Guest e Yer Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 CNN's "The Sixties - The British Invasion" brings back I lot of memories. I'm a baby boomer, born 1954. A lot of the hits of the 60's were political statements that voiced the positions and views of its fan base. Buffy Saint Marie's "Universal Soldier", performed by Donovan, was one example. Another anti-war song was the "Eve of Destruction" by P.F. Sloan sung in a raspy, frustrating voice of Barry McGuire. What was important is that these views that normally would be censored by the main stream media of the times (CBS, NBC, ABC) got air time because it was part of the pop music genre. If the mood set by the melody, and singer matched the theme being conveyed by the message then it became a hit. The free market, the rock-n-roll fan base, paid millions of dollars to the artist to support that message through the purchase of 45's and LP's. See, this was the fan's representative giving them a voice. The sixties and seventies socio-political music artist were in that sense free-market representatives of their constituents or fans. The baby-boomers, many of FDR's younger fan base's mothers, fathers, grandfathers, or grandmothers sadly later in life went 180 degrees, became greedy and materialistic and crashed the U.S. economy...but that's another topic for another day.
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