In the 60’s almost everyone was cool, or at least that’s the impression you get from watching Woodstock, or intellect-wanking over Bob Dylan lyrics. Apparently this wasn’t the case though, as it turns out that even in those hazy years the bitchy kids were as eager to pigeon-hole their peers into cliched cliques as we are now. Platform sat down for a chat with a couple of hip young gun-slingers that happened to live through the whole thing, and got the skinny on name-calling 60’s style.
WORDS: LIAM HAYNES
Pseudo
These are clearly the best kind of 60’s kids; educated but still not shy of a regular dabble in some heavy, heavy acid. This girl would corner you in some dingy bar and wax lyrical about how she once sucked off Dylan’s drummer while he read William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch because all that acid made her think his dick was actually a flute. Radical.
Freak
This is the sister cliche to the pseudo. While the pseudo has some grounding in the real world, be it through beat poetry revival or an encyclopedic knowledge of Norwegian Wood’s sitar parts; the freak is basically just a total drug hound. Seen this video on youtube? That’s a freak. Regarded with contempt by pseudos and heads, as well as being responsible for most negative acid/60’s stereotypes. What a bad egg!
Head
Basically the thinking man of 60’s culture. Not quite as square as a suit, and not quite as doped up as a freak or pseudo. Dabbles in Beat culture and literature, but doesn’t take it too seriously. Imagine the guy that somehow always seems to win at arguments, even if you’re positive you started off in the right. Relentlessly correct, desperately intelligent. These fuckers are probably taking up 67% of the jobs at Guardian right now, as well as at least half of social services. Heavy legacy.
Suit
Pretty much all accountants. The cogs keeping the machine going, the fuckers. Met with much loathing by freaks and pseudos alike as they traipse along to work like ants in a toilet roll. The anti-freak, and the reason that pseudos keep learning and indulging. I mean, in the long run they probably totally killed it by getting some sick jobs while everyone else was kidding themselves that Altamont was okay and that Lennon’s death was faked. In the end, winners. But I bet they feel like they missed out in the long run. Like staying in to do homework while everyone else was dropping Ketamine into their Frosty Jacks at some basement party.