music - 1960s, 70s

The shared culture of music united young people of the US (and elsewhere) in the 1960s and 70s as recordings of many different performers became easier to access than ever before in human history. The radios were jumping with new sounds, and high school kids were buying 45s (single hits) and eventually albums, 8-tracks, and cassettes. Concerts were sprouting, not only in auditoriums, but in fields and stadiums and parks and gymnasiums. This was a rugged, confusing time period during the Vietnam War, the nuclear armaments race, the moon landing, and multiple assassinations of public figures. Building on roots from big band to blues and gospel to bluegrass to country-western to folk, with soul and rock & roll exploding, popular music was a huge creative, comforting, and uniting force. Electronic instruments were coming up fast as were new ways to mix sounds and tracks.

I spend an hour or two now and again on youtube, finding treasures from that era, marveling at the complexity of sounds young bands were inventing, and the crazy, prophetic lyrics that surfaced. Tonight, I listened to early Elton John - 'Grey Seal' and 'Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters' - and to Simon and Garfunkel's 'Only Living Boy in New York', immediate and poetic. I feel the surprised gratitude I felt when I first heard them decades ago.