Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Teach Your Children,” released 41 years ago, was one of those tunes that seemed hopelessly corny when I first heard it, preachy in the worst hippie fashion.

As an 18-year-old flower child, CSN&Y’s Deja Vu was supposed to resonate with me—it did for most of my generation ( the album’s tracks wafted from open windows throughout Berkeley). But I was a flower child about to go to seed and their musical macramé left rope burns on what was left of my hippie dippy sensibility. I understand deja vu as a kind of compression of space and time, but when things move swiftly, stopping in your tracks to observe frozen, insistent memories is the very antithesis of what made the youth movement so vital—we were moving forward not looking back and certainly not letting deja vu trip us up. Had we been here before? No. It just feels familiar because it feels so fucking right.

CSN&Y seemed like a bunch of rich hipsters whose biggest concerns revolved around whether to cut their hair and self-doubt about their parenting skills. My hair was still long, would remain so, and all I cared about was screwing the chicks hanging out in Ho Chi Min Park.

Looking back, I figure CSN&Y, along with the wave of Topanga Canyon and Malibu longhair country-rock bands that followed in their wake, factored into why I was driven in the direction of Iggy And The Stooges and the MC5. For me, CSN&Y marked the point when the Sixties became too hopelessly self-referential, choking on its own patchouli scented vomit.

But fuck the past, right now this song and these guys seem very real and soulful to me thanks to this video. David Crosby and Graham Nash are looking forward and deja vu is now the middle space between what was and what is going to be.

Brothers, I salute you.

Still waiting for the “Street Fighting Men” and Mr. “Born To Run” to make the scene. Where’s the rock and roll 1% when we need ‘em?

The fact that you can’t have electronic pubic public address systems in Zuccotti Park results in an amplification system that is flesh, bone, blood and communal.
 

 
How young and beautiful, Marc Bolan looks in this TV interview from 1970. Filmed during the writing of songs for the first album as the abbreviated T.Rex - after 4 as Tyrannosaurus Rex - Marc can be seen working on “Children of Rarn” and “Suneye”, as he discusses the process of writing. Like many artists (David Lynch comes to mind), Bolan claimed he just pulled the songs out, as if they were already there, fully formed. He also said he was used by “melody” as if it were a being. O, to be touched by the Muse.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Marc Bolan on Belgium TV, 1973

 
Nat Roe of WFMU has uploaded 10 seconds of every hit song from the ‘70s on SoundCloud. Holy cow, Nat! That’s a lot of hard work and serious dedication. He says he’s going to tackle the ‘80s in the next few weeks. I can’t wait for that one! 

Go to WFMU to hear every hit from the 50s and 60s. 

 
Listen to the rest after the jump…
 

 
The Rolling Stones’ Rice Krispies jingle written by Brian Jones. The commercial had a short run on British TV in 1964.

Stones in Chuck Berry mode and it actually rocks for a jingle. Snappy!
 

 
Via Open Culture

 
Above, Brian Ferry’s then-girlfriend, transsexual model/pop star Amanda Lear poses for the second Roxy Music album cover with a panther.

Short documentary film about the making of those iconic and sexy Roxy Music album covers. This was made for a recent event honoring Bryan Ferry in France.
 

 
Via Exile on Moan Street

 
These two clips from 1967 episodes of teen dance show Shebang!, hosted by Casey Kasem, are candy-colored time capsules featuring some ultra-cool Sixties artifacts, an era when even writing utensils were on acid.

Ops n’ Pops psychedelic ballpoint pens, a Vox amp,Super Meteor guitar, Radiocorder and Honda mopeds!

Kasem talks to proto-hipster/radio deejay Dick Moreland about his trip to the Monterey Pop Festival.

Good times.
 

 
The Shebang! Dancers get their groove on to The Seeds’ “A Thousand Shadows.”

 
Yet another reason why I love the City of… Angels(!) so very, very much…

MOCA presents Kenneth Anger: ICONS, a showcase of the films, archives, and vision of one of the most original filmmakers of American cinema, on view at MOCA Grand Avenue from November 13, 2011, through February 27, 2012. A defining presence of underground art and culture and a major influence on generations of filmmakers, musicians, and artists, Anger’s films evoke the power of spells or incantations, combining experimental technique with popular song, rich color, and subject matter drawn equally from personal obsession, myth, and the occult.

MOCA’s exhibition centers on Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle of films—Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit’s Moon (1950/1979), Eaux d’artifice (1953), Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954/66), Scorpio Rising (1963), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), and Lucifer Rising (1970-81)—presenting the work across multiple projections in a unique gallery installation of red vinyl, designed in close consultation with Anger.

Complementing the films is an archive of photographs, scrapbooks, and memorabilia from Anger’s personal collection that illustrates the filmmaker’s unique vision of Hollywood’s golden era. The inspiration and source material for the filmmaker’s infamous celebrity “gossip” books Hollywood Babylon, (1975) and Hollywood Babylon II (1984), the collection centers on stars such as Rudolph Valentino and Greta Garbo, as well as now lesser-known icons like silent-film actress Billie Dove. Anger grew up in Hollywood. His grandmother was a costume mistress, and he is claimed to have appeared as a child actor in the Warner Brothers production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). The world of the classic studios and the mystique of its major figures radiates throughout the photographs, press clippings, letters, and memorabilia on display, which Anger has gathered across many decades.

Technicolor Skull, a multimedia collaboration featuring Kenneth Anger on Theremin and Los Angeles artist Brian Butler on guitar and electronic instruments, will perform for the first time in Los Angeles at the exhibition opening on November 19. Technicolor Skull is a magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance. The project premiered at Donaufestival in Austria, in April 2008, and has subsequently toured throughout Europe, performing at the National Museum of Art, Copenhagen, and the Serralves Museum, Portugal, and recently at the Hiro Ballroom, New York, for the Anthology Film Archives benefit.

Opening: Saturday, November 19, 7–10pm, Technicolor Skull will perform at 8pm.
 

 

 
How to be a Retronaut has done it again by posting these outtakes from the photo session that yielded the Heroes cover. Shot by Japanese photographer and designer Masayoshi Sukita in 1977. 
 

 
More Heroes outtakes by Sukita after the jump…
 

 
Keith Richards and Marc Ribot provide suitably down and dirty guitar riffs for this tune by Tom Waits that sounds eerily like Captain Beefheart. It’s been obvious from the get-go that Waits owes a big debt to Beefheart but this enters the realm of mystical channeling. And I like it.

Here’s Waits writing about Trout Mask Replica:

The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud. Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that’ll never be beat, it’s a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more.

“Satisfied” by Tom Waits from the new album Bad As Me Directed by Jesse Dylan.
 

 
Sad to report that Jamaican-born and New York-raised Heavy D, Dwignt Errington Meyers, died yesterday in Los Angeles at the age of 44.

In 1991, Now That We Found Love by Heavy D and the Boyz killed on the dance floors of what was left of Manhattan’s club scene. I remember spinning the Teddy Riley produced dance mix of NTWFL in a nightspot I managed on Lower Broadway, where I also served as house deejay, and Heavy D’s take on the Ojays via Third World could elevate the crowd to higher dimensions.

Heavy D brought a smooth groove, melody and good vibe to rap, expanding its popularity and accessibility without diluting its urban energy and street smart style. By dropping some sexual healing into the mix and a whole lot of r&b, Heavy D provided the connective tissue between the old school soul of Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, New Jack Swing, House and dancehall reggae. Walls were tumbling down and the various strains of contemporary black music were converging while parochial attitudes about what is hip were dissolving in the heat of the beat.

This was just one of Heavy D’s hits, but it was the one that brings back some immediate memories for me and the video looks like it was shot in my old Soho neighborhood.