What would be your Perfect Time & place ?
I’ve always thought I was extremely lucky to be alive in the 1960’s. It was an exciting era and relatively free compared to the restrictions we now have in every area.
As a Musician and also a Car nut I completely agree with Rob Forrester of the Go-Betweens when he said,
“I wish I’d been in San Francisco in 1965-1966″ -
“All the major players were there, bands were forming but hadn’t made their first albums yet and there was a lovely feeling of shared ideas, shared houses. The Hippy world was coming on, people were enjoying it but it hadn’t been on the front cover of Time Magazine yet.
It was that world where men started to grow their hair down on their shoulders, people were getting into Eastern religion, adventurous fantastic Rock n roll was being made. For a couple of years in 1965-66, that was a fantastic world”
What year & Date would you choose for your Perfect Moment in time?
Agree or Disagree, but let me know by posting your year and reasons in the comments box at the bottom.
Music, Cars, Peace and Love – they were all there in 1965.
Here’s more on what it was like, the Atmosphere, the Cars, the Music -
ATMOSPHERE
In 1965 San Francisco became one of the liveliest cities in the US. The poets of the “Beat generation” moved there; the “Diggers” turned the Haight Ashbury district into a “living theater”. Mario Savio founded the “Free Speech Movement” at the University of California at Berkeley, where sit-ins and marches were supported by the likes of Country Joe McDonald.
McLure, Dylan & Ginsberg
There was excitement in the air. In the summer of 1965 a San Francisco band, the Charlatans, and their hippy fans took over the “Red Dog Saloon” in Virginia City (Nevada), and came up with the idea of playing a new kind of music for a new kind of audience. The Warlocks (later renamed the Grateful Dead) got hired by Ken Kesey to play at his “acid tests” (LSD parties), where the band began performing lengthy instrumental jams, loosely based on country, blues and jazz.
The Warlocks- later became The Grateful Dead
In October of that year, the Family Dog Production organized the first hippy party at the “Long Shoreman’s Hall”. Following the success of that “festival”, avenues for San Francisco’s new bands sprang up all around.
Those acts embodied the pacifist ideals that had been promoted by Bob Dylan, but with less political stance. Theirs was a philosophy of life (”peace , love and drugs”) in direct consequence of what Dylan had preached, but much closer to Buddhist philosophy.
Hippies gathered not to march, but to celebrate; not to protest but to rejoice. The spiritual experience was more important than political experience. This represented a dramatic change from the times of rock’n'roll, when the music was an (ultimately violent) act of rebellion.
CARS
Cars were every bit as fantastic as the music. The muscle car era had just begun. In 1965-66 the top option V8 engines were around 425 cubic inches, that’s 7 Litres. Cars from this era had character, the designers were allowed to be individuals, and cars didn’t all look the same.
The Pontiac GTO
The Shelby Mustang
The Stingray
The Buick Wildcat
late in 66 the Chevrolet Camaro
1965 Ford Thunderbird
Carol Shelby built the Cobra sportscar and then the hot Shelby Mustang. The Pontiac GTO is credited with starting the muscle car era and the Mustang for making muscle cars popular. The Buick Wildcat was powerful, sleek for its size and the Corvette Stingray was becoming a legend. Plymouth Fury & Barracuda, Buick Riviera & Toronado, Chevrolet Chevelle, Impala & Caprice – all these cars were large and had options for huge gas guzzling 7 Litre V8 engines. They were classic and they had style.
The movie Bullit, with it’s famous car chase down the hilly streets of San Francisco, premiered two years later in 1968, but it was no doubt inspired by some of these cars and they way they were driven.
MUSIC
The Grateful Dead, considered by many to be “the” greatest rock band of all times, were a monument of San Francisco’s hippy civilization and the psychedelic civilization of the 1960s. Their greatest invention was the lengthy, free-form, group jam, the rock equivalent of jazz improvisation. This became known as ‘Acid Rock’ which came to represent escape from the Establishment, artistic freedom and the alternative lifestyle.
The Grateful Dead
Jefferson Airplane embodied the spirit and the sound of the hippy era and had a formidable group of talents that redefined every part of Rock music. Their early singles, Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, helped establish psychedelic-rock as a musical genre.
The Santana Blues Band, later simply called Santana formed in 1966. Big Brother and the Holding Company formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their lead singer.
Santana
Not so famous bands of the time (Charlatans, Ace of Cups, The Vejtables, Chocolate Watchband to name a few) contributed to an atmosphere of experimentation, improvisation, and ambivalence about the notion of commercial success.
The Charlatans were credited with being the first band to take LSD just before a gig and also producing the first Psychedelic poster.
In other parts of the music world the Beatles had chart toppers with Ticket to Ride, Yesterday, Michelle. The Rolling Stones had a #1 hit with Satisfaction and The Who had a chart hit with My Generation. The Doors got together in California 1965; The Beach Boys had a hit with Help me Rhonda & Do You Wanna Dance –
“It was all happening, Man”
1965-66 in San Francisco would have been an exciting place to live.
Peace Man~!
Post your perfect year in the box below 
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