Friday, August 24, 2012

The Culture Wars of a Simpler Time (Are you a Jerry or a Hef?)


I ran this question with another version of this video in the year of the last Presidential election, but the video was taken off YouTube and the posting seems appropriate again. When one political party is looking back to their halcyon days in the 1950s (or 1850s), many of us look back to another golden age, located squarely in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Here are the Grateful Dead playing Mountains of the Moon and St. Stephen on "Playboy After Dark" in 1969:

At the two minute mark, be sure to catch Jerry Garcia explaining to a clueless Hugh Hefner and his entourage, with appropriate smiles and hand gestures, "... they more chase each other around. It's kinda, it's like, it's like the serpent that eats its own tail, y'know. And it goes round and round like that and if you, if you could stand in between them, uh, they, they make uh big figure eights on their sides, in your head." Of course Jerry's elucidating why the Dead have two drummers, but Hugh seems to be having some trouble following this crystal-clear explanation.

So what side of this culture divide do (did) you come down on? Would you be wearing a Mexican poncho or a black tuxedo in 1969? Riding in a psychedelic bus or a black Mercedes limosine? Would you rather be Hugh? Or Jerry?

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