


One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all.

Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall,
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.

Call Alice
When she was just small.
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low.


Go ask Alice
I think she'll know.
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead,
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head"

This thread is the coolest.

Sure, White Rabbit epitomizes hippie-dom but I was providing an AM song for the sound track. White Rabbit came out in '67 and never was played much on AM radio in the summer of '69.

It's all good Timber.

if the summer of love was 1967, i was 4 1/2

bummer

but hey let's all go to woodstock

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Oh, yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, fm radio, I was so glad when that showed up!!! Thinking, '67??

DJ, I really like how Joni did her original...much more than CS&N.

A correction. White Rabbit and San Francisco both charted in '67....makes me think the summer of '67 was when it all started for me.

Yeah osso...in '67 FM finally came into its own..I'll hunt down some playlists from WHFS in DC

"Bigger than a bread box radio"

Cheerleading captain and Homecoming Queen...

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but Woodstock was not held in Woodstock NY. It was in Bethel, which was 45 miles away from Woodstock.

My husband used to fish on a private lake in Bethel. Seems that the Woodstock festival spilled over to the lake owner's land. My husband was told that the man was never the same ofter the festival.

Among other delights, music could go on for more than x minutes. One of the first long ones I remember was Aftermath, by the Stones...

Must have been in '68 or '69.

An older ('we' were 19, 29) returned from his term as development aid volunteer in Sfghanisatn, as souvenir some kilos green ... you won't guess it ... Afdghan in his rucksacks.

So we tried this stuff one night.
(It didn't work well with me, thus I returned to my usual Lambrusco later.)

The next day, a Sunday, I heled my friend (where we had had this 'party') to clean the house, before his parents returned. (It was a hell of a job, to open all the doors and windows, get ventillators work - the complete house smelled like a back room in an bazaar.)

Well, then the door bell rang and two policemen stood there.
Neighbours had complained that .... not about the loud music, ... no, not aboz drugs ... neighbours had complained that some had been danced naked on the garage roof!

Which was completely nonsense: one of us had made the same experience I made: the stuff wasn't working with him. He, however, tried LSD instead of the Lambrusco.
There wasn't soemone dancing on that roof: we were trying to get him down and stop him from going "to fly to the moon".


Eh, yes, we convinced the policemen that the neighbours were just old peole, who didn't like parties by the young generation. And that we all were brave students/conscripts.

One of the early night jocks who commanded attention was Cerphe (pronounced surf), probably the star of the station according to Leeds. His real name was Don Colwell and he would open his show every night with the instrumental Rolling Stones song "2120 South Mission Avenue." Leeds recalls the recurring rap he did: "This is Cerphe, we're sending out some tunes tonight for the truckers, the madhatters, the ships at sea and especially ... (whisper) the ladies of the night. This is Cerphe and I'll be here playing rock and roll music for you the next couple of hours." Cerphe used to have tons of crates of music that he brought in for his show.
A lot of the music was from independent labels. He was one of the longest running jocks at the station other than Weasel and Damian. Cerphe started at HFS in 1969 and stayed with the station until 1977. Today he plays classic rock from 3-8p at HFS sister station WARW.

All the jocks programmed their own shows. They said whatever they wanted and played whatever they wanted. Leeds remembers how some of the jocks would get these stoned raps: "Hey, listen I'm inside your radio right now and I could really take control. You know that little red dot that says stereo? I can make that go off and on. Watch this."

Jocks were not hired at the station because of their pipes, they were hired because of their knowledge of music and how well they could segue songs together. Another jock who came and went was weekender Johnny Walker in the early '80s. Walker had worked at KSAN/San Francisco before the freeform rocker flipped to Country. He eventually ended up at BBC Radio 2 in London. Milo also worked at the station in the early '80s, doing nights. He ended up becoming a union stage hand for concerts in the D.C. area.