General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAtticus
(15,124 posts)marble falls
(56,358 posts)LexVegas
(6,005 posts)GusBob
(7,286 posts)Skittles
(152,964 posts)Kajun Gal
(1,907 posts)Skittles
(152,964 posts)mountain grammy
(26,568 posts)just wow.
Squinch
(50,773 posts)Response to Squinch (Reply #75)
Skittles This message was self-deleted by its author.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Kajun Gal
(1,907 posts)A HERETIC I AM
(24,320 posts)Use a condescending term toward someone who has been here almost 15 years
Skittles
(152,964 posts)moriah
(8,311 posts)Ask your "simple question" in "Ask The Administrators", and they may answer.
And welcome to DU!
yardwork
(61,408 posts)hunter
(38,264 posts)thbobby
(1,474 posts)Didn't think many of us were still around.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)smh
Upthevibe
(7,879 posts)If I had to guess....I'd say 45 1/2 years old...... I'm a 60 year old Caucasian Female....
Laffy Kat
(16,354 posts)Freddie
(9,231 posts)Don't feel a day over sixty.
marlakay
(11,370 posts)I dont feel or think old yet...
Kajun Gal
(1,907 posts)mokawanis
(4,434 posts)Why did you ask the question if you weren't planning to be part of the discussion?
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)I can hardly remember what it was like to be that young!
72 here.
Glorfindel
(9,706 posts)I was born a few days after WWII ended but before 1946 began, so I'm not a "boomer."
Grassy Knoll
(10,118 posts)ornotna
(10,763 posts)But my oldest poster is a "Phi Zappa Krappa" from 1970. It ain't a van Gogh but it's pretty cool.
Grassy Knoll
(10,118 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)It was announcing Canned Heat for the upcoming weekend and the Youngbloods for the week after, warm-up band "To Be Announced."
That "To Be Announced" was me and my band!
panader0
(25,816 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)Canned Heat were mostly stoned, but their bassist, Larry Taylor, offered me some helpful tips. Of the Youngbloods, Joe Bauer and Banana were kind of nasty, Perry Miller ("Jesse Colin Young" ) wasn't very communicative at all, and Jerry Corbitt was just the nicest guy you could want to meet.
I had to hide out in the dressing room, or was ushered out into the audience, as I was underage, and not eligible to be in the musicians' union.
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
DFW
(54,050 posts)Most of the local bands in the DC area wanted to be The Little Rascals, and we were playing stuff by the Doors and the Grateful Dead. Very weird by local standards. We were lucky to get the chance to play at the Ambassador and open for these guys. To give you an idea, we missed opening for Jimi Hendrix, who had played that venue a few weeks before, and his first night, there were 40 people. By the third and last night, the place was packed. Word spread quickly, needless to day.
We took our name from a book we had all read. Our classmates thought we were being overly obscure with a "crazy" name like that. Three years later, when Stanley Kubrik made a film from our "obscure" book, suddenly the whole world knew our band's name, but by then, we had scattered to the four winds.
panader0
(25,816 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)Apparently a few other bands using the name were active at the time, but we were using it in 1967, way before the film came out. If only we had stuck around, right?
But things happen at that age. The drummer graduated high school and went off to RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). The first rhythm guitarist went back to Canada (his dad was their Ambassador to the USA), and the second went off into his dad's business, whatever that was. The lead guitarist (and lead singer) got into LSD and went off to seek his fortune in San Francisco (I heard he's now back in the DC area and into CW, of all things). I (bass and keyboards) went off to live in Spain, so that was pretty much the end of The Clockwork Orange, Washington D.C. version.
mia
(8,356 posts)Was living in the DC area in the 60s too and remember going to many a dance where local bands played. Missed going to the Ambassador Theater. It must have been wonderful! I still keep up with people and nostalgia from those days and enjoyed reading your story very much.
The Ambassador was an enormous space. All 1500 seats had been removed. The Psychedelic Power and Light Company took over the balcony and used multiple projectors and black lights to fill the room and cover the walls with colors and images- a stand alone show of its own. Tickets were $1.50 on week nights, $2.50 on weekends....
A young guy named Jimi Hendrix had been touring with The Monkees that same summer, but his style didn't quite fit that double bill. His manager begged The Ambassador folks to let him play there for 5 nights that August, and Pete Townsend of The Who came to see him. (I'm not making this stuff up- ask Nils Lofgren) This all happened here.
More From Nils Lofgren:
"The room was humming, not only with the expectation of seeing the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but that Pete Townshend was in the audience, and it was just an extraordinary pivotal night for me. Hendrix came out and said he was going to dedicate the first song to Pete Townshend and he was going to do a rendition of 'Sgt. Pepper.' Now being naive, and being a huge Beatles lover, a lot of us thought 'well, you're only a three piece band, how can you play 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' there's all these other guitars and strings.' We just didn't have a clue of what Hendrix was really about. He counted off the song and I remember he kind of disappeared, he just did one of those things where he fell to the floor, sitting on the floor rocking with the guitar between his legs kind of doing a 'Purple Haze/ Sgt. Peppers' riff, then he sort of bounces back up and does an insane version of 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.' And when he dropped to the floor everyone just jumped up to try to see him, and from that moment on everyone was standing and mesmerized by obviously the greatest rock and roll guitar player that ever lived... There were just a lot of inspired moments like that at the Ambassador; it was this dark, beautiful, haunted, inspired room that you could go to and get lost in the light show and friends and the camradarie and the excitement of being in the audience discovering all this great new music; it was this real pivotal place in Washington, DC for all of the music scene, young and old."
Canned Heat, Moby Grape, John Lee Hooker, Vanilla Fudge, The Fugs, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and more all appeared at The Ambassador. Our own Joe Dolan of The Beatnik Flies mopped the floors there. His cousin, Patty made this hoe-down poster.
http://cokinosgirl.blogspot.com/2007/11/ambassador-theater-and-how-it-rocked-dc.html
DFW
(54,050 posts)As a local obscure band, we never got name billing, of course.
The story of how we got the gig at all is a typical sixties story. The guy who did their sound system was the son of a friend of my mom's. He also had built a few things for my band as well. One day we were out at his place, and he was driving us back to my house in Virginia (I wasn't even 16 yet!), and he asked if we were in a hurry. We said no, we weren't. He said he needed to do a sound check at the Ambassador before their show that night. It was just me, the drummer and the lead guitarist, and it was about 1 in the afternoon. He warned us it would be better if we brought our equipment inside with him, as the Ambassador was a raunchy part of town. So we did. He told us to set up and play a few things so he could get his sound check right. We said "SURE!!" Hey we could tell people we had played at the Ambassador! This was like having a high school band in San Francisco and being able to say you played at the Fillmore!
Anyway, we set up in the big empty theater, and he turned on the sound system. Of course, we sounded our best with that kind of hall and acoustics. I was on organ and bass organ (same set-up as Ray Manzarek of the Doors), and there was our lead guitarist and drummer. After a few numbers, this guy materializes and asks who we are. We said we were friends of Van (the sound engineer), helping him set up for that night, and who was he? "He" turned out to be Court Rodgers, and he was the owner of the place.
OOPS. We started apologizing for the "noise" and said we were only there helping Van out, didn't mean to disturb anyone. He said, no, no, it was alright, and by the way, were we by any chance free that night? WERE WE?! As of that second, we sure as hell were free. We spent the afternoon calling ALL our friends, and had a decent turnout. We played four weekends there. The place was already financially shaky, and closed soon after, but we DID get to play The Ambassador, quite a feather in the cap of any local DC band that was more into progressive rock than top 40.
mia
(8,356 posts)I'll bet others from the DC area would enjoy reading about your experiences. The facebook page, Ghosts of DC, has posts from others who participated in the music scene back then. https://www.facebook.com/GhostsofDC/
DFW
(54,050 posts)In the meantime, here is our new Trump musical satire video, called "In D.C."
See if you like it: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210151018
mia
(8,356 posts)Thanks for sharing it.
Parents are always proud of the newborn kids!
samnsara
(17,570 posts)...Amphitheater a million years ago..
DFW
(54,050 posts)Canned Heat went through a LOT of personnel changes, although Bob "the Bear" Hite was a steady for most of their time. Henri Vestine was soon gone after we opened for them. Al "owl" who sang the vocal on "On The Road Again" ended up committing suicide, and Larry Taylor, the one I got friendly with (both bass players, and I was only too eager to learn), went off to do who-knows-what? I saw he was doing some studio work in the 1970s, even did a track or two on Leo Kottke's "Mudlark."
I DID remember to follow the Bear's advice, and I did NOT forget to Boogie!
Glorfindel
(9,706 posts)On the same bill: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, The Grass Roots, and Ray Stephens. There was also a female solo performer, but I can't for the life of me remember who she was.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)Hard for me to imagine it was 50 years ago already!
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)Lots of good memories from those days, but time marches on. I'm still trying to make good memories.
I was in the DC area in 1968 and 69. While in the USAF, I got all involved in the anti-war movement in DC. I met many very interesting people during that time, some whose names became household words. Mine did not. Then, after my discharge, I moved back to California.
DFW
(54,050 posts)I was offered a chance to go live in Spain for a year starting in the fall, and I hated my school, which was becoming more and more reactionary, so off I went. I knew Spain was still run by the fascist government of Franco, but I figured there had to be a healthy resistance, especially in the part I was headed for (Catalunya), and I wasn't disappointed. I learned to speak Catalan, and came close to being accepted as one of them. Catalan is close to a version of Medieval French, and isn't too hard to figure out if you speak Spanish and French, and I had a rudimentary handle of both by that time. I was then offered a chance to spend my senior year of high school in New England, which I did, although I HATED the school I landed at. Of course, the school I had been at in DC was pretty awful, too, so I stuck it out. Ironically, both schools are now reputed to have a progressive outlook, especially the one in D.C., where the Clintons and Obamas sent their children. In my day, I would have recommended both places as institutions to which one sent juvenile offenders.
Old Vet
(2,001 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)As a 15 year old going to a (at the time) very conservative school, it was very heady stuff, indeed. We were hanging around with idols and hearing them up close. It ended far too quickly.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)True Dough
(17,090 posts)I think the high end of that range is the mean.
crazycatlady
(4,492 posts)It is a very Boomer centric forum
(I'm the kid of boomers)
captain queeg
(10,035 posts)Whatever that range is. Im never sure, but I know I classify as one and many references that come up here tend to verify as much.
JI7
(89,173 posts)maybe older
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Squinch
(50,773 posts)Based on this:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210149503#post5
I see I was right.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Certainly seems to be an agenda.
Response to Kajun Gal (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
A-Schwarzenegger
(15,596 posts)troll years?
LiberalArkie
(15,686 posts)70 years old, but generally look to be between 45 and 55 and behave like a 35 year old.
A-Schwarzenegger
(15,596 posts)PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,746 posts)I'm 69. I originally signed up not long after DU came on line, then left and came back.
I can recall in the early years that there seemed to be a fair amount of young people, under age 30 or even age 20, and they seem to have disappeared, not stayed here and grown old along with the rest of us.
That's a genuine shame.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)Drifted away, forgot my username and password; email address had changed so I couldn't recover them. Came back recently with a new, improved identity.
Amishman
(5,540 posts)I'd put the median at easily 60+
crazycatlady
(4,492 posts)moriah
(8,311 posts)There's quite an application for rock, though since I regularly listen to music released in the two decades before my birth in 1980 that might be just a sign of good taste.
FirstLight
(13,352 posts)Is there a poll?
DFW
(54,050 posts)Last edited Sat Jan 27, 2018, 07:11 AM - Edit history (1)
I joined around 2005 or 2006, I think. Things got really nasty during the primaries of 2008, calmed down a little after that, went really crazy during the primaries of 2016. Some of the extreme cases went off and formed their own board, and things calmed down somewhat. From the maturity (or lack of it) of the posts of the present-day cast of characters, I'd say there is a broad spectrum, but tending to be weighted toward the older edge of the scale, where I am to be found. I own fossils of animals that used to be my house pets. Those trilobites were cute, but just no staying power.
As for staying power, there have always been a few one-trick ponies that stuck around to promote one certain issue, and then disappeared when the horse they were kicking was declared clinically dead. There was one poster that rose to defend GM food, and then went dormant when GM food was not the subject of a thread. Monsanto's little rep at DU. There aren't too many of those left, either, thank goodness.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,320 posts)And didnt seem to eat as much.
Remember Asher Heimermann?
CONFERENCE CALL IN FIVE MINUTES!
Or OPERATION MINDCRIME? One of the finest trolls to ever troll us.
Ahhhh.....good times
DFW
(54,050 posts)The first two don't ring a bell. I remember during the 2008 primary, there was some character calling himself "Draft Mario Cuomo" or some such.
Trilobites are more finicky than cats. Mine haven't eaten a thing I put in front of them for millenia.
kydo
(2,679 posts)Does that help?
bluedigger
(17,077 posts)aikoaiko
(34,127 posts)If I recall the question was asked in 10-year bins, and I was surprised to see that 50-59 and 60-69 were the most frequent responses, but then quickly dropped off. The younger bins were the least frequent responses, but there were more bins. I'd say 50ish on average.
Cary
(11,746 posts)45
gibraltar72
(7,486 posts)it depends on how we feel on any given day.
raccoon
(31,089 posts)MineralMan
(146,192 posts)The site trends older than the average population. I don't remember the exact numbers, though.
Of course, those polls may not accurately sample DUers, so they're not probably all that accurate.
We have DUers of all ages, though. Unless an individual DUer discloses his or her age, it's difficult to know the age of any particular person.
treestar
(82,383 posts)or 60s. I bet it is about 65.
lillypaddle
(9,580 posts)I'm 70 and feel very wise.
Tipperary
(6,930 posts)MFM008
(19,776 posts).......
Wounded Bear
(58,437 posts)Meaningless pole.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)of the population of one of your cities; say St. Petersburg, for example.
Thirties Child
(543 posts)I joined in February 2004 when Wes Clark dropped out of the primary. I lost membership in 2012 when we moved. New computer, new ISP, forgotten password. Had to rejoin.
Response to Kajun Gal (Original post)
mokawanis This message was self-deleted by its author.
IluvPitties
(3,181 posts)dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)Dinosaurs roamed the earth once, too.
rainy
(6,083 posts)for change for DU old farts🤣😃💙 I still love you. But, Im 59
Golden Raisin
(4,599 posts)is, "Somewhere between 40 and Death." Let's just say Harry Truman was President when I was born.
pbmus
(12,418 posts)blogslut
(37,955 posts)In fact, there's really about five actual posters on DU. We have a couple of laptops set up in our clubhouse and we use automation scripts we bought off Craigslist to register and post here 24/7.
Shh. Don't tell.