![]() They are expressions of a moment in time, when youth conflated purchasing power with political power. On these singles, sound, attitude and, on occasion, lyrics were all important. Thus streamed, I hunted the bins all over London for singles on Island, Elektra and Track. After Radio Caroline had gone, I’d lost most of the connection to black American music as part of the wider pop experience that I’d had in 1965, 19, even 1968. I still bought Motown and reggae hits, but they were the hits: there was no deeper exploration. The divisions had always been there, even at the height of the supposedly classless mid-60s. By 1969, this began to harden into tribal warfare, as skinheads and hippies found themselves on opposite sides of the subcultural divide. Hard mods disdained this trend, cleaving closer to the soul, Motown and Jamaican music that they danced to. The success of the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper” confirmed the primacy of the album over the single for the smart end of white pop, which was undergoing a prolonged dalliance with psychedelia and the drug culture. ![]() There were many reasons for this: social class, economics, and events within the music industry itself. In the late 60s, British pop and youth culture began to fragment into tribes. Unlike the previous volumes in Jon Savage’s series of year-based 2CD compilations, which featured music from an expansive mixture of genres, this latest edition spans three years of 100% rock.
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