Back in the future: actor Rick Miller brings the post-war generation alive in BOOM (Preview)

Posted on: Wednesday, March 16, 2016
BENJAMIN POMERANCE, LAKE CHAMPLAIN WEEKLY

To remember a time that he never knew. That was the challenge, the force that drew Rick Miller toward a project that appeared to be built on a foundation of insanity. He was never a Baby Boomer, never experienced the social and political and cultural upheaval between 1945 and 1969 that turned North America upside-down and inside-out so many times over in so many ways. His birth came later, entering the world at a time when people talked in vague mysteries about the rebellion that had ignited in bygone days.

Yet somehow, enigmatically, those years of turmoil spoke to him. Civil rights struggles and anti-war rallies and ideological enemies and artistic revolutions and children who were so much more plugged-in than their parents and an older generation wondering exactly where and how and why the kids had gone wrong — all of it just seemed so familiar. At times, he felt like he had actually been there.