Rock never my forte. Amplified geetars n' stuff - generally make my head hurt. Mothers much too loud too, but at least they were real musicians and had something to say - and Zappa was a virtuoso kinda guy. (Ian Underwood I knew pre-Mothers: when he was playing Mozart at Hertz Hall! ;-)

Anyway.. the whole period has become a rich broth for each newbie to manufacture YAN This IS the Way It Was.. Honest! I have no delusion that "the THIS that I saw" was any more than an infinitesimal slice of a holographic organism. Among the so-called (and now eviscerated, deconstructed, Disneylandized) "hippies" were some genuine mensch of both genders, along with the usual opportunists, so about That Time:

Those who Know don't Say.
Those who Say don't Know.

All I'll venture is: there were a fucking Lot more *Alive* people around Then - than the pissant, led-to-slaughter Corp. consumer-sheep du jour. I believe that something Important for the maturing of Murica beyond its perennial adolescence:
Died-Dead, largely related-to the three assassinations between '63 and '68 -- and the growing catastrophe of Vietnam (whose effects we have yet to face with any guts).



Ashton
Wondering if we'll survive the double-whammy of a Dubya AND an Ashcroft.. that sanctimonious twit + some new Troglodyte on the USSC [??] could generate buckets o' Fundamentalist blood on the steps.. y'know?