Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
So, you’re trippin’ with your blue-jean baby down a marijuana-scented street, wearing your tie-dyed shirt, love beads and huaraches, when you hear an announcement blaring from a packed tour bus: “Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you look to your left you’ll see a hairy hippie passed out in front of the Phật Phúc Noodle Bar. … Read more
Hello, ma’am. I’m working to clean up the neighborhood from parasites. Do you mind if I take a quick look around your house? I’m afraid you may have hippies. If you’re familiar with the darkly funny animated series “South Park,” you know there’s nothing that tubby 9-year-old Eric Cartman hates more than hippies. In the 2005 … Read more
That’s what Woodstock attendees might have heard at the end of the festival if Roy Rogers had agreed to close the show. Woodstock organizer Michael Lang wanted Roy to come on after Jimi Hendrix, the guitar phenomenon everyone had been dying to to see. Speaking to an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences panel … Read more
There have been more than 1,000 cover versions of “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the debut single by British progressive-rock band Procol Harum. The hauntingly beautiful song with its Bach-like melody and trippy lyrics was a perfect soundtrack for the Summer of Love. It hit the #1 one spot on the U.K. charts on June … Read more
That was the pronouncement of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the transformation of the Fab Four from the droll, cheeky mop-tops of 1964, to the lysergically induced hipster-gurus of 1967. Rumor has it that the Queen voiced this “turning funny” verdict to Sir Joseph Lockwood, chairman of the Beatles’ British record company EMI, at a … Read more