Post #288132 by tiki mick on Sun, Feb 25, 2007 6:20 PM

On 2007-02-25 17:12, hodadhank wrote:
Now Vigor, I certainly don't know you so am ashamed admit I was almost ready to write you off as a pretentious narcissistic windbag, but the more I read your posts I came to understand that this hippie hatred is ALL intensely personal to you. Like tasting something rancid you recoil automatically and then grasp for words to describe visceral sensations words simply can not do justice.

You may not realize your vocal hatred for pot smokers appears more than a little hypocritical since just about every jazz and R&B musician in your record collection were high as a kites on many occasions from pot, heroin or cocaine. You failed to mention the tie-dye and beanie wearing Jaco Pastorius' drug habits or nouveau-rich-kid feelings of entitlement that led to his death at 35 because a bouncer decided to teach a loud mouthed hippie a lesson.

Perhaps you even forget The Smokin Menehunes upcoming gig in Rancho Cucamonga sponsored by a smoke shop who's owner lists Bob Marley as a hero...

...but I digress.

I am personally soothed by my eclectic musical tastes. I'm grateful to have the flexibility to equally enjoy Pharoah Sanders, David Crosby, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Burning Spear, Stanley Clarke, Carl Perkins, Les Baxter, James Brown, Robert Fripp, Sun Ra, Allman Bros, Peter Tosh, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Jimi Hendrix, Lee Morgan, Celio & Kapono and Billy Holiday depending on my mood. (Perhaps the result of having a trumpeter father and a mother who worked at record shops and radio station encouraging me to explore all music.) I've been a kit drummer/percussionist for nearly thirty years and have also enjoyed playing many different types of music.

I realize hippie-bashing is a punk/hipster right of passage just as hipster bashing was for the hippies but as I said before I started this thread for fun in the Bilge to expose the Dead's many connections to Hawaii and their interest in the music of primitive cultures. I'm not trying to convert anyone to my way of thinking, or debate Viet Nam and the fall of tiki pop culture in America. However I honestly look forward to sharing mai tais and rapping about these things after one of your gigs someday soon.

You are right on most of it. But I actually AM a narcissistic windbag. There's no two ways about it, and yes, my hippy antagonism is very personal. I have seen it with my own eyes, the behavior of hippies up close and personal.

But, I don't have a vocal hatred of pot smokers. I just don't like hippy music. In fact, you know my band and who I hang out with. I am no angel.

Jaco was not killed because someone wanted to silence a hippy. He was killed because he was a crazy, out of control guy who was pretty tall, and tried to bust his way into a club after he had been banned. He ran into a bouncer with no self control, named Luc Havan how beat him to death. Many people feel he was already dead, and had been killing himself over the years anyway. He was my biggest idol and influence when I was younger, because of his bass playing.

As to us playing the smoke shop gig. Well, we are the smokin' menehunes. We are what we eat.

Those bands and influences you just mentioned don't sound hippy to me, except David Crosby (who looks like the quintessential hippy) but who actually can play and write really damn good. Since you play, you really needed to let me know that, so you could have sat in with us when we had a regular gig at Catalina fish kitchen. It would have been fun.

As far as hippy bashing is considered, I do nothing to be cool. I could never be "cool". I actually am pretty sure my opinions are in the minority. As far as discussing politics, I won't right now except to say that my favorite presidents in U.S. History are Jimmy Carter and William jefferson clinton. But you are on for that Mai-Tai, and we can talk about that stuff then.