BALLAD OF THE BEACON, BY WISHBONE ASH , ALBUM: WISHBONE FOUR, 1973

Well be leaving this town in the morning
Tomorrow well be able to see
I’ve had me enough of this city
And she’s had enough out of me

I’m turning my sights on the country
Sold everything that I own
I’m heading away from the bright lights
Looking for where the wind blows

Say if I climbed to the mountains
Would you still follow me there
Steal me away in an echo
The mountains will always be there

Another “escaping the stress-producing city for living in the country” song.

You can hear this song in you tube but in a bad sound quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPjnxeJt3iY

You can hear some other songs from Wishbone Ash in you tube:

Blowing free

Jailbait

leaf and stream

Mama Nature said, by Thin Lizzy, Album: Vagabonds Of The Western World ,1973

Mama Nature said
"It's murder what you've done"
I sent you forth my brightest world
Now it's nearly gone

Birds and bees
Been telling me
You can't see
The forest for the trees

You cover up your lies
With sympathies
And I got no solutions
To your persecution

Mama Nature said
"I can't believe it's true"
I gave you life and food for thought
Look what did you do

You're killing my rivers
Drowning my baby streams
Day by day by day by day
I hear them scream

I'm so disillusioned
I'm so disillusioned

Mama Nature said
"You're guilty of this crime"
Now it's not just a matter of fact
But just a matter of time

Cruel will be the vengeance
So savage is the deed that's done
And I've got no solutions
To your own pollutions

Another clear ecological song where Nature takes revenge and condemns us for our crimes against Her

You can hear some songs from Thin Lizzy in You tube:

Whiskey in the jar

The rocker

Emerald

Cowboy song

The City by FLEETWOOD MAC Album: Mystery To Me, 1973

Gonna stay out of New York
There's something there that drives me crazy
Gonna stay out of New York
There's something there that bleeds me dry

It gets so bad that I stop breathin'
And then the sun don't wanna shine
There's something wrong with New York
It's a prison without walls

No I won't go back there
I just don't like that place at all
You might call it sophistication
But I say time is runnin' out

I won't go back to New York
There's a darkness all around
No, I just can't handle it

You know that place is gettin' me down
You can say it's sophistication
But I say time is runnin' out

A strong distaste and disregarding of urban dehumanizing environment and desire for escape.

You can hear some classics from Fleetwood Mac in you tube:

Green Manalishi

Fool Noone

Don't stop

The Chain

Second hand news

Go your own way

peacekeeper

Happy old world by Barclay James Harvest, album Once Again, 1971

Looking like something from out of space we came
Nothing much to look at, but did he complain?
He didn't mind us being here to live in peace and grace
What we're doing to him now could put us back in space

We're thinking like some creatures off the ocean floor
Losing sight of what we've really come here for
Can I be heard above the sounds of prejudice and hate?
Take time to look around before it gets too late

It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I'm sorry to be leaving it
It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I guess I still, I still believe in it
It's a happy old world

We're tearing up the rivers and a thousand streams
And highways, they're in places where they've never been
We're building towers in the sky and racing for the sun
Oh Lord, any eye can see what harm we've done

I need some help to get myself out of this maze
We can both just say goodbye and go our separate ways
My mind's not on this song I sing, my heart's not in the lines
Guess I'll go and kill myself, so would you kindly close the blinds

Oh a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I'm sorry to be leaving it
It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I guess, guess I still believe in it
It's a happy old world

A song that notifies our alienation from our roots in nature. We behave like we came from outer space, or from depths of the sea and we swept out natural landscapes to create heavy urban environments, as nature is a foe.

You can hear some songs from this period of this band in youtube:

Mocking Bird

Mother dear

Album: A question of Balance by Moody Blues, 1970

"Question"

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.

It's where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution
That is burning in it's greed.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the wall of love is for.

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me.
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be.

And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true.
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you.

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she's waiting there for me.

But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose.

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew.
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our souls.


"How Is It (We Are Here)"

How is it we are here, on this path we walk,
In this world of pointless fear, filled with empty talk,
Descending from the apes as scientist-priests all think,
Will they save us in the end, we're trembling on the brink.

Men's mighty mine-machines digging in the ground,
Stealing rare minerals where they can be found.
Concrete caves with iron doors, bury it again,
While a starving frightened world fills the sea with grain.

Her love is like a fire burning inside,
Her love is so much higher it can't be denied,
She sends us her glory, it's always been there,
Her love's all around us, it's there for you and me to share.

Men's mighty mine-machines digging in the ground,
Stealing rare minerals where they can be found.
Concrete caves with iron doors, bury it again,
While a starving frightened world fills the sea with grain.

How is it we are here
How is it we are here
How is it we are here


"Don't You Feel Small"

Ask the mirror on the wall
Who's the biggest fool of all,
Bet you feel small,
It happens to us all.

See the world
Ask what's it for,
Understanding, nothing more,
Don't you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Time is now to spread your voice,
Time's to come there'll be no choice,
Why do you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Look at progress,
Then count the cost,
We'll spoil the seas
With the rivers we've lost.

See the writing on the wall,
Hear the mirror's warning call.
That's why you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Ask the mirror on the wall
Who's the biggest fool of all,
Bet you feel small,
It happens to us all.


In this album Moody Blues deal with social-orientated questioning about our destination, our arrogance, the questionable concept of progress, war and some ecological references (bold parts).

We read in wikipedia about this album:

For the first time, The Moody Blues used political strife as a basis for songwriting with the UK number two hit in May 1970, "Question", which dealt with the controversy resulting from the ongoing Vietnam War.

You can hear some songs from this album in youtube:

Question

Melancholy man

Tortoise and the hare

And the tide rushes in

The balance

When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin, Album: IV, 1971

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, [X2]
When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.

Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan, [X2]
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.

Don't it make you feel bad
When you're tryin' to find your way home,
You don't know which way to go?
If you're goin' down South
They go no work to do,
If you don't know about Chicago.

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

All last night sat on the levee and moaned, [X2]
Thinkin' about me baby and my happy home.
Going, going to Chicago... Going to Chicago... Sorry but I can't take you...
Going down... going down now... going down....

1927/2005 the same story repeats: leeve collapse, Missisipi floods and thousands of mainly poor black people met with disaster, left in their fates by authorities

We read in wikipedia very interesting information and interpretation for this great song:

The original work for "When the Levee Breaks" was produced by the blues musical duo known as "Kansas Joe McCoy" and "Memphis Minnie." The lines at the end of the song, "Going to Chicago; sorry but I can't take you", quote "Going to Chicago Blues" by Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra.

In the first half of 1927, the Great Mississippi Flood ravaged the state of Mississippi and surrounding areas. It destroyed many homes and ravaged the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. During the flood and the years after it subsided, it became the subject of numerous Delta blues songs, including "When the Levee Breaks", hence the lyrics, "I works on the levee, mama both night and day, I works so hard, to keep the water away" and "I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home".

The song focused mainly on when more than 13,000 residents in and near Greenville, Mississippi evacuated to a nearby, unaffected levee for its shelter at high ground. The tumult that would have been caused if this and other levees had broken was the song's underlying theme
……

The song has a significant second connotation, aside from the literal breaking of water-retaining levees by floodwaters. The song was inspired originally by an event rife with social strife (when the levees broke in 1927, black labor was forced to repair it at gunpoint), and this fact carries through in the lyrics. Plant expanded the lyrics to include such phrases as "If you're goin' down south / they got no work to do / if you don't know 'bout Chicago" that add to the original themes of the poor being disenfranchised--the poor, working classes are the ones whose homes are going to be destroyed by floodwaters, and they are the ones who will have nowhere to go afterward.

The second connotation of the song is built on an interesting twist. If the song is interpreted as a social statement reflecting class issues, then the poor themselves become the raging storm, restrained by oppressive (often governmental) institutions (the levees), and who will inevitably strike down what restrains them. In this interpretation, 'when the levee breaks,' it will be the former oppressors whose constructs are destroyed and who are cast out into the cold. In this interpretation, the song serves as a warning to oppressive upper classes that if they provoke a raging storm of social fury, they may sit on their social levee and "weep and moan," but "crying won't help [them], praying won't do [them] no good."

You can hear this song in youtube with a slide presentation from New Orleans hit by Katrina and leeve collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Ny9_CrUVY

The Hand of Man by country joe and the fish, album: C.J. Fish, 1970

It's many an hour I've been thinking of our fate
Doomed it seemed to live in a world of fear and hate.
I thought about the good and the love there could be,
How fear can blind a man, how people are not free.

Hey, take my hand and come walk with me,
Brothers and sisters we all can be
From a spark in the dark from the hand of man
Peace and understanding spread through our land.

I gazed into the sky and saw the rains come down
I saw the deadly poisons flowing to the ground.
The rivers and the oceans turned into a grave
All years of effort wasted there was nothing left to save.

Hey, take my hand and come walk with me,
Brothers and sisters we all can be;
From a spark in the dark from the hand of man
Peace and understanding spread through our land.

An awareness about the future of mankind and our ignorance, not only about environment and its pollution, but also about ourselves who live in fear and insecurity, isolated with no bonds of solidarity and compassion.
You can hear some songs by Country Joe and the Fish in You tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuTyDzS5awA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlW3iP11fH4

1984 by Spirit, 1969

1984
knockin' on your door
will you let it come
will you let it run your life

someone will be waiting for you at your door
when you get home tonight
ah yes he's gonna tell you darkness gives you much more
than you get from the light

classic plastic guards well they're your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves your brothers
but you know it's no game
you're never out of their sight

it's time you started thinking inside your head
that you should stand up and fight
oh where will you be when the freedom must end
just one year from tonight

classic plastic coppers are your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves protection
but they know it's no game
you're never out of their sight

I'm gonna run through the jungle
I'm not going to ever come back


a futuristic song, inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, about the consequences of the need for protection and security. The more protection the more loss of freedom. But the “need” for protection was the perfect excuse for freedom and human rights restrictions by authorities who also change or reverse the meaning of the words. We can see it today in the so-called war against terrorism, but under this pretext, the real enemies are the free citizens who struggle for a better way of living and for a healthy environment and against them are the new real terroristic laws and acts.

you can hear this song in you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3Dr5EltDM

Murray Bookchin and his impact on the counterculture and the emergence of the ecological movement

In a recent issue of the on-line magazine "Communalism", Janet Biehl refers to some interesting aspects of the life and work of the philosopher of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin, which support our comments on the decline of the counterculture at the end of the sixies, as well as the emergence of the ecological movement.

Biehl writes that

his 1969 essay “Listen, Marxist!” represented, not simply a warning to the SDS to avoid a takeover by Maoists of the Progressive Labor Party, but also his definitive personal break with Marxism as the ideology by which he defined himself. He took pride when, a few years later, Victor Ferkiss identified him with a tendency that he called “eco-anarchist.”

(...)

Murray went on in the 1970s to make further contributions to both eco-anarchism and to anarchism as such. He pioneered exploration of alternative energy sources and eco-technics in his 1965 essay “Towards a Liberatory Technology.” In the 1970s he developed a distinction between ecology (inherently radical) and environmentalism (reformist).

(...)

In 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the primary political organization of the American New Left, collapsed, its leadership having been taken over by ultraleft guerrilla groups like Weatherman and the Black Panthers. The Maoist guerrilla campaigns that had seemed to be the path ahead ended up destroying the organization. The student movement had always suffered from the endemic problem of fast turnover—no sooner do students organize a demonstration than summer vacation begins; no sooner do students develop political experience than they graduate. In April 1970 National Guards killed four student demonstrators at Kent State in Ohio. Among the New Left’s rank and file the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam continued to pull together intermittent demonstrations in Washington. The 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern channeled the energy of many antiwar activists. Amid the once-vibrant American radical movement confusion reigned.

In these years Murray was involved with the East Side Anarchists in New York as well as a libertarian collective that published the periodical Anarchos. What the American radical movement needed, he realized, in order to function as a real social and political alternative, was a set of institutions that would have at least some permanence. But no such institutions remained from the detritus of SDS or emerged from the antiwar demonstrations. Marches were “ephemeral spectacles,” he wrote in “Spring Offensives and Summer Vacations,” published in Anarchos in June 1972. “After each demonstration, street action, or confrontation, this hollow cone [of organizational leadership] all but collapsed, only to be recreated again with varying degrees of success for another demonstration, street action, or confrontation.”

Something more lasting had to be built: “The hollow cone that we call a movement must acquire a more solid geometry. It must be filled in by an authentic popular movement based on the self-activity of the American people, not the theatrical eruptions of a dedicated minority.” Antiwar activists, he urged, should build stable institutions.

(...)

As we have seen, Murray had argued that revolutionary institutions are formed spontaneously by the people during the course of a revolution. (Spontaneity was one of his principles of convergence between anarchism and ecology.) But during the late 1970s—I believe it was about 1977 —something happened that permanently changed his thinking: he came to the realization that he was not going to see a revolution would happen in his lifetime. The way he put it to me was: he realized that the revolutionary era is over.

He had been working with the Clamshell Alliance, the group that prevented the Seabrook nuclear reactor from going on line. Was it something about that experience that led to this realization? He was frustrated by the decision-making processes used in that group: consensus, he found, was a process very prone to manipulation. Or was it the changes happening in North America and Europe in the 1970s? Certainly the United States was entering a period of right-wing backlash against the 1960s (a backlash that continues to this day). Onetime radicals were now pursuing careers, getting “a piece of the pie” for themselves. The new social movements were emerging, which offered hope but also fragmentation of any broad movement; they moved radical thinking increasingly toward identity politics. Ecology was emerging as an issue of general concern, but as Washington adopted a few environment-friendly laws, radical ecologists were becoming reformist environmentalists. Finally the alternative (non-Western and noncredal) spiritualities that made up the New Age were ever more popular, luring former political activists into private life and promising to replace extroverted demands to change society with inner quests for serenity and enlightenment.

We stop here with the quotes of this interesting article, since they suffice to complement the elements that sketch the political atmosphere of the end of the sixties and most of the seventies which gave inspiration for many rock songs of that era. What we want to add is that Bookchin's writings and lectures of that era influenced to a substantial degree several ecological initiatives and many more individuals that started to flirt with this new emerging movement. Some of those individuals took part in the formation processes of the new Green Parties and gave them radical inclinations. The majority, however, remained outside partisan processes, trying to realize communalist projects and initiatives, and familiarize wider audiences with Bookchin's Social Ecology. For more information we direct you to web pages that are devoted on these lines:
Institute of Social Ecology
Communalism
Left Green Perspectives
Murray Bookchin Archive
Janet Biehl's blog with graphics about Bookchin
Democratic Alternative
Social Ecology London
European Social Ecology Institute

Fresh Garbage by Spirit, Album: Spirit, 1968

Are they just lyrics or a strong musical accusation for the common bad habits our consuming/discarding civilization bequeathed to us?

You can hear this song with another instrumental (Taurus) in you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jCmNtLSCPI