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(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction!

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posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:43 PM
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This month marks the 50th Anniversary of The Rolling Stones. Perhaps you're wondering what The Rolling Stones have to do with US Political Madness, and while they may directly relate - the Altamont incident seems to represent an era of US Political Madness - indirectly, it was The Rolling Stones who rocked my world when I was only about 14 years old and in many ways this band shaped my own world view.

When I was around 13 or 14 years old, maybe even just 12, but for the sake of expedience let’s say it was 1974 and I was around 13 or 14, my Mother took me to see an original play staged at New Mexico State University. The play was about a young man who was an heir to a soft porn magazine empire, and his struggles to find his own place in the world while navigating the disappointed parents who have their own expectations of him. There were these ritualized scenes where both his Father and Mother would constantly nag him, harping at this and carping at that. At one point, the young man sullenly walks to a stereo and opens the lid to the turntable and then reaches for an album - The Rolling Stones (Big Hits) High Tides and Green Grass - took the vinyl out of the sleeve and placed it on the turntable, then ever so gently he picked up the arm of the needle and tenderly set the needle on the spinning disc.

Within a second or so the yadda yadda yadda of nagging parents was suddenly drowned out by this sudden onslaught of a fuzzed out guitar riff and halfway through this riff a bass line joins in. Then piano and drums are added as the riff is repeated three more times before this voice - hardly the voice of an angel - begins singing "I can't get no satisfaction". I was floored. Riveted, I sat in my seat no longer aware of anything else that was going on other than this song as the earth moved under my feet and a large crevasse opened up and I was perched on the brink of a precipice staring down, down, down, into the dark, dark, dark, abyss.

When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination

I can't get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say
I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
\'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no


Useless information, indeed! The overwhelming sense of confusion, rage, betrayal, and ironically a bittersweet sense of satisfaction swam through my blood rushed head as I took in this song and it's lyrics. I had already begun to suspect, before hearing this song, that the world was not the bastion of innocence my Mother and others had presented it as.

When I'm watchin' my T.V.
And that man comes on to tell me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
I can't get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say




Allen Ludden was somewhat of a household name in 1974 and was the host of Password a daytime game show my Mother would watch religiously while sipping on her King George the IV cheap scotch whiskey. Ludden was married to Betty White who I knew as Sue Ann Nivens of the Mary Tyler Moore Show which was, in 1974, what informed me about "feminism", and supposedly Mary Tyler Moore's character represented the "feminist" ideal which seemed to me to be a woman who had a deep affection for a father figure male in Lou Grant, and would break down crying in the drop of a hat, threw really bad parties and was starkly contrasted by Sue Ann Nivens who represented ambition and that representation was of cruel, calculated man-eating shark. In 1974, before hearing, for the first time, The Rolling Stones - singing Satisfaction, no less - the useless information of TV, Radio, and Print was personified by Mary Tyler Moore, the young love of Love American Style -- Carol Brunette -- en.wikipedia.org... -- en.wikipedia.org... - (a spin off of Mary Tyler Moore) -- Bob Newhart -- Happy Days, and The Six Million Dollar Man.

It wasn't that I was unaware that 1974 was also the year that Richard Nixon became the first United States President to ever ever resign his Office. It's just that Nixon's shenanigans only served as an appropriate back-drop where cynicism begged my alliance as I watched The Watergate Scandals unfold. It only made sense that a President of the United States would resign and all the feigned shock, dismay and hand-wringing done by all those grown-ups, and even though I am only 14 years old, I could see that for what it was, which was what I suspected their shock and dismay was not because a President broke the law - that was expected - the shock and dismay was really from a full awareness that this indecency of corruption and of the highest office of abuse was expected. It seemed to me, as a dumb-ass teenager, that if you go and elect a guy you call "Tricky Dick" then it only makes sense that with all the prescience of hind-sight that when that elected President broke the law while in office that compelled him to become the first U.S. President to resign his office, it was expected.

My mother, after watching on television all about Richard M. Nixon resign his office, experienced another pang of a broken-heart as she realized my father wasn't around for her to gloat about voting better than he did. My Mother insisted that this was the first really serious fight they ever had. Who to vote for in the 1960 Presidential election. She voted for Kennedy and my father, back then - who the hell knows where he was back in 1974 - voted for Nixon. My glum soaked Mother couldn't gloat over Nixon's resignation because my absentee father wasn't around for her to rub in his clearly bad choice of President. It was really just a bunch of nonsense and I was definitely seeing the stark contrast between the "rock n roll" world of The Carpenters, or Neil Diamond that film and television called "rock n roll" and then there was the rock n roll of The Rolling Stones who were speaking an emotional language I fully got. That song spoke to me and so I took my allowance and went and bought (Big Hits) High Tides and Green Grass.

As Tears Go By

Continued...



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:44 PM
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Songs, such as As Tears Go By - The Last Time and the petulant assurance of Time is on My Side rang with pears of truths laced with bad boy arrogance that felt just exactly the same way I felt even before hearing these songs, and while Nixon resigns the bumbling nature perceived of Vice President Gerald Ford pardons the recalcitrant shamed former President Nixon and life goes on. The jagged guitar riff and edgy sound of 19th Nervous Breakdown and Heart of Stone began Side B of the compilation record, but it was the "stop bugging me post teenage" Get off of My Cloud that spoke to me on the same level of Satisfaction.

This was my reality in late '74 - '75. By January of '75, Mitchell, Halderman, and Erlichman are found guilty of covering up Watergate, but this was to be expected. Thy mystical era of an American Camelot was building its fuzzy mythology even while the country licked its wounds from the shame of Tricky Dick Nixon. I had bought next yet another compilation record of The Rolling Stones Hot Rocks which came with many of the same on High Tides and Green Grass but also had Painted Black that accurately described a big part of my world view in early 1975.

I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and it has been painted black
Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black




Saigon was just about to fall and I was just discovering the music of the Stones darkly echoed my reality. The gee whiz can do American cowboy image of John Wayne in The Green Beret was turning out to be a horror story not yet told in film and television. Robert Downey Jr.'s father Robert Downey Sr. had directed the film version of David Rabe's stage play Sticks and Bones that dealt with a blind Vietnam Veteran who was struggling to come to terms with his actions in that conflict, in 1972, and off Broadway Mark Meddof's When You Coming Back Red Ryder? centered around a troubled Vietnam vet who deliriously holds a handful of small town locals hostage in a roadside diner in New Mexico, but the reverent documentation of the tragedy of the Vietnam Conflict had not yet truly begun. Even so, it was clear that there were more dark secrets of a government rapidly expanding its military industrial complex than just the Watergate scandal unfolding, while little Patty Hearst toted guns posing for the SLA.

It was also around this time somewhere in 1975 that I suddenly realized that Not Fade Away was actually a cover of Buddy Holly's hit with The Crickets. Shortly after that, like being hit with Maxwell's Silver Hammer down upon my head I began making the connections of the lyrics to American Pie:

But, February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep - I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died


A soulful lamentation of the current state of Rock n Roll composed and sung by Don Mclean after that fateful plane crash in the February that took the lives of The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and Buddy Holly and how now:

Now, for ten years we've been on our own and moss grows fat on a Rolling Stone, but...\
That's not how it used to be
When the Jester sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from
James Dean In a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the King was looking down the
Jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned - no verdict was returned
And, while Lenin read a book on Marx the quartet practiced in the park, and...
We sang dirges in the dark the day the music died




Cont..



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:45 PM
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Mclean seems to be referencing a dark moment in Rock n Roll history that morosely punctuated the end of any promise - as pretentious as it was - that came with The Summer of Love and ushered in the danger and tragedy of Altamont

And, there we were, all in one place - a generation Lost in Space
With no time left to start again
So, come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick - Jack Flash sat on a Candlestick, 'cause...
Fire is the Devil's only friend
And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell could break that satan's spell
And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw...
Satan laughing with delight the day the music died


Innocence declared lost by a folk singer speaking to this lost paradise with emotional language that, just like the Stones speaks to my reality, while the song the Stones were playing when Hell's Angels killed some guy was Sympathy for the Devil that came with its own lyrics that spoke to US Political Madness:

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all It was you and me


Jack and Bobby taken from all the sycophants of idealized monarchies and a country still licking its wounds from the pragmatism of corruption and the Nixon era Kissingerian RealPolitk that paved the way for Machiavellian political theaters. This was the ongoing 1975 man, and the radicalized hippie protestors of the '60's had morphed into smaller more "pro-active" groups like the Weather Underground who bombed a U.S. Postal Service office in late January, Saigon falls in April, and by November, former Governor of California Ronald Regan has thrown his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination, running against President Ford, but it would be Jimmy Carter who would become the next President, a sort of collective hand washing of the whole Nixon fiasco by electing a man who would probably make a great neighbor, but this Peanut farmer hardly seemed cut out to handle the Office, but well before that I had continued to build my Rolling Stones record collection adding Sticky Fingers - to my Mothers great alarm due to the provocative cover - and the ever cool Wild Horses that came with a well known legend by the time I bought the record.



As I heard the story told, somewhere in the beginning of 1975, Mick Jagger's longtime lover Marianne Faithful was still hooked on junk at a time when Mick was making a go of staying clean. While on tour they got into a fight at the hotel room, and frustrated Mick stormed out and went to work. That night, during the concert, a roadie ran onto the stage to inform Mick that Marianne had OD'd and was being rushed to the hospital. Mick runs off stage to meet Marianne at the hospital as she is being rolled in on a gurney and sobbing he begs for her forgiveness imploring her to not leave him. In a drugged out stupor she reaches up towards Mick and mutters "Wild Horses couldn't drag me away".

The story is just a legend and Jagger discredits the story claiming that when that song was written the relationship with Marianne had been over for a while. Even so, its a cool story that fits right in with the glorification of sex, drugs and Rock n Roll.

Next I purchased Exile on Main Street soaking up all the Stones I could afford. As 1976 finally began and with a bang, Sarah Jane Moore haplessly tried to shoot the hapless President Ford and Jimmy Carter wins the Iowa Democratic Caucus and added to my Rolling Stones record collection was It's Only Rock n Roll which brought with a song that revealed a band maturing and as it had only been a few short years since I first heard Time is on My Side now I'm listening to the Stones sing:



Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face
Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste

Time waits for one, no favours has he
Time waits for one, and he wont wait for me, yeh


Yet I was still just a young Turk, a punk in high school hardly even past my "post teen age" years and somewhat disturbed to hear such tired surrender from what was - at least in my opinion - the greatest Rock n Roll band.

Continued...



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:46 PM
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By July of 1976 North and South Vietnam have The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and a whole lot of Americans were starting to ask just what the hell was the point of that whole stupid war anyway. Mid-July Jimmy Carter is nominated as the Democratic Presidential nominee to run against the shaky and unelected incumbency of President Gerald Ford with his rich fat cat Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. In my Rolling Stones record collection is now the recently released Black and Blue generally panned by the critics and sales slump for a band who it seems has peaked and is about to move past their glory years.

July 4th of that year was, of course, the nations Bicentenial, but I was just a dumb kid who was more enamored with the protests of angry Vietnam Vets who came home to a noticeable lack of parades that were noticeably lavished on the Veterans of World War II. After World War II, sailors came home and kissed pretty girls on the streets of New York City to last in iconographic eternity, but the Vietnam Vets came home to gob spitting hippies who called them "baby killers" and then were quickly forgotten. By this time as I was collecting the more recent releases of Stones records I was still going backwards and had added Let it Bleed which featured the most excellent songs Gimme Shelter and You Can't Always Get What You Want.



Of Gimme Shelter, Jagger would, years later, would say of the song: "Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense...That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that.", and the apocalypse did, for many, seem to be just a shot away. As Jimmy Carter soundly defeated Gerald Ford in November for the Office of the President, You Can't Always Get What You Want seemed an apropos theme song for 1976's approaching close.



In January of 1977 Gary Gilmore would hear his executioners song and face a firing squad for his crimes, and a few days later President Carter pardons all Vietnam draft evaders. Then in May, the same man who introduced The Rolling Stones singing You Can't Always Get What You Want airs his interview with Richard M Nixon, that would be famously known as The Nixon Frost Interviews. Life as a high school kid, though, also included watching Star Wars at least four times. Supposed Son of Sam killer David Berkowits is captured, and the King of Rock n Roll, Elvis Presley dies.

In Late September Fonzie of Happy Days finally jumped the shark and Rock n Roll is about to take a primal turn as The Sex Pistols release Never Mind the Bullocks Here Come the Sex Pistols, but The Rolling Stones won't go away and in 1977 released Love You Live.. While it seemed as if the Stones had seen their better days, 1978 marked a return to form for that band as they released yet another great album with Some Girls. Notably in this album, the Stones blatantly speak to the burgeoning gay movement with When the Whip Comes Down, while also reflecting on the American lifestyle with Shattered

All this chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter bout
Shmatta, shmatta, shmatta -- I can't give it away on 7th avenue
This towns been wearing tatters (shattered, shattered)
Work and work for love and sex
Aint you hungry for success, success, success, success
Does it matter? (shattered) does it matter? Im shattered. Shattered




Also in 1978 the United States Senate hearings are broadcast on American televisions for the first time. Ted Bundy the serial killer is captured. and the very next day The Hillside Strangler claims his tenth victim. In late November Harvey Milk is assasinated so that the killer's, Dan White attorneys could argue the infamous "Twinkie defense", and in December another serial killer, John Wayne Gacy is arrested.



Continued...



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:47 PM
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Did you hear about the Midnight Rambler?
He'll leave his footprints up and down your hall
Did you hear about the Midnight Rambler?
Did you see me make my midnight call

And if you catch the Midnight Rambler
I'll steal your mistress from under your nose
Well, go easy with your cold fandango
\I'll stick my knife right down your throat Baby, and it hurts!


While The Rolling Stones had released Midnight Rambler on their 1969 Let It Bleed album, and reportedly, some of the lyrics are straight out of Albert de Salvo's - who may or may not have been The Boston Strangler - confession in 1964, the song had an eerie timelessness what with Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, The Hillside Strangler, and John Wayne Gacy. It was 1978 and while I was a fresh faced punk in high school, the world out there was very clearly a cold dark place.

The Stones didn't release a record in 1979, my senior year in high school, and I had slowed down on the number of their records I would buy. After all, there was Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan, plenty of Romones records, The Clash's astounding double album London Calling, not to mention all the other "classic rock" bands I still had to add to my collection. Buffalo Springfield, Neal Young, Bob Dylan, Led Zepplin, Donovan, The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Byrds, Pink Floyd, Jimmi and Janis...

I suppose most of the year of 1979 was relatively quiet, US Politically Madness speaking. Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit in April of that year, a few months later Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT II making it superficially appear as if the apocalypse had been delayed a couple of years,. and the Walkman was put on the market in July. While I was a tad snobbish about cassette tapes, and most assuredly snobbish about eight-track tapes, I would, as a vinyl aficionado, tape my newly purchased records before carefully putting the vinyl back in its sleeve to be stored for a later taping when needed. I had surmised through experience that a record had about 15 or 16 pristine plays before the pops, cracks and hisses would begin to manifest, so I would tape my precious records to protect the integrity. The Walkman made me feel better about doing this.

Then, in early November, all hell broke loose on the US Political Madness front, and Iranian Hostage Crisis begins. Suddenly the Middle East is no longer just a distant land where Aladdin and Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves hailed from, it was this very real land, not so magical, where Americans didn't seem to be so popular. By early December eleven fans were killed in a rush of fanatics at a Who concert, but not to worry, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, and some magic still existed.

Then, in 1980, I now in college, Jimmy Carter, In January bails out The Chrysler Corporation after proclaiming a grain embargo against the USSR and that every chilly Cold War seemed to just keep going and going and going. I suppose this is why it mattered so much when a rag-tag team of U.S. hockey players - "Do you believe in miracles?" - beat the seasoned and seemingly unbeatable Soviet hockey team in the Winter Olympics of that year. This only made sourpuss Carter look worse than he already did, considering the unbearably stretched out Iranian hostage crisis, when he announced the U.S. would boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow. Carter seemed to miss the point of The Olympics and took a goodwill sporting event and used it for his own political ends.

It takes the U.S. until April to severe diplomatic relations with Iran as the American hostages remain hostages. Mt Saint Helen's erupts in May, killing 57 people, but the nation soon got over this tragedy as Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back hit theaters. On June first The Cable News Network (CNN) is officially launched, and Ted Koppel over at ABC is laying the foundation for Nightline as he counts the days that American's remained hostages over in Iran. This was in June, the very month that The Stones finally release Emotional Rescue



I didn't really know what to make of The Stones foray into disco. They had already played with that format before Emotional Rescue but this stuff was blatantly disco and...well, disco sucked. I could tolerate Donna Summer, mostly because of the hotness factor, but KC and the Sunshine Band? No thank you. What was happening to my trusted band - the greatest Rock n Roll band in the world - Those Rolling Stones?

Continued...



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:48 PM
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In July of 1980, shortly after Richard Prior burst into flames from a free-basing "accident", Ronald Regan secures the Republican nomination for President. In August, Carter, that most unpopular President, shows the nation just how much luster and allure had faded with the magic of the Kennedy's when he defeats Edward Kennedy - the ghost of Chappaquiddick forever haunting him - to secure the Democratic nomination and vie for a second term. In November Regan defeats the ineffectual Carter and becomes President of the United States.

I was too young to remember where I was when JFK was assassinated, but I clearly remember where I was when I head the news that John Lennon of The Beatles was killed. This was December 8th, the same day as my little Brothers birthday and the day before my Mothers birthday, and the final month of 1980.

In January of 1981, Ronald Regan accomplished what Jimmy Carter failed to do and negotiated, finally, the release of the American hostages in Iran. In July, The Wonderland Gang are brutally massacred, leaving behind more blood, as L.A. police officers would report, than the Helter Skelter of the Tate-La Bianca murders. Five days later, Sandra Day O'conner is nominated by President Regan and will ultimately become the first woman to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. In August, MTV hits the airwaves for the first time, just in time for the release of The Rolling Stones Tatoo You.

I don't know if I was so deeply tapped into the zeitgeist or what, but Tattoo You was the last Rolling Stone record to hit high on the charts, and just happened to be the last new release of a Rolling Stone record I would ever buy. It's not that I stopped buying Rolling Stones and sometime in the '90;'s I got over my snobbery about CD's (I used to think compact discs were for people who didn't know how to take care of their records) and replaced my existing collection on vinyl with CD's of the same Rolling Stones, but Tattoo You was the final newly released Rolling Stones record I ever bought.

By December of 1981 Mohammed Ali loses his last fight ever, as it turns out to be his last fight, and life in general seems to a life for losers as I try to navigate the college life and move on with my future. Listening to Tattoo You during this time, as well as their early works, struck me as interesting to hear Mick change his tune of braggadocio of female conquest and instead sing:

Don't need a whore I don't need no booze
Don't need a virgin priest
But I need someone I can cry to I need someone to protect
Making love and breaking hearts It is a game for youth
But I'm not waiting on a lady I'm just waiting on a friend




1982 was the year The Clash began their slow and painful disintegration as my interest in the Stones of that time continued to wane. The Clash had released Combat Rock which was their biggest selling album to date and would wind up touring with The Who performing in stadiums and becoming the very thing they had reviled in their beginnings, that dinosaur rock band playing arena rock. Meanwhile, Micheal Jackson Beat's It with his Thriller album and US Political Madness is relatively calm, same as 1883 where milestones such as Sally Ride becoming the first woman in space, Ronald Regan announces that GPS will be made available in the market for the public, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers release their first album. Oh yeah, The Stones release Undercover album is released.

The Stones were beginning to look very much like those dinosaurs punk rockers complained so much about. A corporatized band, The Stones were an institution. I guess this was my problem with them at this time and why I couldn't muster the willingness to spend hard earned money on records that my guess would pale up against their greatest. In 1983, I never would have predicted that The Stones would still be around today. They were old farts then! The calm of 83, and now most of '84 was slowly starting to agitate as The Nightstalker claimed his first victim, and Ronald Regan blithely cracked an imprudent joke during a sound check for a radio broadcast and said: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes".




posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:49 PM
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A few days after Regan's joke that bombed, John Delorean is understandably acquitted and whatever involvement he actually had with coc aine, that he had the audacity to design and put out on the market a well made car seemed to be is only true crime.



In 1984 the US Political Madness of the War on Drugs was now in its 23rd year, and that's just the Nixon initiated political campaign, the prohibition of drugs had happened years before 1971, but in 1984 Ronnie was in the White House and the First Lady was Nancy who was in full swing with her Just Say No Campaign geared at children to warn them of the dangers of illicit non-prescription drugs, but the psychiatric bible, the DSM III (Diagnostic Statistical Manual III) was already out and published, and had as one of its listings of mental disorders, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) had its insidious drug affect on children even before 1984 there was a consistent doubling of the rate of medicating children every 4 to 7 years!


Safer and Krager (1988) who analyzed the results of nine biannual surveys of Baltimore County’s public and private schools for 1971 to 1987 have reported the prevalence of medication treatment for hyperactivity/inattentiveness. Their findings indicated a consistent doubling of the rate of medication every 4 to 7 years. By 1987 the use of medication had risen from 1.07 to 5.96% of all public elementary school students, that is between one and two students per class. Methylphenidate increased from 40 to 93% of the medication prescribed indicating that while it had been a minor treatment approach in the 1960s, it had become a ‘dominant child mental health intervention’ in the US by the late 1980s. They also reported that medication treatment rates consistently peaked in the third grade and dropped throughout the primary school years. However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were increasing rates of stimulant drug treatment in secondary school students.


In February of 1984 New Internationalist Magazine published an article titled Mother's Little Helper addressing America's addiction to prescription drugs, as Nancy Regan and far too many zealots in America gleefully fought a "war on drugs".

What a drag it is getting old.

"Things are different today,"
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.




Regan's dumb ass joke that bombed didn't prevent him from smearing Walter Mondale to win a second term as President in November of 1984. Robert Gallo of the CDC announces to the world that he has found the cause of AIDS and the boogie man is called HIV. American's generally heaved a collective sigh of relief assuring themselves that George Orwell's gloomy predictions of a totalitarian world government was way off the mark while The United States federal government continued to expand their military industrial complex and erode the unalienable rights of people while disingenuously offering up civil rights as if they were a carrot on a string.

After the phenomenal success of Geldorf's (of the Boomtown Rats) and Stings (The Police) effort with Band Aid's "Do They Know it's Christmas", Geldorf joins forces with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones to put out We Are the World. Of course, The Stones weren't a part of either project and as Lester Bangs had once famously complained of The Stones in a review of "the heat's off, because it's all over, they really don't matter anymore or stand for anything... This is the first meaningless Rolling Stones album, and thank God" I had not cared much for Lester Bangs, mostly because he didn't seem to care much about The Stones but as I got older that quip from Bangs would stay with me and it was looking like the criticism was right on the money and even in 1985 the heat was well off of The Stones and they really didn't seem to stand for anything.

By March of 1985, the CDC approves blood testing for HIV, as "get tested" campaigns gear up for a huge propaganda machine but not to worry, Wrestlemania debuts at Madison Square Garden, all is well.

Cont



posted on Jul, 21 2012 @ 08:51 PM
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In late April of 1985, Coca-Cola outrages a nation when they do away with their long beloved recipe and start selling New Coke and Pepsi became the "choice of a new generation".



In late August, Richard Ramirez is captured putting an end to the terror that was The Nightstalker, but on Christmas Eve of that year David Lewis Rice, a zealous Christian, murders civil rights attorney Charles Goldmark and his wife because Lewis suspected they were Jewish and Communists.

1986 begins with a tragic bang as the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes into a gazillion bazillion bobazillion little pieces just 73 seconds after launching, killing all seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe who was a civilian chosen to participate in Regan's Teachers in Space Program. All other events of that year seem to be dwarfed by this tragedy...although The Rolling Stones do release Dirty Work.

In 1987 the nation frets about the physical health of President Regan as he undergoes prostrate surgery and in March Regan publicly acknowledges - to some degree - his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and in that same month the FDA approves the highly toxic chemo-therapy drug AZT to be used on highly fragile AIDS patients. In April, The US Department of Justice declares Kurt Waldheim an "undesirable alien" as ALF is experiencing a steady climb in the ratings.



As Star Trek: The Next Generation enjoys its premiere just a few weeks after its Black Monday as stock markets around the world crash together. The relationship between Mick Jagger and Kieth Richards had hit rock bottom at this point and Mick releases his second solo album Primitive Cool. The first solo effort was She's the Boss.

No sittin' down on your butt
The world don't owe you
No sittin' down in a rut
I wanna show you
Don't waste your energy
On makin' enemies Just take a deep breath
And work your way up




In December of 1987, Larry Flynt argues for free press, speech and liberty before The Supreme Court Hustler Magazine v. Falwell and in February of 1988 The SCOTUS agrees with Flynt. Ollie North finds fame and becomes an odd American hero after being indicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and in April Sonny Bono - the other half of Sonny and Cher and also the author of the most excellent song; The Beat Goes On - is elected Mayor of Palm Springs, California.

The beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da


In May of 1988, The Supreme Court rules, in California v. Greenwood that police don't need a search warrant to rummage around in peoples trash. In November of '88 George H.W. Bush is elected President.

In March of 1989 President Bush signs into legislation the banning of certain assault weapons and in September of that year he holds up a bag of coc aine he claims was easily bought to ensure Americans that this "war on drugs" was no where near an end. Oh yeah, and The Rolling Stones released Steel Wheels of which my little baby sister (in high school at this point) "turned me on" to a new band The Rolling Stones and this somehow brought an end to my interest and adoration of that band.

Today, I am over 50 years old, have watched The US move ever closer towards tyranny and The Rolling Stones are celebrating their 50th Anniversary, still alive and still kicking, but through this all the song that remains the same is that (I can't get no) satisfaction.




posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 09:35 AM
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Don't question why she needs to be so free
Shell tell you it's the only way to be
She just can't be chained
To a life where nothings gained
And nothings lost
At such a cost

There's no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Aint life unkind?

it's sometimes hard to decide whether or not we should just keep moving and never hold still - or if maybe gathering a little moss isn't actually a very lovely thing...

:-)

we keep moving Jean Paul - there is no other choice

I forgot - S&F




edit on 7/22/2012 by Spiramirabilis because: (no reason given)



posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 02:28 PM
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Saving for future reference elsewhere on my computer.

Jean........you are now officially The Man. I'll respond more when I have more time, I have a few pots in the fire right now, so I'll leave you a newer song the Stones have done.



Not to take any credit away from Mick, but I still believe Kieth has been the musical backbone of that group. Listen to his solo stuff vs Jagger's. Wicked As It Seems, Make No Mistake, Take It So Hard........

That, and I remember an interview from back in the early 80's, when there was a lot of infighting between Mick and Kieth, the press asked Kieth "What's all the bitching about? He said "You better ask the bitch"





posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 02:39 PM
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Great, now I'm gonna be posting Stones songs all day.






posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 02:46 PM
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posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 03:12 PM
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posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 03:21 PM
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Star and flagged for sure.

Life is a trip and I grew up on the Stones as my dad listened to classic rock(and still does). I am 33 born in 78 so I can relate to some of the later happenings in the op.

I look at it all as we have got to "keep on keeping on".

While my music tastes have moved on from classic rock to a little more of the heavy side I still like to jam out to the good old rock n roll tunes.

I sum up todays youth and society in the one little video. It is a little hard for you old farts
butt the lyrics pretty much sum it up for me.

Give it a listen.

www.youtube.com...


The actions of the folks in the video also speak alot about todays youth.

As I get older I often sit and stare at the stars reflecting on what the hell we have been through and what we are in for.

You are one of my favorite members

edit on 22-7-2012 by liejunkie01 because: (no reason given)


Ps: I forgot to add that I am not promoting drinking as in the video. I gave all of that up along time ago. To me it has more meaning than that. As in slaving for the man and working for the weekend. Just trying to have a hell of a time in this crazy life.
edit on 22-7-2012 by liejunkie01 because: (no reason given)

edit on 22-7-2012 by liejunkie01 because: edited the advertising part/there is not advertising in the link



posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 04:00 PM
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posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 04:05 PM
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By the time I'm done their entire catalog is going to be on your thread Jean.






posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 04:39 PM
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The first Stones song I remember hearing on the radio. WLS AM Chicago. I was hooked from then on.




posted on Jul, 22 2012 @ 04:48 PM
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The first album of theirs I bought. It had to have been the money from helping the local slumlord fix up his rentals. 14 maybe?






posted on Jul, 27 2012 @ 12:36 PM
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posted on Aug, 1 2012 @ 08:55 PM
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Just wanted to bump your thread JPZ.

I think you did a really good job writing it up and i think more people should read it.





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