The sixties were a turbulent decade, and their turbulence was reflected, if nowhere else, in their music. It was like you just couldn't walk into a coffee house in the Village or even Roseland Dance City any more, listen to Sly (Dance to the Music) or like the Byrds (Hey Mr. Tangerine Man) and not walk out without some sort of ideology or a big fat lump in your throat. Bo Diddley was passe; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper were, respectively, dead; Cream was strictly for Anglophiles; you were growing up--bye, bye Ms. American pie--you needed consciousness, man, Albert Shanker had taken over the nation's schools; now his half-brother Ravi was sitaring his way up the music charts. So when they dispatched 400,000 of us up to Yasgur's farm, we went. So what if we were only 12? Sly was going to be there, man. Hendrix (RIP). And Country Joe and the Fish, man. The Fish, did you hear me? Dylan couldn't come only because he was recuperating from his (and the world's) accident, so he sent Baez! The next best thing!! So in that crazy, turbulent sea of mud and peace and love, all the goals of the French Revolution were finally realized, and the sixties could then die in peace (and love). Or so everybody thought...Because--you guessed it again!!--ha, ha, the sixties are back! And I'm not just talking about some vain attempt to stage just another Wood-stock; no, such efforts have been doomed to failure from the outset--look what happened in the early '70s, for instance. You just couldn't get the groups, so you had to settle for poor tonality and a lot of onstage internecine politicking and back-stabbing. (See photo) Warren and the Burgers, and all that. But this weekend, my friend, you need only hop into your car (and I hope it's a microbus with drapes and carpeting in the back) and head on out to the 2001 Center in Gill, Mass. ("2001," we may suppose, is as good a reminder as any that the next century will have its sixties, too--only 94 more years!!) I don't even have to tell you who's going to be holding forth at this Saturday's "Rock Festival." You know. Country Joe is going to be there. All right, so there aren't any fish any more, and Country Joe doesn't have any hair any more, and maybe no teeth either, but so what? Plus ca change and all that. Country Joe will be joined on the big stage by a whole bunch of people who would have been at Woodstock probably if they had made the right plane connections or something. You know who I'm talking about--Jonathan Edwards, Papa Johno Creach, Les Dudek, and Harry Chapin (oh, I forgot, he was driving a cab in '69). Anyway, Rubin Carter was granted a retrial (no thanks to you, I might add), so why don't the people go out to this May Day resurgence of peace and love and all that muddy stuff and celebrate? Who knows? Maybe it'll rain, or a baby will be born or something....