They were tumultuous times, too. Demonstrations over civil rights, the Viet Nam war, political assassinations and the riots that followed them. Sometimes it seemed like the world was coming apart. The music helped us get through it. It gave us a voice, an anthem, a gathering place where we could share our dreams and our fears. It was a time of intense creativity in all the arts and artful ways of living, a brief window between the suffocating conformity of the Fifties and the growing corporate dominance of everyday life.This is an insider's recollection of the scene by a Colorado native with press credentials and a backstage pass. James Pagliasotti was the first rock & roll columnist for The Denver Post when the counterculture became a significant force in society and then gradually faded away. Here is his memoir of those days of wonder and rage-one person's recollection of "What It Was: Growing Up When the Music Mattered".