The psychedelic "Hippie" bands that came out of the SF Bay area were,for the most part,Non-political in their music.The most overtly political band was Country Joe and the Fish out of Berkeley.One thing that must be remembered is that we just packed up and left the whole stinking game and began forming our own Counter-cultural communities.Maybe the assassinations of the 60's played a large part in the formation of this radical break-away movement of young people.But,our energies were needed for the hard work of creating community.To paraphrase Dylan,"we didn't look back".
Who Makes The Moves?
Lyrics: Robert Hunter, Barry Melton Music: Robert Hunter, Barry Melton
The only song on the Dinosaurs CD with Robert Hunter performing (he wrote the lyrics to some of their other songs). It doesn't appear in Robert Hunter's lyric book "Box Of Rain", perhaps because it is co-written with Barry Melton. I assume that Barry Melton wrote the portions he sings (indicated below) and Robert Hunter the portions he sings:
[Melton]
I know we all are different
In some ways we're the same
I know we've all been pushed around
Like pieces in a game
Chorus
Who, who, who
Who makes the moves?
Who, who, who
Who makes the moves?
[Hunter]
Along come a dinosuar, his tale told twice
Singing of hard-hearted Anna from a stage of ice
A red-hot scarlet spotlight melts the stage into a flood
Flows across the footlights like a waterfall of blood
[chorus]
[Hunter] Paper, scissors, diamond, knife, a game of roshambo
Chances are what chances are but chances are you know
A grassy knoll in Dallas testifies what none can prove
A nation sunk in apathy don't really seem to care exactly who
[chorus]
[Melton]
You might think I'm crazy
Something's going down
The way it's going it won't be long
Until we're all underground
Tell me
[chorus]
[chorus]
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
Alice from the Bronx, before she went off with the leader of the local ex-cons on the heroin trail, made me a vest from the surviving blue field of stars I pulled from the ruins of the adobe where the locals burned out some legendary escapees from New York
This was in New Mexico itself a collision of cultures, pueblos overrun by Cortez in turn awash in the influx under the likes of General Lew Wallace its first US military governor who remarked, "Decisions based on experience elsewhere fail in New Mexico."
The era was swept by crosswinds from Beats to Beetles, from Marx to Lennon, in a decade of assassination and the napalming of a subcontinent.
A cabal prowling the globe like a wolf pack soon devours any threat; the "hippies" were torn apart prior to any viable self-awareness.
A buzzword of the time was commercialization, a phrase, "selling out" or "co-opting" all in relation to the establisment, the system, the man.
While the Who may have sung won't get fooled again, it seems many fools continue to beg for it.
Revolution for Germany, Russia, China required a river of blood--and then what do you have?
Stan's splintering frame thread suggests something I think you'd agree was on the threshhold of that "hippy" generation
A realization that we are, and the only chains are the peripheral frame and the overlaid lens of this or that psychological/spiritual dominator
The universe is just as infinite as then as ever
An updated Howl would track our peers dead, detoxing, dealing, backsliding, but we'd agree
He not busy being born is busy dying
It is part of the strategy of tension that a medieval malaise be cranked down until no one can stand erect
Such is the nature of this cabal which the fairies of media insist does not exist
Were those escapees youre talking about part of The New Buffalo Commune that was in "Easy Rider" ?
And yes i do agree that we didn't make the full break through that we needed to make during the 60's / 70's and that we cooperate with out own oppressors more than we should.
But the 60's and 70's got closer to that break through and its usually a matter of 2 steps forward and one back. There is seldom a straight path to the goal.
If you smile at me
I will understand
'Cause that is something
Everybody everywhere does in the same language
I can see by your coat, my friend
You're from the other side
There's just one thing I've got to know
Can you tell me please, who won
Say, can I have some of your purple berries
Yes, I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now
Haven't got sick once
Prob'ly keep us both alive
Wooden ships on the water, very free, and easy
Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline let us be
Talk'n 'bout very free, and easy
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving, you don't need us
Go take a sister, then, by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away, where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don't need us
And it's a fair wind
Blowin' warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I'll set a course and go
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
