I started writing this mid-tempo folk/blues tune after the election of 2016. I felt angry and disappointed with myself and my generation that had been radicalized and activated in the 60s and 70s around the war in Vietnam, civil rights, the police state, colonialism, environmental destruction. “Where are we now?” the song asks, when we need to speak out and stand up against the undoing of so much we thought we had accomplished back then. Can the generation brought up on protest, collective action, and the possibility of change re-emerge in response to the current threats to our democracy? I hope this moment can be an inspiration, a turning point, to re-engage in social action and the political process.
lyrics
A 60s Hippie’s Psychedelic Nightmare
Music and Lyrics: Barry Oreck (BMI)
I fell asleep in ‘76 sure we had it all fixed
but I awoke in 2016 in a horrifying dream
It was a dark psychedelic hippy nightmare
Doctor Doctor, I can’t get a grip
I’m coming down hard on a really bad trip
I saw a beautiful vision was it just hallucination
Now we gave it all away – my lost generation
It was a new world, we changed all the rules
A revolution, an earthquake, a bend in the tide of history
Sang our anthems of resistance,
howled Ginsburg’s poetry
Locked arms in front of tear gas in Nixon’s dark country
From our tepees in Taos. communes in Vermont,
draft offices on campuses and Oakland storefronts
Were we saving the nation or just on vacation?
Now who won and who lost, my lost generation?
It was a headlong experimental, multi-generational, cross-cultural, anti-establishment explosion of hope, fueled by dreams and dope,
Where all kinds of people demonstrate
to end all war, to love not hate
and never be afraid to agitate
Where are you now
my radical long-haired sister and brother?
Did we use up the fire, lose the desire
to stand up for one another?
When revolutionaries turn sedentary
Hippie stoners are suburban home owners
We dropped our daisies in the barrel of a gun
then walked away thinking we had won
America changed, but not like we expected
We let them rewrite history, get a racist fool elected
Can we step out of our homes and show up in person
or just post angry tweets as the situation worsens?
Has all of our outrage turned to surrender
or can we rise up together like we remember?
It seemed so simple then
Our fathers’ world was done, the road to justice won
Awakened to the earth and the people we’ve hurt
A social, political, musical rebirth
Where are you now
my radical long-haired sister and brother?
Can we get back the fire, find the desire
to fight for one another?
When revolutionaries turn sedentary
and hippy stoners are suburban homeowners
spent the rest of our lives looking out for number one
Where are you now, where are we now?
Can we find a little hope to change the world somehow?
Where are we now, where are we now?
The war was won but the battle was just begun
credits
from We Fit Together,
released May 1, 2020
Barry Oreck: guitar, vocal
Rima Fand: violin, vocal
Jesse Miller: guitar, vocal
Adam Armstrong: bass
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