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Old 02-06-2008, 10:34 AM   #15 (permalink)
Grandstander
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Anyone recall the extaordinary atrocity which was Victor Lundberg's "Open Letter To My Teenage Son?" Astonishingly, this release got tons of airplay on the pop stations in the late sixties. It was a spoken piece, the premise being a concerned father responding to questions raised by his counter culture son and was supposed to represent the establishment response to all those damn hippies, yippies and social dropouts.

It was delivered in this Lorne Greenish, stern, ponderous tone, you'd have to roll up a magazine and orate through that to appoximate the sound. The moment the man opens his mouth, you can tell he hates the kid. There's a bunch of bogus patronizing as he pretends like he respects the coming generation, but that is mere warm up for the real messsage which is all John Wayne-America the Beautiful-Beaver Cleaver in style and content.

It was reflective of prevailing values, for example, he tells his son that "Your mother will love you no matter what, because she's a woman." All of it builds to the climax where Dad gets tough and tells the kid that if he burns his draft card, "Then burn your birth certificate too, for from that day on, I have no son."

You could create a special category of sixties music (although "Open Letter" wasn't really a song) where artists had hits that were anti-counter culture. It would include "Dawn of Correction" which was a reactive attempt to put down Barry McGwire's "Eve of Destruction", and more famously, "Okie From Muskogee", Merle Haggard's assault on all things hip.
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