stellauk
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I can understand the difficulties with listening to Bob Dylan, who is arguably one of the finest poets in the English language but as a lyricist is somewhat inconsistent, for example comparing 'Positively 4th Street' and 'Like A Rolling Stone' to other stuff like 'Highway 61 Revisited', 'All Along The Watchtower'.
But I also rate just as highly Smokey Robinson, who can make music with words. I sometimes wonder just how much people realize that contribution to the music industry came from small town America, and some of the decisions which were made - critical decisions - by American record producers. It runs right through from jazz into country, blues, folk, rock and roll and it helped create what was for my mind at least arguably the best decade of music in the 20th century from 1963 or thereabouts to 1973.
This for me is when it all really happened, with jackie DeShannon, Del Shannon - another greatly underrated songwriter and composer, the Mamas and Papas, Peter Paul and Mary, the Byrds, the Loving Spoonful, the Beach Boys going through their renaissance with Brian Wilson discovering his creative genius to come out with something like Pet Sounds, There was also Crosby Stills and Nash, Creedance Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Roy Orbison, and so many others.
English language culture is predominant throughout the world and I feel each possesses their own quality of creative spark, not just in the States but in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, but I feel that nobody can take that creative spark and develop it into something else quite like an American. This in itself is what I feel to be a defining element of American culture.
Perhaps it comes from that strong sense of ethno-centricity, that sense of being American, which is so universal right from the Bering Straits in the north west down to the south eastern tip of Florida, that gives Americans that seemingly innate sense of what is right, what works, and i would even suggest that what America chooses to share with the world, what we all perceive as American culture, is but a tip of the iceberg.
It's something which is quite different from the innovation and inventiveness found in say, Britain or Canada, but you just cannot argue with how Hollywood itself formed out of the ideas of Chaplin and how that was exploited partly to lift America out of the Depression. It can be seen over and over again, with the development of electricity, the telephone, the Internet.
Can you imagine what life would be like without electricity? Without the telephone? Without much of modern music?
Try to imagine a world without America.
This is something which appears to be lost these days, that voice of protest once voiced over Vietnam and Korea has been silent over Afghanistan and Iraq and in among all the bickering, squabbling between political left and political right, in among the daily struggles to keep body and soul together, the fridge stocked up and gas in the car, that what once was appears lost.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I would also argue that 1963 to 1973 was a defining moment in American history, the marches through Selma and Mongomery in Alabama, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, events such as Monterey, Woodstock, Martin Luther King, and the entire civil rights movement.
I'm not an American, the other way I can relate to it is my experience of being in Poland and being a part of that transition from communism to what is today. Two countries on either side of the Atlantic, culturally similar due to the conflicts and isolation in their history, their geography - the vast open territories of the States and the broad expansive plains of Poland in the centre of Europe - in both cases the ideal location for a battle.
I walked into the country when it had nothing, I had just £40 in my pocket, there was not much to buy in the shops, there were shortages everywhere and a sense of solidarity and community that we have never experienced in the West. Polish society was held together by the knowledge that everybody needed somebody else - the university professor needed the shop girl for his quarter pound of krakowski sausage every month, he needed her father to fix stuff in his apartment and her grandfather to repair his Trabant or Syrena.
This is how I imagine it to be in the States during the 1960's, in the small towns, perhaps in the Deep South, whe¶e people knew each other, kept their white picket fences white, 'forty five was the speed limit, motorcycles not allowed in it', and people reaching out, and responding to Jackie DeShannon's 'put a little love in your heart'.
I mean, such changes and advances in civil rights could not be achieved just by the figures, but more so by the ordinary American people, reaching out, supporting each other..
Which makes it all the more soul-destroying to see people bickering between left and right, rich and poor, black and white, heterosexual and homosexual, people refusing to see the reality that times are hard for many people, and that the animosity and enmity shown between the neocons and the liberals is a lose lose battle for every American.
Or maybe part of my soul caught that spirit between Monterey and Woodstock, and this is yet another of my bleeding heart, tree-huggin' posts.
I'd like to provide another example of a great recording from that era involving both a British rock band and an American singer which came about from an idea from an American producer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcCTKtyzaXc
This is The Rolling Stones 'Gimme Shelter', a song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards about the political and social unrest in the States at the time - when there were race riots, Vietnam, and Charles Manson. The backing singer is Merry Clayton, an American gospel singer from Louisiana. She released her own version of this song, she also backed other artists such as Ray Charles and also appeared in the 80's TV show Cagney and Lacey.
'Gimme Shelter' was recorded early in 1969 with the Rolling Stones at Olympia Studios in London and Merry Clayton recording her tracks at Sunset and Elektra Sound Studios in California. The idea for the recording came from its producer Jimmy Miller who worked with the Stones on the most successful of their five albums Beggar's Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main Street (1972) and Goat's Head Soup (1973)
The lyrics of the song speak of seeking shelter from a an approaching storm, highlighting the devastating social transition at the time while pointing out the power of love
Oh a storm is threatening, my very life today
If I don't get some shelter, Oh yeah I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away
Love, sister, it's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away
I feel it's something more of a passing coincidence that these lyrics, as well as many others by American artists such as Jackie DeShannon, Buffalo Springfield and Barry MacGuire, could just as easily apply to today's situation as back then in the Sixties.
That's just how timeless that period truly was.
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Jackie DeShannon; The 60's explained. - 
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