Those of us who experienced the 60s are proud, of course. It was a fast-paced decade in all facets of life, culture and music. What you missed, however, is not found in records and films available today. When it comes to music, we were part of what went on at the time and influenced the evolution of music during the decade. Imagine going to see Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, The We Five, and the Kingston Trio at a New York festival site and getting the chance to mingle and speak with them. Imagine going to Greenwich Village clubs and seeing folk artists up close and speaking with them in between sets. Imagine going to a Hot Tuna concert which started at 8:00 PM and finished at dawn the next day. If you stayed till the end and brought your guitar, you could sit on the stage and play with the band. Very few people were left in the auditorium at that time and we personally interacted with these artists. Imagine going to a David Bromberg concert at a Catskill Mountains venue and getting the chance to tell him you studied guitar under Ian Buchanan. "Let's see what he taught you" he said as he passed his guitar to me. I showed him and his bass guitarist began accompanying me as David Bromberg picked up his second guitar and joined in.
Please don't sell us short. We also appreciated great music; music that was being created at that moment in time. In our case, nostalgia did not drive our appreciation, our pure appreciation, of music of the 1960s.