Welcome to Team DFH's Freaky Friday weekly music series.
Because Team DFH operates more or less like a herd of cats, we’re here at roughly 9PM Eastern, every week. So take off your shoes, plop down on that beanbag chair over there, let your hair down, maybe light up a fattie, and get some groovy on.
Yeah, so what's so freaky about it?
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Back in 2005 or so, Johnny Depp wrote a piece for Rolling Stone entitled A Pair of Deviant Bookends about some of his experiences and friendship with then-recently passed Hunter S. Thompson. I remember it sparked quite a conversation among a few of my cyber Depp Head friends. The piece is a fun read, but be forewarned, Johnny should really stick to acting, well, and rock 'n' roll. Just sayin'. Anyway, this little cluster of folks pretty much determined that we had all had some experience of being considered "different" or odd. Some of us were more proud of that fact than others, heh, but the convo did get pretty lively. I learned some cool things about my friends that day. Each one unique. Mostly, to cherish the good times right then and there when you're in them.
There are endless other moments and experiences that I was fortunate enough to have gone through with Hunter, far too many to write about at this time. I cherish the seconds and milliseconds I shared with him. I was well aware that it was all going to happen only once in a lifetime. These were fantastic experiences. Some of the best moments of my life were happening to me and, luckily, I knew it. ~JD
Laurie Anderson, From The Air lyrics
I don't exactly remember how we first came up with the title for this series, Freaky Friday, but it still fits, especially coming from our rag tag parent DK group, Team DFH. The term “Freak” in the 60’s, and beyond of course, well, it was used as a term of endearment… in my circles anyway. :-) Hey look, it even says so in the dictionary, lol.
hippie a member of a counterculture that began appearing in the early 1960s, which expressed a moral rejection of the established society. Derived from the word hip, meaning roughly “in the know,” or “aware.” Numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word. One of the most credible involves the beatniks, who abandoned North Beach, San Francisco, to flee commercialism in the early 1960s. Many of them moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they were idolized and emulated by the young University of San Francisco students in the neighborhood. The beats (the hip people) started calling these students “hippies,” or younger versions of themselves. Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term. Most often, we called ourselves freaks or heads. Not until later did we begin calling ourselves hippies, and by then we were "aging hippies." An alternate spelling seldom used by people in the know was “hippy.” (See: freak and head)
… and ...
freak a self-denigrating term used by hippies to describe themselves. Early on, the hippie counterculture was characterized as “a freak of society” by the straight culture, so, in defiance, hippies adopt the word freak and used it themselves. In some uses, it was spelled “freek.” During the hippie era, most hippies did not refer to themselves as hippies; we often called ourselves freaks. Hippie is what everyone else called us.
Hey, speaking of beatniks, how bout this cool find?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, age 88, interviewed by Democracy Now with Amy Goodman 2007 talks about Kerouac, and other musings.
Okay, where was I? Oh right, freaks. Of course, it was one of those words originally intended as a slur that the slurees turned on its head, kinda like “dirty f*kin hippie”. It became an all inclusive term that covered a whole variety of sorts: hippies, artists/musicians, Dead heads, dopers, protesters, all kinds of non-conformists and so on. For me, it was an important identifier among my teen-age Friday Night Peace Group, though I was reminded some years later by one of those friends: "Hey! We weren't 'hippies'! We were peace activists !! Dammit!!" Indeed, my friend, that we were.
All these features and quirks were woven throughout the counter-culture of an era that launched a generation (great article). It was a mish mash to be sure. What brought it all together was the music. And, ideals of Peace... and Love.
So c'mon and let your freak flag fly...
I'll start us off with this classic from Jimi Hendrix,
If 6 Was 9 (lyrics link)
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Donovan, (what's not to love about Donovan?!)
Barabajagal (lyrics link)
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A lesser known tune by Joan Armatrading and a bit silly but, man, I love this song!
Eatin' the Bear (this one's for OPOL...) (lyrics link)
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And 'just cuz' ... I'll leave you with this one.
Da Da Da. (lyrics link)
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Bring some tunes, whatever you got! Feel free to comment with just a song-link and your thoughts, or try for the embed, for however long that works for us. Either way, we're just chillin' here, so c'mon and join in.
Here's HOW: To add vids in comments: Click on "share"; then the "embed" button; change the size of the video graphic too, so when it posts, it is smaller. Use 300pixels in the custom parameters (last one on the right) under the embed code. {h/t joanneleon}