The 60's songs of your teenage years

are apparently the songs which stay with you. I know I wrote about this some months back when the matter was raised by one of the columnists in our state newspaper. I have yet to read the research - when I find it. I was reminded of it a couple of days ago when I was reading some comments by my friend H... around "Leaving on a jet plane" by Peter, Paul and Mary.

I also remember saying that I was not one of those teenagers who listened to the Beatles and their contemporaries. (Yes, I know that dates me!) Despite that I realise I can recognise some of the songs from the 60's and 70's. 

Perhaps that is hardly surprising. I did hear them of course, heard them in places outside my own home. I really cannot remember taking a great deal of notice apart from the few songs I managed to learn at Guide camps. (Most of our Guide camp songs were things like "The Quartermaster's Store - often with me making up new verses for everyone to sing.)

My friend O though is "very musical" - in other words she can do more than strum a guitar and sing in tune. She is the one person from that time I have remained in touch with over the years. We can go for months without seeing one another and then we simply pick up where we left off. It was her ability to sing, play and then teach the rest of us which gave me the little knowledge I have of the music of that era. I suppose it was her choice of songs that influenced me too. 

I looked at "protest songs of the 60's" in Google and found I did not remember too many of them "Give Peace a chance" and "Blowin' in the Wind" are still sung along with "The times they are a changing". The Seekers were at their height here in Downunder but a lot of their most popular songs were borrowed from the likes of Bob Dylan. I was reminded this morning of  Redgum (which my cousin managed) but they didn't start to make a real appearance until the mid 70's.  We had Jimmy Barnes and John Farnham - the former a boy from this state but I cannot remember them from that time. I know, weird. I was probably too busy listening to the "music of words".  

I have never been able to work with music in the background. I need silence. So did I really miss out on that much? I had a sudden thought though and I searched "folk songs of the 60's". That's where I found the sort of music I actually remember hearing. It is what O... played and taught us - along with all the traditional campfire songs. Perhaps I am not a complete dinosaur of a cat if I can remember "Puff the Magic Dragon". I can lie under the "Lemon Tree" and listen to the "Sound of Silence".

Do they have songs like that now? I haven't heard any.