That is the voice and sound of our time – a
member of the so-called Beat Generation dramatically expressing a negative attitude towards
the Twentieth Century. – “Footloose in Greenwich Village.”
The progenitors of the 1960s
“hippies,” beats embodied many of the same values: artistic exploration, a
disengagement from mainstream society, pacifism, gender and racial equality, and an open
attitude towards sex and recreational drug use. Unlike their younger hippie
cousins, beats were generally an older crowd whose members included war veterans and refugees
from the rat race of Eisenhower-era prosperity. Embracing Eastern philosophy
and Socialist economics, beats represented the antithesis of the conformist
middle-class mentality of the 1950s –
and many Americans regarded them with suspicion.

While actual members of the Beat
Generation rarely, if ever, identified themselves as such, the media-invented slang word
“beatnik” perfectly sums up much about the beats. Inspired by the launch of
Sputnik in 1957, the word beatnik, to the burgeoning middle class masses,
accurately identified both the avant-garde artistic interests and the leftist
philosophical leanings of the beats.
“Footloose in Greenwich Village” was
included on volume one of the three-disc set The Beat
Generation released in 1992 by Rhino Records. It
is presented below from my personal archives:
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