So we fired up Monica’s boxed set of the Monterey Pop concerts.\u00c2\u00a0 She and Felice wanted to relive their past.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, they went when they were just fifteen, without their parents knowing.<\/p>\n
And I expected nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t expect to be overwhelmed.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t expect to be jetted back to another era, when music RULED!<\/p>\n
I know, I know, you young pups say today’s music is just as good as that of the baby boomers.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t even bother to debate that.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll just tell you if you wanted to know what was going on in society in the sixties, you listened to the record.\u00c2\u00a0 Music was cable TV, the Internet and texting all in one.\u00c2\u00a0 We were addicted to Top Forty, and then we switched our allegiance to FM underground radio.\u00c2\u00a0 And Monterey Pop was the turning point.\u00c2\u00a0 When it stopped being about singles, and all about STATEMENTS!\u00c2\u00a0 The album was what was important.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that it was clear that summer exactly which acts would bridge the divide.\u00c2\u00a0 The Association was on its last legs of hipdom.\u00c2\u00a0 But when "Along Comes Mary" came on the tube, my mind was BLOWN!<\/p>\n
Every time I think that I’m the only one who’s lonely And that friend wasn’t human.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, "Along Comes Mary" was a DOPE SONG!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what dope is, your best friend.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Association was singing about it.<\/p>\n And there were no backing tapes.\u00c2\u00a0 And the instrumentation wasn’t perfection.\u00c2\u00a0 But the HONESTY!\u00c2\u00a0 Music wasn’t big business, but self-expression, a cult inhabited theoretically temporarily by those bitten by the sound, who had to participate.<\/p>\n But the true triumph was Simon & Garfunkel, who took the stage next playing "Homeward Bound".<\/p>\n I saw Simon & Garfunkel the summer before, at Fairfield University, in a show headlined by Soupy Sales.\u00c2\u00a0 This was prior to "The Graduate", prior to "Bookends", when they were just single-meisters.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we know Paul Simon is an artiste, one of the best songwriters of the rock era.\u00c2\u00a0 But at the show I attended, and at Monterey Pop, he was still a comer, he hadn’t cemented his place in the firmament, he still had something to prove.<\/p>\n But having something to prove was different then.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it was this show, and this show only.\u00c2\u00a0 This was years before MTV, two years before Woodstock, when recorded visual performances could break you into the STRATOSPHERE!\u00c2\u00a0 Simon & Garfunkel are just playing here.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 But that lack of perfection gives birth to an incredible humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 These are people on stage, singing from the bottoms of their hearts.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Sounds Of Silence" was even more rough.\u00c2\u00a0 But I couldn’t stop thinking of Emily Sheketoff getting the single for Hannukah, and playing it on the big Columbia console in the living room.\u00c2\u00a0 At the time we thought the duo’s name was made up, who could actually be NAMED "Garfunkel"?<\/p>\n Country Joe and the Fish performed "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine".\u00c2\u00a0 A viewer today, who did not live through the era, would think the performance quaint.\u00c2\u00a0 But I could not stop thinking of how I loved "I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-To-Die", not only the track, but the whole album, with its stereo effects.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew the bass player was Bruce Barthol, and the drummer was Chicken Hirsh.\u00c2\u00a0 Older now, I can see "Chicken" was just a stage name, but that name, I pondered for YEARS how they came up with it.\u00c2\u00a0 And where are they today?\u00c2\u00a0 I know the lead guitarist, Barry Melton, is a public defender.\u00c2\u00a0 As for Country Joe himself..?\u00c2\u00a0 He had too much success to go straight, but not enough to live forever on the proceeds.<\/p>\n Jefferson Airplane followed up with "Somebody To Love".\u00c2\u00a0 In every song there’s a memory, and this one was the party at Diane Melish’s house, hearing the tune on the AM radio on the way home from a place I never went again.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d been invited, I felt included, I didn’t ever feel so included again.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was freshman year of high school, before all the cliques had solidified.<\/p>\n Buffalo Springfield, with David Crosby on guitar and Neil Young absent, played "For What It’s Worth".\u00c2\u00a0 Al Kooper led a big band through "I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes".\u00c2\u00a0 And Paul Butterfield wailed on his harmonica.<\/p>\n But what moved me most was Laura Nyro singing "Poverty Train".<\/p>\n Up close and personal, she was not pretty.\u00c2\u00a0 But she was POSSESSED!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what we’re looking for today, acts that transcend their surroundings, who aren’t in it only for the adulation, who need to perform, who don’t view the audience as part of their posse at an endless party.<\/p>\n And although the Beatles were obviously loaded, most of the acts on this bill were not rich.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like they were all at summer camp, on vacation from the real world, enjoying a respite wherein they could play and be their best selves, where the drudgery of everyday life was put on hold, for just a little while.<\/p>\n We did not know it would go on forever.\u00c2\u00a0 They certainly didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Monterey Pop had seats, there was no overflow of campers trying to get in free.\u00c2\u00a0 With the straight media out of the loop, we just didn’t know how big the scene truly was.<\/p>\n And we’re watching the DVD, and we’re all commenting about the band members.\u00c2\u00a0 We know their identities, their back stories, what gear they played.\u00c2\u00a0 Because this was our religion, this music.<\/p>\n I wondered whether you had to be there, whether you had to live through that era to get it, whether we were no different from our parents watching videos of Frank Sinatra.\u00c2\u00a0 But I don’t think so.\u00c2\u00a0 Because in the late sixties, music ruled the world.\u00c2\u00a0 It was more than the sounds, it was a state of mind, a culture.\u00c2\u00a0 You were either enraptured, or you were completely ignorant.<\/p>\n If only all those teens glued to their computer monitors were creating great art instead of IM’ing.\u00c2\u00a0 If only there were creations larger than the technology.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, the Net is exciting, it’s fun to get e-mail on your BlackBerry, to be connected all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 But once upon a time gods ruled the earth.\u00c2\u00a0 We looked up to them.\u00c2\u00a0 We took their offerings as our Bible in an era when God was dead.\u00c2\u00a0 To go back to these performances, our Dead Sea Scrolls, is to be enlightened, to know both the joy of music and how it truly can change society.<\/p>\n
Someone calls on me<\/em><\/p>\n\n