Give Me Back the 60's

I listen to the pop music of today, and I truly mourn for the decade of the 60's. At 47, I can track the musical trends of the last few decades, and the trend is downward, most of the way.

The 1960's were an awe-inspiring decade, musically. We went from "Blue Velvet" to "Eight Miles High", from "She Was Just 17" to "Day in the Life". The rock music of the late 50's and early 60's was awesome to be sure; think of Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Little Richard and some of Elvis' offerings. But much of what got radio play was an ersatz mix of rockabilly swagger, teen princess angst and tragic car crashes. It really took something like the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction" to slap some sense into American listeners, to wake us musically to the fact that American youth were actually more than life-size Ken and Barbie dolls.

The decade of the 60's blossomed into one of the most spectacular periods in America's musical history. The British invasion, the new sounds of the Beach Boys, and the Motown sound, among many other developments, took us all to emotional and philosophical places we'd never visited. Perhaps the fact of the Cold War, the threat of World War III and the Cuban Missile Crisis all caused the human spirit to rise and react. Other pressures were the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights movement, of course. If God speaks through impassioned artists, he spoke loud and clear in that troubled decade. I think it would be safe to say that artists such as Credence Clearwater and the Beatles truly did raise the consciousness of people everywhere, even conservatives who thought they were immune to such forces.

And then we had the 1970's - the first stage of musical devolution. Even the 60's wunderkinds started giving us schlock. Paul Simon went from "Sound of Silence" to "Kodachrome". Paul McCartney went from "Eleanor Rigby" to "Silly Love Songs". Pop music in general went in the direction of bland bands and polyester disco. Again there were exceptional bright spots - Sir Elton, Rod Stewart and David Bowie among them. But the 70's music does not stir the heart or the soul the way 60's music makes you want to restage a Love-In. The 1980's saw further devolution -- New Wave was actually an interesting new twist, but it was a twinkling of the early eighties, and was subverted by other musical trends. By the mid-90's, we were mired in violent, misogynistic rap music, and the highly depressing grunge sound of Seattle. The mid 00's has barely moved half an inch away from the mid 90's.

There’s enough social fomentation right now (war in Iraq, Red/Blue state schism) that the musical genie might be coaxed out of the lamp one more time. But with all due respect to Green Day, it hasn’t really happened yet, and if ever a world needed good Rock ‘n Roll music it’s now.