Opens with Nature Boy and #garlic propagandist Gypsy Boots.

Some of the leads play out their hopes and dreams and are named after famous actors from Western films. Petit Touré is #EddieConstantine.

“Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized, and to make wickedness fearless”

– Plutarch, Moralia (1 A.D.)

Someone mentions getting sober.

“When I get myself – cleaned up and straightened out, I'm going down and get a ship and I'm going to wind up in South Sea islands. That's where I wanna go!”

It's December 6, 1969 and just like that, the 60s were over. It started out great, the West Coast edition of Woodstock. Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a 300.000 strong crowd and, of course, The Rolling Stones on the final leg of their US tour. And, of course too, Hells Angels armed with motorcycle chains, sawed-off pool cues and $500 worth of beer, hired to stop fans from climbing the stage. And not in the least due to its proximity to Frisco, lots of bad drugs mixing with that crowd.

“Well, The Rolling Stones tour of the United States is over. It wounded up with a free concert at the Altamont Speedway for more than 300,000 people. There were four births, four deaths and an awful lot of scuffles reported.”

– Stefan Ponek, KSN Radio

Even before a single note had come out of Mick's mouth, someone had punched him in the head. More scuffles, Grace Slick begs the audience to keep their bodies off each other unless they intend love. The Grateful Dead, regular deployers of peaceful Angels security, wisely forfeit their performance. The Stones open their set, the final set of the day. By then, the Angels are far into their $500 beer bounty, and the audience far out of their mind. Meredith Hunter, high on drugs, had brought a gun. And the Angels did what they were ordered to: stop anyone from getting close.

“I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”

– Muhammad Ali

R… ne répond plus is Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's exploring the airwaves. Some is clearly political. Radio Schwarzi Chatz (“Radio Black Cat”) and the feminist witches from Wellenhexe (”[radio] wave witch”) have important messages, unheard of in the mainstream media. Others broadcast in languages on the verge of extinction, so may that tongue survive in a world that – already forty years ago – was rapidly homogenising.

“This is called the comeback of reality.”

And then there are those, they're unnamed, who travel the land and across the borders with walkie-talkies – those too are radios, two-way – using their meandering frequencies to hold on to reality. It's all very elusive, but it's there. Maybe #radio is not dead. We just need to learn how to tune into that Enochian frequency again. It's real after all.

On May 1 – in Padstow, Cornwall – an ancient procession goes around town. How ancient, no one really knows. Locals may describe it as a pagan fertility rite but even their generational memory draws a blank and no living soul can put an age on it. Ancient is what is it, drawing from primitive recollections of maidens and the effigy of a horse. The horse, the 'Obby 'Oss, starts its procession on May Eve, when it rises from its death. Locals gather to sing the “Night Song” and overnight, Padstow is dressed in flowers and a maypole has risen.

“Unite and unite and let us all unite, For summer is a-come unto day, And whither we are going we will all unite, In the merry morning of May.”

– Padstow May Night Song (traditional)

Then the “Morning Song”. Two 'Osses appear, dancing their dance, who then eventually on the evening of May Day meet at the maypole where they die, to be risen again next year.

“Now fare you well and bid you all good cheer, For summer is acome unto day, We call no more unto your house before another year, In the merry morning of May.”

– Padstow May Day Song (traditional)

Alan Lomax's Oss Oss Wee Oss is probably the best known visual documentation of the Padstow 'Obby 'Oss festival. That it was filmed in 1953 doesn't matter; the ritual is circular, like the horses themselves and the eternal coming and going of the seasons.

There's something really peculiarly narrow-minded about the Dutch called “verzuiling”, “pillarisation”; society is split into vertical columns and depending on your background you join certain circles. You play soccer, join a trade union, or listen to the radio in a Catholic, Protestant, or social-democratic context. Deeply socialist, (for you American-styled liberals rather extremely) leftist, and seasoned with a generous dash of subversive underground ánd highbrow culture, Dutch radio and TV broadcaster VPRO belongs to the latter.

 

When VPRO radiomaker Bram van Splunteren came across Beastie Boys' rock/rap crossover 12” She's On It (from the 1985 #HipHop movie Krush Groove), he knew he was onto something and he would play the Beasties and other rappers on his De Wilde Wereld alongside Oingo Boingo and The Fall.

“Some people don't know rock 'n' roll came out the same way rap came out. People would say: No, it will never last.”

– Schoolly D

Despite the VPRO boasting about their leftie open-mindedness, Van Splunteren's embrace of such lowbrow, poor people culture (not the right kind of frugal-by-choice types but the low-cultured tracksuit wearing ones) didn't sit well with the broadcaster. Minorities boasting about their accomplishments, their cars, girls, gold? That's got no place in this social-democratic-Lutheran column!

 

Yet time moved on and Van Splunteren was given a budget to make a TV program about that weird talking-over-drum-machines music. With a small crew that included Belgian comedian/musician Marcel Vanthilt – who would sporadicly rap with his oddball New Beat group Arbeid Adelt! – Van Splunteren explored the music from the then-still predominantly Black neighbourhoods in the Big Town: the Bronx, Harlem, Queens, while Vanthilt interviews everyone available; from a boasting LL Cool J and his grannie to a very green Biz Markie and old old old skoolers The Last Poets.

 

Over time, this obscure 1986 Dutch TV documentary Big Fun in the Big Town has become an essential snapshot of hip hop culture. It captures an optimism and fire elemental to survive Reagan's America and highlights the urge to continue the Black struggle that the Panthers and others set in motion.

 

Happy birthday, hip hop. To many more powerful years to come.

Everything America stood for – God, liberty and justice for all – fell apart in the 60s. A much-loved president and family man killed on live television. Teenagers shipped to a country many never heard of before, only to end up as cannon fodder. Peace loving middleclass white kids from well-to-do families gathering en masse in Haight-Ashbury, collectively fell to bum trips and bouts of gonorrhoea. What America needs is family. Someone who takes you in, understands you, sings you songs and feeds you. An older man with friendly eyes appears on the scene, doing just that.

“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.”

– Charles Manson's testimony

What the press dubbed The Family was a microcosm of American society; a loose collective of lost kids. Taken in by charismatic peddling pimp #CharlieManson with a steady supply of #LSD and a place to be themselves, rootless kids like Lynette “#Squeaky” Fromme and Paul Watkins were finally part of a family again. The family grew too; besides more lost souls and the occasional Beach Boy visiting Spahn Ranch, babies were born at the Devil's Slide.

 

Hendrickson and Merrick's Manson offers a candid and by times surreal portrait of a few #MansonFamily members (Squeaky makes out with a riffle, purring about how killing is like having an orgasm while Atkins lays out her plans to murder Frank Sinatra) right in the middle of the spectacle [sic] court-case. It was even nominated for an Oscar – which went to that other charismatic 70s evangelist, Marjoe (1972), while Manson was banned after Fromme's botched assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford in '75 and was lost for decades.

 

Stylistically inspired by Woodstock (1970) and soundtracked by the Family themselves, Manson remains a fascinating curio in the undying output of #Mansonsploitation movies. However gruesome, the American family is forever cemented in that holy cornerstone of self-immolation.