“May 1968 – Vive la Révolution” copyright 2018 00individual TLL
EXPERIENCE the HISTORICAL HEIGHT of POP and ROCK and PSYCHEDELIC CULTURE!
and the Year that Shattered American and World History
MAY 1968!
May 1968 belongs to the phenomenal world-wide impact and domino effect of the
French student protests. Dates highlighted in bold:
Happenings:
May 2 Student protests in France over out-dated universities and lack of employment for graduates led the administrators of the Paris University at Nanterre to temporarily shut down the educational institution. Instead of quelling the demonstrations, the act led to more protests and the calling of riot police by the university
May 3 A group of 500 students at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, protested against the closure of Paris University at Nanterre and the proposed expulsion of some students. Police arrived to disperse the protesters, and “the first riot of mai 68 ensued” and led to riots and university closures across the country.
May 3 The first heart transplant in the United Kingdom was performed by Dr. Donald Ross and a team of surgeons at the National Heart Hospital in London. The patient, Frederick West, would survive for 46 days until dying from complications of an infection.
May 6 More than 20,000 protesters marched towards the Sorbonne, and the police charged the crowd with batons. When some protesters created barricades and threw paving stones, the police respond with tear gas. Hundreds were arrested. A riot breaks out between police and more than 5,000 university students in Paris. Within a week workers throughout France are staging sympathy strikes, threatening the economy.
May 7 In Paris, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (UNEF), France’s largest student union, along with the union of university teachers, staged a march to protest against police actions at the Sorbonne.
May 10 The government of France issued an order prohibiting the state run ORTF from televising the student demonstrations in France, but ORTF radio correspondents were allowed to make live reports. The independent Radio Luxembourg sent its own journalists to France and kept them there despite harassment from the French police. Because of the live broadcasts, news of the rebellion spread from Paris to the rest of France and to media around the world.
At nightfall, college and high school students began erecting makeshift barricades to seal off the streets around the Latin Quarter of Paris and to keep the police from entering the area. The action was imitative of the history lessons taught about the barricades erected by the crowds of the Paris Commune in 1871 and by the French Resistance fighters against the German occupation in 1944.
May 11 French police stormed the Latin Quarter of Paris in order to clear away the demonstrators in a chaotic end to the “Night of the barricades” that called worldwide attention to the chaos in France.
May 11 A crowd of 30,000 students marched to the parliamentary building in Bonn, the capital of West Germany, where members of the Bundestag were going to vote on the “Emergency Laws” (Notstandgesetze) which would authorize the West German executive branch to suspend basic rights during a national crisis. The “Sternmarsch” would be unsuccessful in blocking the enactment of the emergency measure.
May 11 The psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft performed at The Fillmore in San Francisco . A recording of the event would be released 23 years later, in 1991
May 12 Reginald Dwight, who played the piano for the English R & B group Bluesology, chose the stage name that would make him famous while on an airplane flight back to London after his final concert with Bluesology in Edinburgh. After a discussion with his bandmates, Dwight chose to use the first names of saxophonist Elton Dean and lead vocalist John Baldry to coin the pseudonym Elton John.
May 13 In France, a one-day general strike was called by the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO) as organized labor groups walked off of their jobs as a show of support to striking students. Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced the release of prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne, but protests continued.
May 14 Workers at the Sud Aviation aircraft factory near Nantes followed the example of France’s university students and went on a sit-down strike, becoming “the very first of the French factories to go on strike” and setting a precedent that would soon spread to the Renault automobile factories, then to western France and eventually to the entire nation.
May 14 In Tokyo, Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial Company (now Panasonic) introduced what was, at the time, the world’s smallest television set. The tiny device, “so small it can be slipped into a coat pocket”, had a 1 1⁄2 inch (3.8 cm) screen and weighed 1 1/3 pounds (600 grams).
May 14 The Beatles announced the creation of Apple Records, a division of Apple Corps Ltd, at a press conference in New York City.
May 16 Two weeks after students in France had closed most of the nation’s universities with a student strike, employees seized control of the automobile factories owned by the nationalized Renault company, taking control at Boulogne-Billancourt, Rouen, Le Havre, Le Mans and Flins. Employees of Sud-Aviation, the state operated aircraft factory at Nantes, welded the factory gates shut. Workers struck two factories at Lyon, several newspapers in Paris, and shut down Orly, the Paris international airport.
May 17 The social revolt and labor unrest in France spread as the number of striking laborers reached 100,000 employees of dozens of factories. As the takeover continued, red flags were hoisted in and around Lyon over the Rhône-Poulenc chemical plant; ; the Berliet truck factory; and the Rhodiaceta textile factory. The airports at Orly and at Le Bourget remained closed.
May 17 Nine antiwar activists enter a Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland, remove nearly 400 files and burn them in the parking lot with homemade napalm.
May 17 In Paris, students, teachers and young workers gathered at the Arc de Triomphe to demand that criminal charges against arrested students be dropped and that the authorities reopen Nanterre and Sorbonne universities. The example of the Catonsville Nine (later convicted of destruction of government property and sentenced to jail terms between 24 and 42 months) spurs some 300 similar raids on draft boards over the next four years.
May 18 The two-week long Cannes Film Festival ended on its 9th day after members of the judges panel resigned in sympathy for striking French students and workers, and several hundred workers in the film industry seized control of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. An attempt to resume the festival was halted the next day when film technicians (including projectionists) refused to work, and directors of the films scheduled for performance refused to allow the screening.
May 18 The first Miami Pop Festival was staged at the Gulfstream Park horseracing track at Hallandale, Florida. The rock concert included The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Blue Cheer. Their return performances for the second day of the scheduled two day concert were rained out, but the success of the first event led to a larger second Miami Pop Festival that took place at the end of the year.
May 21 France’s President Charles de Gaulle exercised his constitutional power to grant amnesty for the leaders of the students who led the strike against French universities, but the number of French workers on strike increased to 8,000,000 as two million people walked off of their jobs during the day. Banks were closed as panicking depositors sought to withdraw their money, and the stock marked in Paris did not open for trading.
May 24 President Charles de Gaulle appeared on national television in France and made a plea to viewers for help in ending the strike by 10,000,000 workers and rioting in French cities. He announced a referendum for June and asked for voters to approve a grant of emergency power to force reforms and to halt the “roll to civil war”. “Frenchmen, French women,” he said, “you will deliver your verdict by a vote. In case your reply is ‘no’, it follows that I would no longer assume my functions.” [128] In the hours leading up to the speech, thousands of demonstrators, many from outside the city, were converging on the center of Paris, while riot police prepared to contain the violence.
May 25 The world’s 17th human heart transplant was performed at the Medical College of Virginia by Dr. David M. Hume and Dr. Richard Lower, but the hospital initially refused to disclose the name of the recipient or the donor, and an armed guard was kept on the floor where the patient was recovering. . Reporters soon learned from other sources that the recipient was a white man, Joseph G. Klett, and that the heart came from an African-American, Bruce O. Tucker, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury the day before the surgery and whose body was unclaimed; and then found the reason for the secrecy. William Tucker, the donor’s brother, brought a lawsuit on behalf of the family on grounds that the heart had been removed without consent and that Bruce was technically alive when he had been was taken off of life support. The suit, Tucker v. Lower would be “the first case to present the question of the ‘definition of death’ in the context of organ transplantation”. Four years to the day after Tucker’s death, a Virginia jury would become “the first anywhere to accept the new medical concept of brain death, the idea that a man is no longer living if his brain is dead.”
May 27 The government of France and representatives of its striking trade unions informally settled on the Grenelle agreements that would end the strike in return for a 35% increase in the minimum wage and an average increase of 10% in overall wages.
May 27 The Supreme Court rules 7-1 that burning a draft card is not an act of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
May 30 – The Beatles begin recording The White Album (officially titled, simply, The Beatles). Sessions would span over 4 months, ending on October 14.
Let’s Rock
May Album Releases:
May 1 Speedway Soundtrack – Elvis Presley
May 4 Just Because I’m a Woman – Dolly Parton
May 24 Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake – Small Faces
Live At Folsom Prison – Johnny Cash
Basic Blues Magoos – Blues Magoos
The Beat of the Brass – Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
La La Means I Love You – The Delfonics
The Papas & The Mamas – The Mamas & the Papas
Quicksilver Messenger Service – Quicksilver Messenger Service
The Tom Jones Fever Zone – Tom Jones
A Tramp Shining – Richard Harris – “Macarthur Park”
When MacArthur Park, sung by Richard Harris, first came out it became an easy target for ridicule, however coming a year after The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s and The Moody Blues’ Days Of Future Passed, this psychedelic swingin’ mind-bender quickly went from ridicule to a track that was held in high esteem,
00individual has always heard and felt this track as sincere and moving, never to be made fun of, as for some it was harder to admit to connecting to the depth of sincere heartbreaking emotion, which Richard Harris achieved and presented honestly and with no tongue-in-cheek attitude whatsoever, than to admit to experiencing a very dramatic and heartfelt portrayal via orchestration and word.
The fact that it was released during the height of the psychedelic period only added to the far-out aspects of the lyrics which simply, or complexly, convey the emotions within the break-up of a relationship.
Richard Harris’ debut solo album “A Tramp Shining” written, arranged and composed by the highly prolific Jimmy Webb (Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration.) reached #4 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums of 1968 – and – MacArthur Park reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 – the album and track were well-received and well-liked worldwide.
Richard Harris, was a great Irish actor, singer, theatrical producer, film director, and writer; known off camera for his rowdy and robust hard-drinking lifestyle he was loved by friends and fellow actors alike for his kind, considerate and gregarious ways. He was a man who lived life to it’s fullest – right up to the end as Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films.
MacArthur Park is a telling rarity; at nearly seven and a half minutes with lush orchestration, harpsichords and swingin’ ’60s interludes driven by dramatic symbolic psychedelic lyrics and imagery sung mostly in a spoken word style, it stands as a true example of the heights that Psychedelic Pop/Rock’s creativity, through overwhelming acceptance, would and could achieve.
“MacArthur Park” copyright 2014 00individual TLL
“MACARTHUR PARK”
Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo
I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
Birds like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers, by the trees
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo
(Short instrumental interlude)
There would be another song for me
For I will sing it
There would be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life, you’ll still be the one
I will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers through the sky
And after all the loves of my life
Oh, after all the loves of my life
I’ll be thinking of you – and wondering why
(Longer instrumental interlude)
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh noooooo, o-oh no-ooooo
“MacArthur Park II” copyright 2014 00individual TLL
(Created in Classic ’60’s Mad Men-era Painting Style.) Click on image for full-screen enjoyment!
US Top 20 Singles for the Week Ending May 18, 1968:
1 TIGHTEN UP – Archie Bell and the Drells (Atlantic)
2 MRS. ROBINSON – Simon and Garfunkel (Columbia)
3 HONEY – Bobby Goldsboro (United Artists)
4 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – Hugo Montenegro Orchestra & Chorus (RCA Victor)
5 A BEAUTIFUL MORNING – The Rascals (Atlantic)
6 COWBOYS TO GIRLS – The Intruders (Gamble)
7 LOVE IS ALL AROUND – The Troggs (Fontana)
8 THE UNICORN – The Irish Rovers (Decca)
9 YOUNG GIRL – The Union Gap Featuring Gary Puckett (Columbia)
10 DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOSE – Dionne Warwick (Scepter)
11 SHOO-BE-DOO-BE-DOO-DA-DAY – Stevie Wonder (Tamla)
12 CRY LIKE A BABY – The Box Tops (Mala)
13 TAKE TIME TO KNOW HER – Percy Sledge (Atlantic)
14 AIN’T NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (Tamla)
15 LADY MADONNA – The Beatles (Capitol)
16 SUMMERTIME BLUES – Blue Cheer (Philips)
17 I GOT THE FEELIN’ – James Brown and the Famous Flames (King)
18 FUNKY STREET – Arthur Conley (Atco)
19 MONY MONY – Tommy James and the Shondells (Roulette)
20 LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU – Spanky and Our Gang (Mercury)
May Movies:
May continues to make a juggernaut impact with a potent line up of classics:
May 2
The Odd Couple
Historic Classic Neil Simon, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon comedy.
May 15
The Devil’s Brigade
The Swimmer
Classic psychological mind-bender – a real acid trip.
At a neighborhood pool party Burt Lancaster’s character Ned realizes that there are a series of backyard swimming pools that could form a “river” back to his house, making it possible for him to “swim his way home” – and the journey trip begins . . .
Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm}
May 23
Prudence and the Pill
May 28
The Detective
May 29
Villa Rides
Wild in the Streets
The psychedelic classic of a Rock ‘n’ Roll 24 year old President who puts adults over thirty in LSD camps. Movie has the righteous cult-hit
“ The Shape Of Things To Come” by Max Frost and the Troopers!
.
After last month’s outer space excursion The Psychedelic Train lands back on Earth and is rip-roarin’ ‘n’ ready to continue cruisin’ the 1968 landscape.
“The Psychedelic Train Rip-Roarin’ ‘n’ Ready”. Copyright 2018 00individual TLL
Next stop June 1968!
.
1967 Archives
January . . . February . . . March . . . April . . . May . . . June
July . . . August . . . September . . . October . . . November
December
. . .
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