From what I recall, The Musical Age of Reckoning for me began around the time I entered my teen years. I was born in 1954 so around 1967-8 at the young and impressionable age of 13 or so, I can remember spending many summer nights hanging with my friends, listening to ‘acid rock’ on a buddy’s boom box for hours. Songs like Light My Fire (Doors), Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf) and White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) all had a hypno-psychedelic ‘feel’ to them. The message of the lyrics were discussed at great lengths, most of which we never could reach agreement on except to say they were ‘so cool and deep.’ See for yourself:
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
or
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Eventually me and my buddies, all of like age and social stratum evolved into hippies, replete with long hair, ripped jeans, army coats, black light posters and ‘down with the Establishment” mindsets.
Music was, and still is, a very important part of my life. Quite often, memories buried deep within the recesses of my mind are floated to the surface of my consciousness because of a song. Melancholy, happiness and spirituality can be heightened or enlightened by a song. The power of music can be experienced through your emotional connection to a song. To me, music is important because of the impact it can have on your state of mind.
I know my family and friends all love music as well. My contemporaries, most of whom I’ve reconnected with on Facebook, occasionally post links to concerts and ask about certain songs from ‘back in the day’. The love of and the connection to music is universal.
But enough of the serious side of music. I thought it might be fun to go through the top songs of 1960 through 1978 and see if I can extract a song title from each year to create the Baby Boomers Manifesto – the Musical. Baby Boomers were born between 1946 – 1964. I added 14 years (Musical Age of Reckoning ) to the boomer birth years and that is how I ended up with selecting songs from 1960 through 1978. Each new post will have a song title and why I selected that song to be part of the manifesto. When I am finished, Boomers will have 20 song titles (I'll add a bonus song to round it all out) that I think we can use to "publicly declare as our intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives". In other words, our manifesto.
I hope you enjoy it and have fun. Please feel free to express your opinion of the song selection. Got a better selection? Comment to the post and let me know. We’ll make this a joint project!
No comments:
Post a Comment