DID YOU KNOW BIRMINGHAM HAD A COUNTERCULTURE?

Today’s guest columnist is Terry Barr.

My brother asked me the other day if I remembered a place on Birmingham’s north side—1st Avenue, to be exact.

A place run by an old Bessemer guy, a friend of our mother, named Jim Anderson. His place was called: Seeds 4: Never Before Store.

Of course I remembered it: a sort of Head Shop with old wooden floors and high ceilings—long and filled with stuff, though somehow organized with a certain hippie logic—that also sold antiques and various forms of “Mod” merchandise, mixed with Americana kitsch.

A place where you could find a full-sized red phone booth in the store; where you could purchase a pair of Amelia Earhart’s goggles or “We Want Wilkie” pennants, or life-size cardboard statues of John, Paul, George, and Ringo from?Yellow Submarine.

A place where my brother and I bought Monkees and Beatles, Bridget Bardot and Raquel Welch posters (or rather, our mother bought them for us, because in that period—1967/8—we were only eleven and seven respectively). All varieties of incense and Love Beads.

I didn’t know exactly what London’s Carnaby Street looked like or meant, but if you had asked me then, likely I would have said: “Just like this—Seeds 4.”

After my brother and I spoke, I began reviewing other places in the Birmingham/Bessemer area that felt alternative to me, and maybe were to others, too.

These were the years when I began listening to and then collecting records—mainly 45’s because even I could scrape together 77 cents to spend on the latest hit by The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Steppenwolf, The Dave Clark Five, Paul Revere and the Raiders, or The Turtles.

While department stores like Pizitz carried records—and was the place where I first saw The Beatles iconic album/cover of?Rubber Soul—Bessemer’s The Music Box was the place where I could find any oldie I wanted though I had to pay $1.00 for each. Located on 19th Street, just a block away from the Bright Star, The Music Box centralized music for me in those days when I often walked downtown on Saturday afternoon right after viewing Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” and so was motivated to pick up something by Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival or Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

I grew up too late to experience Bessemer’s “Teen Town” aka “the Attic” upstairs from some office also on 19th Street. Imagine a place where teens could go, hang out, and listen to a juke box. I so wanted that, but had to be content with Pasquale’s, whose jukebox was at least current.

I know there were other Bessemer hangouts like The Underground, but in these still for all practical purposes segregated times, I never thought I could or should go there. The same with Shelley’s Record Mart in Birmingham.

But in Birmingham, I did find places I could enter—that felt off-limits but drew me because I was a teenager who needed something different—something that spoke to my culture no matter how deeply or not I felt a part of that culture.

Again, I came just a bit too late for Joe Rumore’s Record Rack in Homewood, but I did find The Angry Revolt after it opened in the early 1970’s. I discovered this heady place after listening to WJLN-FM which became a Free Form Rock station after being for years WJLD-AM’s sister soul station.

The Angry Revolt advertised all over WJLN (which later became WZZK), and they had a weekly special called The Angry Revolt’s “Rip-Off Album of the Week, “an album that was specially priced. I remember when the week’s special was Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, and David Freiberg’s?Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun.?The album featured a song called “Sketches of China,” which I loved. Still, the entire record seemed too dangerous to buy, given the albeit little I knew about the druggies from the former Jefferson Airplane.

The Angry Revolt started as a coffee shop and hangout for Birmingham’s politically left denizens, founded by Ken Forbes, Jr, grandson of the founder of Forbes Organs. Check out the site?BhamWiki?for more info. But the store eventually sold records, “smoking paraphernalia,” and waterbeds. It felt strange, somewhat forbidden, and so very romantically hip to enter.

Maybe just as hip was a retail store in the 5 Points West area, (a place near “Britches” which advertised “Scene Jeans by Liberty” all over WSGN). This other place, The Purple Mushroom, I think, sold Mod and Hippie clothes, jewelry, and other accessories for the rebel youth culture. I remember more about the building and its purple mushroom design than anything else, but every time a commercial for it came on WSGN, I wondered what all went on there, and how I could get there since at that point, I couldn’t drive.

Other venues for shopping and hanging opened in those days—the late 1960’s and 70’s—including Charlemagne Records in 5 Points South, and Oz Records in Eastwood and Midfield.

And nagging at me is a bookstore/health food store on 11th Avenue South, The Golden Temple, right under Birmingham Festival Theatre. I don’t remember what I might have bought or browsed through there, but it was only a block from Charlemagne and so part of my rounds in this teenaged attempt to feel part of the Birmingham “cool” scene.

I was able to drive by then, and also took in plays up at Festival Theatre—a haven for edgy drama by contemporary and avant-garde playwrights, founded by Carl Stewart, Randy Marsh, and Vic Fichtner. Seeing any show there, especially something by Pinter, Albee, or Brecht, made me wonder about all I didn’t know about my world.

Just in 1974, I saw these plays:?“The Effects of Gamma Rays on the Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds”, “Berlin to Broadway”, “The Country Girl”, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”, “Blithe Spirit”, “What the Butler Saw”, and “The Seagull.”

All of this is not to say that I engaged and became a part of anything alternative or countercultural in my hometown. It’s more to remind myself and others that despite all of Birmingham’s problems—its racism, violence, and intolerance of outsiders—there were places I’ll remember, “all my life, though some have changed; some forever, not for better.” Most have gone. Only Golden Temple remains.

Yeah yeah yeah. I loved them all.

Terry Barr is a native of Bessemer. He has been a Professor of English at Presbyterian College in upstate South Carolina since 1987. His most recent essay collection,?Secrets?I’m Dying to Tell You?(Red Hawk Press), is available at Amazon.com, and you can find him at?medium.com/@terrybarr.

Click?here?to sign up for our?newsletter.(Opt out at any time)

David Sher is the founder and publisher of?ComebackTown.?He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

Invite David to speak to your group for free about a better Birmingham. [email protected].

#Birmingham #Bessemer