Free Republic

Social upheaval? Free love? Peaceful protests? Hmmm…really? In The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties, playwright Jonathan Leaf advances the position that the 1960s was a relatively conservative decade. And his arguments deserve our time. Or as William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard writes, “Has any decade been more mythologized than the 1960s? I doubt it.” So let us step back from Hollywood’s historians (xi): Take just one well-known event: the Beatles’ 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie – I Wanna...

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.

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...