Well, sir Bob, I wondered how in the world you were going to introduce "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son." I remember seeing it all over the charts in late '67 but the first time I ever heard it was a couple years ago when I discovered it on an old WABC aircheck of the day. You say it got a lot of airplay in '67; I don't recall hearing it even once then! I'm assuming it was featured mainly in MOR formats and that a lot of Top 40 stations labeled it too "Establishment" and refused to air it, and a few years ago when WBIG featured that week on Johnny Dark's Top 10 at 10:00 they substituted the #11 song "Massachusetts" in place of it. I can understand why. "Open Letter" is not only an unusual record, it's a scary one. Particularly the end where VL draws an iron line in the sand with "You burn your draft card, you can burn your birth certificate as well, because from that moment on you are no longer my son." My first reaction was, My goodness, that was pretty extreme, but then I thought about the 1974 All In the Family episode where Archie practically goes postal when he finds out he's invited a draft dodger to his dinner table. And if I had been old enough in 1967 to be directly confronted with the draft my dad would have reacted no differently. I guess that record spoke for more people back then than we're willing to admit, but it was the last gasp of pro-Nam sentiment in '60s pop. Jeff
|
Posted By: Jeff on: 12/04/2006 14:09:53 EST