A Note on Halcyon High School Days: RIP Leonard Skinner

A Note on Halcyon High School Days: So last century I know. 


Nevertheless as Russ Rollins of Monsters in the Morning observed, people become adults in high school and stay pretty much the same thereafter.


Gots to agree with him, musically at least.


Sure my nephews and nieces only dimly conceive of the years 1975 & '76 as when dinosaurs strode the Earth, BIE (Before Internet Era).


But the Earth herself seemed open to new possibilities as the hippie ethos of the 60's morphed into, in Indian Harbour By God White Bread Beach FL anyway, powerful optimism.


Graduated from Satellite High School in May '76 and in November the election of Jimmie Carter swept away stains of Nixon, he of wiping his ass with the Constitution and the pardoning Ford Presidency.  Yes, everything felt possible then, even certain pot soon legalized.


Music of Lynyrd Skynyrd formed part of the juke box of my life at the time, which boxes would give 3 songs for a quarter ($0.25) and pay phone calls cost a dime ($0.10). Southern Rock came along, and taught us US kids--from FLA, JAX--could play kick ass rock, not just British guitar gods or Chuck Berry riff stealing Stones.


Lynyrd Skynyrd sent to detention?  Bonus for us young adult hippies, burnin; hemp at our smoking tree before classes.


Screw the Man, man, WE can rule the world with Rock and Roll!!!


Then came the scourge known as Raygunizm upon the body Politic, the wilderness of the Bush and Cheney presidencies, when optimism and hope and change for the commonweal became passe, outmoded in the greed infused merger and acquisitions era of new gilded age.


But Lynyrd Skynyrd helped teach me the blues through the "Ballad of Curtis Lowe," celebrating black blues musicians and the genre that birthed Rock and Roll.


So damn youse would-be Lennard Skinners out there putting us down, MY MY Generation, tryin' to stop the rock, now minting $ riding the signal, the wave connecting us all which we only dimly realize through gravity and electrons at light speed in the intertubes.


Do Not Despair 


RIP Leonard Skinner