in your opinion

in your opinion what was the most important aspect of the 60s? also what band do you feel made the most impact on the 60s rock and roll scene?

 

I think making stereotypes by this way is not very smart. For example there were too much musicians with a lot of important acts which were influenced by next ones and made a base for another important history moments in music.
What was the most important aspect of the 60s? Vietnam war and freedom hunger? Conservative parents of the 50s? Kennedy´s or Martin Luther King´s dead? Beatnics? Race segregations? Beatles record? The Rolling Stones record? Jimi Hendrix record? 13th Floor Elevators record?
Still guess it were too much things and aspects in one decade. Which arised also from previous decade.

 

Looking back I think that there were two parts of the experience that I remember as being very important. The first was the music and the second was that we were young and pretty naive in the sense of being pretty innocent. We believed that it was possible - what ever it might be.....For the most part I think that we approached it all with a good heart and a lot of goodwill.....I remember the 50's very well and how shut down, repressed, and hypocritical that time was...The music was corny, the movies were dumb, and the ethic was to do as we were told and not as we saw the grown-ups do.....
For me it happened all at once when I got back from my over-seas military service...My friends were listening to the Blues; to Rock and Roll, we discovered that the girls liked and desired sex as much as the boys......Pot was for laughs and bennies were fun extenders....Red Mountain Wine was cheap and plentiful......we discovered that living together in groups of like minded friends was a lot of fun.....Motorcycles will set you free.....
Some of my favorite San Francisco entertainers and bands were Dino Valenti; the Charlatans; The Warlocks which morphed into the Grateful Dead; the Jefferson Airplane; Steve Miller Band; Blue Cheer; Big Brother and Holding Company and pretty soon with Janis Joplin; Carlos Santana. To name a few that folks from outside of Northern California might recognize.....Pot and LSD and a night at the Fillmore Ballroom was a good time.....speed turned into a buzz kill......smack was just a huge drag.

 

In my opinion the most important aspect of the 60's was the sense that we had no limits on what we could see or change.

Do you mind if I reminisce a little about those days ... ?

First of all, I don't think the 50's were all that bad. We were just limited in our thinking, is all. But there were lots of good things about the 50's, too. When I was growing up, life was good. We were happy. When the calendar ticked over at 1960, I was 12 years old and nobody had any idea that something strange and wonderful was going to happen.

The "60's" that everybody talks about really started around 1964, I think. President Kennedy had just been killed and we were all still in a state of shock and horror. We didn't understand how such a thing could happen, and we didn't like what it said about us as a people.

Everybody was like ... "what the hell do we do now?"

Then the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan and in my opinion that's what really started it all. At first, the Beatles were like a second incarnation of Elvis, and nothing more than that. But it wasn't long before they meant a lot more.

Actually, it's not exactly true that it all started with the Beatles. Before that, things had been bubbling to a boil with the Civil Rights movement and the Freedom Riders in the South. The Riders were attacked and beaten with baseball bats by the Ku Klux Klan, with the cooperation of the local police, and President Kennedy threatened to send in the National Guard.

I think that's when the genie was let out of the bottle. It was the beginning of the end for the Klan and institutionalized racism in this country. I'm not saying that racism doesn't still exist, but that was the end of the days when the police and local governments were able to get away with it.

The next thing that happened was the Free Speech Movement at Cal-Berkeley in 1964. To make a long story short, the university backed down to student protests and allowed more free political activity in Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus. That was the beginning of politicized university campuses and also the beginnings of anti-Vietnam protests.

By 1967, I think everybody knew that this was the dawning of a new age. "Sgt Pepper" came out that summer, and it seemed like we had taken over the world. We had no limits. I was 20 years old that summer, and like everyone I knew, I could do anything. Or rather, we could do anything. We were the flower children ... we danced half-naked in Golden Gate Park, sat around with guitars singing Dylan songs, and discussed Siddartha till the sun came up.

And then in 1969 came the Vietnam Moratorium marches. I vividly remember the march in San Francisco. The entire downtown was jam-packed with hundreds of thousands of people who were sick of that stupid war. I ended up marching with a young Navy guy who was stationed at Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay. He was a nice guy and after the march we went back across the bay and had dinner and made love.

Nixon was president by then, and he was just awful. He was totally out of the loop. He thought that we were insignificant, but the campaign of Eugene McCarthy proved we weren't. That was actually when I first realized that to really get anything done, you had to work within the system, not outside of it. The presidential campaign of Gene McCarthy was one of the most important things to happen in the entire decade, in my opinion.

Then by around 1970, I kinda got disillusioned with the whole hippie movement and left it for a while. I became an elementary school teacher. I later came back to the movement, and became more of a hippie in spirit than I ever had before, because by then I understood that there was more to it than just good dope and fucking anyone you felt like. Somewhere in there, I got married and had three kids.

I honestly believe that by being a teacher and working with children, I accomplished more than I had by marching. But I guess that's a matter of opinion. I'm still a hippie chick, despite the fact that my hair is gray and my joints ache on cold mornings. I gave up the dope a long time ago, my husband died in 2005, and now I'm a widow who still has .. umm ... physical urges.

I still believe that I have no limits. Which was the most important thing that came from the 60's.

 

I guess that I misunderstood your question....I agree with much of what you point out as being watershed events.....but, for me the stage was set with the so called beat movement I remember reading about the beats while serving overseas in American magazines and while I really didn't know what it was about, there was something that really resonated with me......Also the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings in San Francisco.....this was my first exposure to civil disobedience, and the power of a motivated crowd or mob.....I was captivated right up until the mock burial of Hippie in 1967.....

 

No one band can assume the position of the MOST influential, The Beatles come close starting the British Invasion which in return had THE MOST impact on sixties music. Along with the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Troggs, The Animals, and The Kinks all helped with impacting the music of the sixties. Later bands came about; like The Who and The Zombies, part of the second wave of the British invasion.

 

Question 1: The most important aspect for me was the social revolution taking place among African-Americans.

Question 2: Biggest impact (as opposed to "best band":) The Beatles.

IANABIAP (I am not a believer in any prophet.)

 

i think the start of the 1960's, was in the 1950's with the beatniks.
the beatniks were crying out in pain due to the chaffing of the repressive 1950's.
i remember the tail end of 50's and, what i expernece i hated!

the civil rights movement, of the 1950's also, help set the stage for what happen in the 60's.

in even in the late 1950's, i knew on some kind of level that both the beatniks and the civil rights were both crying in rage, that they wanted to be treated like human beings.
in a way, you could say, those people in the 1950's set the stage, for what happen in the 60's; pluse the blind stupidity of mainstream culture, that tried to "keep people in their place."

i can't say which were, the "most" important musical groups for everyone as a whole.
for me they were jefferson airplain, the doors and, the mothers of invention.

 

That is a lovely and concise summery of the times. I'll bet your students considered themselves lucky to have you. I wish everything good for you.