News came in autumn 2003 that The New Christy Minstrels had an upcoming show at the Portland State University Theater. I immediately purchased two tickets to see a band I hadn’t thought about in 40 years. The musical memory that resonated decades later was “Green Green,” an upbeat folk song extolling free spirit and rootless travels that hit the airwaves in 1963. I’ve never liked the term “infectious” to describe riffs or hooks, but the song earned Gold that year propelled by an acoustic guitar wall-of-sound, compelling verses, and a gorgeous chorus.
My father, an eclectic music fan who had everything from John Phillip Sousa marches to Nina Simone, brought “Green Green” home one Friday night, slapped on the 45 rpm converter, and the single that was in heavy radio rotation went into heavy rotation around the house.
When I shared my excitement about the show with my date, she pretended to know who I was talking about, but I discerned that the Minstrels predated her musical awareness by roughly 10 years. There was another song that she had heard, because everybody has heard “Eve Of Destruction.” Since the song’s vocalist, original Minstrels member and eventual solo artist Barry McGuire was still with the band, it was inconceivable that we wouldn’t hear the protest anthem at the show.
It’s difficult to overstate the impact “Eve” had when it was released in 1965. The Vietnam War was escalating under President Lyndon Johnson and the Soviet Iron Curtain was years from its inevitable fall. The Middle East, characterized in the song as “the Eastern world,” was the pernicious hot-spot it has been since the Arab-Israeli War of 1947. Many nights after my parents assumed I’d bedded down, I lay under the bed covers with my transistor radio, waiting for McGuire’s stark admonition.
The Portland University venue was sold out; apparently the legacy of these celebrated artists—who were satirized as The New Main Street Singers in the Eugene Levy/Christopher Guest 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind—had survived four decades of sociopolitical turmoil and cultural upheaval. Everybody on stage was that much older, but the magic of feel-good folk leavened with echoes of protest and civil unrest carried the evening. The assemblage was mostly boomer-folk, with a smattering of young people somehow tuned in to a scene that predated their births by many years. When “Green Green” came, McGuire had everyone on their feet and singing along.
The penultimate number was “Eve Of Destruction.” The song’s perennial relevance rang true in 2003 as ever. The spuriously-conducted Iraq War was underway, and the second-guessing of George W Bush’s foray against Saddam Hussien had begun. The Eastern world was still exploding, with bombings and destruction regularly in the news, especially in “post-war” Iraq. North Korea had withdrawn from the Treaty On The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. On August 27th, the planet Mars made its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years.
“Green Green” and “Eve Of Destruction,” are two songs by an amalgamation of talent that stand the test of time. The first captures hope for a free and open future, while the second, to this very day, reminds us that the interplay of power and world-ending destructiveness is always with us.