# The Music Of The Love Generation



## RonPrice (Aug 23, 2005)

Late at night, after midnight and before I go to bed, I often watch the TV. It helps me turn my brain off, get into a somnambulant state. For me, TV has always been the best forms of meditation late at night after my mind has been active for many hours, usually about 16 during the day. Many practitioners of the diverse art of meditation emphasize that one of the main aims of this discipline is the achievement of a no effort attitude, of a remaining in the here and now, an avoiding of cognitive analysis, a stilling of the fluctuations of the mind, a relaxing of muscular tension. I achieve this watching TV, but only sometimes. 

From time to time there are ads by Time-Life Inc. for a set of CDs. Last night I watched the ad “Flower Power: Music of the Love Generation.” Those who watched the ad could buy 8 CDs, 164 hits, digitally remastered for $150 all up. As much as I had enjoyed the music of that generation of flower-power hits and during those years had bought many of the records from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, raising children on the salary of a teacher from about 1976/7 on made buying records too expensive. I had no intention of buying this package of music. On a disability pension in the early evening of my late adulthood, I was in no position to make this purchase. 

The short segments of a few seconds of songs from many artists-musicians-singers-songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s were stimulating, I must say. I was 15 in 1960 and 36 in 1980--the generation of the first of the baby-boomers, children born in and after 1945--the first of the rock-‘n-roll enthusiasts. Music was an integral part of my life in those years, although listening to music slipped back a few notches as I came to focus on: (a) career, family and community life and its responsibilities, (b) health and the quixotic tournament of issues in the wider society as well as (c) TV and radio programs and my life in the last years of early adulthood and middle age from the late-1970s until my retirement from FT, PT and casual/volunteer work in the years 1999 to 2005. Now in my early sixties I am rediscovering music in its many forms.-Ron Price with thanks to Time-Life Inc on WIN TV at 1 a.m., 15 July 2008.

Where did it all go all those
sounds beginning in the ‘50s
on that little blue radio in that
little bedroom in that little house 
in that little town in that little world 
that exploded all that small town 
smugness all its complacent trinity 
of Catholic, Protestant and Jew
and their genuine One True Faiths.

That world was so safe and so
familiar. Indians got creamed
at the movies on Saturdays, yes,
dying copiously amidst popcorn
and candy wrappers. Canadians
like me were always good guys
who did not start wars, were thrifty
and had virtuous sunlit wheatfields.

Ours was a good town; the Chamber
of Commerce told us in the newspaper.
I played baseball in the summer and
hockey in the winter and then a real
winter hit my life in my teens, the cold
was surrounded by music everywhere, 
but the music did not warm the winter
cold as it stripped my young tree with
its blasts from the north and the west.
The music was not large enough to house
my impulse to believe—a need which lay 
quiet, unhurried and insidious as a seed.

Ron Price
21 July 2008


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

'I am rediscovering music in its many forms'

superb journey!
try a little ofra haza and bix beiderbecke.

dj


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## Guest (Jul 29, 2008)

david johnson said:


> 'I am rediscovering music in its many forms'
> 
> superb journey!
> try a little ofra haza and bix beiderbecke.
> ...


Try some jazz from the 30-50s great stuff


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## Conservationist (Apr 5, 2007)

The love generation was crap, and its music was crap. Illusion always is crap. Ron Price wants to **** on the 1950s, but at least that time had a greater grasp of values that bring about beauty in reality. The love generation created the plastic hell we have now.

Death to the boomers, death in agony.


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## RonPrice (Aug 23, 2005)

*Thanks For An Honest Response*

Yes, Conservationist, as you say, "The love generation was crap." Indeed, paradoxically, I have to agree with you in relation to much of the product of the 60s generation, inspite of the sentiments in my first post in this thread. I have just written a prose-poem drawing on Bach's music and Wordsworth's poetry and I post it here anticipating your honesty, Conservationist, and perhaps the responses to others. In the meantime, I thank you for your responses, folks--and I wish you well from the Antipodes.-Ron Price, Tasmania 
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PRELUDE

For many years I have been interested in William Wordsworth's famous, but now little known, poem Prelude. This great--at least to some enthusiasts of belles-lettres--autobiographical poem, written over half a century, 1800 to 1850, played a role in the formation of my own autobiographical prose-poem. I have also had an interest in the concept of prelude and the role of this concept, this prelude, in the Baha'i teaching program, a concept, a term used by the then leader of the international Baha'i community in his letter of 18 July 1953.(1)

The first use of the term prelude in keyboard music goes back to the late Renaissance. These preludes were free improvisations and they served as introductions to larger and more complex pieces of music. Johann Sebastian Bach(1685-1750) wrote many preludes which were paired with fugues.(2) Fugues were written for voices or instruments in contrasting modulated keys. These fugues, a difficult term to define, had a series of musical sequences that lead successively in imitation of each other. When all the voices and their melodies were over an episode of connective musical tissue was added that lead to another series of entries and episodes in the fugue.

Bach's two books of preludes, his famous the *Well-Tempered Clavi*er, are regarded as one of the world's great intellectual treasures. They were composed in two books: one from the years 1708-1722 and a second completed in 1744.2 The charming elegance of his preludes belies the difficulty of their mastery. I like to see Bach's life and his preludes as a prelude to the life of Shaykh Ahmad(1743-1826), the great precursor whose life was but a prelude, to the Revelation of the Báb(1844-1850). -Ron Price with thanks to 1Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: Messages to America: 1947-1957, Wilmette, 1965, p.117; and an internet site on Bach's the Well-Tempered Clavier, 19 September 2008.

And those wondrous Brandenburg concertos,
a collection of six instrumental works composed 
in the years 1708 to 1721 are widely regarded as 
among the finest musical Baroque compositions.

I remember one of my philosophy professors back 
in 1963 mentioning them--written with those preludes
and with Bach's production of some twenty children
before he died 100 years to the month before that 
martyrdom of the Báb in the city of Shiraz in 1850.
Yes, all those preludes and fugues,1 some gloomy, 
some dismal, some reflective, some happy, but all 
thought-provoking, played with feeling and emotion,
very agreeable to the ear, demanding attention and
admiration on many levels, not boring or predictable
then or now for millions of humans over 260++ years.

Preludes before preludes before yet more preludes, 
before the greatest of preludes, which could take 
almost any form, but in the same key as the fugue 
and as a preparation for the listener's ear and mind 
for what was to follow-an exposition and endless 
repetitions with their connective tissue eventually 
leading to a mass conversion as a result of a chain
of events, momentous, catastrophic in nature and
deranging the world's equilibrium, reinforcing 
the numerical strength of the Force I have been 
associated with for fifty years since the Kingdom 
of God on Earth began its slow prelude period---
unobtrusive, seductive and insinuating itself into
the sad-harrowed-up hearts and souls of humanity.

1 J. S. Bach's Preludes & Fugues: Books 1 & 2. Each book was composed of two sets of 24 Preludes & Fugues.

Ron Price
20 September 2008


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