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By Tiffany Razzano
Denny Laine, former lead singer/guitarist of the Moody Blues and back-up Wing-man for Paul McCartney, went on first. He played Wings' Speed of Sound and Band on the Run, as well as what he called a "little, minor hit [he] had with the Moody Blues" called Go Now.
Next up was the anti-war protestor Country Joe McDonald. He kicked off his set with Entertainment is My Business, which called for the audience to clap along with it. When he didn't feel he was getting enough audience participation he said, "The people on the grass weren't clapping, probably because they were smoking some of it." This garnered a large cheer from the audience. He played a newer political song in which he sang about George W. Bush's Superman complex, singing, "We're going to send you back to Texas and make you work on your ranch."
He ended with his famous I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag. The audience knew every word and sang along. Every time he sang, "Whoopie, we're all gonna die," Wavy Gravy came out dressed in a Whoopie Cushion costume. And, not to be one to miss an opportunity to make a comment on the current state of the world, instead of singing "next stop is Vietnam," he replaced "Vietnam" with "Iran."
Before launching into one of her most famous songs, At Seventeen, she told the audience, "I'm feeling a tiny bit out of place. The sixties were an interesting era for women. We hadn't hit women's liberation yet. So I'm here to represent the depressing portion of the '60s." For her next song, she chose her other famous song, Society's Child, about an inter-racial couple.
She ended with a song that showed off her amazing sense of humor, Ode to Myself. She sang, "What the world needs is a lot more me." As she vigorously played the guitar, her strap broke and the guitar came crashing down. But she persevered; after a quick retuning, she finished the song to her well-deserved standing ovation.
Likewise, Canned Heat were bland as well on their first two numbers, On the Road Again and Goin' Up the Country, which are probably two of their most memorable songs. But they picked up the slack and got the crowd moving with their blues rock on Let's Work Together and You Gotta Boogie.
Rare Earth, a Motown recording artist, was up next. Their set was another standout for the day. They played Hey Big Brother, covers of The Temptations' Papa Was a Rolling Stone and Get Ready, as well as a truncated version of their first song with Motown, Celebrate.
Backed by her son and two daughters on vocals, and her son on guitar, she launched into a hippie anthem, Beautiful People. She also said she was amazed by the evening because "hippie was so long ago. So many brain cells are gone."
After playing the poppy hit Brand New Key, she played a newer song entitled Jammin' Alone. Then, after playing a fragment of I Don't Eat Animals, she decided to play Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma. She closed her set with her famous Woodstock song, Lay Down (Candles in the Rain). On her way off stage, true to her hippie nature, she and her children sang an acapella version of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance.
Mountain took to the stage for the last set up of the night, starting off with an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner, a la Jimi Hendrix, except he didn't need a full band to do it. The band was energetic, but they sounded more heavy metal than hippie and seemed musically out of place, despite the fact that some people in the audience did go crazy when they went on. Many audience members, however, took this as an opportunity to leave and beat the traffic.
Hippiefest was a welcomed event, and the prevailing hippie themes of peace, love and happiness are more than welcome in today's world.
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roves of old hippies, as well as some younger ones, turned up for the First Annual Hippiefest at the Brookhaven Amphitheater on August 13.
