As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm a little bit preoccupied with the conservative turn America took in the 1980s.
You have to admit, it is MORE than a little creepy that Orwell's novel just happened to be titled 1984.
Considering that yeah, that seems pretty dead on from this perspective if you're looking to pinpoint a year (plus or minus a couple) that seems to contain the seeds of the dystopian weirdness we live in today.
But, as occurs so often in history, perhaps the key to this seeming Sociological Mystery is what's being left out of the retelling.
(Previously: "Rich Girl")
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So here's how I would illustrate, using hit pop songs as examples, the narrative My Generation was taught about this particular slice of the mid-late 20th century:
1964: "The Times, They Are A-Changing"
1971: "Imagine"
1978: "Night Fever"
1984: "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"
This, and that one movie, is why I think it's reasonable that most people of My Generation think of the 1980s in America as a time when most people were NOT, as they say, Keeping It Real.
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And oh, was there a lot to keep it real about! As Billy Joel put it:
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law,
Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore!
Wow, Billy, I am really buying what you are selling here about the many troubles of American and global society! If ONLY there were someone out there who was writing REALLY good socially conscious folk-pop that does NOT fuck around!
But wait, could it be?
YES. They did not crumble into dust and blow away on the wind at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1980:
it's
PETER
PAUL
&
MARY.
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The song: Peter Paul & Mary, "El Salvador"; 1982
The moment: 1:57; 2:38
When this song starts playing, you may think "Oh brother, this is just another shlocky white person funky faux-Mexican style folk song, why's Amy Wilson so excited about this Jimmy Buffett bullshit?"
But just keep listening and it gradually dawns that no, this is a song that takes the same reference points as Jimmy Buffett bullshit to craft what can only be called a CAUSTIC screed against U.S. involvement in the brutal Salvadoran Civil War.
And at 1:57 comes the point when it becomes obvious that no, this song is not going to let us off the hook and we really are going to hear this nice-voiced "Puff, The Magic Dragon" man describe a group of innocent people being blown to smithereens simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time
AND
that this takes place with the soundtrack of some stupid mealy-mouthed American ABC News announcer and some REAL shlocky white person music, Gene Autry's "South Of The Border".
And THEN the emotional onslaught continues at 2:38 where Peter Paul and Mary slow their roll just enough to reveal that they know Exactly how U.S. involvement in El Salvador fits into the larger globalization-Cold War-military-industrial complex puzzle.
And as if that were not enough, all of this builds to a simple question at the end -- a simple, decisive point:
Don't you think it's time to leave El Salvador?
If that is not a heaping serving of 1980s-style Extreme Realness, I do not know what it is.
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I don't know about the other members of My Generation out there reading this, but I know that personally I have to struggle against feelings of persistent embarrassment while listening to earnest socially conscious music like "El Salvador".
Perhaps it is because our flavor of socially conscious music sounds more like The Arcade Fire than it does Peter Paul & Mary. And while The Arcade Fire makes decent music and "Haiti" is a powerful song, its lush sound-poetry style will never -- to me, at least -- pack the visceral punch of the vocal, musical, and lyrical transparency of "El Salvador"
And also perhaps it is because we are like people who have been raised from birth in a swimming pool and so can't understand what it means that our eyes are burning except it's a swimming pool filled with irony, not chlorine.
But there is nothing embarrassing about the earnest desire to spotlight any of the terrible global injustices in which Americans are knowingly or unknowingly complicit simply by virtue of being American, and there is nothing embarrassing about the will to operate this spotlight through popular music.
And it is only irony that tells us otherwise.
So I say SCREW irony, DOWN with irony
and UP with Peter Paul & Mary.
Yrs,
AW
PS I worry that the overall angry and caustic tone of this post will sully your image of Peter Paul & Mary for those of us for whom that is still being formed.
So please, let this song be like the marshmallow mint after the spicy BBQ dinner.
