Chez Pazienza: What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It’s Been: If you weren’t able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn’t been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

So this guy writes a long, predictable rant in the HuffPo today, Will the boomers just fucking die and leave him alone—which we will, given time—but the thing that really pops his cork is the idea that Woodstock and the Sixties continues to have interest and value. Really burns his butt.

Honey, geez, we’re sorry we were around for the Best Music Ever. That’s what’s really behind these kinds of rants. The utter frustration that those years and that music, which still pumps the nation, won’t go away.

Because they can’t. Because it is the very foundation of all that you listen to—and an amazing amount of that listening is to music recorded then. Go on YouTube. I have to hand it to the kids; I haven’t come across a fine piece of Sixties or early Seventies music on YouTube that isn’t wistfully drooled over, and, what makes me happy, respected.

And you don’t even know about early Leon Russell, tadpoles. Jumping Jack Flash? Oh, find an early, early version and weep.

Okay, Pazienza did mention getting ticked off at Joan Baez, but Chez, honey, she always ticked people off. Saint Joan.

I find Jimi at Woodstock heartbreaking. That smooth baby-face, and from his guitar come these incredible sounds. Bands like Country Joe and The Fish took their rightful place back in semi-obscurity, but think about all the music that followed. Crosby, Stills & Nash was just the beginning.

The only sense of privilege we carry was having been there when it was all played for the very first time. Suite: Judy, with your blue eyes. Oh say, Can you see?

Tags: leon russell, rock, rock music, the sixties

§ One Response to “The Haze Is Purple”

• Doug Alder says:

  1 October 2009 at 12:43 PM

  Honey, geez, we’re sorry we were around for the Best Music Ever. That’s what’s really behind these kinds of rants. The utter frustration that those years and that music, which still pumps the nation, won’t go away.

  Right on! whoops there I go being a child of the 60s again. Damn. Look what passes for music these days – technopop (WTF)and sexist,misogynistic,racist rap music (oh the utter hesitation to even call that music)

  Give me CSN&Y, Dylan, the early Stones, Leon Redbone, and an endless list of those who soared into our lives during the 60′s and 70′s over anything on the Top charts today.