MV & EE w/The Bummer Road - Green Blues
(Ecstatic Peace!) Keith Boyd 3.8.07
For several years now I've noticed an underlying current in hipster culture to denigrate anything and everything to do with the Hippie movement. It probably started with Punk in the 70's. In that context it makes sense. The timing of that backlash was appropriate and served to redistribute the reins on music and art held by a handful of isolated and self-indulgent few. Now in 2007 however it just seems trite, shortsighted and lame. Our times aren't exactly like the times that produced the Hippie movement in America but we're perhaps in need of a touch of what they were offering anyway. Let's take a look. There's the abomination of a war that's going on; killing scores of people daily in the name of.what? It's changed so many times I'm no longer sure. Then we've got the Bush Regime with its lies, duplicity and ever crumbling façade of impenetrability. The colonization of every country on Earth by a few corporate slave masters willing to do ANYTHING to continue the growth of the bottom line. Don't get me started on the environment. Suffice to say that the warnings given out by books like, "The Silent Spring" and movements like Greenpeace have been surpassed a hundred fold. So we're not actually doing that well after all. Perhaps a little good old Hippie wisdom might actually come in handy. But, oh no! We'd rather wear tight black jeans, grow our hair over one eye and sit in the comfort of our parent's house slashing our arms with razor blades and downloading music. It's so passive it makes me sick. Have the youth been cowed into a corner by "cool-hunters", video games and advertisers that dictate every choice? Is it really the best we can muster to blindly let the bullshit continue while the youth wastes it's time in a cocoon of hip aloof self-destructive bitterness? There's this knee jerk reaction that essentially comes with the attitude of, "Oh that's just some Hippie crystal rubbing nonsense". It's a shame really. Despite the fact that Rock-n-Roll was born in the 50's, it was the 60's and the Hippies that grew it up into the beast we all know and love today. Not just music but really so much of the art, film, literature and even computer culture we take for granted was, if not outright invented by Hippies, at least refined and given credibility and substance. Luckily there is a movement afoot that while not ignoring the ensuing 35-40 years is mining the very fertile veins of those times and shining them up with new inspirations. Bands like Bright Black Morning Light, Feathers, and Lamp of the Universe are bringing the Hippie weirdness to bear on their sound. Magazines like Arthur (R.I.P.) and Strange Attractor are doing their best to warp the minds of all comers. Into this mix comes the great new release from MV and EE; Green Blues.