Boy Did I Just Get A Chill...

[Greylyn58]

I was listening to the radio and the song "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield came on and I just got a freakin chill as I listened to the words. It is so relavent to everything that is going on right now. It says:

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Wow, does that ring true! And make you think.

:think:

[Bucky]

1. The difference between the Vietnam era and today is...

It's not taking this country ten years to wake up, argue it out, and get the hell out of someone else's country. Many of us woke up immediately, the argument is over in two years, and it will probably take another 2-3 years to get out.

Mostly it sucks, but obviously our learning curve is going along much faster.

[despairing optimist]

5. Thanks to the Internets and the been there, done that, deja-vu

feeling. It would have been much harder without independent media and blogs for unedited, eyewitness information. What surprises me is that more people weren't on to the propaganda earlier, and that fundie nihilism has such a strong following. It seems that sooner or later we will have to put them in our reeducation camps or they will put us in theirs. Scary thought, but I can't help thinking it, given the past four years and what may happen after this election.

[Robbie67]

7. Which is why they created COINTELPRO

They knew that the revolution happening in the sixties would come back again.

[cubsfan forever]

2. Appropriate then (Vietnam) and

appropriate now. Great song.

Professor 2

[napi21]

3. That was the Vietnam era song. Brings back memories.

I get the same feeling now. Only people who lived through that can relate.

[Greylyn58]

4. Very True

My dad was in the Marines at the time and we were living in California because he was stationed at Camp Pendleton. I grew up during that time and remember so much.

[Lindacooks]

6. I love that song. It's very compelling.

And very beautiful.

[Arianrhod]

12. Yes, my favorite by Buffalo Springfield.

I have that CD. . . . :)

[Skarbrowe]

8. I was a sophmore in high school and our English teacher had us write

an essay on what this song meant to us. Ashamed to say I was dumber than a rock at the time. I remember saying something like "Oh, it's about Viet Nam and possibly the Civil Rights movement. I remember my mind being on all the high school activities. The carnage shown on the nightly news seemed all just a part of life in the 60's. I didn't begin to understand what was "going down" until several years later.

This song has been on my mind a lot during the past 3+ years. Thanks for posting all of the lyrics.

Skarbrowe

[expatriate]

9. that song has been in my head for several days now n/t

[mitchum]

10. I like the tremolo guitar in that song

It wasn't written about Vietnam, but about the city authorities closing down a Sunset Strip teen club. Honest.

[Selatius]

11. The good that came out of Vietnam

I'd say the thing we have with the Iraq War is 20/20 hindsight with the Vietnam War. We have that bloody war to look back on as an example of what not to do. We have lessons from that war that are valuable, but the question is whether or not the leaders in our country, both among the Democrats and the Republicans, are willing to sit down and look back or if they're going to charge in blindly once again and make people bleed more.

I don't think we're going to come out of Iraq proud of ourselves and the result. I'm not too optimistic that we're going to be able to establish a democratic nation that will last or not splinter apart along religious/ethnic lines. Iraq has never existed as a democracy. The only way it stayed together throughout the whole time it was independent of colonial rule was through force.

Democracy is something that can rarely be forced upon others. It, much like anything else under democracy, comes by choice. I hope they choose to find a way to live together in peace, but if they don't choose to do so, then trying to force them to do so will only result in more loss of life on all sides.

[prolesunited]

13. Take a look at this Quicktime movie

I think it captures your mood

http://homepage.mac.com/prolesunited/iMovieTheater18.html

[Sugarbleus]

14. Ahhh, THAT brings back memories!!

At the Dem convention, Peter Paul & Mary played some protest/insightful tunes from the old days....too bad the Kerry Campaign didn't use more of this stuff. It was great then, it fits today as well.

Thanks for bringing up glorious memories. :hi:

[anarchy1999]

15. RB HAM and I both started to quote this song in posts the summer of 2001.

I started with it on IndyMedia about 2 weeks before he posted it here.

The words will haunt you.

"Stop now, What's that sound....",

I remembered it in July, during the disaster in Genoa, Italy. All through August and into the first of September. I was most disturbed when I heard they were closing G W University and sending all the students away so that the school could be used as a base for soldiers.

I told my husband it would never happen. This was on Friday. On Tuesday the towers came down in New York and all meetings were cancelled.

Strangely enough, for a meeting that was about to happen, no fences were going up. Conclusion, they knew.

[Bridget Burke]

16. That song always gave me a chill....

It wasn't played much on Houston radio but it made me seek out the first Buffalo Springfield album. As mitchum pointed out upthread, the song was inspired by teenage troubles on Sunset Strip. But all good art (even a rock & roll tune) resonates; so the song related to other things going on at the time. And it still relates.

But I just saw Eminem's video again on MTV2. And it gave me chills, too.