History of Rock Exam 2 - Militant Blues on Campus

Johnny Winter

- Blues - "130 pound cross-eyed albino with long fleecy hair" - influential in blues with his guitar and sound

Levitating the Pentagon

- 150,000 protesters, 647 arrested

Woodstrock

- Bethel, NY, August 15th-18th 1969 - signified coming together - people didn't want to go to Vietnam, didn't like Nixon

Jimi Hendrix

- Born in Seattle - 1966 - forms the Experience (band) - held his guitar upside down - The Experience surfaces a violent streak, the spontaneous and impulsive violence of the young - performed star spangled banner at woodstock

Allman Brothers

- Duane and Greg (brothers) - originally called "hourglass" - blues & southern rock

Cream

- Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce (Power Trio) - high-volume, jazz-tinged version of electric blues - "Rock is like a battery that must always go back to the blues to get recharged." - Clapton

Led Zeppelin

- Jimmy Paige, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham - Began as the New Yardbirds - Jimmy Paige was in the Yardbirds and did session work with Kinks, The Who, and Beatles?

Columbia University

- May 1968 - students lock themselves in buildings to protest the war - Police forcibly remove students from buildings and sympathizers as well - used violence - 698 arrested - 120 injured

Evolution of Psychedelic Blues

- Militant youths become more interested in hard-edged rock - turning away from hard-edged rock(?) and folk-based - music becomes angrier - returns more to blues roots - becomes focused on the idea of guitar heroes

Vietnam & Campud Unrest

- While race riots swept across America, college students were protesting - had to go to draft if not in college - people burned draft cards - universities become ground zero for protests

Deep Purple

- began as a pop band - guitarist Ritchie Blackmore steers band to their trademark sound

Altamont Speedway Festival

- concert - stabbed and killed black Berkley student - 4 drug overdoses - 300k people show up - not peaceful

Janis Joplin

- from Port Arthur, Texas - Moved to San Francisco with Chet Helms and joined "Big Brother and the Holding Company" - deeply influenced by the blues

1968

- half a million troops sent to Vietnam - protests become more violent and serious

Born to be Wild - Steppenwolf

- heavy metal - becomes theme song to move Easyrider

Credence Clearwater Revival

- mixed chicago electric blues, early rockabilly, and Psychedelia (later called swamp music) - southern sound influenced by Muddy Waters, Elvis, Carl Perkins - Also wrote a lot of war songs

Kent State University (Ohio)

- on 3rd day of protests - National guardsmen fired into crowd of protestors - 4 dead, 10 injured - after this, more than 200 universities shut down for at least one day many for the rest of the year - Kent State Guardsmen were never arrested, picked up, questioned or prosecuted

Black Sabbath

- originally "Earth" - number of anti-war songs - lots of religious imagery - guitar player is missing tip of his finger

Chicago

- protests - Mayor Richard Daly activated 6k national guards, 6k federal guards with bazookas, guns, barbed wire - hippies and students were radicalized

More protests

- protests spread to other campuses - National Students Organization reported 40k students with 221 protests, 101 colleges and universities - Democratic National Convention, Chicago protests

Berkley

- students tried to remove a chain-linked fence - governor Ronald Reagan activated 2l national guards and gases students from helicopter - 1 dead, 30 wounded, 800 arrested (with shotguns)