the meaning of rock an roll

[revolutionR]

When I was fifteen I wanted to get shitfaced
I wanted to ride the wave of whiskey
and shoot ten off the bottle
I was looking for a poem but I did not know it yet
some rock an roll song on the radio got me fired up
I could feel it in my young blood, feel the strange
need hidden in the music and the words
it was about sex, but it was something else too
there was an urgency a surge of something other
deep in the sounds and the dark spaces between
when you are fifteen and it's just when rock music
is getting its second breath, coming out of the fifties
I was just a kid when Elvis came along, when rock
around the clock got me dreaming of the world going
around, but it was that purple people eater that really got me

but I did not really hear the underground tow of the rhythm
and the beat, that deeper pull of the magic of the buzz
surf music came along, and there was the ocean of feelings
just under the surface, those simple guitar chords were beginning
to tell the tale, that was going to ride the wild surf of psychedelic
thought, it was the house of the rising sun that broke on through
as I was still listening for the meaning of the lyrics of Louie Louie

When I heard, "I want to hold your hand" for the first time
I was ready for what was to come down the pike, my beatnik kicked in
there was no turning back now, nothing would ever be the same again
the cat was out of the goody two shoes bag, and I was ready for some
rolling stones, but around the same time, Bob Dylan blew my little mind
funny but I can't remember when I first heard Dylan, was it "rainy day women"
in any case at sixteen going on seventeen my friend lent me, Blonde on Blonde
finally I heard the poetry put to music that would change the way I saw things
at just that right moment before I drank myself to death, that moment
when I would bend my mind around the rock and roll of the universe
and the psychedelics would do the rest, and Like Jimi said, "you will never
hear surf music again, and damn if I never heard surf music again the same way

[saw]

I can totally relate to all the songs you mention, but more than that to the times that sent me in a new direction of being....of living.....it was so powerful, it has never left me...the drugs, the music, the collective buzz.....communal living, talking and smoking to all hours, reading and jamming like there was no tomorrow...two albums that really hit me hard, like a sock to the jaw of awakening were Axis Bold as Love....Jimi moving on into my soul, and Disraeli Gears.
there was something otherworldly about that Cream album that was personal for me....if music could be this different, then everything could.

[revolutionR]

Saw Jimi Hendrix twice, Cream once. Rolling Stones once. Never saw Dylan, saw Donovan playing for free in the Golden Gate park Panhandle one fine day.

[saw]

I was traveling in my VW.... late 70's....got to Golden Gate Park just in time to see Hot Tuna for free...Man, I so miss free stuff of that caliber...what a time...saw Hendrix in Florida, but never caught Cream, I'm sad to say....saw the Stones first time they came to Baltimore circa 1967. quit my evening paper route 'cause the boss said I couldn't have off....then saw the Steel Wheels tour at RFK stadium in D.C ....they had a fifty foot tall blow up doll for Honky Tonk Woman...man, what a time...still have my stub...I'll post it later.....wahoooo

[WIREMAN]

memories
1st rock n roll song i remeber was Hound dog i musta been 4 and i remeber runnin round the apartment complex singin it all day....the Beatles were the bomb that changed it all i still remeber the next day at school, it was all we talked about. I was in 5th grade and we started a beatle band immediately, played teen clubs and even played for the other classes at school....the stones ....kinks....yardbirds.....louie lou i....we gotta go now....man them daze are deep inside...thanks for the read

[mtmynd]

Love reading about others education into rock 'n roll... so similar to my own memories.

Back in the early - mid 60's R&R was pailing out, growin thin for these ears. Elvis was still alive and the surfin' sound was no longer a thrill (exception: Dick Dale!)... and Motown was great to begin with but it wasn't enough to satisfy... I got hooked into folk music around that time, my town even had a coffee house! wow.. what a trip. And older bungalow-style on a busy street, my first entry into the place was nothing but inexperience at full-throttle... but I sat at a table and had some beatnik chick asked me my order. I had the coffee of the night and settled in listening to the sounds... a mix of folk, some of the cats I never heard before and made mental note to find out who they were... also the jazz! man-o-man was that a mind fuck for this teen.

I hit my record store to hunt down some new sounds... I enjoyed the pair - folk and jazz, about equally at the time. The old staple, Kingston Trio was a must for the time, Peter, Paul and Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon" called for a vinyl taste... some other important cats that I no longer recall.. but when Dylan hit the record store... whoa! the salesman I dealt with pulled out "Bob Dylan"... told me he as getting lots of press off this album. I buy and when I get home I put it on my record player, place the needle just nice like and out comes this sound that brought me to laughter... I mean this guys voice knocked my over and it was like releasing something inside me that I never knew was there... what ever it was I had to hear this again... then again on the 3rd listen I chilled and took in the words, the voice, the feeling. This cat was for real!

Jazz I fell into - Charles Mingus, Miles, Thelonious Monk, Brubeck... so many I was diggin' that it was another self-explosion that shattered my "old life"... I was hooked, I was beat, I was cool, mother fucker...! lol

Beatles enter the head... Ed Sullivan Show, first appearance on TV... blown away. When is this mind-fuck I'm having ever going to end...? Life is fucking too beautiful to let go....

((I gotta take a break.... whew! to many flashbacks... to much to handle at one sitting... too fucking old to relive it all at once... thanks all for the injection down memory lane... we all got mind fucked and tossed around in our heads... "reborn" for real and not some preachie jesus stuff... nah! this is personal like a son of a bitch and I'll never surrender... I CAN"T fucking surrender... early sixties up to and including the early 70's... 10 years or going the the birth canal of psychic change... neverending.))

[revolutionR]

As a teenager, I was right there when all this music
was going through the changes, so much was happening
all at once, all this music was exploding, I liked all kinds
of music, but there were always certain musicians and songs
that stood out to me at the time, for some reason.Of course
the Beatles were the real scene changers, but then so was
Bob Dylan, I really liked Eric Burdon and The Animals, and I
still do, Eric is still doing it.I loved all that folk music too.
But rock music was evolving so fast, in the 60's. But I cannot
separate it from the psychedelic explosion. When I first got into
pot and then LSD, my appreciation of music expanded. At
seventeen I was listening to Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane.
But I really was into all that early psychedelic stuff, Love
with Arthur Lee, The Seeds with Sky Saxon, and then the Doors
with Jim Morrison, who thought of himself as a poet and was a
poet. I grew up in southern California near L.A., so I was hanging
out in Hollywood some as a teenager, and I heard a lot of music
in the L.A. area, and in Orange country where I lived.

[Doreen Peri]

How in the heck did we all end up to be so old so quick? What happened to the years? They just flew by. I can't believe it. Every day I wake up and look in the mirror to see that old lady staring back at me and I wonder how in the heck this happened.

Oh, but the music was great. Still is. I still listen to it.

[mtmynd]

I read you, revR... in the USN when I came from Guam to Oakland, assigned to duty on an aircraft carrier (CVA43), 1967... what a time! I had only read about the growing scene in SF while overseas and when in Oakland the ship was not leaving for a few months. Good news... I had time off and with a buddy of mine, one day we went into the city and found Haight Ashbury... too cool of a scene then, like a disneyland on acid... freaks everywhere one looked. We wanted to smoke some pot never having done any at the time. Long, funny story about that and I won't bore you with the details but smoked my fist joint in an attic in Berkely with a college drop out from Louisiana who worked as a baby sitter in Berkeley.

Had time to take in some concerts needless to say was another mind-fuck for me, never having seen anyone live and Fillmore West and Family Dog brought out so much killer music I was in some kinda heaven... for a guy, like yourself, loved all kinds of music, these concerts were eye openers.

I got discharged in '69 (4 yrs in) and eventually found my way back to the Bay area, Knew a few folks in the City where I was welcomed to crash on weekends and I took advantage of that .... going to those venues twice a weekend, damn near every weekend. Couldn't get enough. Saw so many, including Eric B, /w War... killer show. All the psychedelic masters from the Dead, the Airplane, Quicksilver, Charlatans to name a few.

As you well know, those were incredible times. In '67 after smokin' my first 'J', I also dropped my first acid, my a stroke of good luck (which I was clueless at the time) it was 750mg of Owsley.. pure and unadulterated drop on vitamin C tablet. Whoa! Old Cec' went to places I never knew existed. My guide played the (then new) Blonde on Blonde and Sgt Peppers.... on acid it was an education that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else at the time. Truly amazing what psychedelics did for me.

Nice sharing these times w/ those who know... enjoyed, revR... gracias!

[Doreen Peri]

Whoops! I mean how in the heck did you guys get so old? Y'all are older than me. Haha

But seriously, I've enjoyed reading this whole thread. I have a few memories of my own but I'll spare you. Mine aren't nearly as detailed as yours. As a matter of fact, I've forgotten most of them.

Rock on!

[WIREMAN]

....accept it beautiful ur right there with us and we are still beautiful.....but u know that

[revolutionR]

I wonder if time seems to go faster with each generation.I am sure that it goes faster as you get older. Getting old is all in the mind, which effects the body, ect. I was a draft dodger, my life went down a strange road, I left Orange county when I was 19 and moved to northern calif. I moved in with a friend from high school who was a musician, and also the first person I took LSD with in 67''. I went up to San Francisco in late 67' and ran around Haight Asbury, and saw Janis Joplin at the Avalon Ballroom. I lived in Santa Cruz calif. from 70' on, where I meet my life mate in 76'. She and I were like kids, together, and she could not have children.We both were artists at heart, and lived like hippies.Somehow 35 years zipped past.Now I am alone, my mother died six months after my wife passed. I have no family left and my wife was my best friend. Since I did not live a "normal life" have a regular job and regular family life and friends, I did not fit in to society, did not own my home and a lot of the time I did not have a car, I pursed poetry and my wife was a massage therapist and worked at health food stores, I was on disability, we were poor, but we were happy together, we were all we had. When my mother died she left me some money, so I have enough to live. I recently had a very crazy relationship with a woman 30 years younger then me, suffice to say it did not work out. And I did not like Michael Jackson as much as she did, but maybe that is because I am not a black person. But I think I liked a lot of black musicians more then she did.

[Doreen Peri]

I'm alone, too. Want to get married? I"m lonely as hell.

[Doreen Peri]

I'm just kidding. I think.

[WIREMAN]

dont forget i do know u in the real world my love....if everybody only could, they'd be all the more enriched....