Listening to retro music is a tricky affair, It's like a jog down a lane of memories that you've never had ,yet has the potency to somehow make you feel nostalgic. I sometimes wonder if I would ever be able to come up with thoughts that a 60's slow rock or country music star has not mentioned in their songs. This thought is so profound, that sometimes I catch myself whispering "brown eyed girl!" to myself every time a pretty girl talks to me or so much so that I have convinced myself into believing that "You've lost that lovin' feeling" is a perfectly acceptable way to end an argument without coming off as smug (At least not entirely). Music in the 60s , like life back in the 60s was like a bag of skittles; You could never predict what you were going to get the next time you put your hand in and You just couldn't get enough of it. On some days you could get a red one and Mr. Kennedy would wake up to soviet 'soccer fields' in his Cuban Backyard; While on others you could pull out a green one and find Maoist propaganda brew its leaves in the far east jungles of Bengal. They didn't need Netflix in the 60s because they were busy building the plot for us.
As I stare further at the fan and admire how perfectly circular its trajectory is, I come to realize that music has always been at the center of the very concept of Conflict. Thumping machos with their scarlet robes and iron visors marching their way into 'glory' or whatever glorified term the gladiators had for death and the Young bloods of the 132nd airborne tossing themselves into the air to fight for 'God and Country'; you just can't picture this without the right kind of music playing in the background. In fact, Now that I come to think of it music renders dignity to what otherwise would have been an ugly brawl. The trumpets blare a tune that although simple in composition and having a localized chord pattern signaling 'CHARGE!', Which in not so many words involves you picking up your lancer and galloping into certain death. What if we were to change that music? What if instead of having the trumpets signal charge, the cavalryman plays the harmonica intro to 'Blowing in the wind'? What if Mr.Gorbachev were a John Lennon fanboy(and not a Lenin fanboy, eh eh eh)? Would he have brought down that wall himself while blasting 'Imagine' on the propaganda speakers? I wont pretend like I can answer these questions myself , but what I do know is that a lot of the conflict that this world has seen could be avoided by music lying in my Spotify wrapped.
Now before I turn all existential and feel like I have all the answers I need here, I'm gonna leave you with a question to think about. How many times must a cannonball fly before it is forever banned and How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died? The answer is certainly not blowing in the wind.
