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"Happiness always looks small when you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and at once you learn how big and precious it is."
Maxim Gorky

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Freedom Rocks...


The other night I watched an incredible documentary called 'How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin'. It was all about how the Beatles actually helped end Communism and how the music they made influenced thousands of young people in Russia to question authority.
I was born listening to the Beatles as they were probably my parents favorite band so we were always spinning their disks on the turntable. I even had an Uncle who looked like John Lennon, complete with the granny glasses and long hair. For me, music was always a choice. I was never told NOT to listen to anyone, although I was told to "turn it DOWN!" many times, my parents were young and hip and actually turned me on to a lot of the music I still listen to....Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison and The Beatles.
We had books about them and posters on the wall of that famous walk across Abbey Road, so when I watched this film, I was amazed at the paranoia and propaganda put out by the Russian Officials.

This one in particular was a pamphlet put out to heed the danger signs!

In the film it talked about how the Beatles gave the young their first taste of freedom. Freedom from the oppressive music and dance which they had been feeding Russians for many many years. It even got so bad that if you had long hair  you were arrested and your head was shaved! It got to the point where the Russian government knew that kids were bootlegging Beatles music and knew they couldn't stop it so THEY (the government) got into the record bootlegging business themselves and started selling their own copies of Beatles records to kids!Crazy. Well it opened up the whole question of Communism and...well....the rest is history. So next time you put on 'Back in the USSR', listen to it in a whole other way...



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