As I commented in the previous post (and as many much smarter people than me have no doubt in the past), it’s clear to me that the passing of the year from 1967 to 1968 represented a significant change in popular music. It was true, almost from the moment the new year dawned. It might […]
Read more "1968, Part One – Distant Thunder"By the midpoint of the Summer of Love, it was clear that the world beyond the confines of popular music was about anything but love. The escalation of the Vietnam War and US involvement in it had led to early predictions in ’67 about the war’s impending end, but these proved to be optimistic. The race […]
Read more "1967, Part Two – Summer’s Over"It’s often been remarked, both within Canada and without, by we Canadians and by others, that we lack a definable national identity. The running joke for decades has been that we define ourselves mostly by being “not American”. It says something that a Molson beer commercial from a dozen or so years ago somehow […]
Read more "Gord Downie, The Tragically Hip, and Being Canadian"After reviewing 1966 in my previous post, I was struck very quickly by the sheer volume of music released in ’67. As in, more than twice as many rock albums as the year before. For the sake of my own endurance and everybody else’s interest, I decided I’m gonna have to break this sucker […]
Read more "1967, Part One – Take It And Run With It"Oh 1966…. fifty years ago this year, that year of incipient hopey-ness and changey-ness. But not too much hopey-ness and changey-ness. Yet. If anything, it was a year of transitioning uncertainly between two extremes: conformity and rebellion. To my mind, there’s no better illustration of this musically than the fact that the uber-patriotic, pre-body […]
Read more "1966 – The Year Everything Changed"Riding the train to work one morning recently in the mid-April sun. Down by the water, heading west between Port Moody and Vancouver. Listening to “The Fool On The Hill”, one of my favourite Beatles songs. Heading upstairs from the platform at my destination, a lone coyote crossed the tracks down below. Wow. Look at […]
Read more "A New Rock History Project…"It’s a universal truth: EVERYBODY dislikes Nickelback. Ask whoever you like, and they’ll say they don’t like them. Everybody. Except for the millions of people who have scooped up tens of millions of the band’s albums, and made them one of the top selling musical acts of the last decade and a half. Weird thing to read? […]
Read more "“Release Your Anger! Only Your Hatred Can Destroy Nickelback!”"