FIFTY YEARS LATER - STILL THE SAME

A song caught my attention today. It was Get Together by The Youngbloods.
I remember listening to this when at school - 6th form in 1969. This was a time of great change and ferment - for me as a 16 year old going on 17 and in society at large. There was a changing of the guard then with the 'establishment' giving way to new thoughts and directions.

Woodstock took place that year and lots of other youth oriented major events.

The current 2010s have a lot of resonance with the late 1960s. The world in the 1960s had a serious nuclear war threat that put everyone on edge. The Vietnam War was splitting up families and creating social and political schisms as never seen before. Mass media was driving opinion and thought way outside the familial and provincial beliefs that had knitted together generations.

The current decade has brought massive changes in thought, politics, international connectivity and beliefs that have shaken the 'establishment' that has been built up since the 1950s and even post the 1970s. Brexit, the Scottish 45% vote, the collapse of dictatorships in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and the war in Syria is changing international treaties, boundaries and ethnic settlement. To cap this off USA after the Trump presidency is looking to go the way of previous empires like The Roman, The British, The Ottoman and others.

We are in a time of change all right.

Here are just a few of the songs that defined the late 1960s for me and that were connected to social revolution and the protest movement against the Vietnam War.

I hope that there will be 'anthems' from the 2010s that will have the same effect and long life but I doubt it.



FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH


GET TOGETHER


EVE OF DESTRUCTION


WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR


PAINT IT BLACK


MAGIC CARPET RIDE


and of course, Bob Dylan's Changing of the Guards even if it is from 1978 (this is Patti Smith's excellent version as I couldn't find a good Dylan one).

CHANGING OF THE GUARDS