Interesting to see you posting vids of Steve Hillage. For those of us going to free festivals and buying Gong, Hillage, HereAndNow, Pink Faeries, Hawkwind records, these people weren't obsessing over the 60s, they *were* the 60s. It's just that they were doing it between 1970 and 1975. We felt like we were the last of the hippies in some kind of golden age of hippiedom. This wasn't any kind of retrospective or retromania because we were doing it here and now for the first time.
Which all speaks to a theory I have that the dominant zeitgeist that comes to be associated with a specific decade actually starts in the middle of the numerical decade and runs through to the middle of the next one. So what we call the 60s (Hippy Boomers) ran from 65 to 75; 50s Youth rebellion was 55-65; 70s Punk was really 75-85; 80s bad hair, shoulder pads, syndrums was 85-95; Bristol Trip-hop was 95-05.
Oh yeah, totally -- Gong, Hawkwind et al -- were the continuation of the Sixties, they never stopped being or doing that
but i was specifically referring to the fact that Hillage did the two covers of Beatles and Donovans circa the ten year mark anniversary of summer of love (paralleling a lot of Beatlemania Redux stuff in the mainstream)
yeah the numerical-decade straddling nature of decades makes sense
similarly prog rock, in mainstream crossover terms, reached it highwater mark after punk -- that was when Floyd, Yes, Genesis etc had some of their biggest selling records
Interesting to see you posting vids of Steve Hillage. For those of us going to free festivals and buying Gong, Hillage, HereAndNow, Pink Faeries, Hawkwind records, these people weren't obsessing over the 60s, they *were* the 60s. It's just that they were doing it between 1970 and 1975. We felt like we were the last of the hippies in some kind of golden age of hippiedom. This wasn't any kind of retrospective or retromania because we were doing it here and now for the first time.
ReplyDeleteWhich all speaks to a theory I have that the dominant zeitgeist that comes to be associated with a specific decade actually starts in the middle of the numerical decade and runs through to the middle of the next one. So what we call the 60s (Hippy Boomers) ran from 65 to 75; 50s Youth rebellion was 55-65; 70s Punk was really 75-85; 80s bad hair, shoulder pads, syndrums was 85-95; Bristol Trip-hop was 95-05.
Oh yeah, totally -- Gong, Hawkwind et al -- were the continuation of the Sixties, they never stopped being or doing that
ReplyDeletebut i was specifically referring to the fact that Hillage did the two covers of Beatles and Donovans circa the ten year mark anniversary of summer of love (paralleling a lot of Beatlemania Redux stuff in the mainstream)
yeah the numerical-decade straddling nature of decades makes sense
similarly prog rock, in mainstream crossover terms, reached it highwater mark after punk -- that was when Floyd, Yes, Genesis etc had some of their biggest selling records