It’s easy to get down on the Hippies. When you look around at the world these days, it sometimes feels as though the Peace Movement was a complete failure. Wars are still raging, violence has increased, marijuana is still illegal, and sex ain’t what it used to be.
Summers aren’t even as good anymore. It seems hard to imagine that the air will ever smell as new, or that days can ever be as plain, simple, and innocent as before.
So maybe the Hippies failed. Maybe the whole thing crumbled and half of them became corporate scum bags in the ’80’s. So what! At least they tried. And give credit where credit is due…they really showed the world how to live.
I had a Grateful Dead song, “Friend of the Devil” in my head all morning, so when I got to work I deceided to watch a few Dead videos with my breakfast sandwich. This was the best of them, a performance of “China Cat” from the Old Renaissance Faire grounds, Vineta, OR 8/27/72. It’s a cool little snapshot of The Dead at their best, and of some vintage Hippies doing hippie shit, throwing frisbees and being a bunch of Hippies.
Maybe they didn’t save the world, but they certainly showed us how to have an amazing time.
Oh yeah…and Jerry rocks!
Loading ...
