The Ballad of Rip Van Freaker

I was riding home from Woodstock
Tokin' on a spliff
When my psychedelic hippie van
Went flying over a cliff
Maybe it was the hand of God
That bent time in a wrinkle
I'd slept like a dog for forty years
A modern Rip Van Winkle
So I hitched a ride to the nearest town
To see what I had missed
And oh man what a bummer
2009 is this

TV is a picture hanging on the wall
Women dress like men
But the men don't care at all
Underwear is advertised
Where everyone can see
Gasoline is expensive
But pornography is free
Milk will give you cancer
Water is a snack
The cars are made of plastic
The president is black
The Chinese are our bankers
Ho Chi Minh's our friend
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The criminals go on talking tours
While preachers go to jail
They'll take your right to own a gun
But ammo's still for sale
A hunter needs a license
But an animal can sue
With the whole world turning upside down
What's a freakin man to do
The hippie thing is all messed up
A long hair just can't win
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The Russians fly our astronauts
To an international station
While the United States of America
Becomes a third world nation
Good men just can't find a job
While bad ones still get rich
Some things keep on keepin on
And Brother, that's a bitch
Designer drugs are legal
But reefer's still a sin
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

I wasn’t sure how it all went down
I was sure I didn’t care
We’d had it right in 69
And now we’re running scared?
I prepared to hide my love away
When a voice said, “No kid, Wait!
You can’t change their wicked ways
But you can infiltrate!”
That was all I had to hear
The Revolution is style
Before the next election
Put an R beside a smile
"What’s in a name?" a poet asked
When your heart comes marching in
Singing “Arlo Guthrie’s a Republican.”

It's too true.

This morning our favorite Texas cafe from the 50-60s opened a place two blocks from our house ... 25 mies from where we spent our formative years eating biscuits & gravy. It DOES come around. Len's point is well taken in many ways. It;s the same but scarier.

That's really good. You oughta record it...

Thanks Cheryl, but I don't think it would help. We live in a time bubble. I just came back from the neighborhood coffee shop after getting my flu shot. A local uke album was on the counter and I mentioned to the girl dishing up the joe that I was coming up to GB, Mass to see the 'slinger and family. She didn't know who he is. She didn't know what Alice's Restaurant is. Hippies are ancient history to her like the Rough Riders are to us except we know who they are and not only do they not know what they don't know, they don't know why they should care.

So... so what? Maybe nothing. Our generation took the social brunt for them. A volunteer army and mercenaries have fought their wars. They've not seen cities burn and they believe they are above racism, beyond sexism, without patriotism, and know everything there is to know about the web about which we can't possibly know anything because of course, they created it.

Little frikkers.... let's spend ALL the money, burn down the libraries, and melt all the vinyl and CDs except the Bay City Rollers before we move on. A bit of low burst EMP-rich burps over the Google server farms will do the rest.

That's how it happens, Shelley, "Like tears in the rain."

From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1594:

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Well bard me with a banjo

I think I can convince the girl at the counter you wrote that, Arlo. Now as to royalties...

Hey, Arlo learned the same stuff in high school we did. But he remembers it better that I do.

I'll never forget Mike & I went into a record store (well actually a cd store since they sell cd's now) a few yrs ago and a coupla teenage boys were looking at some Beatles cd's. One said to the other one that the Beatles were old peoples music. I told Mike, "The Beatles aren't old peoples music". Then again, the other day when seeing in the paper a list of what was going on at the local senior center, it gave the age you could join it. I am a yr & 1/2 away from being old enough to join the local seniors center. Scary lol...

Where else could you find a place that mentions The Bay City Rollers and quotes The Bard on the same thread? I mean....I mean.....I mean......there's more to like and love here all the time!

A Guthrie quoting Shakespeare? I've a feeling that in celery time, Shakespeare quotes Guthrie too.

And I'd like to propose a toast the the new Refolklican wing of the Republican party.

Cheers to the new breed Republicans... Refolkagains if you will!

Since the Dems would listen to Arlo or anybody else on the right side, maybe the Republicans will...

I dunno Cheryl.....that may be the plan.
But if they did listen and took it to heart.....and to mind, you may not know them afterwards.
In any event, ears are a much better learning tool than mouths are.

The folkslinger as Refolkican (or Refolkagain); I like it! As long as we're quoting the Bard of Avon, just be sure to keep this one in mind:

From Hamlet - Polonius to his son Laertes before his journey:

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."


mikey

Polonius is a 'tedious old fool'. Alan Moon was the only believable character in the Byrds of Paradise. The rest were method actors being true to their inner life and navel gazing. Dreadful. The actor portraying Alan was having fun playing guitar and watching girls.

He sure looked a lot like Arlo Guthrie. He must have done a lot of research for that role.

I think Alan Moon was a refolklican.
As far as researching the role, I think it's safe to say that Arlo did more research into that role than any other actor on the show did for theirs.An entire lifetime up to that point in fact.

Now we got Shakespeare and Byrds of Paradise morphed or compared in someway here too. This place gets more curious all the time.

By the way, my favorite Shakespeare character is Puck.........probably because I'm a hockey coach.

By the way-way, George W. Bush.......NOT a refolklican.