Catholic Answers article concerning Woodstock and John Lennon

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Yes, we must pray for those who seem to have a negative attitude about things in life.
 
Drugs are harmful. They do not expand anything.

Youth weren’t trying to understand anything. You either went to Vietnam or Canada.

It was a time when radicals and anarchists lied to young people and the public in general.

It was not a time where adults acted like 5 year olds.

Woodstock defined nothing. If you wanted to go, you went. If you couldn’t go, you didn’t. There was no defining of anything.

It was entirely forgettable.

And now fiction is being written about it.
 
Specific criticism is justified. There is a factual historical record.
 
I have everything legal by Hendrix. Would never buy the bootlegs. I read the interviews with him. Tell me, who started him on illegal drugs? Why did he die the way he did? The same question for Janis Joplin.
 
Drugs are harmful. They do not expand anything.
Well, duh Ed. But at the time, we thought it would. We were a very experimental generation…except for you. We made lots of mistakes and we learned a ton. Most of us backed off from all the freewheeling and experimentation…some didn’t and instead became one of the most famous and rich founder and CEOs of Apple.

Just because you didn’t get involved doesn’t mean millions of others didn’t. Some of us don’t even regret being a bit radical and counterculture in our youth even though we’ve changed and matured since then.

Ps. You really need to learn how to say, “in my opinion” instead of assuming you know everything about the 60’s!..jmho
 
Pop culture always had a sinful side and great side, just like we, the people who produce and consume it.
 
That’s hilarious. Read about Doctor Timothy Leary. He was crazy. He promoted illegal drugs like LSD as “mind expanding.” I heard all of that nonsense at the time. As if drugs could never hurt you. False.

Only one founder and leader of Apple which is totally unrelated.

Crazy youth? No, normal youth, which leads to a normal adulthood. Millions? Where did you get that? Us normal people watched the craziness from the sidelines. Us normal people watched the Hippies and Anarchists come into our neighborhoods - our quiet and peaceful neighborhoods - in the 1960s to preach random sex, ignore the Church and mom and dad, use illegal drugs, which they could provide, and ruin your life. Yes, some were too trusting and didn’t recognize the wolves and got swallowed up. By the grace of God, some of us didn’t.
 
Just curious and you need not reply, Ed.
Did you ever try any illegal drug? If yes, which one?
 
Respectfully, study history. Read how the terrible aspects of the 1960s (from 1965 on) poisoned the decades that followed. There is good documentation out there for anyone. There are good reminders out there for anyone. The summary: for those parts of the culture today that are hedonistsc. sex crazed, out of control and generally immoral, know that there was a time when those things were less.
 
Not all those attending Woodstock were anarchists or were even those who were out on the street protesting. A lot were there for the music and a good time no different than youth anytime anywhere. Most probably did experiment with a least marijuana but that was the was going on at the time and they were conforming. That doesn’t mean they were all hardcore and frequent LSD users.
 
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They were easy to identify. We welcomed the strangers in their regulation uniforms. There were a few variants. I knew a guy, and there were others, who looked and acted like he just walked out of Hippie Boot Camp. The goals were the same: random sex, illegal drugs and general disrespect and disregard for normal life. They knew what it was.
 
Did I read that right? Non-comfortists were conforming? You’ve just identified the lie they were living. All non-comformists by definition were conforming to the rules of their new peer group: TOTAL STRANGERS. LIARS.
 
I wish. Otherwise, the majority would still be living the way people lived in 1963. Thanks to those who wanted: “We’ll burn this country down if we have to!” “Off the pigs!”
 
Yes, I watched drug addiction spread. I was invited to get a ride home, only my classmate had to make a quick drug buy on the way: A nickel bag of weed. Or, 5 dollars worth of marijuana from a house in my neighborhood purposely converted for such use.

Silly fun? Nose tweaking? Now that the disease has spread, it will be more difficult to eradicate. Look up drug related deaths in your country starting from 1965.
 
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@Edwest211, Why dwell on the faults and failings of musicians and celebrities, and why dredge up and broadcast the old gossip on them, even if it is true? At what point does it become detraction?

I am saddened by the manner of death of artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and many more, but I would no sooner talk publicly about it than if they were my brother or sister. Let their memory rest.

I am also saddened by certain aspects exhibited in the songs of John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, and many more, but I would rather pray for them than speak against them.

And the same for the hippies, hedonists, stoners, etc. of the “Woodstock generation.” Sure, they got a few things wrong, or a lot wrong, but let’s have a little charity, and humility as well. The world today is at least as messed up – even more so in some ways – and we can’t blame it on people 50 years ago.
 
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Oh yes we can. Your attempt to cloud the issue has been noted. But focusing on the dead and respect for the dead, does not cover up the lies that were told to the people. The present was not invented yesterday. Faith and morals were not so severely impacted starting just yesterday. I do pray for people - all people. That said: Here are the antidotes:

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Makeover-Transformed-Conformed-Culture/dp/1586175610

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Sunda...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JHMD1Y97AD3X5PV6E0ED

https://www.amazon.com/Noise-Media-...rds=noise+tomeo&qid=1566837442&s=books&sr=1-1
 
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I was born 2 years before Woodstock, and if it weren’t in the media cycle right now I’d probably never have thought about it again in my life.

My impression of Woodstock hasn’t changed over the course of the past 50 years: hippies, music, mud, and newsreel clips of hippies listening to music while standing in mud. For the most part, that sums up my impression of the entirety of the 60s, the exception being when it’s interspersed with newsreel clips of police using fire hoses on civil rights protesters. Which itself is interspersed with newsreel clips of men with short, slicked haircuts, pencil-thin dark neckties, and Technicolor shots of Apollo rockets.

There ya have it, kids: the significance of the 1960s as comprehended by a GenXer.
 
I don’t want to sound like a fuddy-duddy necessarily but sometimes it seems to me that if you compare the wit and wordplay found in the lyrics of a classic Broadway musical with any of the acts that played at Woodstock or their descendants today, that our popular culture took a huge number of steps backward at some point.
 
It’s significant because in a way it was the last of festival of its kind. By 1969 the music industry was shifting heavily towards very commercialized tours and festivals. The last glimpses of the Summer of Love happened at Woodstock, so it was the last vestige of Flower Power. After that, it was the era of Album Oriented Rock, of monster tours by bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who. Musical tastes shifted and psychedelic rock was replacrd by progressive rock (like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes) and by heavy metal (like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath). The softer music either morphed in to singer-songwriter acts like Joni Mitchell and Jim Croche (I’d call a lot of it 70s folk rock) or in to the bubble gum pop that dominated the AM airwaves.

The counter culture and mainstream culture had a brief two year period essentially competing and merging in the same place, but by the 1970s sound systems and lighting were to the point where a successful rock band didn’t need a big hokey Rock festival. They could do it in a fifty show tour, split the proceeds with promoters and management, and all you were left with were a few late-60s refugees like the Grateful Dead.
 
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