Hippie Digest: Book Nook Poet of the Week – Remembering Janis Joplin – Recalling the heyday of hippies
Remembering Janis Joplin On What Would Have Been Her 70th Birthday
A fond, heartfelt birthday greeting goes out to the late Janis Joplin, who would have been 70 years old today. Joplin, who died in that unfortunate by-product of heroin and other bad news libations binging in 1970, still remains one of the most, if not THE most prominently influential female artist in all of rock and roll history. She didn’t just influence scores of women rock and roll singers who followed her; her influence split the genders, transcended them, and she was equally revered and innovative to the soulful, dulcet crooning of front men like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon, and Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell.
She belongs to a very scant group of musicians who put their heart and soul out there for the world to absorb and empathize and groove with. Joplin was one of the few who really sang like she felt; there was a tortured kind of gruffness in her bluesy vocal stance that made her that rare one-of-a-kind, once in a zeitgeist kind of figure, who died as she lived, whose recklessness and feckful approach to being a true hippie and a true artist of the blues and pained devil scorned woman created a musical figure of the highest order. In short, the influence of Janis Joplin still remains a hovering force in any band, woman or man, musician or solo artist, who sings in a manner in which they expose every hidden facet of their true being. More…
Worldwide Hippies Book Nook Poet of the Week Frank DeBoever
Meet our good friend and poet of the week Frank DeBoever from Detroit. Thank you for watching Worldwide Hippies Book Nook Poet of the Week and a special thank you to Frank for allowing us to share his poetry with you. Until next time, you know what to do! Create joy; go out there and spread it around! Peace …
Cindi Silva, wwh/cje
We want to bring you some of the best writers and poets–whether they are new writers, weary older writers, experimental, funny, romantic, and innovative and energetic writers. You’ll find them here, each and every Sunday at WWH.
Kevin Brooker
Brooker: Recalling the heyday of hippies
Last week, just for fun, I did a Google search of contemporary news sites for the word “hippie,” and while I’m aware that the term lives on in our everyday lexicon, I was surprised to see how much it persists in more formal discourse.
I found dozens of recent citations, many in headline form. A right-wing website asked, “1st ‘Pagan Hippie’ in Congress?” The more liberal Wired wondered about Obama’s recent nominee for secretary of defence, “Is Chuck Hagel a Hippie?”
From the New York couple recently arrested with explosives – “They’re hippie types,” said a neighbour – to the pansexual bono-bos of the Congo described by CNN as “hippie apes,” it’s clear that the word remains an all-purpose epithet that can be either a compliment or a slur, depending on who uses it.
It’s a distinction worth considering today, which marks the anniversary of an event many consider the birth of the hippie generation: the great San Francisco Human Be-In of 1967. That warm January day, some 30,000 mostly young people converged on the polo fields of Golden Gate Park for what was sub-billed as “A Gathering of the Tribes.” They listened to counterculture figures like Dr. Timothy Leary, comedian Dick Gregory and beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and to music by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. They also are said to have consumed large quantities of LSD; according to contemporary accounts, it was distributed by a man who parachuted onto the scene. The widely reported event – latterly dubbed the first day of the Summer of Love – introduced the concept of “psychedelic” to suburban North America, and it was there that Leary first exhorted his disciples to, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Read more…
Great job, Cindi!!!