maybe the irony is that the revisionist rose-coloured sunglasses that so many young people see the 60s through were actually manufactured in the 90s. probably in china.

the 60s were a period of repression and violence. they killed all the civic leaders. they opened fire on children that were protesting on campus. in the end, almost nothing changed. the evidence hasn't been put down the memory hole altogether, but contemporary recollections in the form of books and songs seem to have been superseded by popular revisionism that was first developed in the 90s, mostly in the form of films.

you could listen to a neil young record from the period to get a basic handle on it.

but, it's really zappa that gives you the most realistic analysis.

"i will love the police as they are beating the shit out of me"

but, read chomsky. generally.

check out zappa's freak out. it was the most important thing that happened those years....

was this the last beatles hit?

it was mid-90s, at the height of the 60s revival that was happening.

i'm a 90s rock kid, it's true.

but, i'm entirely cognizant of the fact that 90s rock was mostly just recycled 60s rock, and the reality is that nobody made any attempt to hide that at the time - it was a part of the marketing apparatus.

so, i'm deeply knowledgeable about 60s rock, too, but it's because i'm a 90s rock kid, not in spite of it - like a lot of people my age, i went back and figured out where it all came from.

there was a shift in technology in the 60s that means it really was a year zero for just about everything. you knew this was going to end up in another marxist rant. but, the technological determinism here is reality - while there are vague precursors in specific types of jazz, you simply couldn't make a record like sgt peppers in the 40s. the technology hasn't advanced since in ways that are nearly as revolutionary. if you know where to look, you can actually find startlingly contemporary sounding electronic music from like 1965. we have a lot more transistors nowadays, but the basic technology is basically the same, and it might not actually be set to advance, in that way, for quite a while - the marxist argument, here, may be that we're stuck with what we've got for decades.

i'm fed up with the endless retro, and i tend to be critical of the lack of emotion in a lot of 80s music, and i also understand how bad 90s pop was, but actual 60s pop (which wasn't the beatles.) was arguably worse than 90s pop, and i tend to put the two periods as endpoints of a single era rather than set them up against each other.

hendrix' estate is uniquely opposed to youtube, it seems. it's hard to find jimi on the internet, which is such a travesty. you can find covers, but fuck...

so, what if 6 turned out to be 9? it kind of did, actually. and, jimi didn't mind...

trying to contrast the 90s against the 60s is...

did you live through the 90s? because it was an era of 60s retro. that was the dominant cultural movement at the time, and i think probably the first retro movement, in this unending stagnation that's set in since. if you hate retro, blame the 90s, because that's where it started.

it was also the last gasp of the 60s underground, in the sense that anything that was still floating around from the 60s met it's conclusion in the 90s. queen and led zeppelin both had chart topping records and singles in the 90s. david bowie released some of his best records. was nirvana's biggest hit actually their cover of the man who sold the world? alt rock band after alt rock band went platinum by ripping on combinations of baroque pop, psychedelic music and guitar rock. bands like oasis were huge. there was an actual indie rock scene, in a way that doesn't exist today. that all started to disappear after the electronica craze in 1997/1998.

so, this idea of contrasting the 90s against the 60s is just a weird thing to hear that doesn't really conform to the facts; the 90s were both a recycling of the 60s and the logical conclusion of them, not out there in some proposed opposition to them.