I was inculcated with the idea that anybody could become President from a
very young age.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember sitting in my first grade classroom trying it on for
size.\u00c2\u00a0 As we read about JFK in the "Weekly Reader".\u00c2\u00a0 That was quite a goal.\u00c2\u00a0
I’d have to be one of the best and the brightest.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t envision myself up
to the challenge.<\/p>\n
JFK was shot.\u00c2\u00a0 Lyndon Johnson succeeded him.\u00c2\u00a0 We hated LBJ with a passion.\u00c2\u00a0
Because he wasn’t JFK.\u00c2\u00a0 He was old.\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t one of us.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he
prolonged a war that JFK had started, we swore off him.\u00c2\u00a0 We tore off our war on
poverty pins and took to the streets.\u00c2\u00a0 No old man was going to send us off to die in
an unwinnable war.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard it said that the reason the youth are not energized, why art isn’t
politicized, is because there is no draft.<\/p>\n
The draft crept up on you.\u00c2\u00a0 This war couldn’t go on forever.\u00c2\u00a0 You were only
in high school.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, graduation was imminent.\u00c2\u00a0 There was talk of
elimination of the student deferment.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of worrying about getting laid, we
were suddenly confronted with whether we were going to live.\u00c2\u00a0 All the
adolescent considerations…what clothes to wear, how to be cool, they evaporated…in the face of this potential unjust personal disaster.<\/p>\n
Some people had to go it alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Their parents believed you had to obey the
President.\u00c2\u00a0 That he knew more than we, the rank and file, did.\u00c2\u00a0 That he
wouldn’t be pursuing this campaign for no good reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Still others, myself
included, had parents more radical than we were.\u00c2\u00a0 We got our antiwar sentiment from them.\u00c2\u00a0 It was shocking.\u00c2\u00a0 To be led by your parents in an era where parents were perceived to be lost, superseded by their baby boomer children.<\/p>\n
Still, it was personal.\u00c2\u00a0 Your mommy couldn’t save you from the draft.\u00c2\u00a0
Theoretically you could move to Canada, but we knew nobody up there.\u00c2\u00a0 It was cold
and lonely.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Arlo Guthrie beat the rap.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, the armed forces
were a bit of a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 No longer invincible, but QUESTIONABLE!\u00c2\u00a0 This long-haired
guy with a twenty minute song…he’d beaten the system.\u00c2\u00a0 Could we?<\/p>\n
With the Top Forty renaissance of the eighties, history has been rewritten.\u00c2\u00a0
To indicate that it was always a hit business.\u00c2\u00a0 A catchy song business.\u00c2\u00a0 But
it wasn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0
Where they spun records like that of the aforementioned Mr. Guthrie.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the
soul of the singer was more important than his coif.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like a giant hole
opened and sucked us right in.<\/p>\n
Oh, not everybody.\u00c2\u00a0 There comes a point when you’re confronted with doing
what’s expected of you, or what you want.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not talking about rebellion, I’m
not talking about drugs.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m talking about MENTAL experimentation.\u00c2\u00a0 Trying new
IDEAS on for size.\u00c2\u00a0 This sound…it enraptured us.\u00c2\u00a0 And changed our
identities.\u00c2\u00a0 We were walking the halls of our high schools, but we weren’t there.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t like today.\u00c2\u00a0 We didn’t don the duds of the stars.\u00c2\u00a0 They purveyed no
clothing.\u00c2\u00a0 They showed up for no fashion show.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t about how you
looked, but who you WERE!\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you were a like-minded individual, you were
INCLUDED!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there were holes in the love your brother philosophy, but
really…you didn’t have to be beautiful to fit in.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no velvet rope.\u00c2\u00a0
Everybody with a will and desire could join.\u00c2\u00a0 And we had no idea how many people had taken the left turn until Woodstock.\u00c2\u00a0 When they all showed up.\u00c2\u00a0 In numbers far
exceeding ANYONE’S expectations.<\/p>\n
Now some of the records had our philosophy in their grooves.\u00c2\u00a0 Jefferson
Airplane’s albums made a statement.\u00c2\u00a0 As time wore on, artists spoke out, from the
stage, in the press.\u00c2\u00a0 They rallied us.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, we were rallied by the
music itself.\u00c2\u00a0 A great explosion of exploration.\u00c2\u00a0 Where, without constraint,
musicians tried to reinvent the wheel.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t about delivering what the label
expected.\u00c2\u00a0 The label didn’t even get any INPUT!\u00c2\u00a0 They just paid you.\u00c2\u00a0 And
shipped the record.\u00c2\u00a0 The record was an artifact we could BELIEVE IN!\u00c2\u00a0 That was the
first thing you did when you went to someone’s house, look at their RECORD
COLLECTION!<\/p>\n
Someone with one or two records.\u00c2\u00a0 Five or six.\u00c2\u00a0 Could be written off as
hopelessly out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 But someone with twenty.\u00c2\u00a0 Containing albums that had never
contained a\u00c2\u00a0 Top Forty hit.\u00c2\u00a0 These were people we wanted to know.\u00c2\u00a0 Who we
wanted to sit on the floor of their room with and quietly listen to what came out
of their speakers.<\/p>\n
I thought of one of those records as I stepped out of the shower this
morning.\u00c2\u00a0 That very first Blood, Sweat & Tears album.\u00c2\u00a0 Which began, after an overture featuring every track on the album, with "I Love You More Than You’ll Ever
Know".<\/p>\n
This was just after reading that Dick Cheney was being investigated as a
possible co-conspirator in the outing of Valerie Plame.<\/p>\n
It’s not about Valerie Plame.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about an unjust war on trumped up
charges.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about taking hold of the government and using it as your own personal operation.\u00c2\u00a0 Spreading disinformation as children are killed and corporations are rewarded.<\/p>\n
Maybe you have to have lived through the sixties for this to be familiar.\u00c2\u00a0 To
find out everything you suspect is right.\u00c2\u00a0 To feel vindicated and almost
powerless at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least we had the music to rely on, to get us
through.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what today’s kids rely on.\u00c2\u00a0 In a society where every
performer is a charge of the corporation and is rushing to sell out.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the
concept of getting salvation from a record is a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Where acquiring the
music you want could bankrupt you AND your parents.<\/p>\n
The first Blood, Sweat & Tears album was only marginally more successful than
Al Kooper’s previous venture, the Blues Project.\u00c2\u00a0 After leaving the band it
went on to vast success with David Clayton Thomas.\u00c2\u00a0 But my father liked that
record, he would sing along in the car.\u00c2\u00a0 It was made to be palatable, with the
audience in mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the first record by the group…it was all about
personal development, the BAND’S personal development.\u00c2\u00a0 We were privileged to be along for the ride.\u00c2\u00a0 A ride made for us kids, not our parents.<\/p>\n
At this point in time, David Clayton Thomas is a touring joke, a Vegas lounge
act.\u00c2\u00a0 A man who sang soulfully, but had no soul.\u00c2\u00a0 But the white boy with the
much thinner voice, he has a more elevated status.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
This was before Chicago.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody else had a band with horns.\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind a
band with THIS many players.\u00c2\u00a0 It was an artistic conception.\u00c2\u00a0 That was executed
with precision.\u00c2\u00a0 It was more meaningful than the government, more meaningful
than the rest of life.<\/p>\n
That was a different time.\u00c2\u00a0 When we felt everybody was on our side.\u00c2\u00a0 When the
youth was united.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, odds are kids will believe in the Administration,
for they don’t want their millions taxed when they make them.<\/p>\n
But it’s all an illusion.\u00c2\u00a0 The American dream.\u00c2\u00a0 Starting at the bottom and
ending up on the top.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, an occasional rapper makes it, but most don’t even
ascend to the middle class.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what they rely on for hope.<\/p>\n
I relied on music.\u00c2\u00a0 And I still do.\u00c2\u00a0 The work of artists.\u00c2\u00a0 Who felt
self-expression was the highest living activity.\u00c2\u00a0 That to test the limits and take the
audience with you was the ultimate satisfaction.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen this movie before.\u00c2\u00a0 Not quite this brazen by less than intellectual
superstars, but I’ve seen humans use the system for their own devices.\u00c2\u00a0 So I
no longer WANT to be President.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to play that game.\u00c2\u00a0 I respect
people with values.\u00c2\u00a0 Who are true to themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Not those down in the pit
fighting for their piece of the pie.\u00c2\u00a0 I just feel badly for those who didn’t live
through the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 An era during which they might fear dying in a war, but
when the emphasis was on becoming your best self.\u00c2\u00a0 When youth culture was
cohesive rather than divisive.\u00c2\u00a0 When politicians and businessmen were secondary to artists.<\/p>\n
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