Southisms

1969

1969 was such a great year for music regardless of the historic Woodstock which took place at the outskirts of New York state.  1969′s music glory owes itself to the culture surrounding it at that time. The restlessness of Vietnam protests.  The counter-culture youth in face with the highly conservative and blindly patriotic generation that had lived through the traumatic World War II.  1969 was the height of hallucinogenic substances which inspired new ways of recognizing the world.  It was also a time of repression and therefore resistance.

1969 also inspired indie.  That music celebrates loving the street musician or playing the record on mono.  Indie was also about Bob Dylan rejecting to play at Woodstock.  Indie was making music for the sake of music. Or music to save lives. And that there was something hateful about record companies, especially after what they have done to The Beatles.  And speaking of The Beatles, 1969 was the last time The Beatles were seen in live performance at the rooftop of Apple Records.  It was also the year when John Lennon performs as a solo artist and cries, “Give Peace a Chance”.  There was something so distinctly resounding about those words at that time, which now is just a song that we happen to know and have heard on the radio before.

1969 was when Bob Marley and the Wailers emerged from obscurity and began to popularize Reggae.  It was also Elvis Presley’s most monumental and critically-acclaimed comeback.  Simon and Garfunkel and Jackson 5 debuts –  a mark of the beginning of another era in music which is the 70′s folk or pop ballad.

When I close my eyes and think about the alternative lifestyles and the music and the pleasures so prolific in 1969, I kind of wish I lived at least a day in that year and just have a look-see of what was going on.  Just as though the Times they are a ‘changin. Just to feel that sense of wonder as one watches the first man land on the moon.