I remember the first time I heard Barry McGuire singing "Eve of Destruction." It was 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, and radio stations in the South were refusing to play the song because of a line in at that took a swipe at my home state: Look at all the hate there is in Red China; now take a look around, boy, at Selma, Alabama. I was finally able to hear it late one night on one of the distant clear channel stations that I often listened to.
"Eve of Destruction" had an electrifying effect on me and on many others; nothing like it had been heard on Top 40 radio before. It wasn't just that it was a protest song. After all, Peter Paul and Mary had scored a big hit a couple of years previously with their version of Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind." But unlike P,P&M, McGuire sounded angry --angry enough to set off a revolution if not lead it himself. The so-mad-I-could-explode tone of the record was enhanced by the singer's gravelly voice and a drums-and-electric-guitar accompaniment (the latter quite unusual for a folk song).
I still like "Eve of Destruction," but listening to it now is almost embarrassing. It sounds like a comedic take-off of a folk song; if it were possible for a song to be its own parody, then this would be it. I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin', my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'. Whoa, dude, ease off a little!
Many of the politically oriented songs of the '60s are great fun to listen to, but they don't carry the same meaning or emotional weight they did at the time. "Eve of Destruction," which is included on Rhino Records' "Songs of Protest" CD, is just the best example.
Some of the songs on the CD are touching in their naivete, others bracing in their cynicism and in-your-face attitude. Among the latter is the anti-Vietnam "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag" by Country Joe & the Fish. The studio version of the song included here will startle you if, like me, you are familiar only with the "live" version from the Woodstock album. The Woodstock version just sounds angry, but the studio recording's addition of a steam calliope changes the mood entirely. Now in our mind's eye we see the war not just as a wasteful killing machine, but also as a macabre circus being run by clowns.
A song that is less widely known, "It's Good News Week" by the English group Hedgehoppers Anonymous, is another of my personal favorites. It's a sprightly mocking of TV news in the same vein as the much later "Dirty Laundry." It's good news week: someone's dropped a bomb somewhere contaminating atmosphere and blackening the sky ...
"Sky Pilot" by Eric Burdon & The Animals is musically one of the most interesting tracks, incorporating as it does both bagpipes and the sounds of bombs falling. Attacking the complicity of organized religion in warmaking through the story of a chaplain (the "sky pilot") sending men off to battle with a prayer and a blessing, it was released as a two-sided single in 1968. Unfortunately it was only the first side that received any airplay, whereas it is the second side that wraps up the story line and drives home the moral. Happily, you can hear the entire song all the way through on this CD.
I also like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," written by Pete Seeger and performed by The Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side" covered here by Manfred Mann, Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," and Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier" as made famous by Donovan. Ranging from plaintive to defiant, they capture well the spirit of the 1960s, when young people began questioning some of the most basic assumptions of their society, including the notion that war is a noble undertaking.
Another hallmark of the '60s' was the attack on what was viewed as mindless conformity, joined to a celebration of individuality and the quest for personal expression. At least two of the songs here deal with that broad theme; sadly, they are the ones that I am most likely to skip over when playing this CD: "Let Me Be" by The Turtles and "Laugh at Me" by Sonny Bono. The former is forgettable froth; the latter amply proves that Sonny's decision not to pursue a solo singing career was a wise one.
The Rascals' "People Got To Be Free" is on here and it's a fine, uplifting tune, but I think it has been so overplayed on oldies stations that it has lost any impact, message- or music-wise, that it once may have possessed.
Also here is Janis Ian's "Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)," which deals bluntly with the topic of interracial dating. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that this was also banned in Alabama at the time. Ian sings it as though her heart is being ripped out by her family's and friends' reactions to her dating a boy of a different race, but the song has never done much for me. Perhaps it's the melody, which meanders too much for my taste.
"Abraham, Martin And John" showed that Dion could sing something more than doo-wop, and it's a wonderful sounding song with its creative use of a harp at the end. Was that supposed to reinforce the image of the Kennedys, Lincoln and Martin Luther King floating around together up in heaven? Here's some possibly surprising trivia: The song was written by Dick Holler, a songwriter who was (is?) living in my old hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and who also wrote "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" for the Royal Guardsmen. Neither of those songs was ever banned in Alabama.
Wrapping up the "Songs of Protest" CD are "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" by the Temptations, "War" by Edwin Starr, and "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band. These all came out at what might be called the tail end of the protest era. The first two, especially the Starr tune, demonstrate how protest music was gobbled up by and finally disappeared into other genres, such as funk. "Signs" is just plain stupid, as well as arrogant in its attitude.
Despite the clunkers, "Songs of Protest" is an excellent compilation of some of the music that moved a generation -- part of it anyway -- into the streets to challenge war, injustice and conformism. Sitting in my favorite Chapel Hill coffee house, Caffe Driade (which I intend to review one of these days), thinking about these songs and the era that spawned them, I'm swept by a wave of nostalgia for the days when caffeine fueled talk of rebellion, not Internet startups.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.