On January 31, 1968 The United States launched the Tet Offensive. In the course of one year 4,124 American forces were killed, 19,295 were wounded and 604 are still missing till this very day. There were riots over civil rights at The Universities of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Howard, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead with Robert Kennedy. The Zodiac killer was running rampant through the streets of San Francisco, and HIV made its arrival in the United States. That same year Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield penned one of the most famous protest songs of all time and gave it to The Temptations. But it was never released until it after Edwin Starr's version in 1970.
Things were not getting better for the United States at that time. Early in the year Jeffery MacDonald murders his wife and family at Fort Bragg, My Lai takes place, The US invades Cambodia and four students at Kent State were killed by Ohio State National Guardsmen. Jimi Hendrix dies and the US repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. These events changed the face of America, scarred it and left it with wounded pride.
But the music of this era is in my mind the best we ever had to offer. There was The Stones and The Dead, Airplane, Joplin, Motown, Folk, Dylan; while America was losing its footing on the world stage it was solidifying its place as the music center of the world. Whether it be love or hate when we are tuned up we are at our most creative, we are alive and at our most full animalistic selves.
Within four seconds Starr comes in with full Baritone and captures the feeling of the era. There are no if ands or buts about it here, the listener is getting thrown right into the riots and walking through the jungle scared shitless. He's watching a monk burning himself in the streets, watching his friend bleed to death screaming about going home while medics stick needles of morphine into his chest. And if that doesn't put you in the fight from the start when the boots start stomping in at the last minute visions of polished black leather coming for you certainly will.
There's B-52s at 20 thousand carpet bombing while A-4s drop napalm on villages. There's mosquitos on every visible part of your sweat stained body as you walk through the jungles waiting for a booby trap to go off or the man in the black pajamas to jump out from the bush. There's a woman with bushy underarms and saggy breasts burning her bra on a street corner next to a black panther extending a leather glove into the air. Jim Lovell is one hundred miles above the earth trapped in what he deems his final resting place, and a scared Second Lieutenant makes a decision that will change the course of his life. All these events are bottled up in that first four second drum roll until it comes back out with all the venom, spit and hatred that marks the dark side of man.
War itself has existed without stoppage for over four thousand years. As much as we want it to stop it never will. For one decade the effects and affects of war produced some of the most amazing soundtracks ever laid down. It makes me wonder why we are so different today. Maybe it is because we like to say we are concerned about the war but we don't feel it ourselves at home, maybe if your son was over there scared, shaking and wondering if this day will be his last while you sit at home worried sick over him, thinking the same thoughts we would feel it. But instead there's that new reality show on tonight and what the fuck I'll just throw a new plasma on the credit card so I can watch it in style. The moral bankruptcy on all levels is as heartbreaking as the intellectual and artistic dearth in popular culture. From my count the United States has had three Viet Nams since the first one but only one that spurned musical genius. I don't think that says a lot about us or at least it doesn't say anything good. The only thing that war was good for is gone in the present day: Music.
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