1960 - 1973 The Revolution of Youth Jump to:
1960 - 1973 The Revolution of Youth Jump to:
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 4 The Folk RevivalThe sixties were to see American popular music receive an unprecedented degree of attention. They began inauspiciously enough, dominated by the inoffensive sounds of “Philadelphia schlock”. This was a neutralized, watered-down version of rock'n' roll. Read More
4 The Protest Movement
The sense of possessing qualities equal to but set apart from those of established culture was an important element in the counter - culture of the later 1960s. But as increasing store was set by poetic texts, however radically they might be interpreted, the music was in danger of being cut off from its source of inspiration. Read More
4 Popular Culture in Britain
In the early 1960s British popular culture emerged from the long winter of postwar austerity, rejvenated by the assertive claims to attention of the young working class. Responding to prime minister Harold Macmillan's 1958 election message, “You've never had it so good”, previously unregarded groups began to demand consumer cultural goods designed specifically for them. Read More
4 Here Comes Beatlemania!
The surge of British “beat” music which followed the meteoric rise of the Beatles (from number 19 in the charts in December 1962 to unchallenged supremacy by the late summer of 1963) was greeted with much national wonderment on all sides; the grassroots activity which lay behind it had passed unobserved. This outbreak of energy and creativity from overlooked people in ignored regions - notably Liverpool and Newcastle - suggested that the country might still be alive after all. Read More
4 British Beat Conquers the World
The Beatles-led British invasion of American airwaves and record stores in the 1960s influenced all aspects of the American popular music scene. In Britain and the United States, few towns were without their amateur groups, almost all of whom attempted to write some of their own material. Read More
4 California Dreamin'
It was to California that the focus of musical attention shifted in the middle of the decade. The state had a laid-back image, at a time when ex-Harvard professor Timothy Leary was extolling the virtues of turning on, tuning in, and dropping out with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs, but this was only partly responsible. The tradition of racially integrated audiences on the West Coast had produced a rich ndercurrent of musical culture, out of which emerged the only “indigenous” music that could rival British beat in its ability to inject nw life into popular music. Read More
4 Rocking Round the World
By early 1967, with no small contribution from the news media, the San Francisco area was being celebrated as the center of the new lifestyle. “Flower-power”, that intoxicating antithesis to all that was conventional, attracted would-be hippies from all over, and also had a sweet smell of dollars to a record industry not averse to striking an anti-Establishment stance. Read More
4 Soul and Tamla Motown
"Soul" - by the late fifties the word had a rich resonance in black society. As the fervent optimism and vocal intensity of gospel joined with the secular energy of rhythm & blues, a powerful idiom emerged in which individual expression and the social activity of dance combined. Songs like Otis Redding's Respect -especially as performed by Aretha Franklin- or James Brown's Say It Loud took the music into a more political area. Read More
4 Rock Festivals: Woodstock, Live Aid
For a few years, the large, outdoor rock festival - an idea borrowed from the tradition of folk and jazz festivals begun in the 1950s and from San Francisco's “human be-in” gatherings or “happenings” - became a symbolic expression of the counter-culture. Read More
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