The Music.  The Magic.
"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,
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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.