Ziggy played guitar.
It’s one of those times in my life where I don’t know if I’m here or there, sad or happy, me or you, making it or faking it. But it doesn’t matter because I’ve got David Bowie playing on, in and around my headphones.
Dig it.
In my youth we said things like, “do your thing,” “it’s your bag” “funky” (I love the word funky — you jive ass turkey). We also said — well not me, but some people — my head’s in a weird place right now (for fuck sakes get it out of there!). We used to “trip” and “go through changes” and we were worried about someone “hassling” us or “messing” with us (the jive ass turkeys). Some of the shit people said was silly like “when is the meeting happening?” But at least no one forgot anything, they merely “spaced on it.”
I was young at some amazing times. It was when we stuck it to the man, took to the streets and grooved and got down and boogied. There was the fucking war in Vietnam and it was just so fucking obvious that that shit was messed up and we protested the hell out of the war. That was a damn good thing and was accompanied by our belief in equality and racial justice.
I’d grown up trying to be keen and boss but then it all became about being cool.
Young, man. That was a trip. Tripping man, they could be trippy. Course we tripped on acid (LSD to y’all). That was heavy. Messing with your own mind. Enlightenment. We were all about that shit.
We got stoned, loaded, wasted, fucked up, shit faced, bombed out of our minds.
We went through some serious changes — dude.
Dude was a word that looped around in weird ways. Changing a lot and do the young people still use it, my dude? There were no fellas and very few guys. But dudes -- yes.
Females were chicks to some. Gays were queer, and queers were gay. Even the young and the hip were still processing homosexuality. That was new to us but in keeping with new and enlightened times we were accepting — eventually.
There was a time that our Black brothers and sisters were Afro Americans. I liked that term but it went away and was not my call.
Ziggy played guitar jamming good….
Love and peace were serious themes. Do we talk about them anymore? I mean we were serious about them both. They were what it was all about. Give Peace a Chance and All You Need is Love, said the Beatles. They were the main spokespeople of our generation, hell, they pretty much formed our goddamned generation.
Course there were others: Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors, The Who, Marvin Gaye, Bowie, Stevie Wonder, the Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Neil Motherfucking Young. Even the Beach Boys — Pet Sounds, y’all. Yeah, we had our voices and they were cool beyond words. Rhythm. We danced like crazy and the dancing was CRAZY. But you knew that.
Woodstock!!Z!!
But some shit was nasty like Charlie Manson and the poor saps he hypnotized. Murdering bastards. Totally uncool.
Vibes were super important. You wanted good ones.
The Black Panthers were at the vanguard.
But there were serious enemies. The pigs. Hoover and the Fucking FBI. The CIA. The Military. Nixon, Reagan. Mayor Daly. So many. The uncoolest.
We were right, though, ya know. We had it together. We were right and righteous. It was our time. We changed the world. No, not so much the U.S. power structure, it looks like rich, corporate, militaristic bastards will always hold sway. But we created the culture man. We made movies, and music, and TV and literature and art and liberated teens, and sex and language and clothes and hair. Hair, man.
We did a number on that.
People should totally thanks us.
Ziggy, out.
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