HAIR
Hair is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the 1960’s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical’s profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. After an Off-Broadway debut in October 1967 at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and a subsequent run in a midtown discothèque space, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances. (More from Wikipedia)
I didn’t really remember the Dead Hippie performance on New Wave Theatre that well (that’s what 30 years will do to you); it turned out to be “Blue Red and White” – as with the song in the Broadway musical Hair, “Don’t Put it Down” that also scrambled “red, white and blue”, it is a song about misplaced patriotism.
(July 2012)
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To some extent, the psychedelic movement in rock was winding down when Cheap Thrills came out in August 1968, or at least it was old news: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had come out the year before, “the Summer of Love” in San Francisco was also in 1967, and Hair opened on Broadway in late 1967. There was even a mock funeral for “The Death of the Hippie” in San Francisco in October 1967.
(February 2014)
