By Staff
The anti-war movement could use a soundtrack.
While the '00s are not the 1960s reincarnate, there are moments during the mad rush of events in 2005 when the uncertainty, anger, fear, sorrow and outrage feel like another watershed year, 1968, doubling back on itself. Marches against the Vietnam war echo today. Washington filled with protesters as the curtain fell on September who provoked their own arrests outside the White House. The whole world is watching, as it did in 1968 with uprisings in the streets from Chicago to Prague.
Sunday John Lennon, who has been gone a quarter century, would have reached retirement age, 65. Where are the successors to &#8221Give Peace a Chance“; and &#8221Revolution?“; Where is a new generation of John Fogertys with &#8221Fortunate Son,“; Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan?
Where is new music to march by, brimming with metaphors that prod words into action? Today we plug in individually to iPods for personal punk and hip-hop. The best the younger generation has to offer is Green Day, which by punk band standards has been around almost forever.
In &#8221No Direction Home,“; Martin Scorcese's Dylan documentary, Dowagiac visitor Studs Terkel interviews Dylan and notes, &#8221All your songs are about more than the event.“;
As former Boomtown Rat turned humanitarian Bob Geldof says in &#8221Get Up Stand Up,“; the TV film on protest and pop music, Dylan's &#8221explosion of ideas“; in song &#8221entered the culture as a way to articulate whole political ideas.“;
In those long-ago times when baby boomers were young, music mattered. It didn't push products, it raised wrath and rattled the establishment, pouring forth from radios and records, inspiring the civil rights movement and challenging the U.S. government's prosecution of war in Southeast Asia.
Today's rockers bring their celebrity to social causes and urgent relief efforts, from Live 8 to hurricanes, but no ideas grand enough to hug to the heart and guide the feet in a challenge to hubris as a foreign policy and plutocracy as a domestic policy.
We need another anthem like &#8221We Shall Overcome“; if we are to overcome.