Summer of love

[Jeffhale]

Just have to say something about this Puna event I attended last Saturday..

Me wife, who loves music dragged me into this 'Summer of love' concert, event. Me not exactly being a hippie, nor her, and Listening to the old beat you hear at some bar, has become extremely tiresome so perhaps you can imagine I'd be hesitant to go to this 'thing'. Although I have long hair, some people think of me as an old hippie, but I am just an old surfer, who in these days don't got to cut me hair. Peace. love, dove baby.


At the gate, a couple of children, asking for, "$10, per person, or whatever you can donate, or if you don't have any money, then, (in a child like innocence) then that's O.K. too."

Time warp.

As we drove in there's all these, modern hippies dressed in their regular affair, kids living in today's world yet fashioned like the hippie of the 1960's. There's the African American with the 1960's rag-tag hair. Somebody beating a drum, Mothers with their children about resembling all you might have seen in an old movie or remake of the hippie era.. A few tents, and all things hippie-ish. Here in Puna there's quite a few kids, 16-30 running around who idyllically live with the fashion of the 1960's hippie, mother earth, peace, living off of the land. I hear many of these kids are somewhere in the woods about in places, who knows where.

So, as we drive in the stage is set, strangers to the local group as we are, yet now warped 40 years back in time.

In a large field there's an old rustic house painted in a hippie fashion which hosts the stage, bands, and announcers.. I can not recall which movie depicted this very same scene but there's a few..

There's a oder of a local herb, which we don't indulge in but too sets the scene.

Some selling beads, local foods, all things you could have found back in the day, San Fran or similar events.

Music of jimmy Hendrix, Janis joplin, Pink Floyd, an others of the era. Some fellow with long hair announcing the need to vote, anti war speech and the like, who at his current age equaled those ages of those back in the day. . Some christen song, folk too.

A few meandering instrumental players in the crowds who figure: "there's an audience, jump in and jam" A indigenous Australian, horn or pipe blown, whispering old sounds. A guitar player with harmonica attached to his mouth and a banjo guy, who kinda looked like what i expected Opie of Andy of mayberry to grow up and look like, who had an unrehearsed attitude and style of a country, 1950's bluegrass redneck..

The bands stopped at 12AM, but the people stayed as invited, which evolved into a hippie like setting, singing folk and the like around a large encircled fire.

Me? i just sat their behind me sunglasses all day and threw the night.. Somewhat stunned, not stoned, as this was a experience, I doubt Jimmy could have expected.

To this whole event unlike a Renaissance fair thingy, not a performance, nor rehearsed meandering players, just plain people gathering as it was, back, well,,, back in the day..


The promoters said something of a Woodstock event in 2009. However in my view this seems far to difficult to pull off, especially as this seemed to go so well.. Publicity and success is not always bliss, which makes the 40 year anniversary of "the summer of love" more of a event verses promotion..

Personally, me, me wife, we are just a couple of years young, at 52 now to have been involved with the 1960's affair.. But if ever there was a flashback, we ever did see, Puna's "Summer of Love" had everything we missed, as it seemed to me..





Edited by - Jeffhale on 07/30/2007 08:38:24

[Beachboy]

wow, sounds like it was a real blast. Especially if you're into "people watching"?
Jeff, where did this even take place, and give me a guestimate of how many people were there too?

I also think you and your wife were old enough to be part or experience the Hippie Culture of our time. I'm only two years older than you two, and I fully embrassed the Hippie Culture. I too am an "old" surfer, but decided to cut my long hair in the mid 80's because of the possibility of having my doors open up my way.(besides I got tired of all those steep take offs from having my hair stuck between hand and surfboard rail on take off!).
But to this day I still enjoy "hippie values", and they have some really good ones too..

[oink]

Have to agree with the bad dog owner on that one. I was born in 52 and while I may have missed the peak, I certainly found it in Cocoa Bch, Redondo Bch, and Maui at the start of the 70s.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[Kapohocat]

The kids (all 20 yo's) from our house were there. They said is was fun but all "old" people there! ha ha They loved the old music etc but decided to leave when the reggae band played as they were (in the girls words) "white pretending to be Jamaican".... they got the sense that the reggae band was not that genuine feeling. Otherwise they had a good time.

[Jeffhale]

Well, I guess, by having had a few flowers painted on my face at 14-15 years old. And wearing torn, tattered, patched and sewn levies, beads and anklet in the day. plus having run across some older than me 'hippies' singing folk songs in 68 or so. I guess i could be found guilty, but as I was to young, only guilty of emulating or fitting the fashion in the day. moreover to young to actually understand the meaning of many verse except thinking rather, everything had to do with LSD verses writings of true story. 'Lucy in the sky' about John's child painting, to me was a LSD trip, of which I'd been far to scared of to dare try.. Alice's brownies, and or song, never realizing it was about the book, 'Alice in wonderland', moreover glazed over with the topic of the day, drugs.. So much verse that in my minds eye, to young or ignorant to know wasn't just a trip, but story, talk story, with deeper meaning than 'just being high'. Guilty i was, of ignorance verses being one of them..

I never took to Janis till well after she was gone, Jimmy to, as well with Morrison, Zeppelin was my neighborhoods favorite band, but not necessarily mine. Beatles didn't Ring with me with exception of a few top ten hits. To young, to dumb to ignorant, to be a hippie, but a fashion of the time..

Besides, surfing was in me dreams, so be it the hippies, I'd rather be at the beach, ha. There was nothing like the early sixties, driving down Beach Blvd, to Huntington beach, beach boys screaming out the radio, Beatles or the like, in me grandmothers 1957 Chevy convertible to go body surfing all day.. Was nothing like that, not for me..

I don-know beach, maybe 300, perhaps as much as 500, hard to count but surly not to many, moreover just enough..

Was just a few miles past Pahoa, "follow the signs" at "The Shire" as we discovered it in a small article a week or two before, in the Puna news.

And yeah, what cat said, ha.. tried to leave them out, but they was blah.. However on the positive note, true to the day, they added today's emulation, sorrowful as they were.. However, banjo guy took his cue near our camp, and with his "where in the heck did this guy warp from" style, drown out that band when they seemed to be unable to carry a beat. jazz, reggie, modern beat-nic or whatever they were playing, They added some type or modernization to the hippie thing.



Edited by - Jeffhale on 07/30/2007 10:58:49

[peteadams]

Now we know what the "boom-boom-boom" going for hours was last Saturday night. Luckily it quieted down somewhat after 9:00PM. A few weeks earlier, "boom-boom-boom" from the same direction went on until 2 or 3 AM. Fine to listen to music and have a good time, but to the folks on the far receiving end it just seems like another instance where uncaring people impose their noise (music from a mile or more away really degenerates into noise) on us and keep us awake at night.

[Beachboy]

quote:

---

I never took to Janis till well after she was gone, Jimmy to, as well with Morrison, Zeppelin was my neighborhoods favorite band, but not necessarily mine. Beatles didn't Ring with me with exception of a few top ten hits. To young, to dumb to ignorant, to be a hippie, but a fashion of the time..

Besides, surfing was in me dreams, so be it the hippies, I'd rather be at the beach, ha. There was nothing like the early sixties, driving down Beach Blvd, to Huntington beach, beach boys screaming out the radio, Beatles or the like, in me grandmothers 1957 Chevy convertible to go body surfing all day.. Was nothing like that, not for me..

I don-know beach, maybe 300, perhaps as much as 500, hard to count but surly not to many, moreover just enough..

Was just a few miles past Pahoa, "follow the signs" at "The Shire" as we discovered it in a small article a week or two before, in the Puna news.

And yeah, what cat said, ha.. tried to leave them out, but they was blah.. However on the positive note, true to the day, they added today's emulation, sorrowful as they were.. However, banjo guy took his cue near our camp, and with his "where in the heck did this guy warp from" style, drown out that band when they seemed to be unable to carry a beat. jazz, reggie, modern beat-nic or whatever they were playing, They added some type or modernization to the hippie thing.
Edited by - Jeffhale on 07/30/2007 10:58:49

---

To bad Jeff, to me those were the stars of our time. Jimi Hendrix I had the pleasure to see 3 times in my lifetime, Ventura Fairgrounds, Newport Pop Festival, and Rainbow Bridge on Maui. Only the Ventura show stunk! I saw the Doors at the Long Beach Arena with the 'Flying Buritto Brothers', and Albert King. Never got to see Janis live, but I sure loved her music! Today, "Cheap Thrills" remains one of my all-time favorite LP's
But for my surf style/culture, I probably enjoyed southern rock sound more than the SF sound. I was soooo into the Allmond Bros"Live at Fillmore East", or "Eat a Peach". Lynard Skynard, was another favorite of mie back then too. But that was music I really enjoyed with the "guys" if you know what I mean. When I was in a romantic mood I'd bust out my Van Morrison collection, and looked for Moondance & Into the Mystic to start things off.
But I also had my Super guitar stag too. I loved guitar players like Alvin Lee of 'Ten Years After, Johnny Winter,Rick Derringer. Plus everything inbetween too like 'LOVE', the Chamber Brothers, Sons of Chaplin, Cold Blood, Tower of Power, and the list goes on. Was there truly and decade better than the 70's for rock or music in general?

[oink]

Lynard Skynard is my current exercise bike music. My exwife was at the Rainbow Bridge, but I missed it.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[lotus]

I was born too late. Way too late. Most of my favorite musicians are from the late 60's, early 70's. But I wasn't born until '77. When all my friends were listening to crappy 90's music, I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Janis, Jefferson Airplane, The Mama's & Papa's and so forth... My mother watched Jimi Hendrix light his guitar on fire in Golden Gate park from about 10 feet away. I'm sooooo envious

I was instilled with some of the radical political beliefs of the time, having been raised by hippies, although I've since rebelled a bit and become a bit more moderate in my thinking.....

[Kelena]

I can't compete with Beachboy! But lemme see here. I saw Jim Morrison and the Doors only once.....but that one time was the infamous Aquarius theatre concert in Los Angeles that last all night long. Jim swung from a rope from the balcony. The music was bluesy (they loved to play the blues) and fine, but the experience was better as performance art. I had to sneak in when I got home. We all did. Saw Joni Mitchell and her warm up act, a comedian named Steve Martin, at the Troubadour in Santa Monica, right after her first album. She was sensational and so was Steve. He did a riff on how you had to say things just right to the French, or they would never give it to you.....frrrrroomage (cheese). Hilarious. And do I remember all these years later that my car broke down as we were leaving, right in the middle of Santa Monica Blvd. Not so much!

My true bragging rights come from seeing Bill Evans, with Scotty Lafaro (on bass) in Los Angeles. My sister in law dragged me there and, I think, gave it up to someone to sneak me into this over 21 jazz joint. She wanted me to hear real music. She was right. Bill Evans was fantastic and it changed my thinking about music, and I began losing my taste for pop.

As for the sixties, there really weren't that many hippies. That was just a name created by the media to categorize people. The whole idea of the sixties was to defy categorization and to force people to deal with you as a person.....man. I fit that pretty well. I had slightly longish hair, but was neat as pin and smelled good (Or so I am told -- no guarantees now!), and was pretty conservative religiously, and very progressive in other ways, but I rode horses and roped calves and went to bed with guys on the sly, and with girls in the open. There were millions like me -- people being very different because the times allowed us to be, and we were accepting of those differences.

Sorry you missed it. There was a very serious overlay to the times though. There was a horrendous war going on and people were being sucked up right and left to go to Vietnam to, uh, defend America. Stop Vietnam...you're SCARING us!!! My brother was drafted and we feared for him everyday. Bless all of those like him who did what their country asked them to do and just went. Salt of the earth and they all deserve our respect.

But the war itself was nonsensical. And so when people asked for peace, they were sincere. Our friends were being blown apart, and were being plucked up to go into thrown into the machinery of war.

Your birthday was on a ping pong ball, and on national television they drew the ping pong balls. We knew that they were going to take the first 100 or so birthdays drawn and we all sat around together and watched television to learn our fate. My birthday was number 53. I was going to go to Vietnam. Sure enough, I got a letter from the President. I reported to my draft board. But before I did, I met with a "draft counselor" -- a curiousity of the time. They advised you on ways to avoid the draft. One thing my counselor said stuck with me. I didn't think of myself as "homosexual" for some reason, but they mentioned that as an out. So I went to a friendly, chain-smoking psychiatrist. She asked me very explicit questions which chafed against my protestant upbringing, but I told her the truth. I told her my story and somewhere in the telling of the story I said to myself: Omigod...I think I might be a homosexual.

She did too. She wrote me a letter. I reported to the draft board, went through the physical -- my feet weren't flat enough to exclude me. So, I got to the very last table (which the counselor had told me about). This was the "is there anything else we need to know" table. I handed it over the the guy (who looked a little squirrely to me). He read the letter, his eyes popped out of his head, and he screamed "You're out!". I was not drafted. I would have ripped apart unit cohesion so bad, I'm not sure the army ever would have recovered. My experience affected my psychologically and so I went to a free clinic to talk to the staff psychologist about the feeling that I might be "a homosexual". As bad luck would have it, he was "a homosexual", asked to come see me where I was house sitting for a family who had gone back to Indiana, came on to me by singing opera to me and playing piano -- all of which the family unexpectedly walked in on, having decided to come home from Indiana early without telling me. I was saved by the bell, but this complicated my ability to handle this new realization: What I thought was a ruse to the draft board was actually the truth.

My brother survived Vietnam, thank god, as did so many others. Bless them all. But the sixties was not just about bad music, stoned people, or any of the rest of that, anymore than the 20's was about flappers and speakeasies.

I do think that Puna is kind of a throwback to those individualistic times, and that in that sense, it does have a 60's feel.

Keep in truckin' man!