Emilie's English Page: Terminales

Travelling

1) Taking a Gap Year

Two interesting radio reports:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12525750

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92528052&t=1557668846310

2) The Meaning of Travelling

The Swinging Sixties

1) Why were the sixties ''swinging''?

2) The Music Revolution

The Real Story Behind Britain's Rock 'N' Roll Pirates

November 13, 2009

At the dawn of the 1960s, (…) with the exception of one commercial TV network, the airwaves were owned by the British Broadcasting Corp. — known semi-affectionately as "Auntie."

The BBC favored a bland if nourishing diet of news, information, light entertainments and children's programs. In other words, the rock 'n' roll revolution that was spreading like wildfire in the United States had been all but banished from the British airwaves.
But for a group of rebellious, rock-loving disc jockeys, such restrictions were merely a hurdle. Many of them took to the seas, hunkering down on old fishing ships anchored off the Eastern coast of England; from there, they broadcast programs built around the illicit tunes of bands like The Hollies and The Rolling Stones.

The pirates' off-coast locations strategically put them in international waters — and thus out of British authorities' legal reach. When they began broadcasting in the mid-'60s, their signals reached as many as 20 million Brits — nearly half of a population that had been permitted a diet of only six hours of "pop music" a week. And the pirates' playlists were largely lifted from American Top 40 stations, which during the '60s were dominated by the era's British bands. Radio Caroline, which broadcast from the ship Mi Amigo, became one of the most popular stations.

Some of the biggest bands of the period, including the Stones and The Dave Clark Five, got their first exposure on pirate stations. The pirates also played commercials, which was unheard of in the United Kingdom at the time.

In 1967 the British government made it a crime to supply music, commentary, fuel, food and water — and, most significantly, advertising — to any unlicensed offshore broadcaster. The law sounded the official death knell for most of the pirate stations.

Yet the music had made its mark. One month after the law took effect, the BBC launched its first pop station. And in a strange turn of events, many of the shipwrecked DJs went to work for their former nemeses at the BBC. After all, it would be six more years before Britain allowed any commercial radio stations in the country.

From npr.com

Revolution by the Beatles

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out

Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright, alright

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright, alright, al...

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know know it's gonna be alright
Alright, alright

3) A Decade of Social Protest

4) The Myth of the Sixties

The myth of the Swinging Sixties. Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll? Forget it! As a fascinating book reveals, most women recall a very different decade.

No decade in Britain’s recent history carries quite as much romantic baggage as the supposedly Swinging Sixties.

In the public imagination, it was a decade of unbroken sunshine and sparkling blue skies, the headlines full of chart-topping pop stars and world-conquering footballers, a world of Minis and miniskirts, endless possibilities and thrilling pleasures.

Even now, half a century later, we still live in the Sixties’ shadow. In an age of unprecedented economic austerity, stagnant social mobility, international terrorism and political bickering, we cannot help but dream of a lost golden age when life was sunnier, simpler, easier and happier.

Yet were the Sixties ever really like that? And if not, isn’t it time we banished the caricatures of Swinging London, and faced up to what life was really like for millions of ordinary people?

‘Swinging Sixties?’ remarks one woman. ‘Not really in my life, but we didn’t live in or around London . . . As far as I’m concerned the whole thing was just a media myth.’

‘I was probably too busy with small children to notice,’ remarks another.

Yet the real story of these women’s lives could hardly be more fascinating.

Their memories certainly confirm that the Sixties was an age of dramatic new opportunities, (…)

Theirs was a world defined not by casual sex and drugs, but by casual weekend jobs and home-made mini-dresses, Berni Inns and G-Plan furniture, daily trips to the shops and cherished holidays to Butlins and Blackpool.

Of course, sex was far from unknown. But in schools, sex education was rudimentary or non-existent. Many girls were introduced to the subject only through talking about rabbits rather than humans, which meant they either did not listen or were baffled by what they had been told.

Even so, a greater frankness was slowly becoming the norm. The power of television played a key part. For example, interviews with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the good-time girls at the centre of the Profumo scandal, suggested to some that sex was easy.

The truth is that in the Sixties, very few teenagers had sex before 16, and millions of girls still believed in the importance of chastity until they had found a steady partner, or even a husband.

There was, of course, a dark side to this apparently innocent picture.

With abortion largely outlawed until 1967, girls who found themselves in the ‘family way’ sometimes resorted to horrific back-street procedures or even tried to terminate their pregnancies themselves, with predictably grim results.

Others had their babies in hospital, only to hand them over for adoption straight away, leaving psychological scars that never really healed.

For most girls, however, the ‘ultimate ideal’, as one puts it, remained the dream of a lasting marriage to a perfect husband.

The striking absence from Sheila Hardy’s book, interestingly, is politics. Then, as now, most people had much better things to worry about than the childish intrigues of the Westminster elite.

Her interviewees remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the first Moon landing, but none mentions politicians of the day such as Harold Macmillan or Harold Wilson.

What is also very striking is how few of them saw themselves as feminists.

‘I never really fancied burning my bra,’ says one. Another, who initially approved of the feminist movement, adds that she ‘came to dislike intensely the brash, aggressive spokeswomen who took it to unrealistic man-hating lengths.’

Adapted from the dailymail.co.uk