July 16, 2019
This song, which charted as number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the third week of July in 1969, stayed in the top spot for six weeks that summer. It portrayed a Dystopian future which, one might argue, was just too downer a message for the ‘make love, not war’ crowd of the decade.
In The Year 2525 was destined to become a “one hit wonder.”
When one looks at the events of 1969, is it any surprise this song captured the imagination of a country that a week later witnessed two men walk on the moon? Technology, it seemed, had no limits and it was just a matter of time before robots usurped humans and the reign of homo-sapiens would end.
From the Infallible Wikipedia:
“‘In the Year 2525’ opens with an introductory verse explaining that if humanity has survived to that point, it would witness the subsequent events in the song. Subsequent verses pick up the story at 1,010-year intervals from 3535 to 6565. In each succeeding millennium, life becomes increasingly sedentary and automated: thoughts are pre-programmed into pills for people to consume, machines take over all work, resulting in eyes, teeth, and limbs losing their purposes, and marriage becomes obsolete since children are conceived in test tubes. Then the pattern as well as the music changes, going up a half step in the key of the song (chromatic modulation), after two stanzas, first from A-flat minor, to A minor.
For the final three millennia, now in B flat minor, the tone of the song turns apocalyptic: the year 7510 marks the date by which the Second Coming will have happened, and the Last Judgment occurs one millennium later. By 9595, with the song now in B minor, the Earth becomes completely depleted of resources, potentially resulting in the death of all life.
The song ends in the year 10,000. By that time, humanity has become extinct. But the song notes that in another solar system (or universe), the scenarios told in the song may still be playing out, as the beginning of the song repeats and the recording fades out.
The overriding theme, of a world doomed by its passive acquiescence to and over-dependence on its own overdone technologies, struck a resonant chord in millions of people around the world in the late 1960’s. The song was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart during the Apollo 11 moon landing.”
The song was written by Rick Evans, one half of the duo of (Denny) Zager and Evans. One remarkable fact about the song is that it is the only song (still true 50 years later) which reached number one on both the US and UK music charts.
Over the past weekend I had the opportunity to see my two older brothers and asked each separately if they knew what one hit wonder was the number one song for mid July 1969. I expected my brother the disc jockey would get it and he did.
It was my older brother, who turned 21 that summer, who took but a moment to consider the question and responded not with the song title but with the name of the artist. Which is quite rare. So often we know the song but not who recorded it. He waxed poetic for a few minutes about how great the music of the late 1960’s was and what an impression it made on an entire generation.
As for me – not yet really listening to the popular music of the day – the song was inescapable. I know I heard it when it came on the radio as well as when my brother played it on his reel to reel tape deck. As someone on the verge of her teen years, I spent considerable time contemplating the lyrics and it marked my questioning ‘who am I and what am I doing here?’ The world they imagined for the year 2525 and beyond was not a place I wanted to live and I found it all very depressing.
Fast forward to today and although computers, robots, and drones are now part of our world it would seem as though people spend more time now working on personal care and fitness, unwilling to become the lifeless blobs imagined. And that is a good thing.
As a work of fiction, In the Year 2525, serves as a cautionary tale. But don’t take my word for it… copy the link to your browser, watch the video, and enjoy the trip back to the Year 1969 when earthlings went to the moon and the world paused to imagine the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2525
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zager_and_Evans
June 25, 2019
For me it was the song Anticipation which has always garnered a strong emotional response. In fact I found in some of my teenage writings where I had written out all the lyrics to the song and even named the beginnings of one of my early attempts at story telling ‘Anticipation.’
It was the influence and support of his wife, Linda, which defined the next 25 years of his career. The solo career was short lived. He formed the band Wings along with his wife, ex-Moody Blue’s guitarist Denny Laine, and also drummer Denny Seiwell.
Although the group has continued to record and perform over the years, with some members leaving, new ones coming in, and then old ones rejoining, those of us of a certain age no doubt think of Fleetwood Mac as the following five individuals who were the group in 1977: Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
The Bee Gees, already a successful group, had no small part in the creation of the soundtrack. In all, eight of their original songs are featured. But for the fact that Columbia records refused the producers the rights to use Boz Skaggs song Lowdown, the Bee Gees might never have gotten involved.
Although the Bee Gees may have lost an album that year, their place in the annals of musical legends was solidified.
But I do have a distinct memory of meeting a man who played with Elvis. By the time I met Punky Caldwell, he and his family were living in Yakima. Punky, unfortunately, was suffering from the complications of diabetes. It was Thanksgiving weekend of 1977, a few months after Elvis’ death. It was a weird night. I had gone with my ex-boyfriend to visit a friend of his from high school – Thelma – and we ended up playing cribbage with her and her mother, Jo. We said hello to Punky. He retired shortly thereafter and then, during the cribbage games, the story of how he had worked with Elvis was told. I guess he must have played with Elvis before Elvis got big. The way I recalled the story is that Jo and Punky went to visit Graceland after Punky no longer played with Elvis, and that there were hundreds of teddy bears everywhere. She commented on the teddy bears to Elvis who offered her one, which she refused. Later, when she and Punky were back at the hotel, a package arrived from Elvis. It was a teddy bear.
Now on to Irving Berlin. Born in Imperial Russia in 1888, his family immigrated to the United States when he was five. His story is a classic rags to riches. The family of 10 lived in the ghettos of New York and a young Berlin quit school at age 13, left home, and took up residence in a lodging house where hundreds of homeless boys lived.![42229 GOD BLESS AM PVG[MECH]](https://barbaradevore.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/God-bless-america.jpg?w=248&h=331)
“Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, states that the song was actually ‘very personal’ for her father, and was intended as an expression of his deep gratitude to the nation for merely ‘allowing’ him, an immigrant raised in poverty, to become a successful songwriter. ‘To me,’ said Berlin, God Bless America was not just a song but an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am.’ The Economist magazine writes that ‘Berlin was producing a deep-felt paean to the country that had given him what he would have said was everything.’”
I was captivated by the movie and have watched it many times since then. I even have a VHS tape version in my collection. But the thing which most sticks in my mind from that day was how my grandfather, during the final scene when they sing White Christmas, wiped away a couple tears and said “they just don’t make them like that anymore.”
For teenage girls in the early 1970’s, he was the heart-throbiest of heartthrobs. His female fans cried, screamed and swooned. The guys of the era attempted to imitate his hair and his clothes. And on November 27, 1970, his group’s song “I Think I Love You” sat atop the pop charts. The idol: David Cassidy.
“In 1970, Cassidy took the role of Keith Partridge, son of Shirley Partridge, who was played by Cassidy’s real stepmother and series lead Shirley Jones. The Partridge Family series creator Bernard Slade and producers Paul Junger Witt and Bob Claver did not care whether Cassidy could sing, knowing only that his androgynous good looks would guarantee success. Shortly after production began, though, Cassidy convinced music producer Wes Farrell that he was good enough, and he was promoted to lead singer for the series’ recordings.”
Kingdom included sellout concerts at Wembley Stadium in 1973. In Australia in 1974, the mass hysteria was such that calls were made to have him deported from the country, especially after the madness at his 33,000-person audience concert at Melbourne Cricket Ground.”
As a 13 year old girl in 1970, I was precisely the demographic which was all agog over David Cassidy. I never put up posters on my walls, however, but I did watch the Partridge Family almost every Friday night. And I might have had a teeny bit of a crush on Keith Partridge.
barbaradevore.com 