The Legacy of the Sixties

Spot a headline like that, and you'll almost invariably find it followed by phrases like a great era, which it was, and things will never be the same again. Of course they won't because the combination of factors that operated in the era are never going to combine in the same way again.

While the sixties shaped the content hereabouts in a number of ways, not all of them are obvious.

Cast an eye over the names that appear under Listings and there's a hefty proportion of artists from that era, many of whom are still functioning, after a fashion today.

But we're not just interested in the sixties as some golden age.  A glance at the album charts and the Top 4 between 1965 and the end of 1968 will reveal an awful lot of dross, schlock and schmaltz. Sure, there were masterpieces, but there was a lot of dross, and everything got played on the radio. There weren't many stations, few of them specialised, and the charts, largely reflected what was selling. So while I was buying Procol Harum or the Vanilla Fudge, the next customer could have been someone's Mum buying Sadie the Cleaning Lady.

Given the range, it's no wonder some of us became rather selective in our listening. 

Interesting (Musical) Times     Rock 'n' Roll upsets the applecart     A Flurry of Post-Beatles Experimentation     

The Response Across The Pond     Folkies and Folk-Rockers     East and West Coasters     San Francisco     

The Tide Recedes (And Flows Back In)

© Ian Hughes 2015