Free Republic

Ellie Greenwich, who has died aged 68, co-wrote some of the most enduring pop songs of the 1960s and collaborated with the "Wall of Sound" producer Phil Spector on such classics as Da Doo Ron Ron, Be My Baby (both 1963), and River Deep – Mountain High (1966).

Why did the 60's Generation get it so wrong in so many areas of life?

Election '08: Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he has never stopped being a radical. His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him. Distancing himself, as Obama did, from the "detestable acts" of the founder of the Weather Underground terror organization, is one thing. Ayers' terror attacks — in armed robbery, police murder, attempted killings of U.S. troops, and bombings of U.S. democratic institutions to advance a Marxist revolution — were quite easy to disavow. But Ayers' supporters say his violence was all a long time ago.

The Lost Country Mad for nostalgia? Don't be. By Rod Dreher, October 8, 2008 The most emblematic scene in “Mad Men,” the justly acclaimed serial drama now in its second season on the American Movie Channel, concluded an episode in September. Father Gill, an idealistic young Jesuit priest serving in 1962 Brooklyn, methodically removed all his priestly garments as he prepared for bed. It was as if he were divesting himself of armor, deconstructing a façade. Wearing his undershirt and his trousers, the priest sat on the edge of his bed, picked up his guitar, and thrashed out an impassioned...

The 'biggest American car show in the world' opened in Västerås in central Sweden on Thursday. More than 10,000 cars are expected for the Big Meet 2008 show. The annual event started 31 years ago and was founded by Kjell Gustafsson who has seen it grow from the humble beginnings of 40-80 cars in a parking lot in Anderstorp. "Just to keep the show going over three days costs 1.5 million kronor ($252,000). 160 officials work with this. That is around the same as the Hultsfred festival," Gustafsson said to Di.se. The Big Meet 2008 show will take place over...

Your opposition to the Iraq War could have distinguished you, but it became more parsed than pronounced.

Politically, 1968 began in Chicago in 1967. The country at the time faced three great crises: racial discrimination, the Vietnam War, and the imperial presidency in which all executive, legislative and judicial power was being gathered into the hands of the president. Behind these loomed the cultural clash of the '60s generation. The hippies, Yippies, Beatle-loving, pot-smoking free lovers doing their own thing came up against Richard J. Daley, the Chicago cops and the National Guard upholding the status quo against their own ''barbarian'' children. Society was sliding into stereotype, and anger was rising. The clash had begun with civil...

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the so-called Summer of Love, that mythical three months in 1967 in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood when visions of peace, love and harmony -- aided by bountiful quantities of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll -- reigned supreme. The Summer of Love has since become legend-- an expression of countercultural revolution, particularly in the minds of those recollecting the glory days of their youth. However inaccurately, this three-month period encompassing a tiny fraction of the population and an eight-block stretch has become a symbol for the entire decade. Among '60s disciples, it's an...

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the so-called Summer of Love. Honest and intelligent people will remember it for what it really was: the Summer of Drugs. Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.

Summer of love: 40 years later Hippie Hippie Shakedown: But where was love? BY DAWN EDEN, Guest Columnist LA Daily News WHEN it comes to inappropriate names, "Summer of Love" has to be right up there with "Joy Division," the name the Nazis reportedly gave to the sections of concentration camps that housed the guards' sex slaves. For one thing, it was not just a summer event. The countercultural happening that swept through San Francisco and beyond began with an April1967 planning announcement by concert promoter Chet Helms, aka Family Dog, creating the "Council for the Summer of Love." It...

I grew up during the tumultuous Sixties. Everyone remembers that era as one of radical protests, riots, drugs, and acid rock. But there was more to the Sixties than that. There were also artists who are seldom heard today: Trini Lopez, Glenn Yarborough, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, and others. During the past few days I've been thinking of another atypical memory from that era--an elderly woman with a terrible, warbly singing voice who for a while was omnipresent on television and radio. Her name was Mrs. Miller. Being a dumb kid, I automatically assumed...

His poem "Woman In The Window" is set to music and will be released as a single in April. Rock legend Jim Morrison is helping the fight against global warming from beyond the grave, with the release of a song he wrote. Environmental campaigners have taken a poem, "Woman In The Window," written by Morrison shortly before he died in 1971, and set it to music, with the help of New Order and former Jane's Addiction star Perry Farrell. The track was given to Farrell by the Jim Morrison estate. It will be released as a single in April. Dan...

Late Doors frontman Jim Morrison is to make an unlikely comeback - an unreleased song featuring the rocker has been found. "Woman in the Window" will be featured on a forthcoming album by rockers Satellite Party. The new song will feature both Morrison and vocals from Satellite Party. An industry insider says, "To hear Morrison performing on a new track is obviously going to be a dream come true for fans. It's being tipped as a massive hit." The icon died of heart failure in 1971, at age 27.

LONDON (AFP) - Fans have rushed to buy the first "new" Beatles album for a generation -- a radical remixing of some of the group's most famous songs -- more than 35 years after the break-up of the iconic band. "Love", which has the backing of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, comprises 26 of the Fab Four's hit songs, but many of them mixed together using previously unheard material from the studio. "I hope this will help people to hear Beatles music again," said Giles Martin, son of the group's original producer Sir George Martin who is often...

Ray Manzarek doesn’t just remember the ’60s. He lived the ’60s to their psychedelic, mind-bending hilt as the keyboardist for the legendary rock band, the Doors. Manzarek, who wrote music for Jim Morrison’s lyrics, soared with the Doors into the rock stratosphere with a string of hits including “Light My Fire” and “Riders on the Storm.” After a five-year flight that symbolizes the highs and lows of that era, the Doors came crashing back to earth. Unlike Morrison, found dead in a bathtub in Paris in 1971, Manzarek lived to tell the tale. “We were at the top of the...

The former Pink Floyd star died from cancer in July at the age of 60.Late Pink Floyd star Syd Barrett left his brother and two sisters a $2.25 million estate in his will. The former singer/songwriter died from cancer in July at the age of 60. His family was forced to write Barrett's will for him, because he was considered incapable himself under the Mental Health Act. Barrett left the legendary band in 1968 after suffering an LSD-induced breakdown.

"The fact that he's dead is unfortunate but looking back on his life it's a very pleasant thought."The father of late The Doors singer Jim Morrison has branded the death of his estranged son "unfortunate," despite the rocker often singing about his family's imagined demise. George Morrison, a retired Navy admiral, insists memories of his rocker son are "pleasant" - even though he once joked his parents were dead and used Oedipal rant "The End" to imagine killing his dad and sleeping with his mother. However, in a new memoir of the band, George remains positive about his child. Contributing...

SAN FRANCISCO--In 1970, 20-year-old student Bill Sagan had his first real brush with rock and roll history at an early Led Zeppelin concert at Chicago's fabled Aragon Ballroom. Now the entrepreneur owns one of rock's biggest treasure troves of recorded shows by Zeppelin and other history-making bands, and he's beginning to share it freely online. Since 2002, Sagan has owned the full archives of legendary promoter Bill Graham, whose concerts featuring performers such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and others helped define the late 1960s and early '70s. Late last week, Sagan began putting excerpts from...

Horsefeathers has refrained from commenting on Cindy Sheehan on grounds that psychopathology is best dealt with in the privacy of the consultation room, and that deranged individuals should be quietly led to treatment, not encouraged to dramatize their delusional ideas for the evening newscast. One doesn’t require the 70+ years of combined clinical experience we possess to note the detachment from reality this woman exhibits. Her obvious rage at her son, her trashing of his life, her paranoid fantasies about the 'neocons' and Israel, her Bush hatred, her self inflation, her weird affect, the strange smile as she articulates barnyard...

The first live show for 36 years by Eric Clapton's blues/rock "power trio" may have attracted the attentions of the media, but it has had difficulty snaring anyone under 40; young people are conspicuous by their absence from the bars and foyers of the Royal Albert Hall. The atmosphere is less like a rock concert than a corporate hospitality tent at Wimbledon. Paunchy men in sports jackets clink ice in gin and tonics, and mumsy ladies fan themselves with pricey souvenir programmes. Presumably some of them were here the last time Cream played the Royal Albert Hall, squinting at the...

One day recently, while performing some house-husbandly chores, I tuned in to National Public Radio for diversion. In short order I heard the story of some women who have started "Mistresses Anonymous" to help deal with the pain, rage, and frustration; of those "other women" in our society; then the story of support groups for expectant fathers who feel sympathetic labor pains. This one-two punch, coming on the heels of an invitation from a well-respected college to a "math anxiety" workshop in preparation for a math test and the discovery that I am a likely candidate for Post-Vietnam Stress Syndrome...

More than a win for conservatism, Bush's victory marks the end, finally, of the '60s.THE SIXTIES ended on September 11, 2001, but they were interred on the morning of November 3, 2004, when a senator from Massachusetts played the reverse role of another senator from Massachusetts 44 years earlier.In November of 1960, John F. Kennedy had received a call from Richard Nixon, conceding the election, an act of statesmanship that still redounds to Nixon's credit. Nixon's chances of successfully waging a recount of Illinois and Texas votes were higher than Kerry's of contesting Ohio's votes from Tuesday, but both would...

The Other Sixties by Bruce BawerTwo decades, the 1950s (1950–59) and “The Sixties” (ca. 1965–74), continue to be the touchstones by which American liberals and conservatives define themselves. To those on the right, the 1950s were the last good time, an era of sanity and maturity, order and discipline, of adults behaving like adults and children knowing their place. To those on the left, the 1950s were a time of fatuous complacency, mindless materialism, and stultifying conformism—not to mention racism, sexism, and other ugly prejudices. By contrast, “The Sixties,” for conservatives, were an explosion of puerile irresponsibility and fashionable rebellion,...

....Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting"Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers Between the windows of the sea Where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much About Desolation Row... Desolation Row

<p>WASHINGTON -- Will we ever recover from the Sixties? What's happening with the bitter dispute over John Kerry's role in Vietnam confirms my fears that my generation may never see the day when the baby boomers who came of age in that troubled decade are reconciled sufficiently with each other to lead a united country.</p>

Tony Blair today launched an extraordinary attack on the decline of the traditional family and the rise of "different lifestyles". In a speech which risked a backlash from single parents' groups and Labour MPs, the Prime Minister said the culture of the "Swinging Sixties" was partly to blame for crime and social breakdown. "A society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to others," said Mr Blair. "All of this was then multiplied in effect by the economic and social changes...

US 'soldiers of conscience' take Sixties route to Canada By Marcus Warren in New York (Filed: 19/04/2004) Two American soldiers opposed to the war in Iraq have abandoned their units and fled to Canada in a desertion evoking the exodus of young men north of the border during the Vietnam era. The two soldiers are seeking asylum as refugees, arguing that they face persecution for their beliefs - and in theory the death penalty - if they return. Their decision to run may not yet herald a mass migration but no one expects the pair to be the last to...

John Mark Reynolds- Contributor John Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, and Associate Professor of Philosophy, at Biola University. Plaids versus Woodstocks The Last Battle for the Soul of the Sixties... [John Mark Reynolds] 2/27/04 I just returned from a delightful reprise of the play Forever Plaid at the La Mirada Performing Arts Center. I first saw this marvelous musical memory ten years ago and loved it then, but McCoy-Rigby has gotten the show exactly right. The show is essentially a memorial to the tight harmonies of the male quartets of the early sixties....

Veterans Should Politically Banish Kerry For Disgracing The Marine Corps Memorial Major Rick Erickson, 01/27/04 On the cover of ““The New Soldier”” by John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against The War, hippies clad in a mismatch of military uniforms are pictured mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima. Today, the Iwo Jima image is a memorial statue that sits above Arlington National Cemetery and honors all Marines killed in action since 1775. It is one of the most recognized and visited sites in our Capitol City. “The...

Just how bad were theliberals in the sixties ? Worse than any could have imagined . Former liberal turned Reagan Conservative , writer Author David Horowitz grew up in the sixties as a radical liberal activist and friend of radical Democrat Tom Hayden , future Demacrat Senator , 1996 Los Angeles Mayoral candidate against Richard Riordan , and husband of Jane Fonda . As a friend of Mr . Hayden during the anti - Vietnam war era , David Horowitz reaveals in his book 'Radical Son ' that Tom Hayden actively ,literally , and personally trained the VietCong how to...

Searching for faithBy Steven Martinovichweb posted August 18, 2003Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith with the Poor Clares is the latest in that dreary genre of books that sees self-absorbed Baby Boomers suffer a mid-life crisis and feel the need to write about it. After decades of turning their backs on the things that their Eisenhower-era parents held dear, many have begun to turn back to those old institutions in a frantic attempt to achieve some inner fulfillment. For the generation that believes they discovered sex, it's not surprising they also suffer the delusion that they're the first to suffer a...

The Conscience of a Conservative - The Conservative 1960's From the perspective of the 1990s, it's the big political story of the era by Matthew Dallek The year 1960, though, brought a turning point for the conservative movement. That year Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative. Generally dismissed in the national media, the book stands today as one of the most important political tracts in modern American history. As the historian Robert Alan Goldberg demonstrates in Barry Goldwater, his fine new biography, The Conscience of a Conservative advanced the conservative cause in several ways. Building on William F....

<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army pleaded guilty to murder Thursday in the shotgun slaying of a bank customer during a 1975 holdup, virtually ending one of the most notorious and violent sagas of radical 1970s politics.</p>