Orange Sunshine: How I Almost Survived America's Cultural Revolution

Orange Sunshine, How I Almost Survived America's Cultural Revolution,by Mar DuQuette, is a first hand account of what it was like to be an active participant in the movement that shaped our nation - a war baby's roller coaster ride of hot rods, guns, dope, revolution and redemption that's action-packed and heartbreakingly hilarious.  A veteran of the 1960's psychedelic revolution, the author  reveals the true inside story of the Counterculture. How could a 22 year old alcoholic, drug-using outlaw biker/machine shop worker, in a span of less than three years, become a yoga practicing, vegetarian commune founding revolutionary, who, inspired by his psychedelic drug trips, begins to practice an Eastern form of meditation in search of inner peace? This sort of radical transformation could only have taken place during the 1960's Cultural Revolution, arguably America's most turbulent time when our country exploded into chaos and mad idealism.

This wonderful autobiography of a baby-boomer-gone-wild captures the essence of 1960s America and beyond. I followed the karma of Marc DuQuette in one sitting, hanging on as he careened wildly from one adventure to the next, making me laugh and breaking my heart. It's worth the read simply to get inside the head of a man who will think to himself, upon being thrown to the ground by police, "What's the karma with my nose and the street?" I loved this book. I loved this book!
It's full of humor, shame, and heartbreak. Marc refuses to be anything less than 100 percent authentic in telling the real story of his life. 

However, what grabbed me the most was Marc's descriptive, amazing view into the hippie movement. The hippies who went up to Oregon in the '60s were legendary. Their struggles, temptations and psychic mind-blowing experiences - few have ever gone this far, this deep into what it meant to be called a "hippie".

Although set in the turbulent 1960's, this is not just a book for Baby Boomers! Anyone can relate to this tale of spiritual seeking, human frailty, and ultimate individual triumph. The author, Marc DuQuette, tells his story with razor wit and ruthless honesty. It's a tale of the times, yes, but also of the downward spiral of addiction. The quirky cast of characters are vivid and believable.

Marc Duquette is a skilled and prolific writer, making the truth seem like a walk in the park. His life was not a walk in the park but a series of events that would make any "Commie Man" cringe with fear as it did! It is very hilarious and sad at the same time. If you do not want to read the truth about this writer this is not a read for you! Looking forward to the screenplay.

When you read this book, you will see before you a naked soul like Walt Whitman! It was captivating to ride through all the "highs and lows" of an authentic Hippie life. I felt honored to encounter such an honest and genuine soul.His deep pain and suffering were really humbling and his redemption was truly glorious.

This book grabbed my attention from the first sentence to the last. It is captivating, entertaining and a wild and memorable ride. What's even more amazing is that the story is true and the author actually did survive!

Marc DuQuette's voice is authentic and he reveals the spirit of the cultural revolution in all its excesses, and the impact on one person. He doesn't spare himself - not insisting on being the hero of his own tales, he is honest about the crazy risks, the various indulgences, and the misguided idealism of the time. Often guided by the allure of "Gee, what would happen if....?", the author dives into each experience and writes engagingly and uproariously. The people and the locations all become characters in this first-hand account. This book is alive!!

"Orange Sunshine" Marc DuQuette's personal memoir, is absolutely a "must read." From Chapter One, "Motorcycle Down" you are pulled into Marc's crazy, fascinating life with a force that you cannot resist. His writing style is open, honest, and hilarious - each page brings you an experience that makes you actually laugh out loud!

What I liked best about this captivating journey through his childhood, the turbulent Sixties, and his search for truth and meaning in the Seventies, is that I literally felt like a fly on the wall - living this experience with him yet not having to actually go through it myself. It was the ultimate voyeuristic adventure! I have always been intrigued and mesmerized by the Sixties, undoubtedly one of the most interesting eras in recent history, and never have I read a book that throws you right in the middle, taking you on every trip and adventure, in such a funny and honest way. Marc gives us a bird's eye view of his remarkable life in a way that is highly personal and authentic through telling his own shocking and entertaining story and those of his cast of characters. You will feel like you are going through each adventure with him, but you won't need to do rehab afterward!

A roller coaster ride of a book. I could not put it down and finished it in one sitting! This book tells a vivid, turbulent, and heart aching tale of a man's journey with addiction during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The story really touched me. I found myself drawn into the life of Marc as if it were my own. As much as I cried through part of the tale I also laughed while reading it. This book is such a fun read because of the author's great humor and unabashed frankness. It's great that I have so much fun reading about such serious encounters!

"Orange Sunshine" a mystery revealed by Schou

Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World  by Nick Schou

             The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a spiritual group and also a major smuggling ring of Hash and Marijuana and producers of some of the strongest LSD. The story Nick tells is of the police that wanted to take them down and how the government was dead set against the wisdom from the use of these drugs to get out and used by more people. Nick did a good job with what information was given to him, and manages to describe in surprisingly colorful detail an underground of hippie drug smugglers that spent the late sixties flying back and forth between Maui, Afghanistan and Laguna. Many members of the gang are still leery of talking about what went on during this time.  But we realize it does need to be told; so the truth will come out and everyone will know what really happened--not just what they want you to know. So more books like this one will be published and hopefully the stories can be told without too much ego-tripping or paranoia getting involved.

            It is often said that if you claim that you can remember the Sixties you really weren't there. Well, I remember the 60s, having been in my 30s then, but the memories are hazy from the lapse of time. Well, this book brings it all back. It very accurately reflects the FEELING of the times and the MENTALITY of people many of us who were there knew and met every day. It accurately depicts the naivité of many in the counterculture and how it all disappeared when the criminal element took over. An undercurrent of this book is the curious, double nature of the Brotherhood. There is no doubt they were spiritual people and deeply reverential. But make no mistake, we're talking about drug dealers here. This book is stark reminder of how very much things really have changed. It is a valuable time capsule for those who were born afterwards and who ask that question, "What was it like back then?" This book is one good answer.
        On one level this is a crime story: the evolution of a hippie drug smuggling operation and the cops who eventually took it down. But it's also a larger than life story about people who used highly illegal and unconventional ways to, in their point of view, bring peace on earth.
          The first historian to speak extensively with the group's original members, Schou sorts fact from fiction and shows how an American utopian movement morphed into criminal organization. Orange Sunshine is an important addition to the historical literature of the 1960s.
        This is a great book for anyone interested in the 60s, the counterculture, LSD, and the period of time when many thought a cosmic change of human consciousness was possible.
'Orange Sunshine' really gives you the impression that the creators of the 'Brotherhood Of Eternal Love'  had a pure intention about spreading the use of LSD to the whole of humanity...and their intention and belief was that it could save the world from corruption, hatred, and greed.
        The feeling/scenes at the beginning of the book  are enticing to say the least; I doubt there are many people who haven't dreamed of moving to a remote island with all their best friends and family and starting something pure.
       Having recently finished reading "The Harvard Psychedelic Club," I was happy to find a completely different look at the same period in "Orange Sunshine." Although Leary figures in both books, "Orange Sunshine" is not about Harvard Professors, Beatnik Poets, flashy rockers,  or famous writers. The Brotherhood was made up of lower middle-class suburban boys whose interest in cars and football were replaced by visions of God after taking LSD.
            John Griggs, the charismatic leader, had visions of establishing a hippie utopia on a tropical island and had already began selling some drugs to finance his vision. Disillusioned, Griggs, an apparently sincere religious seeker, saw his vision give way to ego and money as the brotherhood morphed into an international drug smuggling ring.
         This rise and fall takes place in suburban Orange County, Mexico, Afghanistan and Maui, and makes for an intriguing social history. The cast of characters, their adventures, their acid trips and their legal skirmishes provide great stories and add to our already rich and juicy memories of that decade.
         Many of the "brothers" are silent today. They are laying low, out of sight and hopefully out of the attention of the feds who pursued us for so many years. For many years, late into the seventies, I was stopped and searched by Customs agents whenever I was returning from an international trip. It had the effect of making me want to become invisible.
       The theme I most appreciate about this particular story about the Brotherhood is that (at least in the sixties) we did not exist to make money (although we never refused it, of course) but were more motivated by a desire to change the world, which seemed to be heading for violent chaos or at the very least, a mindless- cookie cutter conformist society. We had become transformed by the taking of LSD and mellowed by the smoking of pot and hashish. This book evokes the feeling of those times
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is peopled with interesting characters, places, and events. It is well written and kept my interest from beginning to end. It also really reveals what was wrong with the 60s counterculture, and it is fascinating to me to see how these lessons have been largely forgotten or conveniently ignored today.
              There was an idea that people could live communally and progress to some kind of utopia, but the book reveals that human nature cannot be wrung out of people, despite the best of intentions. Egotism, ambition, greed, and jealousy are not characteristics restricted to wall street bankers and oil executives.
      I loved this book, and I am very interested in the 1960's & I had first read about The Brotherhood of Eternal Love in the brilliant, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties & Beyond by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Ever since then, I was intrigued because the Brotherhood was from MY 'hood! Laguna Beach is a charming coastal town now & during the 1960's it was a haven for artists & hippies. It was also fairly Conservative (as most of Orange County is today), so it is amazing that this large & very successful drug operation was taking place there. A highly detailed account of the inner workings of this pretty secretive organization & an historical treat for those living in the "OC". This fantastical story of a hippie drug ring centered in Orange County is a shaggy one all right: lots of characters, not an especially neat story line, but some riveting episodes.
          Although the title stresses the Brotherhood of Eternal Love's signature brand of mind-melting LSD, I thought their hashish business was the most interesting part of the book. Members trekked to Kandahar when that was even more remote than it is now. The first trip took several weeks and was full of twists and turns; in fact, the original destination was Turkey, but some fellow travelers convinced them that Afghanistan had the best stuff. Once there, they scored primo hash from Afghans who would have been at home in the Hebrew Bible. The Brotherhood smuggled it back to the states, often in hollowed out surfboards. The LSD, it turns out, was practically given away, all in an effort to enlighten the world, Timothy Leary style. When Leary was sent to prison, the Brotherhood paid the Weathermen to bust him out. Yeah. Pretty wild.
            Organized crime is one of my favorite genres, and there's plenty of that here. But what comes through most vividly to me is the utopian impulse behind the operation. Mostly these guys wanted to surf, drop acid, smoke hash, meditate, and get back to the land. The drugs were in many ways more sacramental than recreational. There was plenty of sex, but their leader tried to emphasize family life, hippy style, especially on the ranch. (At first, the ranch community excluded unmarried members of the Brotherhood.)
         On the edge of the operation was Mike Hynson, best known for his role in "Endless Summer," which is nothing if not utopian. For you youngsters, that was the 1966 film about two youthful surfers traveling the world in search of the perfect wave.
        The Brotherhood's operation came crashing down in 1972, when law enforcement rounded up members in a multi-state raid. But several remained at large for years, and some went on to lead interesting post-Brotherhood lives.
          Often I have wondered what REALLY happened in the 'summer of love' and the subculture
that was pushing LSD as the magic drug to connect people to their spirit, but it is more than that,
it is the culture, the folklore, Timothy Leary and the much talked of John Griggs...It is surfing folklore
of surfers smuggling hash in hollowed out surfboards, and here in "Orange Sunshine' we see how prevalent it really was...Jimi Hendrix drops by towards the end when the cartel moved to Hawaii...The parties, the freedom,the utopian dream they had in the beginning and seeing that unwind into just another drug running operation.
          
       I found the book very well researched and it sort of stumped me that the author could get so
many of the people he interviewed  to speak...and also that he managed to find the original law enforcement and policemen who were busting our balls in the era. Having said that, I am sure there must be some  people who were there as part of the 'Brotherhood Of Eternal Love' that probably don't like the book, and they probably wished the story was never told or they were upset that they were not asked to contribute their version of events.....
       The final chapters really answered most of my questions...although it did motivate me to start investigating  the John Griggs character, who Timothy Leary so admired. It also made me want to revisit the archetypal utopian "escape to an island novel," 'Island' by Aldous Huxley.
            What I found most amazing is that we all had our own different experiences-- some better than others--and some of the stories they told I hadn't heard before.
If you found this interesting, you might want to compare it with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia:The Story of the LSD Counterculture by Stewart Tendler and David May.

A Nation of wannabe Outsiders

A nation of outsiders : how the white middle class fell in love with rebellion in postwar America    by Grace Elizabeth Hale.

           At mid-century, most of us fell in love with characters like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye and Marlon Brando's Johnny in The Wild One, musicians like Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, and activists like the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These emotions enabled us middle-class whites to cut free of our own histories and to identify with those who, while lacking economic, political, or social privilege, seemed to possess instead vital cultural resources and a depth of feeling not found in "grey flannel" America.
       In this wide-ranging and vividly written cultural history, Grace Elizabeth Hale sheds light on why so many white middle-class Americans chose to re-imagine themselves as outsiders in the second half of the twentieth century andshe attempts to explain how this unprecedented shift changed American culture and society.
        Love for outsiders launched the politics of both the New Left and the New Right. From the mid-sixties through the eighties, it flourished in the hippie counterculture, the back-to-the-land movement, the Jesus People movement, and among fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians working to position their traditional isolation and separatism as strengths.   
         It changed the very meaning of "authenticity" and "community." Ultimately, the romance of the outsider provided a creative resolution to an intractable mid-century cultural and political conflict-the struggle between the desire for self-determination and autonomy and the desire for a morally meaningful and authentic life.
          It is rare to find a scholarly book that captures both a broad history and the landmarks of one's own life. Having grown up in Los Angeles during and after the Second World War, I found this book helped me to understand a good deal about that era which I lived through pretty unconsciously as a child and adolescent. Reading Dr. Hale's pages brought back memories, of sounds and images I had long forgotten. The book is about a subject -- the American outsider -- that I have thought about for a long time, because as soon as I discovered this character in lit, I was right there. I was him.  I learned a great deal from this book"A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America" (2011), even if I could  not have articulated the issue myself in precisely her way. Dr. Hale an Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Virginia, already raised some similar issues in her previous book, "Making Whiteness: the Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890 -- 1940".
.          Her new book on outsiders has as a major theme the manner in which white middle-class Americans have perceived African Americans. In her new book, Hale examines what she describes as the "history of a knot of desire, fantasy, and identification" that constitutes the romance of the outsider, the "belief that people somehow marginal to society possess cultural resources and values missing among other Americans." (p. 1) She traces the large role of the outsider in 19th Century America through Thoreau, Whitman, Bohemia, and, in particular, ministrely as practiced by both African Americans and whites. The focus however, is on America after WW II.   Hale argues that American life following the war was dominated by the image of the outsider and she explores why this was the case. She finds Americans became fascinated with the outsider as a result of their dissatisfaction with centrism -- what they came to find as the materialism, boredom and lack of deeply felt commitments in middle class suburban life. Americans took to and identified with the figure of the outsider or rebel, whom they frequently, but not always, identified with African Americans in the South.
             By identifying with the outsider, Hale maintains, Americans pursued two not fully consistent ends: first, they pursued what they viewed as their own independence and individual autonomy. Second, Americans, in their fascination with outsiders, wanted connectedness and value, a sense of sharing with others. Developing these two goals is critical to the exploration of the outsider that Hale undertakes in her detailed history.
               A strength of Hale's book is her exploration of the role of the outsider on both the left and right of America's political spectrum. The relationship between the fascination with outsiders and leftist politics is not hard to find. But Hale shows that some modern American conservatives, especially William F. Buckley, also positioned themselves, accurately enough, as outsiders in that they were opposing the liberal consensus developing in the 1950s. Later day conservatives and members of the religious right, including Jerry Falwell, also portrayed their movement in terms of outsiders, conservative, evangelical Christians, looking for their voice. Other religious outsiders, such as the Jesus People of the late 1960s and  early 1970s, appear for the most part apolitical. Hale links outsiders of the left and right to show their commonalities. She perceptively concludes that the fascination with outsiders is neither left nor right but rather involves a rejection of centrism and conformity.
           In the first part of her study, "Learning to Love Outsiders" Hale examines the source of Americans' fascination with outsiders in the books, movies, and music of the 1950s. Among the best sections of her book are the early, nuanced discussions of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Kerouac's "On the Road". Both these books, which carefully read will each bear several competing interpretations, played large roles in stating and developing the alienation of young Americans from the worlds of their parents.
               Hale also discusses early rock and roll with Elvis Presley and the strong influence of African American rhythm and blues and the perceived influence of African American sensuality. The largest part of her discussion concerns Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie  and the growth of American folk music with its search for authenticity. In the "authenticity" romance, in which practitioners largely misinterpreted earlier popular music and turned it to their own image, many people saw authenticity and sincerity as values above all others. Furthermore, they internalized the concept of authenticity to make it solely a matter of feelings and the heart rather than following a relationship to other people based upon considerations such as nationality, religion, gender, or occupation. The search for an internalized "authenticity" dominates the fascination with outsiders who are thought to have more of it than the people in the center.   
              In the second part of the book, Hale discusses the role of the outsider as it played out in the variations of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and the 1960s. She discusses how the black power movement rejected middle class American imaginations of the outsider and how these imaginations then transferred, in many instances, to other causes. Hale offers what I thought was a sympathetic look at the Jesus people and their attempts to return to God, as they perceived God, and a far less sympathetic look at Jerry Falwell at at abortion opponents who coopted the peaceful disobedience techniques utilized by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s to pursue their disagreement with legalized abortion.
              Throughout the book and in a too-brief concluding chapter, Hale tries to assess the strengths and weaknesses of American's view of the outsider. The concept of the outsider has become so broad that, except for extreme cases, it is now difficult to distinguish it from the mainstream. Hale finds that the focus on outsiders creates a largely imaginary portrayal of the outsider figure and frequently works to avoid focusing upon and addressing hard, concrete issues. But she also finds that the outsider myth works "because it denies at the imaginary lavel the contradictions between the human fantasy of absolute individual autonomy and the human need for grounding in historical and contemporary social connections." It also is important, for Hale, because it encourages the middle class and those in authority to put aside and disavow the economic and political power they have in favor of other goals. She concludes that the time has come to develop "a new romance" in the loose tradition of the outsider. (p.. 308)
              The book is carefully, thoughtfully, and on the whole even-handedly written. It is dense and well-documented. Although there is no bibliography, the detailed and substantive endnotes refer to a large range of important source material. In reading this book, I was reminded of some of the preoccupations, good and bad, of my life, and was able to understand them more fully. I feel this  book was quite valuable in its understanding the ethos of American life in the mid-20th Century.

After the baby boomers...the next generation & religion

After the baby boomers : how twenty- and thirty-somethings are shaping the future of American religion by Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University (2007)

             Members of one generation differ from preceding generations because their social environments and experiences are different. After the Baby Boomers  offers us a tantalizing look at the future  of American religion for decades to come.  Younger adults of today differ from the baby boomers, and are not well-understood as a cohort, according to Wuthnow (Princeton), who writes from his analysis of "several dozen national surveys" conducted over the past 35 years.
      Wuthnow identifies seven key trends in the "life worlds" of contemporary young adults, which have defining impact and significance for their relationship with religion in America. These trends are (1) delayed marriage, (2) fewer children and later childbirth, (3) uncertainties of work and money, (4) more higher education, (5) loosening relationships, (6) globalization, and (7) a culture more and more based on the information explosion.
    This is clearly a sociological work, but non-sociologists, such as counselors and therapists who are concerned about the young adults of this generation and their relationships to organized religion, will find this book worth serious attention. The first several pages of Wuthnow's concluding chapter are particularly illuminating, and should be thoughtfully considered by American religious leaders of all faiths.
    Much has been written about the profound impact the post-World War II baby boomers had on American religion. But the lifestyles and beliefs of the generation that has followed--and the influence these younger Americans in their twenties and thirties are having on the face of religion--are not so well understood. In this book, Wuthnow shows how their faith affects their families, their communities, and their politics.
     Interpreting new evidence from scores of in-depth interviews and surveys, Wuthnow reveals a generation of younger adults who, unlike the baby boomers that preceded them, are taking their time establishing themselves in careers, getting married, starting families of their own, and settling down--resulting in an estimated six million fewer regular churchgoers. He shows how the recent growth in evangelicalism is tapering off, and traces how biblical literalism, while still popular, is becoming less dogmatic and more preoccupied with practical guidance.
     At the same time, Wuthnow explains how conflicts between religious liberals and conservatives continue--including among new immigrant groups such as Hispanics and Asians--and how in the absence of institutional support many post-boomers have taken a more individualistic, improvised approach to spirituality. Wuthnow's fascinating analysis also explores the impacts of the Internet and so-called virtual churches, and the appeal of mega-churches.    
       Furthermore, as baby boomers age, studies indicate that their use of illicit drugs will continue.“The reality is the Woodstock Generation has come of age.Their background is with psychedelic drugs, marijuana, recreational drugs, non-narcotics . . . It’s a real problem.”  Over 2 million aging boomers have severe mental illnesses, many of which are directly related to their long-term habits of illicit drug use.  Against these growing problems, meanwhile, the number of health providers and other service providers is shrinking in proportion. And that means, according to the report, that “a health care workforce that is not prepared to address either [mental health/substance use] problems or the special needs of an aging population is a compelling public health burden.”
         In this book Robert Wuthnow assembles and analyzes a vast amount of data about the religious lives of Americans aged 21 to 45. His interests include the extent to which younger adults participate in organized worship, as well as how they think about spirituality, the relationship between religion and politics, and theology. In particular Prof. Wuthnow explores these two questions:
                    *What are the churchgoing habits and spiritual interests and needs of this generation?
                    *How does their faith affect their families, their communities, and their politics?
     Interpreting new evidence from scores of in-depth interviews and surveys, Wuthnow reveals a generation of younger adults who, unlike the baby boomers that preceded them, are taking their time establishing themselves in careers, getting married, starting families of their own, and settling down--resulting in an estimated six million fewer regular churchgoers. He shows how the recent growth in evangelicalism is tapering off, and traces how biblical literalism, while still popular, is becoming less dogmatic and more preoccupied with practical guidance.
        At the same time, Wuthnow explains how conflicts between religious liberals and conservatives continue--including among new immigrant groups such as Hispanics and Asians--and how in the absence of institutional support many post-boomers have taken a more individualistic, improvised approach to spirituality. Wuthnow's fascinating analysis also explores the impacts of the Internet and so-called virtual churches, and the appeal of mega-churches.
      Wuthnow insists that in some ways, today's younger adults are similar to their boomer parents-the vitality of small groups, for example, is nothing new. But there are key differences, chief among them the tendency of today's younger adults to remain single longer than ever before. Married people are significantly more likely to participate in religious communities; at the same time, participation in at least some religious groups may make marriage more likely.
    Wuthnow concluded that our society provides lots of structural support for children and teens, but leaves younger adults to fend for themselves during the decades when they're making crucial decisions about family and work.

You're a Boomer, but what generation are your kids?

We all know that Boomers were born between 1944 and 1953, but did you 
realize that cohorts following Boomers can be broken into several sub-categories  
According to Brainiac's GUIDE TO AMERICA'S GENERATIONS
1954-63: OGX (Original Generation X

1964-73:  PC Generation
1974-83: Net Generation
1984-93: Millennials

I found Brainiac's well-researched article very illuminating and thought-provoking, and reading it provoked me to create this blog this evening, so I want to recommend it here. 

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/01/generation_x.html)

Characterizing generations is rather like characterizing historical periods, an imaginative arbitrary construction, like a balloon, that offers different perspectives and invites comment, elaboration and 

most likely eventual destruction. But it makes for good ride, lots of fun if you enjoy exercising your mind. 

If your children were born between 1954 and 1963, 

they are the original Generation Xers (OGX)

By mistake they have sometimes been lumped in with the Boomers. 

In the early 2000s, Jonathan Pontell offered a new name for this lost generation, 

whose members, he claimed, were born between 1954 and 1965: "Generation Jones."

In the past year or so, Barack Obama (b. 1961) himself has become the spokesman                        for this lost generation, because of his insistence that his generation's worldview and 

politics aren't a Baby Boomer's.

Here is one man's attempt to characterize this unique generation to which I bet some                  of you belong, or had children that did:"The Original Generation X is cynical, ironic,                     skeptical -- which is not the same as directionless, nihilistic, or depressed! 

OGXers had a front-row seat for the Reagan Revolution, during which they saw "liberal" become a pejorative term, as many Americans recoiled from the various liberation movements (sexual, feminist, gay, ethnic) of the Sixties and Seventies. 

The Boomers had Roe v. Wade; OGXers got the anti-abortion backlash and the keeping-my-baby meme. The Boomers had the Apollo moon landing; OGXers got the Challenger explosion. Too young for Woodstock but not Altamont, just old enough for Watergate and the energy crisis, not to mention Three Mile Island.

In 1990 Time Magazine dubbed their youngest members "twentysomethings" (i.e., directionless, nihilistic, and depressed); and their oldest members were lumped in, strictly because of demographic considerations (which is foolish), with the Boomers. Whom they tend to resent and despise! No wonder two of their (non-American) cohort -- Billy Idol ('55) and novelist Douglas Coupland ('61) -- independently popularized the anti-label "Generation X."

The OGX is a generation that has brought us punk, post-punk, and cyberpunk, hardcore and hip hop ..."Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons," "Ghost World" and "Love and Rockets," "Master of Puppets" and "Pulp Fiction," "Slacker" and "Do The Right Thing," sardonic "charticles" and impossibly convoluted and footnoted prose. 

Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Arsenio Hall, Rosie O'Donnell, and Conan O'Brien are OGXers; so are the Hollywood Brat Pack and the New York one. Also: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer; Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, and David Foster Wallace; Al Roker, Katie Couric, and Matt Lauer; and Madonna, Prince, Bon Jovi, and Michael Jackson. Plus: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.

This generation of latch-key kids and children of divorce were the first American adolescents to be informed -- incessantly, and persuasively, by TV shows and Hollywood movies -- what it's like to be an adolescent. "Lost in Space," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Happy Days," "The Brady Bunch," "The Partridge Family," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Taps," "Risky Business," "Little Darlings," "Bad News Bears," "The Outsiders," "Rumble Fish," "21 Jump Street," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "St. Elmo's Fire," "Pretty in Pink," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Joanie Loves Chachi," "Family Ties," "Eight is Enough," and "One Day at a Time" all cast OGXers as... themselves, sorta. 

When French Situationist Guy Debord (The Society of the Spectacle)wrote that "the individual's gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him," this is the sort of alienation he meant. [Debord wrote that in 1967, when the oldest OGXers were 13, and the youngest 4 -- and all glued to the TV]" 

(This long quote is from the delightful article by Joshua Glenn available on his blog: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/01/generation_x.html)

Glen calls the children born in the years 1964-1973  "The PC Generation."  

Neil Howe and William Strauss's bestselling books "Generations" (1991) and "13th-Gen" (1993) claimed that these post-baby-boom "13ers" (aka Gen X) were born between 1961-81. [However, in their 1997 book "The Fourth Turning," Howe and Strauss confessed that the members of this so-called generation didn't buy into it: "Compared to any other generation born in this century, [the 13th generation] is less cohesive, its experiences wider and its culture more splintery."]

In 1993, the political advocacy group Third Millennium, announced that it had formed to represent the concerns of those Americans who'd been dubbed "twentysomethings" or "Generation X"; following Howe and Strauss, its leaders claimed that the cohort in question was born between 1961 and 1981. 

[In her 1998 book, Rational Exuberance: The Influence of Generation X on the New Economy, a young economist named Meredith Bagby (b. 1974) said she was proud to be a member of Generation X, which she defined as those born between 1965-76].

In 1997, Time also claimed that "Generation X" was born between 1965-77. 


Generation Y (Glen's Netters) were born between 1974 and 1983
Who, then, are these  Generation Yers that we've heard so much about? 
The New York Times called "Generation Y" those born from 1976-90.
But Glenn argues that "there never was a Generation Y; like Generation X, 
it was a placeholder label that lumped together young Americans who were actually members of discrete generations." 


Instead Glenn calls them "the Net Generation, describing them as "Web-savvy, boss-flustering, heavily tattooed Americans, [who] were born between 1974 and 1983." 
[In other words, the older Netters were lumped in with younger PCers and called "Generation X," while the younger Netters were lumped in with older Millennials and called "Generation Y."


In this schema "Millenials" refers to the children born in or after 1982. 
According to the consumer research outfit Iconoculture, Millennials are those Americans 
who were 29 and under in 2007. In that scenario, the first Millennials were born in 1978. 
Newsweek, meanwhile, has described the Millennials as those born between 1977-94. 
In their 2000 bestseller Millennials Rising, Howe and Strauss claimed that Millennials were born between 1982 and 2002. 
[The nice thing about a flexible generational periodization scheme is that you can neatly peg the Millennials to 1982, which allows the first-born of their cohort to graduate in the year 2000]           

How and Why I came to love "Outsiders"

Recently, I''ve been reading a very interesting book by Grace Elizabeth Hale entitled A nation of outsiders : how the white middle class fell in love with rebellion in postwar America  

She reminded me that in my youth, at mid-century, young Americans like me idealized characters like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye and Marlon Brando's character Johnny in  The Wild One. In the 50s and 60s we also loved provocative musicians like Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, as well as activists like the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and SDS. These emotions enabled some of us middle-class whites to cut free of our own personal histories and to discover and even to identify with those blacks who, while lacking economic, political, or social privilege, seemed to possess instead rich folk traditions and other vital cultural resources we felt we lacked or felt cut off from.  In and with those "others" I imagined that I saw and occasionally experienced  a depth of feeling not found in my conservative parents "grey flannel" America. 

In her wide-ranging book, about outsiders Dr. Hale helped me to understand why I and so many other white middle-class Americans chose to re-position ourselves as "outsiders." She explains how this unprecedented shift changed American culture and society. 

My introduction to this deviant role-identity, which I gratefully  embraced whole-heartedly once  I became aware of it was reading the then unknown young British author, Colin Wilson's 1956 bestseller entitled The Outsider which presented admiring portraits of literary "outsiders" who I identified with from William Blake and Charles Baudelaire to James Joyce and Hermann Hesse. 

Love for outsiders, she says, launched the politics of both the New Left and the New Right. From the mid-sixties through the eighties,  the cult of the "outsider" mentality flourished in the hippie counterculture, the back-to-the-land movement, the new feminism, the Jesus People movement, and even among fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians working to position their traditional isolation and separatism as strengths.    

In time this value shift changed the very meaning of concepts like "authenticity" and "community." Ultimately, the romance of the outsider provided a creative resolution to an intractable mid-century cultural and political conflict---the struggle between the desire for self-determination and autonomy on the one hand and the desire for a morally meaningful and authentic life on the other.

Reflections on The Catcher in the Rye by an old fan

In J.D. Salinger's brilliant coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old prep school adolescent relates his lonely, life-changing twenty-four hour stay in New York as  he experiences the phoniness of the adult world while attempting to deal with the death of his younger brother.

Salinger, whose characters are among the best and most developed in American literature has captured the eternal angst of growing into adulthood in the character Holden Caulfield.  Any American who has reached the age of sixteen or more should  easily identify with this unique and yet universal character, for Holden contains bits and pieces of all of us.         It is for this very reason that The Catcher in the Rye became and has remained one of the most beloved and enduring works in American and world literature.                                                                                                                                     Told as a monologue, The Catcher in the Rye not only describes Holden's thoughts and activities throughout these few days, but it also goes back into his past. He describes some of his true friends, how his parents and childhood were, and gives reasons for his actions. (Like deciding not to have sex with a prostitute.)  During the short period covered in the novel, Holden experiences a nervous breakdown, a result of his unexplained depression, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behavior. However, life continues on around Holden as it always has, with the majority of people ignoring the changes that occur in him- until it begins to get them seriously ticked off. Progressively through the novel we are challenged to think about society's attitude to the human condition, and to ask “Does society have an 'ostrich in the sand' mentality, a deliberate ignorance of the emptiness that can characterize human existence?” And if so, when Holden begins to probe and investigate his own sense of emptiness and isolation, before finally declaring that the world is full of 'phonies' with each one out for their own phony gain, is he actually the one who is going insane, or is it society which has lost it's mind for failing to see the hopelessness of its own existence?                                                                                                      As always, Salinger's writing is so brilliant, his characters so real, that he need not employ artifice of any kind. This is a study of the complex problems haunting all adolescents as they mature into adulthood and Salinger wisely chooses to keep his narrative and prose straightforward and simple. This is not to say that The Catcher in the Rye is a straightforward and simple book. It is anything but. In it we are privy to Salinger's genius and originality in portraying universal problems in a unique manner.  Images of a catcher in the rye are abundantly apparent throughout this book.                                                                                                         While analyzing the city raging about him, Holden's attention is captured by a child walking in the street "singing and humming." Realizing that the child is singing the familiar refrain, "If a body meet a body, comin' through the rye," Holden, himself, says that he feels not so depressed." The title's words, however, are more than just a pretty ditty that Holden happens to like. In a stroke of pure genius Salinger wisely sums up the book's theme in its title. When Holden, whose past has been very traumatic, to say the least, is questioned by his younger sister, Phoebe, as to  what he would like to do when he gets older, he replies, "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do is, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going. I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."                                                   In this short bit of dialogue Salinger brilliantly exposes Holden's deepest desire and expounds the book's theme.  Holden wishes to preserve something of childhood innocence that gets hopelessly lost as we grow into the crazy and phony world of adulthood. The theme of lost innocence is deftly explored by Salinger throughout the book. Holden is appalled when he encounters profanity scrawled on the walls of Phoebe's school, a school that he envisions protecting and shielding children from the evils of society. When Holden gives his red hunting cap to Phoebe to wear, he gives it to her as a shield, an emblem of the eternal love and protectiveness he feels for her.                                                                                                      While Holden's feelings are universal, this character does seem to be a rather extreme example. The catalyst for Holden's desires is no doubt the death of his younger brother, Allie, a bright and loving boy who died of leukemia at the age of thirteen. Holden still feels the sting of Allie's death acutely, as well as his own, albeit undeserved, guilt, in being able to do nothing to prevent Allie's suffering. The only reminder Holden has of Allie's shining but all-too-short life, is Allie's baseball mitt which is covered with poems Allie read while standing in the outfield. In a particularly poignant moment, Holden tells us that this is the glove he would want to use to catch children when they fall from the cliff of innocence. In an interesting Salinger twist, Holden distorts the Robert Burns poem that provides the book's title. Originally, it read, "If a body meet a body, comin' through the rye." Holden distorts the word "meet" into "catch." This is certainly not the first time Holden is guilty of distortion; indeed he is a master at it. This distortion, however, shows us how much Allie's death has affected Holden and also how much he fears his own fall from innocence, the theme that threads its way throughout the whole of the book. By this amazing book's end, we must reach the conclusion that there are times when we  all need a "catcher in the rye." We are, indeed, blessed if we have one.                                                It is difficult to remember what it was like to read this book for the first time when I was 16. It is also difficult to imagine a book where each new reading provides so much more illumination into the main character and his personality. I can remember finding Catcher to be funny the first time I read it.  I now find Holden to be walking a fine line between witty sarcasm and dangerous cynicism. He is funny, of course, but his belittling nature also causes him to dismiss much from his life that may not be perfect, but should be included. There is nothing that he, in the end, does not dismiss as being phony, whether it is the nuns, with whom he shares a cup of coffee, the teacher at the end, who most likely was just trying to help, Pheobe's school...everything. As soon as one little detail slips in which is not completely on track with what he is thinking, whatever it is he is contemplating becomes useless, “phony,” and not worth dealing with. His humor is sharp and witty and I often laugh out loud while reading the book, but it is also an easy way for him to detach himself from a world which he no longer feels he belongs in, or wants to belong in.                                                                                                                       I can remember finding the ending ambiguous the first time I read it. I now see it as the only way it could end, with Holden finding happiness watching his sister Pheobe going forever in circles, and being able to pretend that that is never going to change. She is the one thing in his life which he still deems worthy of existence, and placing her on a merry-go-round is his best attempt to keep her there.                                                                                                                 Things change and grow and move on, but Holden refuses to accept this and is yearning to stop things forever where they are, to go back to when D.B. was a writer full of dreams and Allie was still alive. He mentions once how he used to take field trips to the museum, but how it was never the same and that takes something away from it. Even if the exhibit was the same, YOU would be different, simply by having traveled a bit farther in life,  and this is what Holden is incapable of dealing with. The ending is Holden trying to keep the one thing in his life he still truly loves exactly the way she is.                                                                                                       I can remember when I first read the novel finding Holden's journey somewhat confusing. But now I can see that there is not a single detail which Salinger does not use to illuminate Holden. On Holden's last night at school everything is covered with snow. He stands there holding a snowball looking for something to throw it at, but he can not bring himself to throw his snowball and disturb a fire hydrant or a park bench. Everything is peaceful under the snow and Holden cannot bring himself to alter this tranquil scene,  just as he cannot handle a world that keeps changing. Or there is Holden's history class, which he is failing. The only topic he is remotely interested in is the Egyptians and their process of mummification. The only thing he cares about is how to preserve things just as they are.                                                                                                                    Holden sees the world as perverted and narrow, and has a nervous breakdown when he imagines that he sees innocent children about to fall off a cliff. This cliff is an image in Holden’s troubled mind. This imaginary cliff is situated near a field of rye on which he envisions children playing.  Holden would catch the children if they didn't look where they were going and accidentally ran towards the cliff where they were in danger of falling off. There is incredible symbolism in this statement. The children represent childhood innocence and purity. The cliff, or what lies below it, represents the tainted, impure "game" of life, in which so many people have fallen. These people, the "phonies," are what Holden despises most.        Holden demonstrates his desire to save innocence when he finds that someone's written "f...k you" on a schoolhouse wall.            "I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them- all cockeyed, naturally- what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days." Holden rubbed the mark off, and felt extreme hatred toward the person who wrote it.              Holden hated everything. Everything he held sacred turned out to be a disappointment.    A girl he thought was innocent and pure turned out to be being screwed by a suave roommate of his. Another girl whom he dated was such a phony it almost made him vomit. He gets roughed up when a disgruntled pimp comes around to collect more than Holden owed for a prostitute whom he didn't even have sex with. An old teacher that finally understood where Holden was coming from turns out to be a pervert when he's found patting Holden's head in the middle of the night. Nothing sacred and nothing pure, and the worst part was that Holden was, self-admittedly, too "yellow-belly" to do anything about these things. He was a boy lost in a sick world, helpless to confront its evil, and yet Holden's viewed as the crazy one? Holden speaks the brutal truth, And he admires others who do. For example, Holden said that he really admired this kid, James, that Holden knew, who said that another kid, Phil, was a conceited jerk. Phil was much bigger, and he and six other jerks went into scrawny James' room and beat him up, wanting him to take back his comments. James never took it back, but instead, decided to jump out a window to his death.                                                                                                                                              Considering how it became in instant classic with teenage readers soon after it came out, because there was nothing like it available to them, what amazes me most about A Catcher in the Rye is it's incredibly controversial reception when it was first published. The book took place and was published in the 1940's, and society then was based on everything being right and proper. Things like hollow, empty conversations conducted ritually  just for the sake of conversing defined what Holden held as "phony". Holden hated phonies with a passion, and throughout the book made brutal, dead-on observations about the world which were stated in crude dialect. This caused much criticism in polite society when the book came out, and “Catcher” was stereotyped as "evil" and "insignificant" by many of the common ("phony") book reviewers of the time. Even serial killers were caught with the book on them. Mark Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon, was found with a copy of the book in his pocket after the crime. As you can imagine this didn't help Salinger’s situation at all. Evil was personified in the eyes of some readers by the book’s main character, Holden himself, and in the 1940s people reacted to the novel as a whole just as they reacted to the novel’s protagonist. Holden was considered a rebellious, ungrateful, disrespectful teenager that seemed to represent a growing  worldwide epidemic. But if you can see past the narrow-minded views of the psychologically uneducated ignorant majority of the reading public in the 1940s, you will realize that this book was--and is--an expression and testament of the experience of adolescence itself and that the fictional character Holden Caulfield became a spokesperson for many angry, alienated, disillusioned frustrated, and rebellious teenagers and has been ever since. The book shows that Holden, although seemingly a rough-edged sarcastic, nasty, and unlikable guy, is really a person much like anyone else, a young man who is just trying to save his own sense of justice and innocence.                                                                                                           One thing that made “Catcher” particularly enjoyable to me was the style in which Salinger presented Holden’s monologue. Holden’s “voice” has stayed with me ever after and even when writing my memoirs now at 75 years old I still find myself tempted to lapse into Holdenese. It’s so damned funny! I admit, this book is definitely not an English teacher's dream when it comes to grammar, sentence structure, etc. But the dialect, often quite risqué even by today's standards, conveys a feeling of reality that is not obtainable by any other literary device I know. Holden's sarcasm, humorous attitude, and flat out bluntness has me laughing page after page every time I read it.                                                                                                                  This line, chosen at random, demonstrates Holden's attitude and his particular voice:  "You should've seen the way they said “Hello”. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other  in twenty years. You'd have thought they'd taken baths in the same bathtub or something when they were little kids. Old buddyroos. It was nauseating. The funny part was, they probably met each other just once, at some phony party. Finally, when they were all done slobbering around, old Sally introduced me."                                                                                                  There are several moments when Holden, narrating his story in the first person, mentions offhandedly that he recalled a time not long ago when he began to cry uncontrollably --he didn't know why--and that he just felt like dying, like killing himself--and then suddenly these disturbing thoughts and feelings just vanished and instead, he felt elated, invigorated with pulsing new bursts of energy. This almost phenomenological account of his bi-polar mood swings rings remarkably true as we read this now, but what writers wrote about this stuff with such honesty then in 1951? Who tackled these issues, and in such a manner, even a decade later?                                                                                                                                                 So why is A Catcher in the Rye a great novel? I think what makes a novel really great is its ability to communicate subtly with the reader’s deepest emotions, desires, and fears, whether these are conscious or unconscious. The reason this novel still has such a universal and irresistible appeal especially to Young Adult readers and impacts our unconscious minds and feelings today just as much as it did when it was originally published in 1951 is because it gives a voice to that inarticulate wounded brooding silent and/or silenced despairing yet still hopeful contradictory inner adolescent inside all of us.  Others have written more "shocking" books or have been more overtly anti-social, but with The Catcher In The Rye,  Salinger captured the bitterly confused and resentment-filled mind of a youth who hates the whole world, not because the world itself  is worth hating as such, but because he is so uncomfortable in himself, frustrated at his own impotence to change anything outside while his own bodymind is changing seemingly unpredictably and uncontrollably from within,  and at his inability to get along in the  ault world, expressed with such crisp language and astute, right-on, in-your-face observations that it shocks readers even today far more than any fantastical American Psycho movie ever could.                                                                                                                         When I first read Catcher in 1951, like millions of other teenage readers, I could identify completely with Holden’s squinting ascerbic attitude, as I did later in my freshman year at Duke in 1954 when I discovered and read Dostoevsky’s bizare portrayal of the alienated Underground Man who served as another spokesperson for my confused and mixed feelings of ressentiment, and then in the 1960s Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf another literary character became my spokesperson expressing for me views and feelings I hadn’t yet dared bring fully into my ego consciousness and own as my own.  Holden made me feel like there were other adolescents in this world who thought and felt much like as I did.  So perhaps I was so not unique, after all!!                                                          I was impressed with Holden as a teen who wasn't afraid to speak his mind.  He taught me that  even if you’re only 14 or 15, your criticisms of the world are often justified and valid. And in the end,  Holden made me feel a little less alone.            He was another “imaginary friend” I found I could add to my imaginary support system, my family of choice in a hostile untrustworthy world. 

Bob Dylan, spokesperson for our generation is now 73

         Bob Dylan’s career has lasted the better part of fifty years now. That’s pretty remarkable. What is more impressive is that Dylan has remained not only active for almost all of that period, but controversial. He has never repeated his successes. For better or for worse, Dylan has always pushed his work ahead. Bob Dylan is as great a songwriter – ah, let’s not beat around the bush – as great an artist as America has produced. But he’d be the first to tell you that he is part of a long line, one link in an endless chain. You can follow his influence backward or forward according to your own inclination.  Or you can spend a long time just listening to Dylan’s five decades of contributions. Wherever you go into it, and whatever you get out of it, your time will be well spent

      Dylan came from humble beginnings. Born in Duluth, Dylan aka Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born May 24, 1941 and raised in Hibbing, MN. As a child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock & roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school. After his graduation in 1959, Dylan began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre wove its way into his music. He spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.

        Dylan made his way to New York in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idol Guthrie in the hospital, where Guthrie was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following. 

       Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter,        he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist's role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan’s force was clearly evident during his height of popularity in the '60s.

      Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin' went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, "Mixed Up Confusion," at the end of 1962, but his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folkie. 

      Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul and Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul and Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folkie Joan Baez, Freewheelin' became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast.

         On July 29, 1966, Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, NY, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive -- he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia -- and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to record a number of demos.      For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings was intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double album The Basement Tapes.

During 1972, Dylan began his acting career by playing Alias in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in 1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his biggest hit since "Lay Lady Lay." The Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia contract before he moved to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum Records. As retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. 

        When Dylan returned with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969. Dylan followed his country inclinations on his next album, 1969's Nashville Skyline, which was recorded in Nashville  While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single "Lay Lady Lay," it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material.  

        Dylan's 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminating with 1975's Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians -- including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen Ginsberg -- Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a future film. During the tour, Desire was released to considerable acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts. 

         To commemorate thirty years since the release of Dylan's first Columbia album, a marathon tribute concert was held at New York's Madison Square Garden, with a galaxy of stars and voices from the past taking part. The cumulative effect of this tribute was staggering, revealing just how much truly great Dylan material there is to choose from all of his periods. A firm nucleus of the three surviving members of Booker T. & the MG's, plus G.E. Smith on guitar and Jim Keltner and Anton Fig on drums, anchors the bands, and most of the stars offer fresh slants on songs familiar and obscure. Among the more memorable interpretations are Richie Havens' moving "Just Like a Woman," completely within his style; the Clancy Brothers' fervent conversion of "When the Ship Comes In" to an Irish folk idiom; the swinging, countrified "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, and Rosanne Cash; and a sullen "Masters of War" by Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready on acoustic guitars. Lou Reed went through the bootlegs to come up with the pounding "Foot of Pride," which is perfectly suited to Reed's declamatory style. Eric Clapton delivered one of the most electrifying performances of his life in "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" -- each guitar lick and vocal cuts angrily to the bone -- and George Harrison makes his first U.S. concert appearance in 18 years with "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Dylan himself appeared at the end, wildly improvisational and harshly authentic in voice on "It's Alright, Ma" and "Girl of the North Country."