The Music.  The Magic.

From the back cover of The Moon Is Down CD:

"One magical night in January, 1969, sixteen people hovered behind the curtain as the Boulder High School auditorium filled: tuning, whispering, and exchanging glances. As stagehands dimmed the houselights, the crew assembled on stage, not talking for a change. Something hung in the air, heavy enough to cut with a knife, a feeling of stifled frenzy. Then the curtains parted to the sounds of and the intensity reached into the packed house. The show was carried by its own momentum; and when the company finished with a standing ovation left the performers limp."

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You can help send a kid to nature camp at the Thorne Nature Experience, founded by the original producer of the Sing-In Boulder LP albums, Dr. Oakleigh Thorne II, who has generously endorsed this re-release.

It was a magical time for music. The revolution began on February 9, 1964, with The Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan show, but it wasn't just The Beatles. With the door of opportunity cracked open and alternatives to the once-exciting but rapidly ageing Rock n' Roll suddenly unshackled, both new music and revived folk music was everywhere.

We not only had the British invasion, but songs like Pete Seeger's immortal If I Had a Hammer and Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, The Kingston Trio's and Peter, Paul & Mary's takes on 500 Miles, and The Mamas and the Papas' captured our new generation. The post-WWII baby boomers were coming of age. ( by then a classic, is the lead-off song of the 1972 Sing-In album, Feelin' Alright).

We sat cross-legged on the floor, listening to a record player (not a stereo system), watching the 45 RPM single Yesterday spin, playing it over and over. We passed guitars around, singing the songs mentioned above and strumming the four chords of If I Had a Hammer, singing Peter, Paul & Mary's A' Soalin', and inevitably imitating Eric Burdon and The Animal's The House of The Rising Sun, a revived, traditional folk song first published in 1925.

The civil rights movement was still going strong, and central to the revival of the traditional gospel song. Although most remember We Shall Overcome, a descendent of a gospel song written in 1900, written in the 1920's, was also considered an anthem of the movement. ( is recorded on the Sing-In The Moon Is Down album).

The turbulent times of the still-threatening Cold War, the emerging Vietnam War and the escalated draft fueled the sentiments of our new, idealistic generation that had never endured the hardship of the depression or world-wide conflict.

The opening verse of Peter Yarrow's also on Sing-In's The Moon Is Down, captures the essence of the generation gap: 

So I told him that he'd better shut his mouth
And do his job like a man.
And he answered "Listen, Father,
I will never kill another."
He thinks he's better
Than his brother who died.
What the hell does he think he's doing
To his father who brought him up right?

Simon and Garfunkle burst onto the scene with The Sound of Silence, bolstering the popularity of the smooth, harmonic and thoughtful male duet style we hear in the Sing-In original songs and and in Paul Simon's on The Moon Is Down album. Paul Simon's is on the Feelin' Alright album.

Musicians who frequented or lived in or near Boulder, like Stephen Stills and and Neil Young and also added their influence. Many of us skipped class and attended Stephen Stills' and Neil Young's impromptu, free concert in the City Park band shell (just down the street from Boulder High), highlighted by Still's Buffalo Springfield classic, For What It's Worth (Stop, Hey What's That Sound). Frequent Colorado visitor Michael Martin Murphey co-authored and Judy Collins' powerful performances of and inspired their Sing-In counterparts.

Woodstock had happened, and we were able to get Joan Baez to appear at an assembly at Boulder High where she did sing for us briefly.

Among The Beatles Peter Paul & Mary and Simon and Garfunkle Cosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Stephen Stills' and and Neil Young's and The Bee Gees and Joni Mitchell and their musicians account for songwriter credits on seventeen of the songs on the four Sing-In albums. Other noted contributing songwriters include Donovan Leitch Buffy Sainte-Marie James Taylor John Denver and Cat Stevens

The students themselves contributed ten original songs, (listed under an alias, but also sampling Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant), and

The word "genre" had not yet come into the vocabulary, but folk rock had come into our lives.