"The History Of Vancouver's Rock & Roll!" - Afterthought Vol 3 - 1983

Vancouver already had a minor countercultural scene then—the beatniks, folkies, and art students who hung around on Robson Street, which had a strong European heritage...... From 1967 through to the mid-1970s, the Easter Be-in was one of the most visible expressions of Vancouver’s counterculture. At its peak, thousands of the young, the hip, and the merely curious would assemble in Stanley Park to listen to bands, speakers, and poets, socialize, become inebriated, and occasionally throw up. The Be-in arrived each year with spring, a time when it is either very foolish or merely optimistic to schedule a regular outdoor event in Vancouver, a time when the monotony of rain and cold is often interrupted only by long periods of cold rain.
The Be-ins were more than just free concerts. They served as an opportunity to gather as a community, a means of keeping in touch, an annual general meeting for people who felt they were onto something that mainstream society wouldn’t give them credit for. The rest of the year, you might be a freak, some weirdo with long hair, the subject of derisive jokes, but at least at the Be-in you knew you weren’t alone. At the beginning, there was no industry to design, package, and market some form of channelled rebellion for you and your peers. That came later.
The Be-in also offered the safety of being in a crowd too big to be easily arrested. Prison time and even banishment (in the form of a sentence that included a year or two out of the province as a condition of release) were all very possible outcomes of making an alternative lifestyle choice. The be-ins and other public demonstrations of that era were a way of daring society to object.
The first Be-in didn’t just happen, although part of its charm is the way it seems like it did. Recalls psychedelic-poster artist Bob Masse: “There may be a certain amount of romance, but I remember a lot of mud and fog and generally being cold and wet. We were always tripping around Stanley Park. Sometimes there was a band.” Still, that’s a bit disingenuous. Although the second, and subsequent, Be-ins were organized by several people over the years (including Blaine Culling, currently developing a diverse group of clubs and bars on Granville, Jim Allen of the Granville Book Company, and the late Roger Schiffer, who established the Retinal Circus nightclub), the first one came about because of Jerry Kruz, a young concert promoter whose club, the Afterthought, is credited with providing the first regular nucleus for the countercultural scene in Vancouver. Now 49 years old and a grandfather, Kruz is more willing to discuss his involvement with this aspect of Vancouver’s past than he once was. He lost his business licence in 1967 in a state of disgrace. Suffice it to say that what he was convicted of 30 years ago is now treated as a misdemeanour, but back then Mayor Tom Campbell and the Vancouver police were on a concerted drive to wipe the counterculture off the streets of Vancouver by any means, and he was a target. Somewhat sooner than many of his contemporaries, he was jolted back into what passes for normal society. While only in his early 20s, he found himself married, a father, and studying to become a social worker. He says he has only granted two interviews about the old days until now, only one of which was ever published (in Victoria’s Times-Colonist).
Of the Be-in, he says: “I’d like to think I actually started it. But not for the purposes of the Be-in, because there was all the idealists of the time and I was driven to make money. Believe it or not! In the ’60s.” - By Dave Watsontraxfromwax:
1. The Seeds Of Time: My Home Town 2. Spring: It's A new Day 3. The Tom Northcott Trio: Just Don't 4. The Painted Ship: Little White Lies 5. The Self Portrait: He's A Man 6. The United Empire Loyalists: No No No 7. Winter's Green: Are You A Monkey? 8. The Collectors: Looking At A Baby 9. The Painted Ship: Frustration 10. The Tom Northcott Trio: Let Me Know 11. Spring: As Feelings Go 12. Northwest Company: Rock 'N Roll Lover Man 13. The Seeds Of Time: Crying The Blues 14. Orville Dorp: Jesus Marijuana
ripped from vinyl in glorious monoloudarama!