Good Times

Aah, the Sixties. I know that it's one of those times that people really love or hate. Myself, I have to love it. Being the Sixties really didn't start till about half way through the decade and kinda bleed into the first few years of the '70's, these were my Jr. and Sr. High School years.

I was never a hippie, hell my hairs longer now than at any time during that period. I grew up just on the tail end of what was happening, always a year or two behind the curve. This put me in a position to see what was going on, but I never got caught up in any of it. I got to hear the ideals of my generation, which sounded great, but I also got to see what happened when these ideals were put into practice. Human nature and reality have this nasty habit of getting in the way of Utopia.

I watched a lot of people screw up their lives pretty bad back then. Some recovered, some didn't, and some are still going along.

Why this nostalgia? I'm off work (long change)and it's raining like hell, so I'm not going outside. That's left a lot of time to sleep, which I did, and I found myself wide awake at 3:30 this morning. There wasn't much on TV until a Paul McCartney concert came on. Every song brought back a memory, most of them pretty good. It made me think back to my first concert, 1968, Hollywood Bowl. It wasn't the Beatles, they'd quit touring by then, but I had worked my Aunt and Uncle's little truck farm up outside of Eureka over the summer and had earned a little cash, so I bought a really cool fringed leather vest, a shocking pink striped shirt, yellow bell bottoms and had enough left over for the $5.50 ticket to see Iron Butterfly.

This is the line up I got to see (in order of there appearance):
John Mayall, I knew of him, but wasn't really into his music at the time.



Lee Michaels, I knew nothing of him before the concert, but I think this was actually my favorite part. This was real Power Rock, just a Hammond B3 organ and a drummer...really loud. Because it was so new, unexpected and overpowering it really hit me.



Then the headliner: Iron Butterfly. Of course I love them. The video here is a Top 40's version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (if it's over 2 1/2 minutes, no radio play)and the Iron Butterfly Theme.



Would I want to go back? No. There were plenty of rough and scary things happening then, and I remember them as well as the good times. They were what they were and the 60's came and went as all periods do.