This picture from 1973 is pure ego, but it kinda symbolizes one of the major problems of the 1960’s counterculture that has most recently surfaced in the comments on Monday’s post Flip To Reality. The shameful truth is that, somewhere around 1975, we freaks made the classic revolutionary misstep and allowed not only the means of production, but even those of distribution, to slip back into the hands of totalitarian corporate management. And that is the root cause, as Roldo notes, “for outlaw/Underground artists finding so few gigs.”
If, as he says “economic crucifixion does seem the current method-of-choice” it has a lengthy and decidedly sorry history. Between approximately 1966 and 1975, give or take, the counterculture did it’s damnedest to run it’s own mom and pop store, walking a hard-to-follow line between cooption, prosecution, and hip capitalism. We printed our own propaganda, we dyed our own ties, we smuggled our own dope, and where the squares gathered, we sold retail. Jobs for hippies were generated so they didn’t need to join the Manson Family.
By the mid-seventies, however, a serious combination of weariness and greed had set in. I was as much to blame as anyone. On the music side of things, The Deviants had packaged and distributed the first album PTOOFF! ourselves, but later we’d look for a deal with a major label because it made life easier. IT, Nasty Tales and the other print publications with which I’d was involved had been independently organized from paste-up to newsstand. After years, however, of police raids, poverty, and preparing for one bullshit trial after another, the idea of writing for a corporate music tabloid like the NME seemed damned attractive. Of course, NME was owned by the IPC mediaglomerate, but I rationalized that there weren’t too many content clashes with management, and punk was on the horizon, and I getting to promote the shit out of the Ramones, the Pistols, and The Clash, and also make records of my own. How bad could it be? But something very crucial was in the process of being lost. What remained of the counterculture was hard wired to global total media – Every Boredom Entertained – and only survived if handled accordingly. South Park. The revolution will be animated.
Thus when Matt and others commented on the need for a broad, ground-up revision of our ideas, it felt like a return to ideas long lost. A whole lot of mom & pop micro-economies functioning on a local level. “We can choose to be active Americans in our local communities who build our direct economies rather than join the entrenched top-down Republican-Democrat-Corporate collusion (no matter who their symbolic savior/figurehead is at any given moment).” This may actually be the path out of totalitarian capitalism.
The secret word is Comintern
If, as he says “economic crucifixion does seem the current method-of-choice” it has a lengthy and decidedly sorry history. Between approximately 1966 and 1975, give or take, the counterculture did it’s damnedest to run it’s own mom and pop store, walking a hard-to-follow line between cooption, prosecution, and hip capitalism. We printed our own propaganda, we dyed our own ties, we smuggled our own dope, and where the squares gathered, we sold retail. Jobs for hippies were generated so they didn’t need to join the Manson Family.
By the mid-seventies, however, a serious combination of weariness and greed had set in. I was as much to blame as anyone. On the music side of things, The Deviants had packaged and distributed the first album PTOOFF! ourselves, but later we’d look for a deal with a major label because it made life easier. IT, Nasty Tales and the other print publications with which I’d was involved had been independently organized from paste-up to newsstand. After years, however, of police raids, poverty, and preparing for one bullshit trial after another, the idea of writing for a corporate music tabloid like the NME seemed damned attractive. Of course, NME was owned by the IPC mediaglomerate, but I rationalized that there weren’t too many content clashes with management, and punk was on the horizon, and I getting to promote the shit out of the Ramones, the Pistols, and The Clash, and also make records of my own. How bad could it be? But something very crucial was in the process of being lost. What remained of the counterculture was hard wired to global total media – Every Boredom Entertained – and only survived if handled accordingly. South Park. The revolution will be animated.
Thus when Matt and others commented on the need for a broad, ground-up revision of our ideas, it felt like a return to ideas long lost. A whole lot of mom & pop micro-economies functioning on a local level. “We can choose to be active Americans in our local communities who build our direct economies rather than join the entrenched top-down Republican-Democrat-Corporate collusion (no matter who their symbolic savior/figurehead is at any given moment).” This may actually be the path out of totalitarian capitalism.
The secret word is Comintern
Nigel Cross provided the pic.
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9 comments:
And who could possibly turn down an offer to be on the cover of a Sunday supplement?
What a fantastic robot toy!
Then again, there might not even have been a Psychedelic Renaissance if those capitalists hadn't taken so long to catch on that Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Kantner et al were doin' a lot more than than just making money for their recording companies.
I was never, even Then, into the idea that we were gonna create a perfect world by the end of the decade. Real change is as slow as history, and the changes that were made are still vibrant and viable - why else would the System still be trying to crush us?
The System crushes us because it doesn't know how to do anything else.
Well yeah - there's that...but I wasn't refering to the generic grind it afflicts on all within its power but rather to the detectable pattern of anti-Psychedelic programming I've been noticing in the film industry over the last decade The seemingly obligatory use of "freak" as a degrogatory being just one example.
But yeah - the System destroys because it has nothing to build.
I'm not clear what you mean by a "detectable pattern of anti-psychedelic programming." Wanna cite a couple of examples?
Sure. There's the one I mentioned - "freak" being using as a term of insult in film and tv to the point where I began to suspect it it was more than a fad. There was also a repeating theme of exhippies relating how they'd come to there senses and rejoined the mainstream, eg. James Spader in some flick says " I was at Woodstock - I spent three days sitting on my ass in the mud and thought 'Is this what I want to do with my life?'".
My favourite is the "You owe me a rug" scene in 'The Big Lebowski' which seems to satirize the idea.
True this could be coincidence but I factored in the constant anti-tobacco references in film - Waterworld" being the most blatant and 'Lord Of The Rings' the most unnecessary - and I decided there was reason to suspect coersion. There's also the fact that Fox deliberately ran the series "Firefly", which had a strong Freek vibe, out of order to fuddle the context, as it had earlier with "Sliders".
Still, one finds what one looks for but like James Bond used to say "Once is accident, twice is coindence, three times is enemy action."
Might one suggest a simple solution to all our cultural woes? It keeps occuring to me that if everyone recognised the rather obvious fact that if everyone put a bit of effort into making life easier for everyone else then life would be easier for everyone. Yeah I know its an idealistic uptopian concept promoted by Jesus and a lot of other Hippies but I'll be fundamentally fucked if I can see a flaw in the reasoning. I expect it'd catch on a lot quicker if the oligarchy wasn't so locked into their neo-Staussian belief (if belief it be and not merely excuse) that people are essentially stupid and evil and require a iron hand to keep them 'in line','under control', and all the other catch-phrases, for their own good.
"PTOOF!" was a fine album...not as good as "mona" tho....."..come on sheila - leave her alone...."
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