This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

The subject is trivial; the principle important. As YouTube was running in the background of my life, while distracted, a video began to play extolling the greatness of Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere and the Raiders rock and roll band! Sure, you remember? Well, probably not. But the video told us how many times they appeared on TV (720) while the Beatles only appeared on a few Ed Sullivan shows. Proof! The 60s musical horizons were only limited to Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Beatles. I’m here to tell you, it’s not true. I was there; I’ll prove it. In 1966, the Beatles released the “Revolver” album. For 500 points and control of the board, and a new septic tank truck, what legendary album did Paul Revere and the Raiders release in 1966? Exactly.

It’s fake history and it can’t be allowed to flourish. Paul Revere and the boys were an AM radio pop band. Think- modern boy band. Something sweet and palatable for an older generation. Aren’t they cute in their little tri corner hats? I was around ten years old and in the prime demographic for those boys, and I thought, that’s the corniest thing I ever seen in my ten tender years. Knee breeches and swinging their guitars around the way the surf bands used to do while wearing those stupid hats. They sold a lot of records to little kids who saw them on TV and didn’t know any better. Until a big brother or sister wised them up. (See: Almost Famous)

Most of the band’s famous TV performances were affiliated with Dick Clark. Dick was famous for hosting the “American Bandstand” dance program. Huge in the 50s, big in the 60s, but dying. Dick with his clean-cut image, had become incongruous with the new bands. So Dick branched out with a series of “we’re still cool” dance programs. Many hosted by Paul Revere and the Raiders as the house band. Never in my life have I known someone to say to me, “I sure do miss Paul Revere and the Raiders.” They were the house band for Dick Clark Productions. Quick! Which band had more number one hits? Paul Revere and the Raiders or Pink Floyd?

See? Cool versus pseudo-cool. Cool, if we play it long enough and persistently enough, you’ll learn to love it! A big company thought the best way to generate good rock and roll music was to sell it like pimple cream and let your parents pick it out. Corporate control teaching the younger generation to hear the sound of the swill stick hitting the side of the feed bucket, since Gramp’s days with Chuck Berry. No, no, you like Pat Boone! And Frankie Avalon, and of course, Rickey Nelson. Just because Eisenhower is gone, doesn’t mean that you have to wake up! Sleep, sleep!

Brought to you by “Stridex” The favorite pimple cream of cool kids and pretty girls everywhere! Don’t forget to get a haircut and register for the draft, kid! You see, the confluence was coming. The dance party platform of clean-cut kids dancing on a beach didn’t jibe with what was going on all around them. Until it became meaningless. The generation that had grown up on television turned their back on it. On television, everything was “groovy.” Once I heard that word used in a television ad, I swore never to say it again. Once it had passed through corporate lips, the word had become dead to me. The quickest way to become uncool was to pretend that you were cool, and one of US with a phony patter and a “groovy” vocabulary.

Rather than tell the truth or at least take an honest look, television instead ignored the issues of the day. Come on! Dance! Dance! Dance! For tomorrow, you might be drafted and forced to go to war. The star of the Flipper TV show didn’t have to go because he was a TV star. A poor black kid from Selma, Alabama, probably had to go in his place. Few would even dared to mention it.

Just how liberal are you? Are you willing to give up a privilege, even if it might come back to hurt you? Go to school, any school, or go into the Army. Let the poor kids go to war. It wasn’t just Donald Trump dodging the draft; you know. What’s your doctor’s name? Bone spurs! Huh? I never thought of that! I guess I’ll have to go see Niagara Falls and not come back for a while. Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much, but the issues were so real. My buddy got into the Air National Guard; my other buddy’s brother stepped on a landmine.

Maybe now, you understand my anger and resentment. Paul Revere and the Raiders dancing and singing in their fringed tri-cornered hats on network TV. Simple, smiling and fraudulent. A corporate minstrel show designed to distract the youth and sell product. “Hey, never mind kids!  A couple hundred dead American boys every week.” Let’s all dance and try to forget about it!

The band represented to me the fraudulent nature of American 60s television. The sicky sweet persona of happy music! Blemish-free children living in a middle-class paradise. Dance kids! Consume! Don’t think! Don’t question! Everything is great! But it’s like Woody said, America has lots of parts and some of them are ugly parts, and some are pretty parts. You can’t just look at the ugly parts and complain or look at the pretty parts and gush. You have to see both parts and try to improve them. They tried to tell Woody what kind of songs he could sing on his radio show, and he quit. Do you see the difference? Woody needed the paycheck just as badly as the Raiders did. But Woody walked away from a million dollars. Back when a million dollars was a lot of money, before allowing himself to be muzzled. A product, versus a corporate product.  A President versus a corporate president. See the difference?

“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed. And who try to make slaves of all of us. And they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare. And without their music and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we’d not have any opposite to compare music with — and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we’d never know its speed, its power….”
― Woody Guthrie