I was inculcated with the idea that anybody could become President from a
very young age.  I remember sitting in my first grade classroom trying it on for
size.  As we read about JFK in the "Weekly Reader".  That was quite a goal. 
I’d have to be one of the best and the brightest.  I didn’t envision myself up
to the challenge.

JFK was shot.  Lyndon Johnson succeeded him.  We hated LBJ with a passion. 
Because he wasn’t JFK.  He was old.  He wasn’t one of us.  And when he
prolonged a war that JFK had started, we swore off him.  We tore off our war on
poverty pins and took to the streets.  No old man was going to send us off to die in
an unwinnable war.

I’ve heard it said that the reason the youth are not energized, why art isn’t
politicized, is because there is no draft.

The draft crept up on you.  This war couldn’t go on forever.  You were only
in high school.  But suddenly, graduation was imminent.  There was talk of
elimination of the student deferment.  Instead of worrying about getting laid, we
were suddenly confronted with whether we were going to live.  All the
adolescent considerations…what clothes to wear, how to be cool, they evaporated…in the face of this potential unjust personal disaster.

Some people had to go it alone.  Their parents believed you had to obey the
President.  That he knew more than we, the rank and file, did.  That he
wouldn’t be pursuing this campaign for no good reason.  Still others, myself
included, had parents more radical than we were.  We got our antiwar sentiment from them.  It was shocking.  To be led by your parents in an era where parents were perceived to be lost, superseded by their baby boomer children.

Still, it was personal.  Your mommy couldn’t save you from the draft. 
Theoretically you could move to Canada, but we knew nobody up there.  It was cold
and lonely.  And then Arlo Guthrie beat the rap.  Suddenly, the armed forces
were a bit of a joke.  No longer invincible, but QUESTIONABLE!  This long-haired
guy with a twenty minute song…he’d beaten the system.  Could we?

With the Top Forty renaissance of the eighties, history has been rewritten. 
To indicate that it was always a hit business.  A catchy song business.  But
it wasn’t.  As the war turned sour, as we were confronted with a system we had
no part in establishing, we turned to a new outlet, FM underground radio. 
Where they spun records like that of the aforementioned Mr. Guthrie.  Where the
soul of the singer was more important than his coif.  It was like a giant hole
opened and sucked us right in.

Oh, not everybody.  There comes a point when you’re confronted with doing
what’s expected of you, or what you want.  I’m not talking about rebellion, I’m
not talking about drugs.  I’m talking about MENTAL experimentation.  Trying new
IDEAS on for size.  This sound…it enraptured us.  And changed our
identities.  We were walking the halls of our high schools, but we weren’t there.

It wasn’t like today.  We didn’t don the duds of the stars.  They purveyed no
clothing.  They showed up for no fashion show.  It wasn’t about how you
looked, but who you WERE!  And, if you were a like-minded individual, you were
INCLUDED!  Oh, there were holes in the love your brother philosophy, but
really…you didn’t have to be beautiful to fit in.  There was no velvet rope. 
Everybody with a will and desire could join.  And we had no idea how many people had taken the left turn until Woodstock.  When they all showed up.  In numbers far
exceeding ANYONE’S expectations.

Now some of the records had our philosophy in their grooves.  Jefferson
Airplane’s albums made a statement.  As time wore on, artists spoke out, from the
stage, in the press.  They rallied us.  But really, we were rallied by the
music itself.  A great explosion of exploration.  Where, without constraint,
musicians tried to reinvent the wheel.  It wasn’t about delivering what the label
expected.  The label didn’t even get any INPUT!  They just paid you.  And
shipped the record.  The record was an artifact we could BELIEVE IN!  That was the
first thing you did when you went to someone’s house, look at their RECORD
COLLECTION!

Someone with one or two records.  Five or six.  Could be written off as
hopelessly out of it.  But someone with twenty.  Containing albums that had never
contained a  Top Forty hit.  These were people we wanted to know.  Who we
wanted to sit on the floor of their room with and quietly listen to what came out
of their speakers.

I thought of one of those records as I stepped out of the shower this
morning.  That very first Blood, Sweat & Tears album.  Which began, after an overture featuring every track on the album, with "I Love You More Than You’ll Ever
Know".

This was just after reading that Dick Cheney was being investigated as a
possible co-conspirator in the outing of Valerie Plame.

It’s not about Valerie Plame.  It’s about an unjust war on trumped up
charges.  It’s about taking hold of the government and using it as your own personal operation.  Spreading disinformation as children are killed and corporations are rewarded.

Maybe you have to have lived through the sixties for this to be familiar.  To
find out everything you suspect is right.  To feel vindicated and almost
powerless at the same time.  But at least we had the music to rely on, to get us
through.  I don’t know what today’s kids rely on.  In a society where every
performer is a charge of the corporation and is rushing to sell out.  Where the
concept of getting salvation from a record is a joke.  Where acquiring the
music you want could bankrupt you AND your parents.

The first Blood, Sweat & Tears album was only marginally more successful than
Al Kooper’s previous venture, the Blues Project.  After leaving the band it
went on to vast success with David Clayton Thomas.  But my father liked that
record, he would sing along in the car.  It was made to be palatable, with the
audience in mind.  Whereas the first record by the group…it was all about
personal development, the BAND’S personal development.  We were privileged to be along for the ride.  A ride made for us kids, not our parents.

At this point in time, David Clayton Thomas is a touring joke, a Vegas lounge
act.  A man who sang soulfully, but had no soul.  But the white boy with the
much thinner voice, he has a more elevated status.  The music he made is not
dated, the first BS&T album sounds as fresh today as it did when it was
released back in ’68.

This was before Chicago.  Nobody else had a band with horns.  Never mind a
band with THIS many players.  It was an artistic conception.  That was executed
with precision.  It was more meaningful than the government, more meaningful
than the rest of life.

That was a different time.  When we felt everybody was on our side.  When the
youth was united.  Today, odds are kids will believe in the Administration,
for they don’t want their millions taxed when they make them.

But it’s all an illusion.  The American dream.  Starting at the bottom and
ending up on the top.  Oh, an occasional rapper makes it, but most don’t even
ascend to the middle class.  I don’t know what they rely on for hope.

I relied on music.  And I still do.  The work of artists.  Who felt
self-expression was the highest living activity.  That to test the limits and take the
audience with you was the ultimate satisfaction.

I’ve seen this movie before.  Not quite this brazen by less than intellectual
superstars, but I’ve seen humans use the system for their own devices.  So I
no longer WANT to be President.  I don’t want to play that game.  I respect
people with values.  Who are true to themselves.  Not those down in the pit
fighting for their piece of the pie.  I just feel badly for those who didn’t live
through the sixties.  An era during which they might fear dying in a war, but
when the emphasis was on becoming your best self.  When youth culture was
cohesive rather than divisive.  When politicians and businessmen were secondary to artists.