Eden Ahbez
- Thread starter Woebot
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what about gypsy boots, the guy that nature boy was written about, wasn't it a strange time when nat king cole and the alt lifestyles of yoga and smoothies, could reach millions sympathetically?
there is some really great film of those guys i saw years ago on daytime telly, of them lot wandering around being proto hippies.
its an extraodinarily intersting time that.
there is some really great film of those guys i saw years ago on daytime telly, of them lot wandering around being proto hippies.
its an extraodinarily intersting time that.
Woebot
Well-known member
is that around the cligger, near perranporth and also st ives and penzance?
people lived in caves around the cligger, basically mineshafts into the cliffs.
the proto hippy things is really interesting yes. The californian neo wilderness kids and the whole hippy trail thing is well interesting, i'd def like to know more about how that grew and developed into ibiza goa etc.
i think it's interesting because you had ideas being taken seriously by societies and the people that ran them, things like rand corporation experimenting with lsd, these guys getting on telly, that whole kind of post war generation where something positive just had to be done.
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Here's a really good article about proto-hippies that you guys might find interesting... A Brief History of Cranks. ... evidently they were even around back in the 30's!
I'm currently reading a book about bohemian Paris too, called umm, "Bohemian Paris", not exactly hippies but fascinating nonetheless.
I'm currently reading a book about bohemian Paris too, called umm, "Bohemian Paris", not exactly hippies but fascinating nonetheless.
they were around far longer than that, there is a movement going back into victorian times and before, the theosophists and their intriguing ideas about synasthesia, the guy who introduced sandals to england etc....
good call on cabinet, must remind my girlfriend to get the new one as she works in town
can we carry on this discussion please, i know its a bit rambling from me but it's interesting i think and not a very explored part of pop history.
What do you think is proto hippy music in this way, it wouldn't have been rock n roll, more like fellas like tom lehrer and his satirical songs, max wall, the exoticians and their sexually charged mood music, even old nat in his way, the counter culture wasnt split along boundary lines, the postwar consumer lifestyle lines were only just forming, the threat of the bomb was in the air balanced against the highly politicised space race and the new race into the future thru affordable household gadgets, which of course went hand in hand with cold war military technology. It's no wonder some people felt solace in nature, before it was highly politicised, a smoothie, yoga and h and e was just another utopian lifestyle choice don't you think?
What do you think is proto hippy music in this way, it wouldn't have been rock n roll, more like fellas like tom lehrer and his satirical songs, max wall, the exoticians and their sexually charged mood music, even old nat in his way, the counter culture wasnt split along boundary lines, the postwar consumer lifestyle lines were only just forming, the threat of the bomb was in the air balanced against the highly politicised space race and the new race into the future thru affordable household gadgets, which of course went hand in hand with cold war military technology. It's no wonder some people felt solace in nature, before it was highly politicised, a smoothie, yoga and h and e was just another utopian lifestyle choice don't you think?
Nice.... yeah, I was kind of hoping this conversation would continue too. I didn't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but personally, the tangents are one of the things I love about this forum... Plus I find the subject of counterculture histories very interesting.
I'm not too familiar with the British proto-hippie music but I definitely want to check it out. Was it kind of like music hall?
Mms, you actually piqued my curiosity about the hippie trail and it's culmination into the Goa scene (regardless of the quality of the music
). I was going to dig around online one of these days to see what I could find... I'll come back on that soon...
From what I gather, out in the UK there's the whole naturalist and what-have-you history and then the new-age traveller and festival scene now...? Out here, there's kind of an equivalent in the Rainbow Family and the whole deadhead/jamband/tour-kidz scene... (which all crosses over). In the late 90s I actually had a pretty heavy hippie phase (who am I kidding, I'm still "kind of" one)... but I mean I was going to tons of raves, and I was one of those tour-kids travelling acround the US, going to Dead shows and rainbow gatherings. (Hey, I had somewhat of a hippie-ish upbringing, and after spending my teen years in Orange County, I really needed to get out...)
The Rainbow Family and rainbow gatherings are an interesting phenomenon, I think they happen in Europe (and elsewhere) too actually. Gatherings started in '72, when a bunch of "families" (hippie communes, cults, whatever), realizing that the 60s were over, and still wanting to continue their way of life and connect, started gathering in mass numbers in these make-shift, tent-and-tipi cities in National Forests. The main part of a gathering happens for about a week, peaking on the 4th of July, but a lot of people stick around for a couple months. They're always deep out in the middle of old forests and separated into small "villages", which are hosted by different communes who provide free kitchens. Only trade is allowed, no money is exchanged (the gathering itself is free and grassroots too). I attentended two, in 98 and 99, and it was quite an eye opener... really taught me a lesson about the dark side of countercultures actually. Every type of commune and cult were there, as well as (road) kidz (kind of the current outgrowth of the Grateful Dead/jamband scene... amoral kids who dress in a kind of gangsta-raver style, with tilted caps and dreadlocks, who walk around with boom boxes blasting WuTang or drum n bass, trying to sell fake drugs to "custies" aka "customers" aka normal people), jesus-freaks, wiccans, deadheads, feminists, zippies, acid-casualties, crusties, activists, professors (met quite a few there actually), hari krishnas, etc... (it's like you take a conservative's most extreme stereotype of "whacko pinko liberal queer pagans" and put them together in the woods)... and although there were some real decent, interesting people, a large portion just seemed lost to plain fucked-up. It was still quite an experience, but all that is waaay behind me now.
I'm not too familiar with the British proto-hippie music but I definitely want to check it out. Was it kind of like music hall?
Mms, you actually piqued my curiosity about the hippie trail and it's culmination into the Goa scene (regardless of the quality of the music
). I was going to dig around online one of these days to see what I could find... I'll come back on that soon...From what I gather, out in the UK there's the whole naturalist and what-have-you history and then the new-age traveller and festival scene now...? Out here, there's kind of an equivalent in the Rainbow Family and the whole deadhead/jamband/tour-kidz scene... (which all crosses over). In the late 90s I actually had a pretty heavy hippie phase (who am I kidding, I'm still "kind of" one)... but I mean I was going to tons of raves, and I was one of those tour-kids travelling acround the US, going to Dead shows and rainbow gatherings. (Hey, I had somewhat of a hippie-ish upbringing, and after spending my teen years in Orange County, I really needed to get out...)
The Rainbow Family and rainbow gatherings are an interesting phenomenon, I think they happen in Europe (and elsewhere) too actually. Gatherings started in '72, when a bunch of "families" (hippie communes, cults, whatever), realizing that the 60s were over, and still wanting to continue their way of life and connect, started gathering in mass numbers in these make-shift, tent-and-tipi cities in National Forests. The main part of a gathering happens for about a week, peaking on the 4th of July, but a lot of people stick around for a couple months. They're always deep out in the middle of old forests and separated into small "villages", which are hosted by different communes who provide free kitchens. Only trade is allowed, no money is exchanged (the gathering itself is free and grassroots too). I attentended two, in 98 and 99, and it was quite an eye opener... really taught me a lesson about the dark side of countercultures actually. Every type of commune and cult were there, as well as (road) kidz (kind of the current outgrowth of the Grateful Dead/jamband scene... amoral kids who dress in a kind of gangsta-raver style, with tilted caps and dreadlocks, who walk around with boom boxes blasting WuTang or drum n bass, trying to sell fake drugs to "custies" aka "customers" aka normal people), jesus-freaks, wiccans, deadheads, feminists, zippies, acid-casualties, crusties, activists, professors (met quite a few there actually), hari krishnas, etc... (it's like you take a conservative's most extreme stereotype of "whacko pinko liberal queer pagans" and put them together in the woods)... and although there were some real decent, interesting people, a large portion just seemed lost to plain fucked-up. It was still quite an experience, but all that is waaay behind me now.
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chris you made me think of this book:
http://www.visionarystate.com/
in the 80s where i grew up there were lots of festivals of the kind you're talking about there, treworgie tree festival
elephant fayre which was organised by very decent hippy aristo Jago elliot who died a couple of years ago - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4103468.stm
there were and still are lots of people with hippy ideals down there, a neighbour of mine as a teen lived with her husband in teepees on bodmin moor up until the 90's she had a kid and thought less of it and got rehoused though, sometimes a teepee isn't enough. Her next door neighbour was a quaker too, who were considered cranks 50 years or so before incidentally.
http://www.visionarystate.com/
in the 80s where i grew up there were lots of festivals of the kind you're talking about there, treworgie tree festival
elephant fayre which was organised by very decent hippy aristo Jago elliot who died a couple of years ago - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4103468.stm
there were and still are lots of people with hippy ideals down there, a neighbour of mine as a teen lived with her husband in teepees on bodmin moor up until the 90's she had a kid and thought less of it and got rehoused though, sometimes a teepee isn't enough. Her next door neighbour was a quaker too, who were considered cranks 50 years or so before incidentally.
Man, I could talk about this stuff for hours... I was going to do a post tracing back from the Palo Alto scene (particularly the Pranksters and Jerry Garcia and Co) forward as the modern pioneers of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, but I didn't want to be tedious or too bloglike... but yeah, I think an important aspect of rave culture, the whole trance-dance, group-mind thing, started at the Acid Tests and in Grateful Dead jams in particular...
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Mms, that book looks interesting... California certainly does have quite a history of whacky spiritualists and new agers.
The most mind-blowingly idiotic case of hippie open-mindedness that I've ever seen, would have to have been at the National Gathering in Pennsylvania, '99. A friend and I were on one of our little treks through the forest, and we came across this "prophet." Here's this little, bushy-bearded old man raving about the TRUE identity of the anti-Christ. He'd set up this elaborate chart, displaying a hierarchy of diabolical masterminds in an unholy empire... and who does he posit as the anti-Christ at the top of his pyramid?... Jimmy Carter. And the worst part is that there must have been about 20-30 hippies standing there, totally eating it all up, nodding their heads in agreement.
Of course most people there weren't NEARLY this misguided, just eccentric. One memory that always gives me chuckle is of this woman who was part of a little camping circle that my travel-mates and I had set up at a Gathering in Arizona. She was this 40-something, elegantly beautiful dancer from Berkeley, and every time I came back to our campsite, she'd be sitting around naked in the arms of a different "friend"... and they would ALWAYS be Berkeley professors. It got to be pretty funny, I'd show up at the site, and she'd be "hey Chris, meet (so-and-so), he's a professor of (whatever) at Berkeley..." and here'd be yet another professor, naked, usually smoking a joint, saying "Hey Chris!" like it was no big thing...
The most mind-blowingly idiotic case of hippie open-mindedness that I've ever seen, would have to have been at the National Gathering in Pennsylvania, '99. A friend and I were on one of our little treks through the forest, and we came across this "prophet." Here's this little, bushy-bearded old man raving about the TRUE identity of the anti-Christ. He'd set up this elaborate chart, displaying a hierarchy of diabolical masterminds in an unholy empire... and who does he posit as the anti-Christ at the top of his pyramid?... Jimmy Carter.
And the worst part is that there must have been about 20-30 hippies standing there, totally eating it all up, nodding their heads in agreement. Of course most people there weren't NEARLY this misguided, just eccentric. One memory that always gives me chuckle is of this woman who was part of a little camping circle that my travel-mates and I had set up at a Gathering in Arizona. She was this 40-something, elegantly beautiful dancer from Berkeley, and every time I came back to our campsite, she'd be sitting around naked in the arms of a different "friend"... and they would ALWAYS be Berkeley professors. It got to be pretty funny, I'd show up at the site, and she'd be "hey Chris, meet (so-and-so), he's a professor of (whatever) at Berkeley..." and here'd be yet another professor, naked, usually smoking a joint, saying "Hey Chris!" like it was no big thing...
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me too its one of those about 25 subjects which i think 'what would i do for an ma' is one of them,
this is quite a good book about post sixties festival culture but not pre-sixties
Amazon product ASIN 1859840280
that jesus guy sounds a bit like this dude:
http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/
Lonnie Frisbee! I actually read an article about him a little while back. He played a large part in converting a lot of hippies in southern California to christianity (the whole Jesus (freak) movement), particularly over to the then newly-forming Calvary Chapel. Ironically, Calvary has become one of the most conservative denominations around, which is saying a lot considering the shitty state of Orange County christian culture. I've personally had nothing but bad experiences with them, extremely judgemental and unfriendly, always boldly mixing Republican politics into their sermons (I know because an ex-girlfriend used to try to drag me to their services ). Unsurprisingly, they tend to like to downplay Lonnie's contribution to their early years because of his closeted homosexuality.
). Unsurprisingly, they tend to like to downplay Lonnie's contribution to their early years because of his closeted homosexuality.franz walsch
New member
That's quite a fascinating topic. A quick google-search for proto-hippies dug up this book which could be pretty interesting. I'd definitely add the Swiss colony Monte Verità to the list of important forerunners. By the way, can anybody recommend a good book or articles on the East Coast hippie scene? The West Coast seems to be fairly well documented, but I'd be interested to know more about the East Coast scene. Seems to me that it was quite different from the Californian hippies, more directly indebted to the Beats and more overtly political and artsy.
This is my first post after some lurking around, so, uh, Hi!
This is my first post after some lurking around, so, uh, Hi!
Welcome Franz!
I'll see what I can find, generally I've seen more written about the New York Beats than the hippies, but there might be some information in books about Bob Dylan and the East Village folk scene... I know there was a Fillmore East, so there might be some stories about that venue that describe the NY scene...
I'll see what I can find, generally I've seen more written about the New York Beats than the hippies, but there might be some information in books about Bob Dylan and the East Village folk scene... I know there was a Fillmore East, so there might be some stories about that venue that describe the NY scene...
franz walsch
New member
Thanks a lot, Chris! The Fillmore East might actually be a good keyword. As is probably the whole Yippie thing.
here's a couple of mp3s from a 7" of Nature Boy by Eden with Don Reed:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/05/365_days_131_do.html
The soprano intro to Nature Boy sounds like it could be the sample lurking in the background of Timba/Timberlake's My Love?!
The b-side is a corny rock'n'roll/doo-wop number.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/05/365_days_131_do.html
The soprano intro to Nature Boy sounds like it could be the sample lurking in the background of Timba/Timberlake's My Love?!
The b-side is a corny rock'n'roll/doo-wop number.
Furthur propelling this thread into the stratosphere...
Just came across this entry on the Arthur blog today, on how the German "Naturmensch" and "Wandervogel" tradition ended up influencing the Californian protohippie "Nature Boys." After some digging I also found this fascinating and much more comprehensive article on the subject. I always felt a connection between German naturalism and California hippiedom, interesting.
*edit: eden ahbez is shown in the first two pictures on that Arthur post, he's sitting in the first picture, and front row, second-to-the-left in the second one, along with Gypsy Boots, Bob Wallace, Emile Zimmerman, Fred Bushnoff, & Buddy Rose, some of the original California "nature boys." The second link mentions eden ahbez and his hit "Nature Boy" a little past halfway down the page.
Just came across this entry on the Arthur blog today, on how the German "Naturmensch" and "Wandervogel" tradition ended up influencing the Californian protohippie "Nature Boys." After some digging I also found this fascinating and much more comprehensive article on the subject. I always felt a connection between German naturalism and California hippiedom, interesting.
*edit: eden ahbez is shown in the first two pictures on that Arthur post, he's sitting in the first picture, and front row, second-to-the-left in the second one, along with Gypsy Boots, Bob Wallace, Emile Zimmerman, Fred Bushnoff, & Buddy Rose, some of the original California "nature boys." The second link mentions eden ahbez and his hit "Nature Boy" a little past halfway down the page.
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