"I don't want you to do your own thing, I want you to do MY thing!"

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I asked Jim [Kweskin] what his new act was like. Did he sermonize or what?
"We don't sermonize; but we don't always do what they think they want. I mean we demand that the audience get personally involved in what's happening, and a lot of times they just don't want to. We've been known to sit up on stage for hours and not do a thing. Sometimes you have to create an embarrassing or painful or angry situation just so that everybody's in the same place at the same time."
Wasn't this the sort of intimidation that people often associated with the Jesus freaks?
"Peace and love!" he said scornfully. "I mean, I walk down the street and I talk to some of the Jesus freaks or some of the peace and love people, you know? And they're dead. They're sound asleep. They feel absolutely nothing. All they do is spout out words. I mean, it's obvious we're not spouting out a bunch of words that somebody taught us how to say."

burned-out acidheads sell Bibles on the street for a living.

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The light shows and sounds indicated the influence of dope on audience and musicians alike. They could no longer be called dances for they resembled Be-Ins more than the foxtrot shuffles that still predominate in middle-aged memories. Clubs, like U.F.O. and Middle Earth in London's West End, used to have all-night sessions, where one could listen, dance, blow bubbles, eat, sleep, trip, make love or just wander around digging the people. As might be expected, rip-off club managers began their own enterprises, charging high prices for music, food and hard liquor. For a time nobody cared, because the head clubs were community run and one could hear the best in progressive rock and grin stoned grins at performers who would later be ranked as superstars. A mixture of police harassment and capitalist economics eventually closed them down. The political nature of rock music is manifested at a number of levels. Many groups take explicitly political stands, whilst others make obvious references in their songs and interviews. The nature of the music industry, however, sometimes induces an ambivalent stance for, despite the free concerts and the heavy rhetoric, the record companies are 'only in it for the money'. The M.C.5, as long as they stayed in Detroit with John Sinclair, were a screaming, revolutionary band. As soon as they left, they became a teeny bop group with a mean reputation but without any balls.

this cult of electric guitars and ass shaking has replaced Christianity

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The manhood of England, immersed in pools of Swedish flesh, must be beholden to their cunning music press which has facilitated the myth of their interminable swinging modernity. They need only get a bowl hairdo or some fey contemporary equivalent and they're awash in nubile Nords, thanks to a savvy and deceitful media organ. The Beatles are ultimately responsible, for without them and their psychedelic phenomenon, the country would be revealed as a chilly version of Portugal - a conservative backwater left only with distant memories of imperial glory.Indeed, before the Fab Four, England was drab and bowler-hatted; their parliament wore wigs, the food was bad, and the morality stultifying. No Swedish girl would have set foot on its soil. In the innocent days preceding "Beatlemania," Anita Ekberg and Ingrid Bergman were in Italy, almost certainly making love to their respective directors.

She’d come across his type often - all mouth, sneaky hands and no do

 

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Moving closer to Rose she whispered: ‘I’m not going to make the drug scene, not for anybody.’

Rose trembled, her features like a television screen blossoming into technicolour picture. ‘Is that what ... ?’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘Bloody right I will!’ Rose’s excitement knew no bounds. ‘Christ - it’s fabulous when you’re flying high. You’ve never had a bloke until you’re under him in tripland! One guy I had a ride with got me floatin’. Man, was it worthwhile! I could have lived with him but he had this bird preggars.’ She grunted to express her disgust. ‘Bleedin’ bitch wouldn’t let him off the hook.’ ... 

Stories in the lurid Sunday press came from her memory banks to torment her. She could recall the Manson killings, the spate of yarns dealing with hippies, yippies and their ilk in Britain. Had she inadvertently walked in on a pair of Manson-painted blokes? She laughed aloud, imagination was a powerful weapon ...

I was trying to imagine myself as a freaked-out Mark Lindsay

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During this time period we were all burdened with the number one teen crisis in America—the draft. Uncle Sam was extremely interested in quite a few of his musician nephews and a Master Plan needed to be concocted. The most important ammunition for a draft-dodger at a physical was a letter from a psychiatrist that waxed imperative about the lack of mental stability of the person presenting the note. Then one had to begin a transformation that began a week prior to said physical: If you were thin, it was important to eat as little as possible that week. If you tilted toward obesity, gluttony was suggested. Changing clothes was verboten that week, as was actually removing said garments. This exempted bathing, tooth-brushing, use of deodorants, etc. Judicious use of hair-spray was encouraged, however. Sleeping was frowned upon and drug intake was expected to increase from one hundred to three hundred percent in that week.  All these instructions had to be carried out to the letter if the inductee was to have any chance of escaping Uncle Sam’s long arm. The final phase of the Master Plan took place the night before your physical. This was a tradition that supplanted the bachelor or stag party in the mid-sixties. The victim would hold open-house that night and all his concerned friends could gain admittance by drug contributions or expert advice. If you had ten joints, three hits of speed, or had taken the physical more than twice and knew special stuff, you were most welcome. Our operation was smooth, professional, and, finally, claimed a one hundred percent success rate.