Last night I was up until 2 am talking about politics and society with my mom, and I came to a conclusion I've come to several times before. This country needs another Woodstock. And I don't mean that we need to have a massive concert full of era defining artists, pot, granola, mud and camping. Although it might help loosen everyone up a little. What we need are the feelings that era carried. My mom was a teenager in the late sixties and early seventies. She petitioned for Cesar Chavez, she was the go to girl for information about feminism at her high school, she hung out in Berkeley. And she said that, back then, it felt like any little thing you did could make a difference. You really could change the world. And, it seems to me, that feeling isn't there anymore. We can throw protests and rallies but it doesn't seem to do anything. And you certainly don't feel like you can do something on your own.
In that era, people had hope. The sixties were ABOUT hope. Yeah, they were also about mind expanding drugs, and free love, but maybe we need that back to. The music was about hope, everything in that culture was imbued with hopefulness and the need to change and the people enacting that change could see it and feel it and know that it was happening.
Today, not so much. The need to change is there, that's for sure. But that never ending fountain of hope that seemed to be around in the sixties? It's turned into a never ending fountain of cynicism. And I'm just as guilty as the rest of the world. I'm angry, I'm disenfranchised, and I'm trying to do my bit to help, but I can't help but feel it's going nowhere. Society has reached the point of no return on it's path to ultimate downfall. I want to believe change is possible. I want to believe we can fix this. I want to believe we can take this sham of a democracy we're living in, and make it at least an actual democracy. By the people, for the people, not by giant corporations, for giant corporations. I want to believe that people are capable of socialism, or anarchy. But I can't. And that's the problem. We, as a culture, have stopped believing in the people. Because, we don't seem to have a reason to. It's 2010, and racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, hatred of the homeless, sexism, size-ism and any other number of useless and unfounded prejudices run rampant in society still. People need to realize that a person is a person, no matter how small, how tall, who they sleep with, how they dress, where they live, or what they do for a living. And they need to treat all people as people. We need to stop thinking violence solves anything, because it doesn't. We need to stop trying to assert our own race or gender as the best race or gender, and we really need to stop being such a nationalistic country.
I don't know how we're going to do any of that. I don't know how much of it will ever happen. And I don't know when. But I do know that in order for it to happen, we need to have hope. And if that means we all need to get together, and sit in circles and play acoustic guitar, or march down the streets of this country with flowers in out hair and singing, or if we need to throw massive protests and hand out leaflets, so be it! Let's do it! Let's write new music because, as much as a I love political music nowadays, it's often loud and angry. I think what we need right now are a few more singer/songerwriters like Sandi Thom.
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
When the head of state didn't play guitar
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and radio was king,
When accountants didn't have control
And the media couldn't buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
When popstars still remained a myth
And ignorance could still be bliss
And when God Save the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale
When my mom and dad were in their teens
and anarchy was still a dream
and the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
When record shops were on top
and vinyl was all that they stocked
and the super info highway was still drifting out in space
kids were wearing hand me downs,
and playing games meant kick arounds
and footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too lead to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
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