HST
Jesus, no wonder Lionel had a stroke. What a nightmare it must have been for him to see the honest rebellion that came out of World War Two taken over by a witless phony like Warhol . . . the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Lights, Noise, Love the Bomb! And then to see a bedrock madman like Ginsberg copping out with tolerance poems and the same sort of swill that normally comes from the Vatican. Kerouac hiding out with his "mere" on Long Island or maybe St. Petersburg . . . Kennedy with his head blown off and Nixon back from the dead, running wild in the power vacuum of Lyndon's hopeless bullshit . . . and of course Reagan, the new dean of Berkeley. Progress Marches On, courtesy, as always of General Electric . . . with sporadic assists from Ford, GM, ATT, Lockheed and Hoover's FBI.
And there's the chill of it. Lionel was one of the original anarchist-head-beatnik-free lancers of the 1950's . . . a bruised fore-runner of Leary's would-be "drop-out generation" of the 1960's. The Head Generation . . . a loud, cannibalistic gig where the best are fucked for the worst reasons, and the worst make a pile by feeding off the best. Promoters, narks, con men, -- all selling the New Scene to Times magazine and the Elks Club. The handlers get rich while the animals get either busted or screwed to the floor with bad contracts. Who's making money off the Blues Project? Is it Verve (a division of MGM), or the five ignorant bastards who thought they were getting a break when Verve said they'd make them a record? And who the fuck is "Tome Wilson," the "producer" whose name rides so high on the record jacket? By any other name he's a vicious ten-percenter who "Special-Guaranteed Used Cars" in the 1950's, and the 29 cent thumb-prints of John Kennedy in the 1960's . . . until he figured out that the really big money was in drop-out revolution. Ride the big wave: Folk-rock, pot symbols, long hair, and $2.50 minimum at the door. Light shows! Tim Leary! Warhol! NOW!
And there's the chill of it. Lionel was one of the original anarchist-head-beatnik-free lancers of the 1950's . . . a bruised fore-runner of Leary's would-be "drop-out generation" of the 1960's. The Head Generation . . . a loud, cannibalistic gig where the best are fucked for the worst reasons, and the worst make a pile by feeding off the best. Promoters, narks, con men, -- all selling the New Scene to Times magazine and the Elks Club. The handlers get rich while the animals get either busted or screwed to the floor with bad contracts. Who's making money off the Blues Project? Is it Verve (a division of MGM), or the five ignorant bastards who thought they were getting a break when Verve said they'd make them a record? And who the fuck is "Tome Wilson," the "producer" whose name rides so high on the record jacket? By any other name he's a vicious ten-percenter who "Special-Guaranteed Used Cars" in the 1950's, and the 29 cent thumb-prints of John Kennedy in the 1960's . . . until he figured out that the really big money was in drop-out revolution. Ride the big wave: Folk-rock, pot symbols, long hair, and $2.50 minimum at the door. Light shows! Tim Leary! Warhol! NOW!