Is Sgt Pepper Prog?

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 Dean wrote:

 SteveG wrote:

 Dean wrote:

 SteveG wrote:

 Dean wrote:

 SteveG wrote:

 Dean wrote:

 SteveG wrote:

The whole myth and the accompanying warped bigoted stereotypes of the hippie culture is mostly that. A myth. Most Americans were either in college to avoid the draft or actually drafted for the war, while a very tiny group ran off to Canada. The tune in, turn on and drop out crowd was a small part of the population that was intimately aligned with the anti war/anti draft movement. You know, the 4 people shot in Ohio in 1970 (way after the hippie scene was supposed to be dead, another myth) by the American National Guard while they protested the insane, illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. Shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. But why be concerned, even 45 years later. After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?
Edit: Btw, it was psychedelic rock that vanished in 1968, not hippies.
And the myth continues - the four people murdered in the Kent State shootings were students not hippies. The hippy movement brought the anti-war message to the fore but it didn't own the monopoly on it. The Student unrest that occurred in the late sixties and early seventies was not a part of the hippy movement but in some ways was a reaction to the indifference of society as a whole to the message it preached. Sure there is correlation, but we should be wary of drawing direct conclusions from that because what those students were protesting about in America wasn't the same as they were protesting about in Paris and Munich.
The myth continues, if you care to keep perpetuating it. To make myself clearer, strike out the line in my post " After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?" and insert "These students were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?" 
It's kind of silly to mimic one's self isn't it? But you are correct. I'm speaking of American student demonstrators only.
And the mythinformation continues. I took your original comment to be a flippant rejoinder due to the implied sarcastic tone of the language used, but since you have altered that I now dispute your claim all together as I don't see that they were mimicking anything of the sort nor had they adopted any hippy values. And while on the subject of perpetuating myths, nor were they shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. While such incidents of putting flowers in gun barrels did happen, it didn't at Kent State on May 4th 1970 and the most iconic of those occurred 300 miles away in 1967 (and no one got shot as a consequence of doing it) - also it is highly improbable that any students would have got close enough to the guardsmen to do it on that day without being bayoneted first, as had happened on the previous day.

However, none of this is particularly relevant to the topic other than as an illustration of how memory isn't quite as exact as we'd like it to be.
Dean, if the flowers in the gun barrels as metaphor flew over your head, then I'm afraid that you will not see the generalized wide spread peaceful behavior of the students as a whole. That whole being part of their culture. The counter culture of which the hippies and students actually shared. And that's no myth, as much as you wish it to be.
Bullsnot.  

" You know, the 4 people shot in Ohio in 1970 (way after the hippie scene was supposed to be dead, another myth) by the American National Guard while they protested the insane, illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. Shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. " - was a statement of presumed fact, not a bloody metaphor - if you meant it as a metaphor at the time you wrote it then that was not made clear until now - and frankly I simply cannot see it even after you've claimed that it was. Also, it was a protest against Nixon's announced invasion of Cambodia, not Vietnam, unless that was a sodding metaphor too.

If you do nothing else today, read the accounts of the Kent State massacre as I have this afternoon, and not just on Wikipedia either - read more than one article because even an event as well known as this is shrouded in inaccuracies and misreporting. 
There's no BS regarding this as both a metaphor and a stereotype that you should have appreciated, based on your past hippie bashing and insinuations, and is right up your alley, along with your incessant view of hippies as dirty, based on the numerous times you posted photo after photo of after concert pictures from festivals like Woodstock and the like, that were declared disaster areas due to the unmanageable and unforeseen amount of attendees.
As for your advice regarding my further knowledge of the facts regarding the Kent State shootings, I'll call Neil Young,  whom I worked with for almost twenty years and I'll talk to him about it, as we talk almost monthly. He researched it a bit, even after his song Ohio became a hit, and he even knows a little more about it than Wikipedia. Imagine that.

Edit: I can't believe the amount of captchas I had to go through to post this. But it was worth it.

Eeeeuuw!...

Now here's a thing or five ... I appreciate what I deem worthy of being appreciated - an honest misremembered memory I can understand, saying it was a metaphor not so much, but hey - if you say it's a metaphor then who am I to question that? - hippies putting flowers in the barrels of guardsmen's rifles is a metaphor for students not putting flowers in the barrels of guardsmen's rifles... so I didn't get it but so what? that's my dumb stupidity and your dumb luck, no big deal there and no great surprises either. Unless you telegraph a metaphor ahead of time or use ones that are not quite so closely related to what you're trying to convey them perhaps (just perhaps mind), I'll not take them at their literal meaning. Never mind, everything I write is probably an unnecessary metaphor for something or other if only I knew what it was. I can do flippancy, glibness and irreverence but not metaphors it would seem. (yay)

I believe that once in some 37,000 posts I probably posted an ironic picture of the mess left behind after some festival or other possibly in response to some bullsnot claim that hippies cared for the planet or some such nonsense, but incessant and time after time? Nah, you dreamt that. What you may have half-remembered is the trite and tiresome joke I trot out with regular monotony that hippies never die, they only smell that way - which is based solely on the the reek of patchouli oil, a scent that to my olfactory senses has an earthy musk that is reminiscent of something that is dire need of a damn good bath. But hey, read into that what you will, and no doubt you will. But as for past hippy bashing, I suspect you are confusing me with someone else (Iain perhaps? As I recall he really doesn't like hippies but that is true of a few others around here too), I just don't buy into that mystical mind-expanding drug bollocks and have little time for anyone that does - my disregard of hippy culture is merely collateral damage as a consequence of my complete dismissal of drug culture wherever it's found. I regard hippies in much the same was as I do punks - the real thing only lasted for a very short while yet its effect lasted much longer - what followed looked like punk and behaved like punk but the true essence of what made it punk eluded them and most of the romanticised guff that's written about them is not worth the paper it's written on. While I never actually said that the hippy movement ended in 1968... ... ... [waiting for that to register] ... I said it was dead and buried by the time the Freak Scene replaced it in the late 60s/early 70s... a slight dramatic exaggeration perhaps, but post-1968 (which means some time after 1968) the hippy movement had gone into decline and apart from small enclaves that refused to give up it was for all intents and purposes over by the turn of the decade. Sure there are still a few tiedyehards around today, just as there are a few geriatric mods and middle-aged goths refusing to admit that it's all over bar the crying.

Neil Young eh? (hey, hey, my my). Well, I'm sure he'll remember it for you if reading an article or two is too much. I guess he'll get the flowers in rifle barrel metaphor so perhaps he will remember each of the four students being shot and killed after metaphorically placing flowers in the gun barrels of guardsman's rifles as a protest against the Vietnam war. (or perhaps you really did mean 'riffles' and that's why I missed the metaphorical meaning). Cool name-drop though *doffs cap* - I met that Paul McCartney chap once...

But (and it's a big butt) - 99% of all this crap is irrelevant when we are talking about Sgt Pepper and the foundation of Progressive Rock. What was happening (or had happened) in America was inconsequential and of little relevance to what was happening in London. I opined on how and why the underground music scene in and around Notting Hill Gate became so important during the time from Sgt Pepper through to In the Court of the Crimson King (while ItCotCK wasn't recorded in that area, Island Records was based there) and beyond. I'm sorry that America and the American hippy movement wasn't part of all that, and I'm really sorry that this is so London-centric but that's how it goes - Ladbroke Grove was central to the London counterculture but it just wasn't a hippy scene and that's all there is to it. 

We all say things at times that we feel are innocent and innocuous. We mean no harm by them. I do it and so do you. There's no imagination necessary for that. That was the point of my ire. Tit for tat, if you will. 
As far as Notting Hill Gate being a central hub of the underground, as well as certain other parts of London, that only holds water if said bands actually liked each other. The Beatles hated everyone except Hendrix and Hendrix himself was dismissive of Floyd. Did they catch snippets of performances at shared venue? Yes. Did they actually care about what they heard (or saw)? That's debatable due to their constant search for individuality at a time when that trait was most celebrated.  
And I still feel that your stripping of the London hippie scene from the underground is the same as stripping chaff from wheat, but I don't feel that we'll ever come to an agreement on that. However, as this is flogging a dead mare, I agree to return to the posted topic and put this to rest, as you stated.

Btw, the only reason Neil still talks to me is because I'm the only person he knows that thinks that Bert Jansch was God. Yeah, musical tastes are that rare and exclusive, unfortunately.

Edited by SteveG - May 17 2017 at 05:42