I was in my 20's. I spent my decade going to school and getting degrees and working and staying up all night every night partying. The entire decade I hung out at the Aragon Ballroom on Friday and Saturday nights, sat in the front row of this huge auditorium and watched live bands like Creedence Clearwater, Traffic, REO Speedwagon, B-52's, Cars, Doors, Grateful Dead, etc etc.
I saw everyone. In the first row. It was glorious. I was not interested in meeting any of them. My boyfriend was the reason I got to sit up front. He was roommates with the bouncer. We all had wild, hippie hair and as the 70's waned, we cut it and became new improved YUPPIES. Upwardly mobile achievers. We traded our downers for uppers and still drank till we dropped.
I was drunk half the time. I managed to get a degree in Cosmetology and Court Reporting. I made lots of friends and fell in love with a gay guy.
You know, the usual.
You can't believe what this sounded like the first time they played. OH WOW. Blue Oyster Cult had a SOUND SYSTEM that blew everything away. Hearing that for the first time was mind bending.
The late 70' to early eighties were the time of my early adulthood when I left home and began to discover the world. I was a student and a sculptor, much attracted to most things alternative. Groovy had gone out of fashion by then, but yes, it was a groovy time. My generation bucked Vietnam, marched against the bomb, fought for women's rights, joined the Reclaim the Night marches for women and the Gay Mardi Gras parade for gay rights and celebration, and began the big campaigns for the green movement. We built mudbrick solar passive and active in way out designs, recreated communal living, planted thousands of trees, grew (still grow) our own veggies etc. We adopted alternatives medicines to treat the minor ills of healthy youngsters - but now those ten and twenty years older than me are being challenged by old age - and many are choosing conventional medicine to help them stay alive longer. We practised Tantra and Taoism in bed with each other - with varying degrees of success. We grew and smoked weed, experimented with entheogens, and artificially induced forms of bliss and unconditional love. We sampled just about every religion on the planet - and many got hooked on one or another and so went off on a tangent. We gave up meat, meditated, practised yoga and happily avoided making too much money. We preferred live music over recorded, often went out to listen to it, or visited each other's houses for jam sessions. Our tastes were often blues and rock, but more often fused with folks and classical from around the world. Still are. We dressed in rainbow colours, natural fabrics and ethnic styles with semiprecious stones, shells and feathers for jewellery. Today we have grey hair, wrinkles, dentures and glasses, and the rainbows have shifted to earth tones. Many of us old hippies have sloughed off our hippie rags and disguise ourselves as straights - but on the inside, we haven't changed.
This post was edited by inky at August 7, 2019 5:08 PM MDT
Well I was on a few drugs in the 70`s so I don`t remember much about it except a TV show called the Banana Splits and that I was just out school and I was really really cool I was a wild child. I think the 70`s was the coolest decade for rock and roll and for rock and roll fashion - glam and glitter rock fashion was way cool. Cheers!
Zack 