Cheer the fish: Woodstock's anthem of Anti-Vietnam, the fish cheer I feel like i'm fixin to die rag from Country Joe McDonald
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Civil rights and anti-war weren’t the only battle cries as women organized and demanded equality in the ’60s, too. In his original 1965 version, Otis Redding delivers this song’s themes of love, sex and deference with typical passion and flair. But Aretha Franklin’s 1967 rendering turns it into a feminist anthem, empowering all those held down as second class citizens to stand up and demand a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
GIVING PEACE A CHANCE: Recorded in a Montreal hotel room where Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsburg, Tommy Smothers, Petula Clark and a crowd of others banged on tables and doors, while John and Yoko sang from their bed. The song recreates the hurly-burly vibe of a mass demonstration and is still chanted wherever people assemble to protest war.
We shall overcome: In August 1963, 22-year old folksinger Joan Baez, led a crowd of 300,000 in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the Lincoln Memorial during A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington. President Lyndon Johnson, himself a Southerner, used the phrase "we shall overcome" in addressing Congress on March 15, 1965, in a speech delivered after the violent "Bloody Sunday" attacks on civil rights demonstrators during the Selma to Montgomery marches, thus legitimizing the protest movement. Pete Seeger's 1967 version "We Shall Overcome" was sung by over fifty thousand attendees at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.
This Land is your Land: = Woody Guthrie One of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940, based on an existing melody, a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire", in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land". In 2002, "This Land Is Your Land" was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry
Big Yellow Taxi: Written, composed, and originally recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1970, and originally released on her album Ladies of the Canyon. In 1996, speaking to journalist Robert Hilburn, Mitchell said this about writing the song: I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart... this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song - which contains the prophetic lines "They paved paradise to put up a parking lot" and "Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now" – The song is known for its environmental concern
A future foretold? Maybe difficult to accept at the time (1969) - however-, some of the lyrics are quite/very close to truth today 0:14: Equality issues are still prevented for Women in certain Countries 0:57: One looks at the homeless situation 1:08: Automation certainly allows the practicability of such 1:26: Are we not (to a degree) there yet? 2:20: "He's taken everything this old world can give, and he ain't put back nothing"
SALT-WATER: (= Tears) Combining subtle melodies with gentle vocals to bring forward the issues of environmental conservation and world poverty against the marvels and feats of human civilisation with the death of the natural world, constantly emphasising the passing of time — "Time is not a friend, 'cos friends we're out of time".
A SOLDIER BLUE: Inspired by events of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory. the film (of the same name) saw to utilize the narrative surrounding the Sand Creek massacre as an allegory for the contemporary Vietnam War The title song sung by Indigeous Singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie as a reminder of own near genoside of Naive Americans
