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| Ten Thousand Motels |
I've always liked Hippies.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
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| steel driving hammer |
I'm not a hippie, never will become one either. No disrespect but, well you know.
Most hippies love The Kinks Muswell album but I love that album and am the furthest from a hippie.Perhaps no album exemplifies the brilliance simmering beneath the hippie surface of the Kinks than Muswell Hillbillies, released in 1971 and reissued late last year to perfection by Konk Records and Velvel Records. As Ray Davies comments in the album's liner notes, writing and recording the record was "the classic thing of not delivering what people think you're going to deliver. And I was very happy to do that." It's miles away on the musical map from what you're probably most familiar with from this band. Though it may not comprise what you imagine when you conjure up the "classic" Kinks sound, it offers dark, alluring riches all its own.
The immediate contradictions between the music and the lyrics on Muswell Hillbillies are exemplified in the record's title. Muswell Hill is a town in Britain where Ray Davies and his brother Dave grew up. Yet the title refers to Muswell "hillbillies," swiping a term that's American in connotation, most commonly associated with characters like Jed Clampett and the commercial pitchman Ernest. In a similar way, the words penned by Davies address specifically working-class British concerns, while the music draws from New Orleans and classic blues styles. The result is a rootsy sound that effortlessly evokes a powerful nostalgia, emotions that connect precisely with the attitudes of the characters in the songs. Though the sounds and the words are drawn from separate parts of the globe, there's an undeniable symmetry.
Hillbillies opens with probably its most famous track, "20th Century Man," serving as a hypnotic overture to the concerns that will be raised throughout the record. The characters and stories all revolve around a past that can never return, one that's not dominated by the "people in grey" or any "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues." These people never wanted a change. They yearn for the familiar, and they are consumed by fear of the world they live in now. They are paranoid and terrified.
Yet in the paradoxical way that so much great pop music has, they sing of it through one voice, with grace and wit. Few of the songs force their themes into the listener's mind; they meander toward their ideas, shuffling along with all the energy of the Thames on a still day. Davies' lead vocal guides the musical pace with its lazy British drawl and laid-back attitude. He sings as though he's reclined on the couch at home, staring at the ceiling and pondering the absurdities of twentieth-century life. The best tunes on the record--songs like "Alcohol," "Have a Cuppa Tea" and "Oklahoma U.S.A."--encompass all the contradictions at the heart of the album. They're funny but sad, poignant yet bitter, sweet and sour and angry all at the same time.
Complexity is just about all you can ask from a good pop record, and with all due respect to the Kinks, it's not something you'll get from "You Really Got Me." It's there in spades on Muswell Hillbillies, a wistful and bitter acoustic lament built around a longing for the familiar in a world where the only constant is change. That must be reminiscent of Ray Davies' message to Kinks fans who encountered this record in 1971; like the characters on his record, hang on for a bumpy, exhilarating ride, because the days when rock was simple--hell, when life was simple--are long gone.
Like Mr. Jimmy says, I gotta bail, later.
Stones!
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| Candace Youngblood |
I always wanted to be a hippie but I was born about 30 years too late.
I like lots of hippie things. Incense & peppermints, tofu, tye-dye clothes, early Grateful Dead, Merry Pranksters, annoying jangly jewelry, Indian mysticism, etc.
But I still would rather be a beatnik. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
steel driving hammer wrote:
I'm not a hippie, never will become one either. No disrespect but, well you know.
Well that's not surprising.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| Break The Spell |
Never wanted to be a hippie myself, but I like a lot of the music. I also like how the Stones never catered to the hippie movement when it was the in thing, no peace and love songs from that period, instead we got "Sympathy For The Devil", "Street Fighting Man", "Gimme Shelter", "Midnight Rambler", "Jigsaw Puzzle", "Monkey Man", etc. |
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| Candace Youngblood |
Nice avatar change, TTM. I like when FZ makes fun of hippies.
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| pdog |
LSD and sex without attachment are good... |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Candace Youngblood wrote:
I always wanted to be a hippie but I was born about 30 years too late.
I like lots of hippie things. Incense & peppermints, tofu, tye-dye clothes, early Grateful Dead, Merry Pranksters, annoying jangly jewelry, Indian mysticism, etc.
That was then. This is now. Hippie existed thousands of years ago, long before 30 years ago. Spartacus or Jesus of Nazarteth, for example. The fluff like, incense and peppermints and that stuff, is just an aside in time. Hippie begins to exist when the man comes on the movie screen and says "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
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| pdog |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
That was then. This is now. Hippie existed thousands of years ago, long before 30 years ago. Spartacus or Jesus of Nazarteth, for example. The fluff like, incense and peppermints and that stuff, is just an aside in time. Hippie begins to exist when the man comes on the movie screen and says "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
Alot of Hippies are Jews... Is it because of Jesus? |
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| Candace Youngblood |
Okay, well then I AM a hippie. I like to hug trees. I have even hugged rocks. FPM has it on tape.
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| pdog |
quote:
Candace Youngblood wrote:
Okay, well then I AM a hippie. I like to hug trees. I have even hugged rocks. FPM has it on tape.
Is this metaphorically speaking, are we talking Hippie home porn...? |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
pdog wrote:
Alot of Hippies are Jews... Is it because of Jesus?
Not really. It's usually individuals that stir the pot. The "individual" is the enemy that has to be tamed and watched. That's why all livestock in the USA will be chipped by 2009, per order of the USDA. |
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| Joey |
Whatever Happened to the Truth ........ ?
Whatever Happened to the Dream ........ ?!?!
Whatever Happened to all that lovely Hippie Sh*t ?!?!
**** Rooster " Cock-a-doodle-doo's " in the distance *****
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| Candace Youngblood |
Since when has hugging become porn?
No, I was literally hugging a very large rock one day while we were hiking.
Git yer mind outta the gutter! |
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| Bloozehound |
once I hugged a toilet
does that make me a hippie ? |
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| Joey |
quote:
Bloozehound wrote:
once I hugged a toilet
does that make me a hippie ?
YES !!!!
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| Bloozehound |
but I didn't hug it with my anus, I hugged it with my mouth
I'm a dirty hippy
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
If it weren't for the hippies you kids wouldn't be listening to rock n roll today. You'd be sitting in some "church" praising some fraudulent plastic Jesus. |
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| Break The Spell |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
If it weren't for the hippies you kids wouldn't be listening to rock n roll today. You'd be sitting in some "church" praising some fraudulent plastic Jesus.
I always liked that song "Plastic Jesus" by the Broadside Singers.
"When pedestrians try and cross, I show them who's the boss" |
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| pdog |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
If it weren't for the hippies you kids wouldn't be listening to rock n roll today. You'd be sitting in some "church" praising some fraudulent plastic Jesus.
I thought the kids were listening to Rap and Nu-metal... Fucking hippies!
All my plastic Jesi are genuine factory pressed replicas! |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
BOB DYLAN A.K.A. "HIPPIE NUMERO UNO."
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| pdog |
quote:
Candace Youngblood wrote:
Since when has hugging become porn?
When I become aroused!
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| Break The Spell |
Speaking of Jesus, I saw in an almanac that his date of birth officially was 6 BC. How the heck could he have been born 6 years before himself?? I know the calendar got shuffled around a bit back then. |
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| pdog |
quote:
Break The Spell wrote:
Speaking of Jesus, I saw in an almanac that his date of birth officially was 6 BC. How the heck could he have been born 6 years before himself?? I know the calendar got shuffled around a bit back then.
It's well known fact Jews have the abilty to time travel. |
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| Joey |
quote:
pdog wrote:
It's well known fact Jews have the abilty to time travel.
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| Jumping Jack |
Hippies love Fidelity Investment commercials! Word.
Iron Butterfly |
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| pdog |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Hippies love Fidelity Investment commercials! Word.
Iron Butterfly
Nothing says Love more than running through a field of fresh cut grass, shirtless while the sprinklers spray drops of water and caress your skin and remove the worlds filth.
Maybe that's the Nasonex commerical. |
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| HardKnoxDurtySox |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
BOB DYLAN A.K.A. "HIPPIE NUMERO UNO."
I dunno about all of that. I don't see where Dylan fits in with any "hippie characteristics" other than he used to play music in the 60's. If he did I probably wouldn't like him as much as I do... |
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| FPM C10 |
A few things....
WAS THAT MY (OUR) BABY STEELIE???? FOR REALIE????
Come home, Baby Steel Drivin' Hammer. All is forgiven!
TTM: Hippies started in 1976 (year that Network was released)??? Huh??? In that case I was a hippie. I always thought I missed the boat. Or bus.
PDog: Why do you hate our troops so MUCH? WHY????
For everyone who IM'd me begging for film of Miss Youngblood hugging rocks, I accept Paypal. |
