Being Bardi

of the time to be honest was ourselves. You have to remember there was no internet at the time. So in order to find peers we actually had to go out in public. Apart from marijuana we really did not do quite as many drugs as thought (although there were exceptions, and probably we still did too many) and we certainly did not have as much sex as people thought we did. But we moved in groups, in what we considered tribes. Communes, festivals, just hanging around parks and coffee houses from San Francisco to the East German border. And even inside Eastern Europe, but that is a different day,eh?

OK..did you guess it? There were the Byrds, with David Crosby, and Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young and Steve Stills, and the Hollies with Graham Nash. And together they made arguably one of the first super groups CSN..and on occasion Y. This clip does get lighter, and I know it is long, but it is still one of my favourite songs of theirs. In fact the first one I think I ever heard.

As the British Invasion gained momentum, they were not always welcomed with open arms, at least not at first. The truth is that they did have a negative impact on the American scene in the beginning.

And what was the American music scene? Fragmented. The Boston-New York corridor was home to folk,avant guarde jazz and tin pan alley. Blues musicians gravitated to Chicago and Memphis. Nashville was home to what was becoming Country. You have to remember that Country and Rock and Roll were actually the same thing in the beginning. Detroit and Cincinnati were the main points for R&B. New Orleans was the home for traditional jazz. Texas and the bordering states to the nortn and west were home to Cowboy music. Cowboy music, with its emphasis on story driven lyrics would soon become the Western of Country and Western.

And in California were the reigning champions with their Fender guitars,madras shirts, infectious lines and tight harmonies. The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Safaris, there was a whole school that had been ruling much of the charts (remember there was no FM music yet). But the Californians had two secret weapons that would help even the balance..Sun and Beaches.

Ok...now in truth the invasion started, as we all know, but these four fellows from Lierpool. Two of whom were actually Anglo-Irish but we shall leave that be. And while they did hae unique hair cuts (brought from Germany and invented by the girl friend of a now dead band member) they also wore suits and ties etc. In fact so did most of the groups that followed them. Not for long, but at the beginning.

The irony is that the British Invasion actually started out with British groups doing covers of American songs. But that was soon to change, as was the way we looked at music..and each other.

We all know about the beginnings of rock (well sort of..may get back to that later). But there was also jazz, which we have touched a bit, and folk.

If you weren't there it is hard to understand how popular folk music was in the 60s. The Folk Scare as Tom Paxton called it. Folk singers were actually getting signed on major labels and getting top 40 radio play. Coffee Houses were everywhere in every city. Songs of social injustice and songs to out angst anything available today. And some that pretended to be one thing while actually just being..well..silly? Especially at the beginning..such as this song.

Some things have been echoing inside the cranial spare rooms over the last week or two.

The first being..do we really need the warts? The 60s certainly have more than share of them. But a good many of them we were not aware of at the time..the media was a bit more circumspect and of course the internet was far in the future. Certainly there is the Truth out there (sorry,wrong decade) but what of the myths and legends that grew. Would we truly be that much better off if we exposed them?

One thing we never realised..and which is true today just as much. Sometimes we are,indeed "them". Sometimes you are "them". Sometimes on the rare occasion even I am "them"

More than any subsequent decade the 60s were about cars. Driving them, admiring them, hitching rides in them. On the big screen there was James Bond's Aston Martin DB5. On the small screen there was the Batmobile.

But in real life there was the VW Beatle and the VW Microbus.They were cheap(ish) they were dependable and they had personality. And for those with a bit more money there was The pony car..the Ford Mustang. The VW was for hippies,even becoming one of the focuses for a song which became a movie. And the Mustang was for the rest of the under 30 population of North America.

Now I am, to be honest, not the person to talk about the clothes of the 60s. I know in North America at the dawn it was madras shirts and white chinos on the west coast and black chinos and black turtlenecks (often with berets) on the east coast. And scruff and leather from the growing biker element. And the UK had the mods and teddys? I think. And then about mid decade we embraced Carnaby ( I do remember owning an Edwardian coat..double breasted and high collared).

Of course it was a moot point for a large percentage of us. If you were in secondary you did not have long hair, you did not wear jeans or boots..or tennis shoes in many areas. For that matter tie wearing was still expected even in some Universities, at least on Sunday.

And then of course came t-die and jeans and sandles and beads. And often to no clothes at all..but that is another story.